River City Girls

 Switch
Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 12 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 12
  3. Negative: 0 out of 12
Buy Now
Buy on
  1. USgamer
    Sep 6, 2019
    70
    River City Girls is as bubbly as the pop song that soundtracks its intro cinematic would lead you to believe. With all-around excellent art direction, you'll be hard-pressed to find a game this year with more style and confidence than River City Girls. While the first few hours are a slog as you level up and learn the ropes, once your moveset grows bigger, any encounter is a blast full of combos, and yes, dabbing. Just be sure to bring a friend along for the ride, as it's much harder to brave alone.
  2. Game Informer
    Sep 6, 2019
    70
    I love pounding bad guys with an array of cool attacks and inventive weapons, even if I feel robbed by cheap tricks. River City Girls’ chaotic battles are entertaining, but they’re surrounded by an array of decisions that add more inconvenience than challenge.

Awards & Rankings

95
#95 Best Switch Game of 2019
69
#69 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2019

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 77 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 53 out of 77
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 77
  3. Negative: 20 out of 77
  1. thisisdot
    Sep 29, 2019
    3
    It's insane how much people let this game get away with. I tried playing this game but there's so many bad design elements that ruin the wholeIt's insane how much people let this game get away with. I tried playing this game but there's so many bad design elements that ruin the whole experience.

    1. Difficulty- this game is way too easy, enemies are extremely passive, taking forever to even initiate attack, essentially just standing there waiting for you to hit them. And if you do hit them, you're left with two options, doing long combos that are only there to make the game flashier, or waiting a million years for enemies to stand back up. Enemies wouldn't be that much of an issue if they either made more them more aggressive, or lowered their health bars so fighting would feel less like a chore, but the latter would never happen since this whole game revolves around the flashiness of their animations. Bosses are the only "difficult" part and it's only because of how unbalanced they made them, the difficulty in fighting them comes from invincibility frames and the fact that they just do more damage. A lot of these issues are exaggerated when you find out a basic combo pattern that essentially serves as an infinite/lock which I discovered way too early.

    2. Design oversights- Why is the regular attack button also the button that does every single action in this game? Enemy spawns near door and you prepare to attack, whoops you entered the next room and have to go in again. Doing a simple combo near a bat, whoops you picked up the item which is detrimental to comboing. Small stuff like this hamper the whole experience and make things more annoying to deal with. Why do shops not tell you what stats are affected when you use an item for the first time? The original Kunio game on the NES 30 years ago knew to tell you that stuff, it's kinda ridiculous.

    3. Story stuff- This story is awful, not even in a "haha it's so bad way" it's just awful to listen to. WayForward from what I know about them, gets a lot of praise typically for how great their dialogue is and I never really got that from their other games, and it's way worse here than it's ever been. There's so many "haha look at how self aware we are" types of jokes that aren't even handled well, either from how the joke is written or how it's delivered by the voice actors. The story is insulting at times with it's humor falling back on weeb humor, stuff that feels like crap that we made fun of back in 2007 like "i watch naruto, haha I'm such a weeb XD" types of jokes, and a lot of the humor is very based on weeaboo type crap, Kyoko makes a jojo reference by going ORAORAORA during one of her attacks but since they have to make weeb jokes she also does a "WHAT'S A MANGA?!?!?!?!?!?!" joke when some kid talks about comics. It's annoying crap like that which plague every aspect of the humor of this game, there are flash animations on newgrounds from 2005 that do a better job making jokes about this type of stuff.

    Presentation- Good sprite animations, but that's really about it. Music isn't bad, but I will say it doesn't fit this type of game at all, it's full of low energy vocal themes and basic beats that aren't bad on their own but when coupled with a beat'em up, it just feels kinda off. UI is fine, but it's kinda stupid since you have high resolution digital art being placed on top of pixel art, kinda jarring. Both elements work on their own but don't when put together, but the UI thing is typical of wayforward games so it's not that big a deal. Voice acting is pretty bad, you have some talented VAs like Cristina Vee, Greg Chun, Patrick Seitz and such, but the delivery of all their lines are just not good. This next part is kind of a personal thing, but I was kinda put off by the fact that so many voice actors in this game are youtubers, people like JackSepticEye, the Game Grumps, Cry, various youtubers voice characters in this game and what kinda bothers me about that is the fact that it comes across as hiring just because they're famous rather than hiring out of merit, I'm sure there are smaller VAs that have had trouble making a name for themselves that would've done a better job here but got pushed to the side because their youtube subscriber count wasn't high enough and that's extremely upsetting to think about.

    Final Thoughts- This game has a lot of issues. I mentioned a very basic overview of my issues with the game. The difficulty is non-existent, the design oversights hinder the whole experience, the writing makes the game annoying to sit through, and the presentation while not bad is just kinda off at times. I gave this game a low score because all these things combined with each other make the game unacceptable, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who thinks this seeing that reviews are giving this game 9/10s calling it the best beat'em up ever(though I bet most of them only think this because it's easy or because they like the flashiness), I can't convince anyone to not get the game but I hope whoever reads this thinks before they buy before they're left disappointed    … Full Review »
  2. JustJohnB
    Jan 7, 2020
    10
    Played it on the PS4. Absolutely loved every second of it. There's really nothing you could possibly fault with the graphics, gameplay, music,Played it on the PS4. Absolutely loved every second of it. There's really nothing you could possibly fault with the graphics, gameplay, music, and story. All the bases this game tried to cover were covered perfectly. Multiplayer was perfect. Finished it with my brother, girlfriend, and nephew and all of them loved it almost as much as I did.

    And if you're worried that this game might carry with it toxic feminism or progessism, let me put your fears to rest. There is none of that. It's just good, timeless entertainment.

    We need more games just like this,    … Full Review »
  3. MARUYAMA
    Oct 2, 2019
    0
    ウェイフォルワードわウェイフォルワードだ
    As expected, behind the beautiful visuals there's a very poorly made game
See all user reviews »