izigame.me

Recommendable just barely because WOW what a mixed bag this game was on release. I hope a lot of these issues are patched out later or improved on in a 3rd game.
The game still oozes style which is it's strongest area, however the spritework could do with a resolution upgrade on the characters if we ever get a 3rd game. The music mostly hits the mark of what they're aiming for with some of the sound design being so layered I was starting to get some GTA world building vibes. So it's a shame that sometimes you'll be stuck with the same song for ages and then the other extreme by the end of the game when you'll be moving so fast you'll rarely hear past the first minute of a piece of music. An unlockable radio you could bring with you might solve this?
There's countless references to the River City Ransom games, Double Dragon, wayforward, and even some other cameos from other games and even internet personalities. My only complaint about the storytelling is all the key/famous male characters except the playable ones seem to be betrayed as sometimes Homer levels of incompetent on some level. Game 3 should have some sort of side story where the Double Dragon cast try to resolve some unsolved issues but that's just imo.
The size of the game is more than doubled over the original, but a lot of the fetch quests which pad that out are an exercise in patience. This is especially bad with online play with the strangely long load screens between each map change (and you will be doing that A LOT) as if the game is fixing the connection every time. It's a great achievement this game even has cross play, but it's made less impressive by the load times and probably the biggest black mark it has of all.
I'll be blunt and just go ahead and say it, despite this being advertised as a 4 player game, unless you play locally and have to share one visually crowded screen, ONLY player 1's (the host player) progress is saved! You can level up characters and buy moves and items, but ALL other game progress is only memorised on whoever the host player is, NOT EVEN character unlocks, item rewards on quests HELL even some story required minigames are single player only. This just seems like a baffling choice designed to make the game last longer for a generation of gamers who don't touch games anymore once they've unlocked everything. On the plus side? some content shifts depending on the characters being used, the banter between characters changes and even the pictures on the selfie quest. A lot of games would take the easy way out and not change this so the extra detail is appreciated.
Speaking of Selfies, using a characters phone for the map, game progress and the majority of the menus ingame and features was a genius idea! I just wish I didn't feel I was putting my life in danger any time I checked it in online play. The enemies will show you zero mercy, creating frustrating LET ME JUST CHECK SOMETHING! Moments where you end up trying to find places to hide.
Last we have the combat which I feel has gone a bit sideways. Why did wayforward ever think a 30fps fighting game was acceptable? Thankfully this is being patched but still. Being an rpg beatemup that means you can just muscle your way through most fights by having higher stats than whoever you're fighting, basically extrinsic progress over intrinsic as a player. The River City games have always been like this, but it has the bad effect of making the game hard at first and then a cakewalk later. I'm still underwhelmed by the characters combo potential so far (partly because by the end you can ko most things in a few hits), but I might just need to experiment more with it in the new dummy training room which is a great new feature. The ability to bring enemies you beat as a tag fighting style game assist character has been improved, with you now able to bring more than one and keep the ones you find. If only it was a bit easier to catch them in the first place since you have to weaken them pokemon style and pray no other enemies or players get in the way and you end up finishing them off.
The bosses were pretty weak too, with an over-reliance on super armour, iframes and "wait for their attacks to finish before you're allowed to do anything" If you remember the Noize boss fight from the first game it's basically that problem (though just to clarify Noize is NOT a bad character I just think the boss fight needed more work).
Confusing review? Well based on the state of the game on release if I had to rate parts of it the ranking would be something like
Best: Music & sound design
Visual Design
Story
Gameplay
Worst: Online features
Unless you REALLY like the series it's not as great a game as it pretends to be, but it's no-where near close to as bad as some other weird River City licensed games that have been released over the years either. Of all the River City Girls games so far this is still easily the most game you get for your money.