River City Melee Battle Royal SP - Review

A few months ago I was looking through an email from Limited Run, for those of you who are not aware of them, they print a limited number of physical games that ordinarily would be only available as a digital download.  They were about to release two games, River City Melee Battle Royal SP (part of Kunio-Kun Series) and Double Dragon IV.   I really wanted the Special Edition of Double Dragon IV as it came with the soundtrack, alas even though I logged in a mere fifteen minutes after it went on sale they had sold out.  As I had already planned to spend that money I didn't want to waste it, so I bought River City Melee and Double Dragon.  I had never played a River City Melee game up to this point but it seemed fun, and I thought why not.


Who remembers Bernard Matthews Mini Kievs?  They were so tasty, small balls of turkey in bread crumbs, filled with garlic sauce.  Thinking of them always reminds me of my childhood, when I was first presented with them I was skeptical, but very quickly I learned to love them.  Playing River City Melee Battle Royal SP I found myself asking, was I right in my initial skepticism, or was this something I could learn to love?

Story

The Japanese Video Games Series, Kunio-Kun turned thirty last year, in honor of that Arc System Works (who now owns all the rights to the series) released River City Melee Battle Royal SP.  In all honesty, while the name River City Melee rang a bell with me, I had never played one of the games, this is most likely as I grew up as a child of Sega rather than Nintendo.

Like with many of the old-school style games the story is relatively simple.  A mysterious gang is going around attacking students and other gangs.  While this is all happening, students/teams/gangs are informed about an upcoming fighting tournament.  Twenty-five teams enter in the hope of being crowned the winner, along with figuring out if the mysterious gang is somehow related to the tournament.

While the story is simple, I liked that each team had its own backstory, so each time I played it through I got something a little different.  It may not be the most exciting story, but it is fun.

Visuals

The visuals are quite interesting, if for no other reason than their contrast of old versus new.  The backgrounds in each of the stages have a modern feel, they look clean and fresh, which is why they are in such contrast with the 8-bit style characters.  While it's not for everyone I really liked it, even though on occasion I ended up paying attention to the background more than I should have, to my own demise. 

There were some interesting level designs including the; football pitch, factory, and school gym.  The football pitch offers a crowd of cheering fans, along with a goalkeeper who you can try and score goals against, while you try to battle enemies.   The factory had two nice touches, conveyor belts, which looked good and could make combat tougher, but also an item/weapon dispenser which really helped shake things up.  The school gym stage was a little awkward as it could be difficult to gauge where the edge was, and if you were unlucky, would fall off.  What made it fun was in the lower right corner under the stage you could see Scott Pilgrim.  Overall, visually, it was a pretty good, and a lot of fun.

Music

The score is upbeat, fun, and a little cheesy, none of which are bad things in my opinion.  It's strange, sometimes in games, I don't realise how much music they actually contain until I sit back and listen to it all afterward.  This is definitely true of River City Melee Battle Royal SP.  The composer for the score is, Kazuo Sawa, who is a Japanese Video Game Composer, he has been in the industry for many years, and has helped create the sound for the Kunio-Kun series, along with the Sound of World Populous.

The soundtrack features forty-eight tracks, and about an hour of music, there were many catchy tunes, and the only really annoying sound was the one used when dialogue was being typed on the screen, very piercing.  My favorites pieces included:

Like A Work Horse

Last Straight Course

Awards Ceremony

Continuing Universe

Daisetsuzan School Theme

Funky's Theme

Happy Ending

Mysterious Gang

Nervous Competition 

Preparation 

Passionate Fight

Rantov March

Run Together

Ultra Niekketsu

Super Shoot

Gameplay

Onto the breaded turkey!  I won't lie my first impressions of the combat was not great, and even when I played it on Beginner difficulty it seemed challenging.  The problem was that I was thinking of it in terms of a fighting game that required skill, but when it comes down to it River City is pure button bashing.  Find one or two moves that work, and go to town.  In fairness, there is a little more to it than that but that is the crux of it.  

There are twenty-five teams, made up of five characters, different characters have different special moves.  One of my favorites moves had to be the Mach Punch, it was fast, and effective against multiple enemies.   The key to success is to go into each fight guns blazing, get as many hits in as you can, more hits, means more points. There are also items and weapons on each stage, which can really help turn the tide of the battle.  While you can get knocked out first, you could still end up finishing with more points that then other players.  Once three rounds have been completed whoever has the most points win. 

The game has a lot of charm, one example of this is during dialogue sequences.  Little emotions are displayed on and sometimes around characters, for example, if the character is angry they have flames around them, circular swirls next to their head indicates confusion, and red expanding cross next to their head indicates irritation.  This is something seen in many Japanese games, anime, and manga.

Once I got used to the gameplay style I really got into it and ended playing it through multiple times.

Final Thoughts

So, after five hours how did I feel?  Really good.  Initially, I felt a little skeptical, especially after my first playthrough, but after playing it a few times I got a lot more into it.  Overall a great game that has inspired me to go back and check out some of the other titles in the series.  While I was back, and forth a few times on how to score the game I finally settled on giving it 4 out of 5