River City Girls 2 PS5 review - Kyoko and Misako return with a vengeance

River City Girls 2 is finally here, and the girls don’t come alone. Featuring their boyfriends and two extra characters, the beat ‘em up action game comes in fast and fierce. I didn’t get to play as much of the original as I’d like, but I’m a long-time fan of the various adventures of Kunio-kun and his friends.

From River City Ransom and Super Dodge Ball to Crash ’n’ the Boys: Street Challenge, I’ve played many games in this series. However, I adore a good beat ‘em up, and while not perfect, River City Girls 2 definitely delivers on the action. This review would have been out earlier, but I needed to try out the online gameplay — that’s a very important part of action RPGs like this.

River City Girls 2 brings back the action

At the end of River City Girls, Kyoko and Misako set things right and defeated the Yakuza boss terrorizing their hometown. However, her father broke out of prison and decided to take care of things himself.

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This leads us to River City Girls 2, where the girls, alongside their now-free boyfriends, Kunio-kun and Riki, have to pummel the Yakuza again.

If you’ve played any of the beat ‘em ups in this franchise, from Double Dragon to River City Ransom, you will feel right at home. River City Girls 2 is an action game where a series of attacks are activated when you hit the correct button inputs.

They’re very easy to pull off, but you only have a few at the start of the game. You have a strong attack, heavy attack, jump, and special attack. You can also recruit thugs you beat up and use them as summons. This is one of my favorite parts of the game, having those extra attacks in a pinch.

As you level up and farm money, you can head to one of the two Dojos run by Billy Lee and Jimmy Lee of Double Dragon fame. There, you can learn more and more powerful techniques.

Each character feels unique, though there are similarities. For example, Kunio has a full-screen knockback (a bite attack), and Kyoko can do the same (with her powerful dab attack).

Each character serves a role on the team. Marian is a tanky grappler who complements Kunio-kun’s brawling. Provie and Riki are both high-speed attackers. However, Provie is better at clearing packs of enemies. Ultimately, play whichever character you want; there’s no wrong answer.

That’s right; Kyoko hits a magnificent dab and blasts the target across the screen. River City Girls 2 is very much an action RPG, so you level up and grow stronger as you play the game. You can also increase your stats by buying/eating food, but there’s been a change. You can’t simply spam by buying food to buff up your stats. The first time you eat a bit of food, you get the stat buff once, and that’s it.

Combat is mostly amazing in River City Girls 2

The combat is a lot of fun. As you unlock attacks in River City Girls 2, you can start juggling enemies across the screen, wall-bounce them, and juggle across the screen again. It gets even better in multiplayer, where players can use their various skills to dole out hits to enemies.

My best friend and I could easily nail 60+ hit combos on enemies through the power of teamwork. Teamwork, and that bicycle I found to clobber them with. The gameplay loop will feel very familiar. You wander the map, which is much bigger, and defeat the minions of the Yakuza.

The attacks and weapon-based combat are incredibly satisfying, and I love the feature of beating someone down until they surrender. You have up to two thugs to summon at a time, and they can really come in handy.

However, there were also some genuinely frustrating things about the combat. So many times, I’d roll back to my feet, and instead of facing my opponent, I’d be facing away, so I’d start taking damage again. In addition, when doing aerial attacks, more often than not, the timing is ridiculous, and I’d just whiff.

Jumping attacks have very little in the way of forward momentum unless you’re dashing. Keep that in mind, or you will get punished by enemies.

The combat is grand, and with more allies, you have more possibilities for incredible juggling attacks and punishing amounts of damage.

The world and people of River City Girls 2 have expanded brilliantly

Some people will be upset that the development team at WayForward reused a lot of assets. From the environment to the attack animations, a lot of it will look familiar.

Why not, though? There are zero reasons to redesign the same city and characters in such a short amount of time.

Having said that, there are new attacks and new areas. The city has widely expanded, and there’s plenty to do in it.

You can partake in games of dodgeball, foil crimes, and much more. The characters’ personalities have also expanded. The character dialog makes sense, and the interactions the protagonists have with NPCs are often hilarious.

Doing odd jobs to help people across the city doesn’t feel like an intrusion, though repairing the power generators requires a fair amount of backtracking. It’s not an incredibly long game, but it’s got replayability — playing other characters, having harder difficulty, and finding the game’s many secrets. There are plenty of things to uncover as you play solo or with friends online.

This leads me to one thing that frustrates me about the game — the backtracking is so frequent. The world is beautiful, and while there are some bus stops to take, you’re more often than not going to be walking across this vast city.

River City is expertly built, and I adore the little inside jokes across the game. My favorite is probably the garage door that has “Bimmy was here” spray painted on it. This is a reference to the awful typo in Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones on the NES.

Even though you have a lot of walking to do across this vast city, at least it’s brilliantly designed.

A gorgeous art style is partnered with an incredible soundtrack

The art style of River City Girls 2 reminds me of the other fantastic beat ‘em ups we’ve seen over the last few years, particularly TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge or Streets of Rage 4. It also looks similar to River City Girls 1. It has a bright style, and the characters all have very striking designs.

Megan McDuffee’s work on the River City Girls 2 soundtrack is second to none. She’s joined by Cristina Vee and even the ineffable Mega Ran on the tracks in the game.

Every single song in the game is a banger, and I hum them at all hours of the day. There isn’t an awful song on the entire soundtrack.

In conclusion

River City Girls 2, even with its minor issues, is incredible. The online multiplayer worked great, and only once or twice did my tag-team partner have issues with latency.

This did not happen to me at all, and we both played on the PlayStation 5. The gameplay was sharp and addictive, and the back-and-forth between the characters was brilliant.

I loved the gameplay, visuals, and non-stop action that the game came with. It was a little on the grindy side when farming new skills.

I have one final complaint, though. When playing multiplayer, only one player gets to progress the story — the game’s host. We hoped that both of us would unlock Marian while playing together, but only I did.

It’s disappointing, but we now just have an excuse to play River City Girls 2 together again. The game is incredibly fun. It looks great, plays great, and has kept me coming back for more beatdowns in River City.