After Apple Arcade and Netflix, Crunchyroll entered the sport subscription service get together (?) with its Crunchyroll Game Vault for cellular bringing premium video games to cellular as worth provides for subscribers. The launch video games included some older titles now part of the Crunchyroll Recreation Vault, and in addition WayForward’s River Metropolis Ladies (Free) which noticed its cellular debut by means of this service. Shaun already reviewed the sport on Swap here, and I agree with mainly all of that. For this evaluation, I needed to cowl how the sport has aged with the sequel out on different platforms, and the way the port is thru the Crunchyroll Recreation Vault.
When you’ve by no means heard of River Metropolis Ladies, it’s really a brand new entry within the Kunio-kun/River Metropolis franchise from Arc System Works, however one which has you enjoying as Misako and Kyoko as a substitute of Kunio and Riki. It excelled for its fashion, music, voice performing, and a lot of the gameplay once I performed it on Xbox a number of years in the past. The Swap model was plagued with some efficiency points, however is in a greater place proper now. It did have co-op, and I all the time felt like the sport was balanced round that reasonably than being accessible to solo gamers.
There’s fairly a little bit of freedom in River Metropolis Ladies by means of its open-esque places with outlets, enemies, and extra. As a beat ’em up, it isn’t as polished as one thing like Streets of Rage 4 when you’ve performed that, however I nonetheless suppose fondly of how a lot I loved River Metropolis Ladies and nonetheless love its characters. Shifting from location to location and finally attending to memorable boss fights (some sadly aren’t enjoyable), and upgrading and unlocking extra on your characters. That is one space I want the group went again to stability higher. When you play solo like I did each initially and now, the sport feels too tedious with enemies having what seems like inflated well being swimming pools. After unlocking and upgrading a bit, issues grow to be much more enjoyable, however it’s nonetheless difficult even on regular issue. I couldn’t check the net on the cellular model, however the recreation itself solely supported native co-op. I hope if WayForward does carry River Metropolis Ladies 2 to cellular, it consists of the net multiplayer as properly with cross platform matchmaking.
Now, River Metropolis Ladies on iOS on my iPhone 15 Professional and iPad Professional (2020) has efficiency points. It additionally appears to be like glorious in most elements. The few points I bumped into must do with how the side ratio of sure issues has been dealt with inflicting cropping or components hidden behind the house bar in elements. A number of the contact targets are additionally too small with tiny textual content in menus. These often are the tabs you’d swap between within the menu utilizing the shoulder buttons on the controller, however they should be tweaked for iPhone and iPad. Yet one more factor I’d prefer to see is correct cloud save assist. I logged into my account on each iPhone and iPad and my progress didn’t sync throughout for the sport.
Talking of controls, River Metropolis Ladies has controller assist, and it really works nice. It does solely present Xbox button prompts in my testing at the least. When utilizing touchscreen controls, you sadly can’t regulate the positions or dimension of those touchscreen buttons except I missed one thing. They work properly on iPad, however really feel a bit cramped on the telephone. I hope a future replace can add choices to regulate these like we’ve seen within the Hitman: Blood Money – Reprisal launch.
Barring the few management and interface points, River Metropolis Ladies nonetheless has the issues of the unique recreation close to stability for solo play and a few bosses not being as a lot enjoyable. This model is up to date although, so that you don’t mistakenly find yourself altering location if you’re attacking enemies close to a door or one thing. I did get pleasure from revisiting it a number of years later although, and nonetheless choose it to the sequel in some ways.
Every time I evaluation a recreation that’s solely in a subscription service, it’s value whether or not the sport presents sufficient worth to warrant subscribing to stated service. River Metropolis Ladies is priced at $29.99 on Nintendo Swap, and whereas it being “Free” for subscribers is unbelievable, it isn’t sufficient to justify subscribing. Possibly when there are extra video games, however proper now it is a good worth add for current subscribers. When you don’t have a Crunchyroll membership, particulars about subscription pricing are here on the official website. You want the Mega Fan tier ($9.99 monthly) or the Final Fan tier ($14.99 monthly) to additionally entry the video games within the Crunchyroll Recreation Fault.
If you have already got River Metropolis Ladies on one other platform, there isn’t something of notice with this launch to warrant replaying it. When you don’t, and have a Crunchyroll subscription that features the Recreation Vault, it’s completely value enjoying. I all the time preferred River Metropolis Ladies regardless of its flaws, and whereas I hope the iOS model will get patched to enhance controls and its interface, it’s a good port. River Metropolis Ladies itself is beautiful with an incredible soundtrack, and I nonetheless choose it to the sequel.
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