River City Knights of Justice: Summer of Beat-Em-Ups, Part 2

 

Forward

In the early 1990s, as the Nintendo Entertainment System was on its way out to make way for 16-bit gaming, a game called River City Ransom came out for that dying console.  It wasn't a big hit at the time, but subsequently it became a cult classic.  And why not?  The game's unique mix of beat-em-up and RPG elements meant that there was no other game like it...or so people outside of Japan thought.  That all changed with the release of River City Tokyo Rumble, which we covered last time.  But the series hadn't been all that able to capitalize on the original game's cult status to become an even bigger sensation, and I think part of the issue was that making any more beat-em-up/RPG hybrids diluted the uniqueness that had been River City's hallmark.  With no one game in the series being able to rely on that uniqueness anymore, something else had to be done to surpass expectations and make newer entries a success, and ARC chose to go in deeper with the RPG side of the formula.  As I said last time, though, it's tricky to get that right without bogging things down more than it's worth, and unfortunately River City Knights of Justice bogs down, hard.

At a Glance

The most immediately obvious sign that this game is going in deep with the RPG stuff is its setting.  While (most of) the character sprites are still the blocky, chibi things we know from Super Dodgeball and River City Ransom, they've left the modern urban setting behind in favor of a generic fairy tale world, the likes of which most RPGs inhabit.  As you trek across this medieval Europe-inspired world, you'll fight your fair share of humans but also ogres, ghosts, some rather unmenacing blobs and even the occasional dragon.  You can still punch, kick and grapple, but you also get to equip a lot of swords, magical staves, potions and other fantasy RPG tropes, which have a variety of effects.

Welcome to River City--I Mean, Riverandia

We've moved the plot from a city to a whole country.  Actually, maybe several countries, depending on how you define them.  This being a generic fairy tale world somewhat modeled on medieval Europe, they're arguably fiefdoms.  

 

Interestingly enough, unlike the other ARC-developed River City games, this one has been localized using character names that are based on the western localization of River City Ransom, but more...formal, maybe?  So Kunio is now Alexander, Riki is now Reinhold, Hasebe is now Roxanas, etc.  It's a strange choice, but maybe one that makes some sense in that this sort of fantasy is, again, loosely based on medieval Europe.  Japanese-sounding names would detract from that fantasy, so I'm fine with the change.  

 

However, this is not an overall well-written fantasy.  It's toned down the bratty attitude that bugged me in last game I reviewed, and there's the occasional funny line, but much of the dialogue you read is strictly functional at best and a bunch of small-talk from bystanders at worst.  To be fair, it's not like this isn't true of many medieval fantasy RPGs, but it'd be nice if this frequently silly series gave us better.

 

Either way, the expanded (maybe?) scope has changed how you navigate the world, and it takes some getting used to.  You get what looks like a world map to choose your destination, some being towns, others dungeons, and some random spots of the countryside you can choose to visit.  You might suspect this works akin to such maps in games like Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, and Donkey Kong Country, with your character being the moving cursor that selects your destination and enters.  This isn't so, however.  Instead, after you select a destination, Alexander must move there from his current location, and he can get jumped on the way in potentially hostile areas of the map.  This triggers fights in those locations, as if you'd gone in intentionally.  Fortunately, you can flee the area and continue on your trip, and you can also stop your trip by pressing B.  So don't make the same mistake I initially did with this game; don't try to get anywhere more than a few spaces away in one stretch--at least not until you've leveled your character up a lot. Speaking of which...

 

Lots and Lots of Loot

...except not really.  While in many regards this game ups the RPG components, there's actually no leveling up this time around.  Nor does food consumed in restaurants increase stats.  Instead, this game's designers got way too enthusiastic about their new inventory system and decided to tie a lot of game mechanics to it, stats included.  To power up your character, you obtain and equip items.  There's a slot for gloves, a slot for shoes, (both of which increase your stats) and ten slots collectively dedicated to scrolls, rings and charms.  Including scrolls lets you do special moves (one per-scroll), while rings and charms increase stats like the gloves and shoes.  You can also boost your stats further with gems, which have the advantage of not taking up any slot, but are harder to get.

Then there is everything else...a lot of it.  You'll visit lots of towns in this game, wherein you can buy many objects, and some are useful, such as potions, but others are as mundane as literal cardboard boxes, whose main purpose is to be used as macguffins in fetch-quests.  There are also restaurants where you can go eat a wide variety of suitably medieval things (Monster Meat being my favorite) to restore hit points, mana points, or both, but it's actually all pointless because the towns also have inns that completely refill both, and cost less.  I think this has to be an oversight on the developer's part; perhaps they didn't spend enough time analyzing every option, or perhaps they originally intended for these restaurant items to increase stats, only to leave them pointless as equipable items took over that role, but either way, their immediate obsolescence definitely lessens the narrative fun that this world should have.  But worse is that a similar lack of planning also affects this game's vast arsenal of weapons, because when you get into battle, the game is unfortunately at its very clumsiest.

En Garde!  Oops, I Slipped; Hold Up!

Right off the bat--no, make that club--there's one big inherent problem with making a River City game that's so heavily focused on the use of weapons, and that problem is that frankly, weapon use in this series has always kind of sucked.  The moment you pick up a weapon in most River City games, the punch button that formerly could do a wide variety of attacks depending on context gets taken up with just one style of simply bonking foes with that unblockable and often unbreakable stick/pole/whatever, while kicks are also disabled as the kick button is used to throw the weapon.  To be fair, some of the games do attempt to make the use of weapons a bit more nuanced with special moves that utilize them, and this is one of those games.  Among others, you can get a scroll to do an attack where you jump into the air with a sword and slice through a whole bunch of enemies, and that's fun and cool.  But it's still essentially a castle in quicksand, as basic melee weapon combat remains a clunky ordeal of both you and your allies mashing the punch button to bonk each other while neither of you can block the other.  Yes; in an otherwise standard medieval fantasy world, where many people have swords and armor, nobody has ever thought of using a shield, nor turning a sword to block another sword. 

There are magic weapons too, usually staffs.  These can also bonk people like the melee weapons, but that isn't really the point; the point is to press the new "use" button to activate their special abilities.  These abilities are often more powerful but consume mana, and in some cases, they can be pretty cool. Unfortunately, this combat is not all that well suited to them, either.  Some magical abilities, such as becoming invisible or confusing your opponents, can be consistently useful, but as most of them rely on an "area of effect", they tend to be complicated by how everyone is constantly running around in this game and there isn't much aiming.  You might shoot a bunch of fireballs only to miss enemies that move north or south out of the way, move north or south after them to line up another shot, and hope they don't move out of the way again.  Despite that, the most frequently useless item I have found is the healing staff.  It spawns magical circles on the ground, which can heal you and your teammates, but because they, like your enemies, almost never stand still, good luck getting them to stand in them long enough to heal.  You can switch which of your team mates you control, but it's more awkward than anything else, as it tends to result in an abrupt shift around the screen during chaotic battles. (We'll come back to this mechanic, and with a vengeance.)

To make this already highly randomized mess more annoying, characters frequently drop their weapons.  All of the weapons have two stats (plus some, mostly the magic ones, having special abilities), related to how much damage they do and how easy they are to hold onto.  And with everyone tramping back and forth across the battlefield after each other, a dropped weapon is often less than a second away from being picked up by an opponent.  Soon after battles end, the scene fades and you go back to the "level select" screen, meaning you might very well not retain a weapon you brought to the fight, so don't get too attached to it. (Incidentally, this fade out is also problematic because it prevents you from picking up all of the money your opponents drop.) Conversely, you have the ability to jack opponents' weapons and add them to your inventory, so it's possible you're better off not even bothering to buy weapons in stores.  This is a good time to transition to the game's inventory system, which is also bad.

 

That Deserves Repeating: This Game's Inventory System is Really Bad

To go with this game's increased focus on weapons, it allows you to build up a huge inventory of them, as well as some other items like food and potions.  From this you can create a mini-inventory of "favorites", which you can select on the fly during battle.  It sounds convenient on paper, but in practice it's anything but.  

 

Last review, I complained about how the ability to pause and consume healing items lets you cheese your way through the longer fights, and that with how absurdly much HP some bosses had, that was essentially the only viable solution.  This game's designers seemed to share my complaint but swung way too far in the opposite direction.  Now the favorites menu is the only thing that you can select items from during battles, meaning no stopping time to consume a bunch of healing items at once, and to be fair, this time none of the bosses are so inflated that I couldn't beat them without that cheat.  

 

Unfortunately, the real-time selection is cumbersome, especially in the thick of battle.  The only form of selection you get is one shoulder button to cycle left-to-right through the list, looping to the start when you pass the end.  Is the item you need too far to the right to access it immediately?  Tough, you just need to cycle through and hope it'll still be needed when you get there...assuming your character is still conscious, of course  Did you cycle through too fast and pass the item you needed?  Tough, you don't get a button to cycle leftwards because the other shoulder button is used to switch party members.

Now, that might be a reasonable sacrifice in many RPGs.  In many RPGs, your party members tend to have very different, and mutually exclusive abilities, so switching between them may well be necessary to finish battles.  But in this game, while different party members may play as different RPG archetypes like paladins and wizards, beneath it all a character's abilities are defined by what items that character has.  Because HP and mana stats are determined by equipped gear, the special moves your character knows are determined by equipped scrolls, and most of the attacks you can do in any given battle are dictated by the items in that favorites menu, Alexander himself can just swap between serving any of those functions via that menu.  So given there isn't any good reason to switch which character you're controlling, it would have been better had they not included that ability and instead used the other shoulder button to cycle through the favorites menu in another direction.

Yet even if you could do so in two directions, cycling through a menu still isn't the ideal way to fast-select items, and that brings us to the most truly inexcusable thing about this inventory system.  Despite that this is a 3DS game and that the favorites menu is on the lower screen, there is no touch-select functionality!  While the menu we got is really too small to work with anything but a stylus and it's not convenient to use a stylus and buttons at the same time, because the favorites menu is the only part of the inventory system you can actually use during battle, they could have omitted the rest and enlarged the slots on the favorites menu, making it easy to press with one's fingers.  How nobody thought to do this sort of thing when it is not only a huge quality-of-life improvement, but present in pretty much any other DS and 3DS game, is almost mind-boggling.

Closing Thoughts

Last time on Summer of Beat-Em-Ups, I concluded that River City Tokyo Rumble was serviceable, a follow-up to River City Ransom that played a lot like that game, for both better and worse, which stumbled over its attempts to have more plot but didn't become totally unpalatable as a result.  Knights of Justice expands on the formula, but for every step forward there are many more steps back.  It's not fair to say this game's combat is never fun, but there's scarcely any point when it doesn't feel unpleasantly messy.  What's particularly sad is that this game's big problems are all tied to its expansion into more RPG-like territory, which in theory seemed like a good fit.  It's possible to imagine a River City game that puts a greater emphasis on items, and is better for it...but this isn't that game.  Instead, this game's items are poorly balanced and poorly implemented, and that actively detracts from the gameplay.  You're better off playing the original River City Ransom or playing any number of other fantasy RPGs.

But look on the bright side: Next time on Summer of Beat-Em-Ups, things get good!

River City Tokyo Rumble: Summer of Beat-Em Ups, Part 1

Forward

At this point, I have undoubtedly discussed the River City series more than any other on this blog.  I've spent a lot of time waiting for River City Girls 2 to debut so I can enjoy it, criticize it, or most likely both, but that isn't the only thing 2022 has on offer.  We also have known for a while that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is coming this year, and in fact more recently I learned it will premiere this week.  Meanwhile, because the 3DS eShop is circling the drain, I decided I might as well buy those River City games that actually got western releases, and play through them so I can maintain my proud position as a know-it-all who likes to lecture players who first learned of the series from River City Girls.  Then recently, we also learned that River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is getting a release over here.

In other words, these months are quite overstocked with beat-em-ups I intend to play.  Most from the River City series, but of course I can't say no to the Turtles.  And given I'm going in so deep to this genre, I figured, why not blog about my experiences?  So I'm doing that now.  This series will feature reviews of beat-em-up games I played this summer, and we start it with River City: Tokyo Rumble.

At A Glance

The first of ARC's Kunio games to come west, Tokyo Rumble will feel mostly familiar to those who have played River City Ransom.  A gang called the Lion Alliance is muscling in on Tokyo, so Kunio teams up with a few of his friends/rivals to defeat them.  This means you can always have an AI-controlled ally tagging along and assisting you.  You start with Riki but eventually Shinji and Misuzu also join, though only one can follow you at a time.  

Welcome to River City (Or is it Tokyo?)

As is a proud tradition in River City games, this isn't your standard left-to-right scrolling beat-em-up; you can explore the city at your own pace and go where you choose, to an extent, but the set-up does have a twist that makes it a bit more confusing and restrictive.  The city is divided into several districts, and often when you reach an end of one you'll just wrap around to its other end--or sometimes it's a dead-end.  To get into any other districts, you'll need to take a train, and destinations only unlock after you defeat bosses--and the order you defeat them in is set in stone.  Once you get this, the nearest train station is never hard to find, and a minimap does at least remind you what district you must visit to progress the plot.  However, because you're not bopping your way through most of this game's terrain as a means of getting elsewhere, it can be hard to remember the layouts of the districts themselves, and this can be an issue when you revisit them.

Take in the Sights

I've been a pretty big critic of ARC's take on the Kunio series ever since they began making new entries on the 3DS, and this is because the graphics, I felt, were a big step in the wrong direction.  The big offending issue is that canonically, Kunio is supposed to have brown-to-ginger hair, and Riki is supposed to have blue-to-purple hair.  This has always been the case, but early 8-bit Kunio games had to simplify them to having just black hair. (8-bit sprites have substantial limits on how many colors they can use.)  As soon as the 16-bit era rolled around, the in-game sprites started to represent their canon hair colors. This remained the case for the new/remade Kunio games that Million (who had the license at the time) released on the Game Boy Advance and DS, including the series' brief  two-game stint in 3D, and it reached its peak in the gloriously colorful Kunio MMORPG, whose cancellation I still resent.  But when ARC System Works took over the series, starting on the 3DS they reverted Kunio and Riki back to their 8-bit, black-haired sprites, while sticking them in a 3D environment that didn't match well.  Also, while it would be one thing if ARC wanted to reboot the series so Kunio and Riki just canonically had black hair, they did not; ARC's art of the characters still depicts them as having more colorful hair, and being more colorful in general.  I was instantly turned off and wrote this off as an ill-advised attempt to follow in the footsteps of Mega Man 9 and 10.

Having now given this game a fair chance, it's better looking than I initially thought.  The environments are colorful and detailed, some of the other characters also have a lot of detail, and there is even some exploration of other body shapes with some characters, which allows them to convey more than they would be able to if they stuck strictly to the chibi-styled sprites of the Downtown Nekketsu sub-series.  The one character who seems like a graphical misstep is Misuzu, as the game uses her sprites from the home console port of the original Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-Kun, and as that game used a different artstyle, she doesn't really look like she fits in with the rest of the characters--yes, that's even by her own freakish stgandards.  Otherwise, while this game's graphics aren't impressive on either a technical or aesthetic level, they aren't generally ugly.

In spite of the above praise, the dated sprites for Kunio and Riki still look bad; in fact, the fact that many other characters are more colorful makes them look even worse.  It seems like a self-evident axiom that a story's heroes are supposed to stand out compared to everyone else, and to be fair, maybe because this is a Japanese game, they felt it best to make Kunio and Riki stand out more by looking more Japanese than other characters.  However, that still wouldn't explain why the art that ARC is making of these characters contradicts this, and a sprite also can have black hair while not being 8-bit.

 Pump You Up

As is the case with most River City beat-em ups, this is also an RPG.  Compared to River City Ransom, roleplaying elements have seen some changes in that few items you consume actually increase your stats.  Instead what you get is more like what you would see in most RPGs; your characters level up from experience, and you can boost their stats a bit further by equipping clothes.  While there remains a lot of food to eat in this game, unfortunately none of it does almost anything but heal you and the only difference between most menu items is how much they heal; the exception being those items that revive knocked out partners instead.  However, with carry-out items that let you heal in the battlefield, you can only buy so many of one type, so there is a reason to buy multiple types.  In fact, it's all-but necessary; more on that later. 

Bigger Stories Aren't Always Better Stories

This game has a detailed plot and a lot of dialogue by River City standards, and that isn't necessarily a good thing.  Let it be acknowledged that Kunio is to street brawling games what Mario is to platforming games, and on the one hand, that makes him a very important character in a very important franchise.  On the other, it makes him an unapologetically simple character.  In this game, at least, there isn't a whole lot to Kunio besides that he loves fighting and that he's great at fighting. (Assuming that you're a good player, of course.)  Thus most of this game's plot is about fighting thugs, then bosses, then more thugs, and more bosses.  The obvious objection is that this is true of the vast majority of beat-em-up plots, and indeed it is, but my issue with this one reflects the rule of thumb I mentioned in my Pokemon Masters review: A narrative's quality has to scale with its presence, or else what was a pleasantly simple story can easily become a boring or even annoying one.  For example, there's no need to make a few short and functional phrases good in themselves, but if you're going to inundate players with dialogue, it really had better be entertaining.  

Unfortunately, this game has plenty of dialogue, and the overall story it tells veers towards being annoying.  Because this is a story where violence really is the answer--every single time--just about every major plot point is made to validate a protagonist who isn't all that likable.  Kunio does have a strong sense of justice, but he's a lazy student, and in this story he's also a horndog who constantly flirts with his teacher--those last two things naturally annoy her.  It's just frustrating to sit through a story where what should be character flaws never really hinder that character and the character is never forced to grow or apologize for any of them.  Kunio's obsession with fighting is rewarded because it happens to be the thing that is needed to save the day here, and because it saves the day, his lust and book-dumbness just get overlooked.  His allies Shinji and Misuzu end up being substantially more interesting and entertaining characters, which seems like a misstep. The bosses have a bit of personality, but their dialogue too often boils down to a loop of: 

Boss 1: Now I'll beat you!

Boss 2: You beat Boss 1?!  No way; now I'll beat you!

Boss 3: You beat Boss 2?!  No way; now I'll beat you!

Boss 4: You beat Boss 3?!  No way; now I'll beat you!

If you find yourself annoyed by this extended spiel about the game's plot and dialogue, when we haven't even gotten to the combat yet, well, what you feel here is basically how I felt playing it.  When plot and dialogue aren't interesting and they don't serve any other purpose than to justify people taking it to the streets and punching each other, you might as well not have them and just skip right to the fights themselves.  When nobody has much noticeable characterization, a shallow protagonist doesn't have to get on people's nerves, and when dialogue that is redundant is at least scarce, it doesn't cross the line to being tediously repetitive.  With that summation of this game's biggest flaw, let's get to what is predictably it's biggest strength.

Enough Talk; Let's Fight! (Wait; have I said that already?)

This game's controls are, for better or worse, rather similar to what you got on the NES; there is a punch button, a kick button, and while jump also gets its own button now, it's still possible to jump by pressing the punch and kick buttons together.  That all works fine, but also as with the original River City Ransom, blocking is just a context-sensitive action tied to the punch button, and this makes for some messy early-game battles.  This game adds some judo moves to the mix; you can grab characters just by bumping into them, after which you can do a variety of throws, and it can be incredibly satisfying to throw an enemy into other enemies.  It's just not all that practical much of the time, as you'll spend a lot of this game flanked, meaning the relative slowness of grappling will leave you open to attack.  Fortunately, combat gets much better as you learn more moves.  As with in River City Ransom, you do this by reading books; they're expensive and some of them are only sold in secret stores you have to find, but they're worth it.  While up-close combat doesn't go far enough beyond button-mashing, at least that can't win you many bouts on its own unless you're at a much higher level.  Special moves tend to require you to jump or run away before slamming back into your enemies, giving combat a fast and exciting guerilla feel.  Others tend to propel your enemies away from you instead.  They aren't the smartest, but knowing which moves are safe to do when, keeps this game from being mindless, and most enemies go down fast enough if you're the right level and know how to fight them.  It's a fun time, whose only real fault is how much of it is basically the same fun time you could have in the original River City Ransom.

Then you get to the bosses, and what had been a fun time soon gets tedious.  While they have more fancy moves than the basic grunts, bosses in this game aren't really any smarter than them; instead the difficulty comes from just how staggeringly many hitpoints they have.  Also, these are not your typical video game bosses who follow a pattern.  Their behavior is random, which means that this is almost certainly not the sort of game where you can get good enough to avoid taking any damage, or to pull off a move that is difficult to execute but strong enough to end fights in a hurry.  Without huge amounts of grinding that would become tedious in themselves, your characters simply won't be strong enough to take down these bosses quickly, no matter how good you are at the game, and that means bosses, particular the last ones, are defeated not so much by flashy martial arts as by pausing and accessing your inventory.  Yes, here is where we return to that pinned point from the "Pump You Up" section; defeating bosses in this game is often a matter of stockpiling heaps of food, drinks and medicine, and then constantly accessing the pause menu to consume these so you can outlast bosses, whittling them down slowly because they can't heal in kind.  While the combat against these bosses is still engaging in itself, the fact that you're just going to be doing the same sorts of things repeatedly wears out its welcome.

Closing Thoughts

River City Tokyo Rumble is a serviceable game.  It's an easy game to pick up and play, its core combat is fun and has a surprising amount of depth when you factor in the special moves you can learn, and the script has some occasionally funny jokes.  Compared to the original River City Ransom, it's a step forward in several areas, and the combination of beat-em-up and roleplaying elements remains a good one. However, this game also shows the pratfalls of this sort of setting, characters and mechanics when playing up the RPG side of that formula.  As this review series goes on, we'll learn that ARC's take on River City does get better...but unfortunately, first it gets worse...

River City Girls Demo Impressions: Comedy Vs Characterization

Our "heroines"

When River City Girls was announced months ago, I was excited.  When it was revealed last week, I got even more excited.  More excited still when I learned that it would have a playable demo at Anime Expo 2019; to the extreme I spent a lot of time revisiting Twitter just to see if someone posted footage and info.

While that describes many people, I have a special stake in this because by American standards, I know a lot about the Kunio Kun series, localized in various ways in the West.  I never heard of it during the earliest phase of its life on the NES, SNES, and a few other consoles of that era, but Seanbaby's amusing tribute to River City Ransom got me interested in it; enough that when I learned Atlus would port the game to the Game Boy Advance, I had to buy it.  So I bought it, I had fun, and I got confused by the ending text saying that the adventure was just beginning.  Last I checked, there weren't any sequels.  Still, digging around online, I discovered that there were; most just never were released outside Japan.  I became more than a little obsessed (NOTE: I actually wrote the original version of that linked TV Tropes article, back before the site banned me for insisting Spider-Man 3's plot had flaws.  Some people have soft spots for the weirdest things!), seeking out and playing many games of this series I missed out on, and probably my favorite of the under-appreciated games was Shin Nekketsu Kouha: Kunio Tachi no Banka. (Yes; this series' games often have very long titles.)  It starred Kunio and Riki, going up against mobsters with the help of their playable girlfriends, Misako and Kyoko.  Sadly, the series had all-but died by then, and its revivals seldom called back to that game, but then River City Girls promoted Misako and Kyoko to the starring roles, and I was stoked.  So again, I eagerly awaited and searched for footage of the demo, and finally Metro Kingdom Radio posted it.  I remain quite excited for this game--but I also have some reservations about its narrative.

These issues didn't actually dawn while I was watching.  I was too busy laughing at all of the biting humor and being impressed at the fanservice that implies a great familiarity with the source material.  This game directly addresses how confusing the series' continuity is by having Misako and Kyoko interact with Hasebe and Mami, playing on how which are Kunio's and Riki's girlfriends differs from game to game.  It has someone actually, physically barf.  It helped that the graphics were great and the gameplay looks great, too.  After the demo was over, though, I started to consider that some things feel offputting about the writing.  Characters seem too shallow and mean-spirited.  Let's go through the scenes in chronological order to demonstrate why I feel this way.

We'll start with the intro, where Misako is zoning out during a dull math lecture, while Kyoko keeps her sanity by looking at her cellphone.  Misako complains, Kyoko gets a text revealing that her boyfriends have been captured, and the two skip class; Misako insulting her teacher's math lecture on the way out.  The principal comes over the PA, inviting the other students to beat the girls into submission, and the game begins.  I'll be honest, I don't have a huge reason to like these girls.  Certainly, I remember feeling like Misako and Kyoko did in that math scene, and I even covertly read Treasure of the Lost Lagoon: An Otto and Uncle Tooth Adventure during math lectures, but that was in Elementary School; I'd long-since grown out of such covert distractions by High School. (Though not the out of being bored by math and getting distracted by my mind wandering.)  Also, note that I said "covertly"; why is Kyoko able to look at her phone in full view of everyone else, and only get caught when she reacts? (For that matter, as she says, she doesn't normally go to that school, so why is she there now?) Then there's Misako mouthing off to her teacher.  It's not like I was unaware this series' protagonists were described as delinquents, and it was obvious from the reveal that Misako was going to be a bit of an antiheroine compared to Kyoko, who both looks and acts nicer (even if she looks at her phone during class), but where's her good side?  Sure; she's going to rescue her boyfriend, but the way it's presented just comes off as shallow and possessive.  We don't get enough background to for it to come off otherwise.

That same theme repeats itself when they meet Hasebe and Mami, whose only character traits are being rivals for the affection of Kunio and Riki (Also maybe their kidnappers, but who knows?), and mean to the heroines as a result.  Again, it's funny because it references how the heroes have different girlfriends in different games, but it sacrifices all of those characters' likability for the sake of that one joke.  Walt Disney called this reckless dedication to laughs at the expense of other qualities, "The Tyranny of the Gag".  What's worse, the sorts of people who will actually get the joke are also the sorts of people who will remember that no past Kunio game has ever portrayed Hasebe and Mami as awful, catty characters.  I still tend to think of Hasebe as Roxy, the sweet girl in River City Ransom who pretended to be the villain's girlfriend in order to spy on him and go report his actions to the heroes, and I'm not alone.  More recently, she's become a very powerful fighter with a no-nonsense persona.  That doesn't mean I didn't also love Misako and Kyoko in Banka (Would you want to type that game's whole title out every time?), but this game just decides up front to designate that game's heroines as the preferred girlfriends and make the other girlfriends jerks to suit that narrative.  When fanfiction does this, smarter readers call the writers out on it.

The next conversation of note is with Misuzu.  There are a lot of funny jokes exchanged, but then Misuzu gets catty too; implying that Kunio and Riki should dump the heroines and instead get with her.  It's funny, sure, but where did this even come from?  When was she ever romantically linked to them?  Readers of a certain inclination may note that every female character who had a lot of dialogue in this demo seems to be driven by desire for male characters.  (Specifically, the two male characters who are usually the heroes of the series, but here were meant to have the spotlight removed from them.)  Some people, that bugs a lot.  For me, there's not anything wrong with caring about people of the opposite sex; in fact, it stands to reason that there is plenty right about it.  A female action protagonist isn't less dignified for caring about a male character; any more than a male action protagonist is for caring about a female character.  In this game demo, though, what's on display reads less like caring about people of the opposite sex and more like just wanting them, for reasons that can't be assumed to be much more than lust without much more info given.

If it seems like I'm a bit too obsessed with having likable characters in a game about people beating each other up, I point out that this series' normal hero isn't just a badass; he's a badass with a good heart.  The very first Kunio game had far less narrative elements than this demo did, but it started with Kunio's friend Hiroshi being beaten up by thugs.  Kunio goes and beats them up in retaliation.  He's not a squeaky clean hero; such as would leave it to the cops.  Since Hiroshi isn't captured or currently under attack, this isn't a rescue or defense effort; it's a painful punishment for misdeeds, dished out by someone who enjoys dishing it out.  Still, he wouldn't do it to someone who was either unable or unwilling to fight back.  It's strongly established from Scene One that there's a conscientious side to Kunio.

While this game is clearly more comedic than that one, it also features more narrative elements.  A character like Misako could get away with just being a badass if there was little plot to speak of, but since they're going to have a plot, she should have a nicer side.  The more narrative complexity increases, the more character complexity should increase, and sometimes this means sacrificing quick and easy jokes for more nuance.  The portrayal of the girls in the intro scene to this demo, Misako especially, felt like what that video describes as Newgrounds-style humor.  There is not much apparently driving her character besides "I hate math, I like fighting, and Kunio is sexy", so quick jokes are possible, but it's harder to see her as a sympathetic protagonist in a game where she will have much more dialogue.

For that, she would have to be fleshed out, and the best way to do that would be to go into detail about her and Kunio's relationship; establishing that it was actually a very good one.  Here is a rewrite of the scene that allows the girls to be more sympathetic:

Teacher: We find the absolute Min and Max on the specified interval--

Misako: This is unbearably boring and confusing!  I wish I had Kunio here to help me with math.  He might be even worse than I am at it, but he'd certainly try!  He's too nice not to, and his company would make it more fun.

Kyoko: [Rushing in with cell phone] Misako!  Kunio and Riki have been kidnapped!

Teacher: Hey!  No cell-phones in class!

Kyoko: But this is important!  A student from this school is in trouble!

Teacher: Eh, he was a dumb jock anyway who gave our school a bad name.  Now I demand you take your seats!

Girls: No; you take them!
[The rest of the scene proceeds as normal]

The above is probably less funny because it is less spontaneous, but it adds more depth and a sense of karma to the ordeal, establishing that Misako and Kyoko aren't just the heroines; they deserve to be the heroines.  Misako is revealed to be driven by more than just lust; her relationship is also a friendship based on compassion.  Kyoko isn't just misbehaving; she's in here with the phone specifically to sound the alarm.  Finally, by establishing the teacher as not just boring, but also spiteful, Misako can berate him for being boring without feeling like a jerk herself. (Note: Unlike Hasebe and Mami, he's an original character, so it's fine to make him a jerk to make the heroine look better.)

I want to be fair and stress that this is not a final game; for all I know, that is not going to be the first scene in the actual game, which in turn, may well add more depth to Misako, and Kyoko to a lesser extent (since she's nicer and needs it less).  Even if that is the first scene, the characters could be salvageable with others establishing that they're sympathetic and their relationships has value. But I'm wondering if the writers are up to it, or care, and there's probably no reversing the derailment Hasebe and Mami got.

Make no mistake; this game will likely be great.  I trust the developers to make a game that plays and looks great, and clearly it is at least going to be funny.  Precisely because of those factors, though, I think this game is going to have a big impact; it's the most grandiose and talked-about game in the series.  It saddens me that this impact might entail transforming once venerable characters into walking punchlines.