River City Girls 2 – Full Game & Story (Nightmare Mode / All Characters / NG)

Why not kick off 2023 with a new video? I’m very late uploading this, despite having played it since before it was even released (huge thanks to WayForward for sending me a code!). There’s a reason for that, besides pure laziness, which I’ll get to in a moment…

But first thing’s first! River City Girls 2 has finally been released, and it’s bigger and better than the original in almost every way. The combat feels great, the pixel art and animation is really well done, with stages that are packed with detail, and the soundtrack is fantastic (one of my favorites of the year). Even the storyline, characters, and writing are enjoyable. Overall, this could be my favorite WayForward game. But it does have one gigantic flaw that I’m hoping will be fixed soon… You can only play New Game once. If you want to replay the story after completing a second playthrough, you have to start a new file from scratch. RCG1 didn’t do this, so I have absolutely no idea what they were thinking with this change. It’s awful. It almost ruins the game for me. I lost interest in playing after that, and I was kinda rushing through the game in this video, since I had to start over. I’d love to see them go in the *opposite* direction – NG should get even harder. I want a difficulty that’s balanced around your characters’ stats being maxed out – put more enemies in each encounter, more dangerous enemies, higher rank enemies, etc. That’s when the game is at its best.

With that disappointment out of the way, I’d still recommend this game. I enjoyed the hell out of it in my first two playthroughs. It is a little expensive at 39.99, but personally I think it’s worth the price. I put 40-50 hours into it by the time I was done recording this video (across four playthroughs), so it can keep you busy for a while. It’s a lot of fun to play.

0:00 Opening
3:55 River City High (Misako)
20:00 BOSS: Ken
30:34 Uptown (Kyoko)
1:10:00 BOSS: Provie
1:19:00 Technos Headquarters (Ken)
1:49:55 BOSS: Tsuiko
1:59:15 Downtown (Riki)
2:27:09 BOSS: Marian
2:36:58 Flatirons (Provie)
3:02:27 BOSS: Blaire
3:14:27 Ocean Heights (Marian)
3:50:45 BOSS: Primo
4:04:17 River City High (Kyoko)
4:35:10 BOSS: Ken
4:43:50 Bomb Rescue & Sanwakai Tower (Misako)
5:19:21 BOSS: Sabu
5:24:40 Ending
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Beat ’em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?listPLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?listPLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?listPLFE6B3779BE759F71

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