River City Saga: Three Kingdoms from developer Arc System Works is an interesting game. It’s a combination of a beat-em-up action title and a backend RPG to help keep it engaging. It has all the elements of the classic River City Ransom (1989) but with a tad bit of Dynasty Warriors conflict driving the entire story. The one thing it doesn’t have are controls that won’t frustrate the ever-loving (BLEEP) out of you. So. Very. Frustrating.
Let’s get right into it.
Story
There is conflict in the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Three very separate warriors come together to fight off invaders, protect cities and citizens, and deal with fallen leadership and crumbling kingdoms along the way. It’s nothing incredibly too complicated story-wise, and it’s all satisfying to play.
The story does a good job of keeping a very real danger lurking throughout the kingdom in this game. You run into rebellions, and competing gangs, and must balance out when to do the right thing and when to attack from within. The story has many arms to it and some occasional branching narrative features. At times, you will have the opportunity to choose paths and walk the way of the wayward souls who you’re fighting against.
The narrative in River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is quite potent for a beat-em-up game. You do get to help folks out and your help impacts the citizens and cities you’re fighting for in the story. Seeing your characters grow and run into what I can only perceive as real government problems is not something I would have expected in a game like this. But it’s all there in all its complicated glory. To say this story was really put together well would be an incredible understatement. I never played the original game, so I’m unsure if this is typical or not, but I am well-versed in 2D beat-em-ups from yesteryear, such as Double Dragon, and that story wasn’t exactly Horizon Zero Dawn level good. Go fight, go save the damsel in distress, and karate moves! That was about it. River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is far more than that structure, which is a helluva thing to be when you’re resting in the beat-em-up genre. It is definitely a unique position to maintain.
Anyway, the story is a good part of the game. A little chatty at times, but nonetheless solid.
Gameplay
The gameplay of River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is a tale of two halves. The first half is a well-constructed backend that keeps you motivated to button mash and button mash and button mash. You’ll stick around in repeating fights just to gain XP, level up, and improve your character. That’s the true nature of this game, to grow your character with certain attributes. Those attributes include punching, kicking, endurance, intelligence, and so on and so forth. Every time you level up, you gain five experience points that allow you to level up in these categories. The categories go to 100, so you’ve got a lot of space to grow the character. Once leveled up, you improve in whatever area you chose. For example, I leveled up to 70 in punching because I love punching in these types of games. It’s easy, quick, and it works. I saw immediate enemy damage improvement when I leveled up that attribute.
Outside of leveling attributes, the game also allows you to learn new punches/kicks and assign them to be your main when you’re in a fight. For example, I had a rapid set of punches that my main character used with one touch of a button. On the positive side of this, if I grouped together enemies enough, I could wipe out most of the squad with one single mayhem set of punches. The downside to this is that I’m stuck in punching animation until it finishes, which is a real problem when my aim is inaccurate, and an enemy wants to get back at me. The fact that you can change up your style and impact is such a simple item of interest that makes the game not only customizable to your character but fun.
Other backend beauties in this game include a special tactic that sets off a powerful move from your character. If you have ever played Streets of Rage and remember hitting that one button to pull off a special move and wipe enemies off the screen, then you’re on the right path with this train of thought. You can assign a tactic to a certain button and pull off said tactic by pressing L1 and that button you assigned it to on the controller. The move is not only powerful, but it’s also entertaining as hell to watch the enemy’s reaction to the move. It’s a good way to take out many enemies at once. The special move is dictated by a meter in the middle of the screen. If that meter fills up, then you can pull it off. To fill it up, you must kill enemies or pick up scrolls that enemies drop. Regardless of your tactic, this feature makes the game so much fun and it gives you just a bit more motivation to keep pushing and playing.
The backend of River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is amazing and intuitive, and it upgrades the typical beat-em-up gameplay that is associated with the River City Ransom name. In this respect, the game is very improved.
As for the actual gameplay, you traverse different types of terrains, cities, and challenges on your way to helping your land. Most of what you’ll be doing in this game is back and forth travel between cities, picking up main and side quests to complete, and exploring to discover new parts of the country. And fighting. You’re going to do a lot of fighting in River City Saga: Three Kingdoms, which isn’t unexpected. The good folks at Arc System Works stretched out the fighting portion of the game with the other elements listed above to compliment it. Adding that XP character leveling within a fighting wrapper that is spread out across a huge map is a great way to keep players focused and interested. I can tell you that the balancing act that they performed with new and old gameplay designs works out well in this game. It’s fun most of the time and what they’re asking you to do isn’t exhausting. It’s progressing.
Now, a so-so element of the gameplay design is the direction and path the game tries to keep you on. For the first half of the game, you stay on a defined path that features side quests along the way. Picture how Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or Bethesda’s Fallout series does it, and you get the picture. As the six-chapter game progresses, though, the main quest kind of gets off track. In chapter three, I hit a wall trying to find what and where I needed to go next. I was stuck for a long time trying to gather iron for a guy trying to build a nice house in a city. The iron was very sparse, and the game essentially gave me no hints on where to locate it. I had found it a couple of times but spent the better part of two hours searching for the final iron. I was unsure whether this was part of the main story or not. I should never be unsure of anything in a game like this. Going back and forth between lands to find one single thing drove me bonkers. Did it work out eventually? Yes. Was it worth all the time I put into it? No. The fact that the game didn’t give me direction to go or hints or some indication on the map where iron might be was just annoying. I’m not at all saying that games should suddenly become Game Genie and cheat for me but throw a bone occasionally.
The majority of the gameplay design was damn good, though, and it exceeded my expectations.
Those controls
The second half of the tale is a rough one. We’re talking about Star Wars: Episode IX rough. Is it possible to love and hate controls in a game? I’m so there. The controls, when they were right where they needed to be during fights were satisfying as hell. It was so nice to take out 5-7 enemies at once. The chaos was intoxicating, much like an action film from the 80s. Unrealistic, stupid in concept, but lord it was fun to watch enemies fly right off the scene and perish. After they perish, you collect coins and goods for your efforts. This is one of the most satisfying sets of sequences that make the fighting worth the eventual frustration.
The actual button-pushing portion of the game and character movement was less than satisfying. There were so many times in the game where I just couldn’t accurately jump into an enemy scrum and punch. Some of the enemies require this movement of jump/attack to lose their blocking stance. If you get it right, then see the previous paragraph. Most of the time, you’ll get it wrong because you over or undershoot their position. It is even worse when you’re one-on-one with an enemy.
To make matters worse at times, the button-pushing amplifies this need for positioning perfection, as it goes by the old button NES rules, where pushing a button doesn’t necessarily equal the button reaction onscreen. If you remember the days of the NES and SNES, there were times when the push and response were not in sequence, which generally meant death or failure (see Super Mario World for details). The same disconnect happens here not only in fights but also in jumping puzzles, which you will run into the latter a few times. I cannot express how frustrating that is to have those button pushes misfire when you’re attempting to get through a jumping puzzle filled with peril. It has been a while since I raged quit a game multiple times, but this caused me to do so over a period of days. It was just so damn frustrating. Because of this part of the controls, the game was at times unenjoyable. This is a big issue that affects gameplay, and it can’t be swept under the rug by story or backend performance. While the intention of recapturing the River City Ransom experience might have led to this, it was unnecessary, and it hurts the gameplay considerably. Some of it can be worked through, but you feel it badly with repeating fights and especially with jumping puzzles. This needs to get fixed.
Beyond this complaint, the game has everything else going for it, which is just frustrating to say as a gamer. The adventure is long, harrowing at times, and interesting, but it’s all disrupted by the control issues. I hate that for the game because there is a lot of great potential and pieces to this title. It was incredible fun when everything worked but was an uphill struggle when it didn’t.
On that note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is an interesting and fun direction to take the characters and series. It has so many pieces that work but is hampered by inaccurate controls that cause frustration. If you can live with those controls, then you’ll find a fun game underneath that had a lot of thought and love put into it.
