Nintendo Switch Critic Reviews

River City Girls Zero is an interesting look back at the origins of the characters newcomers have grown to love in River City Girls, but one with a few annoyances. The new music and art sprinkled into this release definitely help make it worth experiencing for fans.

River City Girls Zero is geared more toward existing Kunio-kun fans rather than those who are new to the series. Existing fans can appreciate the callbacks to older titles and like the fact that the game tries something different with the formula. Everyone else will still enjoy the game but may wonder why many series elements and genre traits are missing. It is a solid game, but be cautious going in if you aren't already a fan of the Kunio-kun series.

I'm quite happy that we finally have an official port of this 16-bit beat 'em up gem. Although River City Girls Zero isn't as fun as River City Ransom or its modern sequels, it's still an exciting brawler with a rather engaging story to boot.

You’re being treated here, not to a replica of 16-bit graphics, but the genuine article, and that in itself carries a wonderful charm. With varied locales and great music, River City Girls Zero cleverly all takes place in pseudo real-time, the sun setting into night and eventually dawning again as you near end of your journey. It's an endearing romp across a quaintly rendered Japanese urban landscape that continually offers new places to scrap — from fairground rides and collapsing buildings to nightclubs and sun-drenched bays — all becoming especially colourful in the last hour. While it’s very much a game of its era, River City Girls Zero is still rewarding for those interested in experiencing one of the saga’s more creative entries.

It’s always nice to see a game that never made it out of Japan back in the day get a wider release, and even nicer when it’s handled well. The actual links with River City Girls, both in terms of story and gameplay, are tenuous but River City Girls Zero makes the most of them. The mechanics do the job decently, and the story side of it certainly distinguishes the experience from most other brawlers of its era. It’s no Streets of Rage or even Final Fight, but those who are invested in the characters will likely have a good time.

River City Girls Zero brings back the 1994 game featuring the origins of the characters. While this is a good way to introduce current players to the original work, the game's slow pace feels out of touch with today and its lifespan is too short for current day expectations. Still, its gameplay is simple and intuitive, and the way the game is executed on the Nintendo Switch works very well.

Awesome 16-bit graphics and nostalgia will distract you from the sluggish gameplay. Players unfamiliar with retro brawlers should probably skip out on this one. But if you’re a fan of the River City series and want to take a trip back in time, this is a good place to start.

If you like retro-style brawlers, River City Girls Zero is the right game for you; if you can life with things like laggy controls and a rather short play time, that is.

River City Girls Zero is a fine and largely inexpensive preservation of a long-lost title from the massive Kunio-kun chronology, even if the actual title itself is far from being a lost classic that you need to play. At best, the game serves as an interesting origin story. So unless you’re a diehard completionist, then you’re probably better off just waiting for the eventual launch of River City Girls 2.

If you do manage to suffer through the game, including its frustrating final boss, you’ll be rewarded to another manga cutscene, another beautiful David Liu cutscene (which I would like as a desktop background), and another McDuffee song. And then, and this is truly the best part of RCGZ, you unlock the ability to play the Intro, Outro, and End Credit sequences from the main menu. You can also flip through scanned pages of the original game’s Japanese instruction booklet if that’s your bag. I haven’t played too many games where the bread is the best part of the sandwich, but here we are.