A bit of history on the series needs to be mentioned before we proceed further. The "River City" game franchise is a Westernized localization of the "Kunio-kun" Japanese franchise of Action-RPG beat-em-ups. The very first was localized in Western territories as "Renegade" for arcades, and many games in the series were ported to consoles like the NES. Interestingly, while both formed their own canons back in the day, the modern reboot games like River City Girls are a blend of the two, using the Japanese names and plotlines with the Westernized touches of the River City localizations. The same company that made these games also is behind Double Dragon, one of the founding grandfathers of the beat-em-up genre, and this game among others in the RC/Kunio-kun franchise shares some cameo and crossover with it. A further note is the games have varied in tone, from very serious to quite silly. This game is pretty far into the wacky side of the series.

The plot starts as the main characters Misako and Kyoko are being forced to attend detention (remedial lessons in the Japanese script) when they get a mysterious phone text with a picture of their boyfriends Kunio and Riki being manhandled and taken away in a van. Horrified, they decide to break out of the school and find their boyfriends, no matter how many black eyes and beatings they have to dish out to save their love interests.

The meat and potatoes of the game is a Beat 'em up with Action RPG elements. Most of the game involves going from area to area, beating up random foes who try to accost you. Aside from a few story-mandated boss fights, they also can do some sidequests for certain characters. They can also visit store areas on some parts of the map and purchase various goods and services such as power-ups, health recovery, and so on.

The game can be played with one or two players, and co-op play can have friendly fire enabled or disabled, the former allowing allies to hurt each other. Aside from either a normal or difficult challenge setting, these options can be changed every time one loads a save, that's more or less it for deciding game options.

Just wanted to add this game is very, very silly. On top of a script that knows the story concept is ridiculous and runs with it, there are a lot of shoutouts, easter eggs, and silly background pieces, so half the entertainment can come from trying to find all the jokes. If you are familiar with both the Kunio-kun titles and the Western versions of those games, you will likely get even more laughs out of all the references.

Graphically, the game uses a 16-bit side-scroller look done in hand-drawn and quite expressive pixel art. The story is told through a combination of brief anime scenes like the opening theme, manga-style art panels, and in-game scenes. Given this game blends aspects of the Western and Eastern, River City itself has a Western style yet many Japanese touches.

The sounds and music are quite good. While most sounds and music use a Sega Genesis-esque synthesized sound font, there are a lot of areas with vocalized anime-style music in English. The voice acting is good yet curiously only in English despite supporting Japanese text.

The gameplay can be controlled either by the keyboard or any Steam-compatible gamepad; the latter is highly recommended. The stock button assignments are easy enough to get used to, however. You can remap keyboard keys easily enough, though third-party tweaks may be needed for controller reassignment. It works out of the box on Steam Deck.

Stability is fine on Windows. It is rated Verified on Steam Deck and runs fine on that as well as Linux. One caveat for the Steam Deck is that the cutscenes will show nothing (but can be skipped past) unless the screen is set to Windowed mode due to a rendering anomaly in Steam Proton. Otherwise, runs just the same as under Windows. System Requirements are quite modest and this should run fine on all contemporary laptops and desktops.

Morally, River City Girls has some issues.

The violence is beat-em-up style. Both barehanded and weapon combat with various implements are included. There are a few minor displays of bloodstains in some areas, though most foes when defeated leave nothing behind but money and an occasional healing powerup. Some foes will attempt surrender, which can be accepted, making them summonable as allies.

Language is mostly mild, though there is a rare instance of the word a** heard at least once. Sexual content is generally low, most outfits are normal and street-legal (if somewhat bizarre at times) for most characters. The closest we get to anything remotely inappropriate is an homage to the original River City Ransom sauna, but even this shows both ladies more than fully covered by towels. Regardless, there are some lewd comments, such as a few girls who imply they have engaged in extramarital sex (though this is done as a taunt to some other girls and is of dubious truthfulness). There is one odd Engrishy conversation where a guy makes a comment implying homosexuality towards another male, but given the entire conversation is rendered as an homage to the hilariously bad Engrish translations of some of the early Western games, it's hard to be sure and it's implied to be a garbled misstatement.

There is a prominent user of the "dark arts". While they claim their powers are drawn from the occult, it comes off more like generic feats of telekinesis and other feats of that nature dressed up in the guise of dark magic. Some other characters exhibit similar abilities that are not clearly defined. It's also implied via ashen grey/black colorings to some random enemies they are zombies or some form of undead. Their names are typically something like "Vesper", the Italian word for ghost, further indicating this. Some actual zombies do show up, but their exact origin is unclear and treated as a joke. In co-op mode, one player can revive the other by "stomping" on their "soul" until it reenters their body.

Morally and ethically, this is heavily checkered. While the protagonists are engaged in a noble effort to rescue their boyfriends from an apparent kidnapping, their very first act is to violently break out of detention at a school. While most of their acts of assault can be chalked up to self-defense, some appear more to be done out of sheer spite or incited by personal animosity. Vandalism, theft, and general causing of strife in a crowded city are all acts that must be committed at some point by the player to proceed. Authority is portrayed as ethically gray at best and quite corrupt and violent itself. The protagonists show a general disregard even for legitimate authority figures, such as the teacher overseeing their initial detention. In short, this game involves a lot of societally disrupting acts as part of the story and player choices during the same. There are also a few incidents of class-based prejudice aimed at the protagonists of the rich vs. poor variety.

If you want a love letter to the classic Kunio-kun/River City games of yore, this will certainly satisfy you. Conversely, it's got a pretty checkered moral outlook, so be advised if that bothers you. Overall, as someone who loved the older games, this was a fun trip through memory lane with a fresh coat of paint.