River City: Rival Showdown Review (Fistful Of Nyquil)
As a fan of the OG American version of River City Ransom on the NES, (Was playing it in 1990) and River City Ransom Underground, I wasn't even aware that River City Ransom was remade on the 3DS back in 2016. So when I bought this it was a surprise to me. It was a pleasant surprise though.
I love the fact that the story is better fleshed out, and has even more humor than the NES version. The city has been totally remapped. Good graphics, Great controls, (We'll get to that in a minute.) and has a day/night feature not present in the NES version. It has a nostalgic feel which is what I was hoping for since River City Ransom Underground pulled that off nicely.
The only gripes I have with the game the fact that the game seems to be shorter than the OG NES version. (Maybe because I was young at the time.) The 2 player co-op feature doesn't seem to be as good as OG NES and River City Ransom Underground which was 4 players! Hell, I tried to to join someone for a co-op adventure, but it always comes up as failed to find a room. Retry? To be fair, I haven't tried to host a co-op adventure either. I even read that only the 1st player can do a majority of the events. This makes no sense to me.
As for the controls, there were some problems on the PC. Despite installing it on the PC, I have YET to play on it. Guess what? The game works like a dream on the Steamdeck! There is also a controller issue on the deck as well because by default, it's set to the KB/M layout. I typed out how to fix it on the Steamdeck in the controller issue thread, but I'll copy & paste what I wrote there here:
On Steamdeck it's on keyboard and mouse on default but here is what to do, and doesn't require disabling Steam Input.
1. Select the game
2. Click on the controller icon next to achievements. This takes you to "Current Layout"
3. Click on the template tab that has the default of kb/m. This takes you to "Load new layout".
4. Select the Template "Gamepad with Joystick Trackpad. This will change the keyboard/mouse buttons into controller buttons
5. Enjoy the game.
I've already beaten the game and got the variant ending, so I'm going through the game again with "new game +"
Overall a nice game for fans of the series. I also recommend you buying River City Ransom Underground if you haven't done so already.