River City Ransom: Underground (PC) - A Throwback to the Future

It took a very long time for me to get my first Nintendo. I actually had to wait until my first communion where I started receiving envelopes upon envelopes of money. And young Cannonman counted, and counted, and counted until he hit that magic number to which I went to my mom and asked if I can leave the party to go buy my Nintendo. She made me wait a day.

I made some missteps as I purchased games, but there was no greater achievement than was getting one side scrolling brawler I especially loved. Problem was, the only place that seemed to have a copy of it was our local Blockbuster (if you even remember those). My mom took a shot, asked if it checked out often and if we could buy it from them. Staggeringly, they actually said yes and what would follow would be almost a daily playing of this game for near the remainder of the NES life cycle, and honestly multiple times after the NES became irrelevant.

28 years later, Conatus Creative kickstarted a 4 year development of a true sequel to the Americanized version of said game. And while I didn't kickstart it, I did anxiously follow and watch through its torturous development. It took its time, and there was a lot of delays along the way. But now? It's finally here... 

RIVER CITY RANSOM: UNDERGROUND(PC)

RCR:U starts off with you replaying a condensed version of the final moments of the original River City Ransom: In 19XX Alex and Ryan approach the gates of River City High on a mission to take back Ryan's girlfriend Cyndi and break Slick's control over the gangs of River City. This functions as a tutorial to teach you the new controls of the game and catch you up to speed on the story of the first game if you didn't play it.

The game flashes forward 28 years to the year 19XX where Cross Town High as now be converted to the new River City High, and members of a local gang the Flock are running late for class. But when they reach their lecture, the TV turns on with an announcement from Mr. Merv, the millionaire behind Merv's burger joint (where the smiles are still free). He is irate that someone kidnapped his precious angel, and has security footage implicating the Flock's leader Chris as the culprit.

Merv offers to make the ones who bring vigilante justice to the Flock very very rich, and so begins a wave of attacks against the Flocks remaining members: Glen the Shoutaken fighter, Provie the Breakdancer, Bruno the Luchador, and Paul the Boxer. The gang scrambles to escape by chance come across a much older Alex and Ryan. They suspect Slick is behind this, and join the gang to take the streets to figure out what the hell is actually going on.

From the moment I hit start, I was right back where I left off almost 30 years ago.

First off, I have to appreciate the nod to the original series and how they found a clever way to work in the lore from the previous game. It was a cool way start the game and gave my nostalgia a kick right from the onset. And even if you never played it prior to this one, it essentially gives you all the story from the original in one little bite sized tidbit. The story of this game isn't anything really revolutionary, its basically just a simple framing device of motivation for you to start wandering the city and start wailing on baddies.

But there is one big story line error that I have to address right at the gate: Cyndi is/was RYAN'S girlfriend. It says so in the original game, and is confirmed on the wikipedia page. But this new installment of the game follows along the plot under the impression that Cyndi and Alex were an item. Now, maybe things changed over the 28 years, maybe we are supposed to believe that certain things happened. But left my own thoughts, certain things don't add up. I won't press this further though not to spoil anything.

That being said, it would be a disservice to say that this game has no story. The folks at Conatus Creative did a pretty exceptional job with what little the previous game left us with, and weaved together a handful of stories to flesh out a pretty lengthy campaign. Considering I can beat the original River City Ransom in under 12 minutes, giving me enough story to keep me playing for several nights was excellent. Even hit me with a few surprises along the way.

The biggest difference to the game though is in the fighting engine. Now it keeps somewhat true to its roots that you start off with punches and kicks and you need to learn techniques along the way to give you more moves to trash baddies. But in the old RCR this was basically all done with 2 buttons. RCR:U operates under an 8 button system so no classic controllers for those hoping. It now is a punch, kick, dedicated jump button, grab, manual block, special button, Item Use, item switch, and taunt (on the analog).

It adds a pretty big degree of the complexity to the game because now you just aren't mashing one or two buttons the entire time. You could, but you would be under-utilizing your abilities by late game. Like the previous game it will involve a bit of grinding of enemies to raise money to get new techniques. Before you just needed to be able to afford a book and then use it. RCR:U now has a leveling system in place where you need to reach a certain threshold to be able to purchase the abilities from dojos scattered across the map.

The problem with this is the stores are all limited to just the item and price. It would have been nice if there was some indication of what level I needed to be in order to actually purchase the technique. Or if this attack is later part of a combo that requires me to have another technique in order to actually use. I know this is something they are working on in a patch, but the game really does have a explanation issue.

This is kind of an issue for really all of the items in the game. Flavor text is fine and all but you really don't get it until after you've made the purchase and used the item, so you can effectively be wasting a lot of money learning just what stuff does and even then I forget what things are useful. You could argue that this is keeping in spirit what the original RCR set before it, but just because its how it was before doesn't necessarily mean its good for now. Some of these are constraints of the system limitations back then. There is no reason these items couldn't have explanations as you roll over them.

That being said, once you get your techniques actually unlocked and have the controls down a bit, using your special moves to combo and air juggle is an absolute dream. My first play through I went with Glen the shoutoken fighter and I managed to produce together a quick striking combo that lead into a hurricane kick air juggle that ended with dragon punch that would absolutely mow down anything in my path, regular enemies and bosses alike. It takes time to get there, but when you do it feels fucking awesome.

Once you get combo-ing down, you feel like a skillful badass.

RCR:U tends to follow a somewhat similar progression to its predecessor: Fight a boss, tells you where to go next, fight next boss. How it differs compared to the previous though is that the map of River City is significantly larger and a lot less linear. The objectives are on the map are sometimes unclear as well so it took a little effort to move along in the game, sometimes to the point of frustration.

I'll give you some examples, in the early goings there is a mission where it tells you where to fight the next boss. It tells you to go to the factory but you face appears on the same spot on the map for 3 very different areas. He doesn't appear immediately though, you have to get his attention. What this means is you have to continue to beat baddies for a somewhat nondescript amount of time before the boss actually makes an appearance. There is little to tell you that you are actually doing this properly, so you might find yourself running in circles.

There is another section where you have to find an old boss from the previous game, and the story tells you to go to another specific location. But if you aren't paying close enough attention, you might never see that you can actually climb up a fence along the wall that opens you up into a brand new area that is easily missed even though the map shows you are technically in the right area. If you are like me and flew past it multiple times, you will find your progress completely halted. None of them are game-breakingly annoying but a little more direction would have been appreciated.

As you can see from the character design this love letter to the original RCR as everything is painstakingly designed to look like the original game, but its so much more detailed than that. On top of having 8 playable characters, each character unique fighting style that makes them all play differently and meticulously animated to be fast, fluid and detailed. There are very few characters that share animations for any real reason.

You get a more tangible list of where you stats actually are at in this one.
So when you eat food, you know what you can stop buying when you max out.

On top of that, all of the baddies in the game over various gangs, on top of also being uniquely designed, also feature their own unique fighting styles specific to their respective gangs. It certainly explains why the development cycle took so long, because the amount of original moves in this game are mind bending. But I feel the game is much better off for it because everything about them feels original. No palate swap of T-shirts here.

The music... eh.. I'm not sure how to rate this one. Conatus brought in the talents of Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpiece) who has some established credit as a game composer for such games as Fez, BitTrip Runner, and Hyper Light Drifter. As I played through the game the music was fine, I guess. But I wouldn't say any of it was notable. Wasn't even any callbacks to original game. I dunno, it just didn't feel as memorable as it could have been.  For a composer who has some pretty notable soundtracks under his belt, that is a little disappointing.

In addition to being a good single player game, the campaign mode of the game supports up to four player co-op. It doesn't appear to add any more enemies for you to fight along the way, so it might be easier to team up with friends. There is also a battle mode which up to 4 people can duke it out in a smaller area for kind of a Smash Bros mode if you will. And whats really cool about this is almost all the enemies characters and bosses are available for use in this mode so you actually get to try out some of their niftier move sets.

The problem is unfortunately the abilities are not unlocked for this mode and its scales with how you've played. So for example if we jumped into a round of that game, My Glen who I've used most and have all the moves unlocked for, would have a significant advantage over Ryan who I didn't play at all and the majority of his moves are unavailable. Battle mode should just have everything unlocked with all stats maxed out to balance the playing field.

Apparently, the game contains a significant number of secrets buried in the game as well, with one of the developers tweeting out that some of the secrets haven't been found yet. That actually impresses me. When I completed the game on my first run I ended around 85% complete, so there is reason for me to keep coming back to play it so that's always a plus.

Ether gives out a "Notice Me, Senpai" Joke. I Lol'd.

The difficulty curve can be mixed. I would say that this game is significantly harder in the beginning of the game because not having your abilities unlocked will set you back more than actual game difficulty. And the reason for this is because literally on any given map you have 6 enemies coming after you at any given time. And they aren't dumb enemies lining up for punches. Almost always they will be trying to pincer you on two sides and will cheaply knock the shit out of you. It can be incredibly frustrating. But then you will start to unlock your moves, and the game will lull you into thinking it has become too easy as you trash baddies. Until the last few levels are thrown at you which are long arduous slogs where if you die you have to start them all over again. Some consistency would be nice.

This is amplified on a level that has already been patched to be made easier. There is a mission where you have a carry a milk bottle from one end of the map to the other end of the map without it breaking. Taking a hit of any kind would cause you to drop the bottle. It was MERCILESS. Some enemies would dive punch you at the moment of screen transition and cause you to drop the bottle. meaning you have to walk all the way back to pick it up and try again. I couldn't believe I actually managed to do it and it took inside of a few days for the devs to tone that mission down a little.

The last few missions will really put your skills to the test.

There are a lot of little annoyances to game too that pad out the length for unnecessary reasons. For one, there is a pretty useless Day/Night mechanic in the game that doesn't really seem to affect anything other than making bosses appear or not appear if you clear out the right area at various times. Additionally, it also affects certain stores as well as some are open all night, some are only open in the day, and some only open after nightfall. There really is no reason for it.

Fast travel in this game is almost next to impossible. There is a subway system where you have to survive a small 30 second gauntlet to jump to other places on the map, but its not really an efficient system and there really aren't enough drop off points to make it a very expedient option. Near the end of the game they just get locked off completely, which is super annoying.

There are some platforming issues that are a massive pain the ass, Thankfully when you fall off a ledge that can kill you, it will re-spawn you back in the stage but not without taking away a massive chunk of health. But then there are sections with moving platforms where you will keep getting re-spawned over another pit, this can happen 2 or 3 times and if it goes that much, it will probably kill you. the game is not precise enough for that kind of platforming.

Pedestrians still wander around the mall areas, but now you can accidentally hit them or the surrounding area such as parking meters or arcade machines. This runs the risk of giving you a wanted level to deal with. When you have a wanted level, the game will continue to throw police officers to beat you down. There is no reward for beating them, and they only go away if you get back to a hideout or clear an area long enough to hide in a trash can.

I can't think of how many times I accidentally popped a pedestrian who
walked in front of me during mid-combo. Pricks.

And probably worst of all, is there are a decent number of items in the game that don't really have a functional use. Many of the items are expensive to get, so most of the time you buy them hoping for some big buff or payoff. But sometimes, they are just posters or nods to other popular games (there are a lot nods to other game character) that are meant only to decorate your hideout. If you save up like 40 or 50 bucks in the game to basically have it go to waste, that can be real fucking annoying.

There are obviously a handful of glitches and a lot of little problems still throughout the game, but Conatus Creative was really pushed up against the wall because they have already pushed this title back multiple times past their estimated release date. Even right up to the release date they were having issues to work out and just getting it going on steam for the release date seemed to be a chore. It really is an example of how difficult game development can be.

Like I said, all the individual movesets can get really insane.

But for all its flaws and faults, River City Ransom: Underground delivered on almost everything I wanted it to be. The combat is fun and engaging, they managed to prolong a bare bones story and make it interesting, the sprite-work is beautifully designed and animated, it boasts a reasonably long playtime, has some good replay value with the character variants, and the dev team appears to be be still working on more content for the game and hammering out bug fixes as they find them.

It currently goes for 19.99 on steam currently (it launched at a discount of 14.99) and I've pay a significant amount more for games I was finished with a lot sooner. If you the type of person who is nostalgic for the classic sidescrolling beat em up or actually played the original, Underground delivers. It is an incredibly solid play and was well worth the wait.

And yes, everyone still uses the Sauna together.

Salt and Sanctuary (PS4): Soulselvania

A friend had suggested this title to me somewhat of a ways back and I gave it a causal nod, a quick viewing of the video and then pretty much forgot about it. It was pitched me as a game that I should give a try if "I liked games like Dark Souls". Somewhat recently it came across my mind as I had just used my speedway points for a free PSN card and had 20 clams to burn. Looking to mix up the pallet of the stuff I had been playing recently, I decided to take up my friends suggestion.

SALT AND SANCTUARY:(PS4)

Much like its souls-ian predecessor, the story for Salt and Sanctuary is pretty scant, but if you follow along with what you learn from NPCs, you can piece it together. You are one of the worlds many Saltborne (oh yeah, this is unabashed parody). You are stowing away on a ship that is carrying your nation's princess, in transit for a wedding of political alliance. But during the course of the travel, you ship is ransacked by marauders. One of the dying crew pleads for you to find and save the princess.

As you battle through the ship and approach the main deck, you as set upon by mammoth beast called the Unspeakable Deep. It promptly smashes you into paste. The ship is destroyed, but you find yourself washed ashore of a beach. Collecting your resolve you decide to search out the princess, still. Upon meeting a old man on the beach and telling him of your creed, your adventure can then begin.

Good fuckin' luck.

So as my cheekily written title leads in, this game borrows incredibly heavy from the mechanics that made From Software's Souls series so popular. Right down to the menu, sound effects, and fonts used. it functions with a similar combat system, stat structure, equipment system, and inventory mechanics. Even saying it borrows heavily is being pretty generous.

But the biggest shakeup and what sets it apart from Souls similar games like Nioh, Lords of the Fallen, and so on is that this is all done in a hand drawn 2d style of gameplay. So some things change, primarily in the combat of the game. In Dark Souls you could lift your shield and circle while you wait for an opening, using your roll to protect you from swings. In S&S however there is no circling, and you have to bring your shield up to defend, parry, or dodge roll through the attack.

Ska Studios took great care to make the combat feel weighted and intentional.
Weapons and their use all affect how you approach every fight.

However, because of the new layout of the game there are new strategies that present itself. This game is only working on a 4 point axis so now you have ledges and stairs above and below you. So now you have a jump mechanic that comes into play and you can use the stage around you to evade or retreat if necessary.  The people at Ska Studios (bleh on the name) did a very good job of find a way to work all these mechanics into a 2d plane and have them work well.

It also has a familiar feeling to another 2d series of games, now that I think about it. The map is a giant expanse that has locked pathways and shortcuts that manage to loop you back around to checkpoints and previous areas. There are ladders to climb and knock down, leaps of faith to take, you will learn new abilities as you play along the game that open up new areas for you to explore, so its not a linear game. It's kinda like if Metroid and Castlevania had some kinda gamebaby. They really should have word for that.

Unfortunately, this means it also contains one of the most annoying combat features that you get in Castlevania games and that is the knock back. I can't think of how many times I would be fighting some baddie in this game and get hit with an errant shot that would almost always send me off a ledge plummeting down to my death. It almost happened like clockwork. 

Dying too borrows from the Souls convention. Where if you die, you lose all the salt you were carrying, which in this game functions as your XP to level up your character or improve you weapons. When you die, the monster that defeated you will hold it with some smoky mist around them and you have to kill them to get it back. If you die from falling from a ledge without having been hit by an enemy, instead a monster bat will spawn and attack you. Thankfully it is usually very easy to defeat and easy to gain your salt back. Even dying to a boss is somewhat forgiving since you don't actually need to beat them to get it back, just knock down about a 5th of their bar to at least save it for this attempt.

But S&S curiously also has gold that can be spent at shops as well. You can use this to get basic equipment, most of which you will find as you play along the game anyways. But you can us it to get small bags of salt for a little more leveling, or for some of the base level upgrade materials. Every time you die you will lose a portion of this, but I can't think of a single instance where not having gold inconvenienced me in some way. Don't really see why its in here.

You make offerings to add shops and functions, but when you pick they are locked in.

The art direction of the game you could argue is somewhat cartoony I guess? The character creator is somewhat goofy looking and you really don't have a whole lot of freedom other than hairstyle, color, and if you wear lipstick or not (boy or girl). But this is Ska Studios, and the art design is very reminiscent of one of their previously releases Charlie Murder. Stiff and a little janky.  Where the art direction really shines is in its monster design. The washed out color pallet and the stiff, almost old flash-esq animation really lends itself to the game's monster design.

An example where I feel it really shines is one of the earliest bosses in the game, the Queen of Smiles. Basically she is kinda of skeleton queen who can summon swords to throw at you, She's basically got a skull for a head without a bottom jaw, and it appears to be weeping blood. The way the characters are designed it just looks fucking awesome and with the kinda tense operatic boss theme that plays when you fight her, it just frames together a scene for a great moment. The stiff animations make it feel lifeless and creepy, and just lends to her overall design. Many of the bosses and monsters have this effect, and it's great.

I'm not ashamed to admit this fight took me more tries to beat than it probably should have.

One way how this game differs is in relation to cooperative play. Surprisingly, there is very little online play to speak of. You can sometimes find tombs where characters died in a section, break them to see a few after images to see how it happened, you will sometimes see a another playing in your shrines, but that's really about it. You can play this game two player though. Basically as you set up shrines around the world and you can place offerings to basically inhabit your shrines with villagers who provide various services to the player.

For co-op play, you need a sellsword. By talking to them you can summon an additional player for couch co-op. The catch is they have to be on a different account so they can't just use any other characters you have previously made. So if your co-op friend doesn't have the game, you can work around this by making a generic User1 account (on ps4) and make a character that way.

Other than that there doesn't seem to be much else in the way of online. You can't invade other players or be invaded, you don't see after images of players progressing around the same areas you are. You can't drop a sign to be summoned to help someone in an area just before a boss. So one hand I can't actively sunbro in front of a boss and farm salt, but on the other I don't have to worry about trekking for an hour into unfamiliar territory and have to worry about some jackass spawning into my game and ruining my progress, (there is plenty of other shit to do that).

The aforementioned boss fight theme is pretty great, but I find the soundtrack of the game to be rather lacking. Maybe not lacking but unimpressive. I've said the same thing about the Souls games sometimes, or the Tales series. The music or lack there of works for the game, but its not memorable. In many instances you won't even have music, just a couple of notable tracks here and there to punctuate things, such as boss fights or your home base.

S&S features a creed system that operates loosely like the covens of the Souls games, but without the persistent online mechanic, I found very little reason for it. You can't unlock certain items to buy without changing your creed, which causes you to be an apostate. You can change a shrine to your shrine which gives you sin, and doing either of these things will make people hostile to you, but if I am being honest I didn't find very much reason to do it.

Story and questlines are scarce in this game and much like the series it apes, much of it can be found by talking to the NPCs you come across on your adventure and it fleshes the tale out a bit more if you do. There doesn't appear to be a lot of them though. And spoiler alert, the original reason for starting the adventure never really seems to be addressed by the end of the game. I might have missed it, but I honestly don't think that I did.

One complaint with the game is probably to some also one of the game's biggest assets: This game is fucking punishing. I've struggled with difficult games before, Even when I think I'm hot shit at Dark Souls when a sequel comes out I always have that moment of "Fuck this, this game is impossible." Whelp, Salt & Sanctuary that is prevalent as well. This game is going to chew you up and spit you out, and it will do so often. It is particularly rough in the early going when you are still figuring out all the mechanics and the the bosses will usually wreck you before you even get a chance to observe their patterns. This game is an exercise in stubbornness.

Some fights will greatly test your patience.

The difficulty curve was all over the place too. Once I finally got a decent build in place, I would mow through some enemies only to get fucked by one that was way more difficult than everything around it. Some bosses I would approach and bring down on my first attempt, others would just rip me a new one for 50 attempts. It never felt like a gradual build up.

Probably the thing I didn't like the most was the somewhat confusing skill tree system it uses. If you've ever played Path of Exile and looked at their skill tree you would have a good idea of what I'm talking about. This is a game where you kinda want to have an idea of what kind of character you are trying to go for at the onset, and you will want to work your way from there. You earn gems to move a node with each level, and some require multiples to do so. There is also a system of grey gems which let you remove a node and replace it.

The skill tree can be daunting. I just looked what what weapon I wanted to focus
and then followed the line that took me to the highest level of that weapon.

But what it doesn't explain, for example, is when you unlock the skill nodes for say Greatweapon 5 you don't need to have levels in great weapons 1-4 anymore. With enough gray gems I could reset a significant number of skill points, but I never thought to do it because it and respec as I needed. They still provide a stat boost, but really they are meant to fix a fudge up or if you went down a path you didn't want to for the end game of your character.

You can perhaps consider Salt & Sanctuary to be a Souls or Castlevania clone, but I really see it as a love letter to a pair of games that basically invented a pair of genres. The game will drive you to a fury, and make you want to spike your controllers, but it also provides that same level of satisfaction once you actually muscle your way through it. By the time I ended up getting all the way through it I seem to have burned a good 40 hours or more.

For a game that was like only like 18 bucks, I have to say that counts as a pretty worthwhile purchase.

Fuck the stupid Witch of the Swamp.
That fight was impossible.