Hot-Blooded Musou – River City Saga: Three Kingdoms Review

Sometimes it’s just fun to see a mash-up!  Marvel vs. DC, Batman vs. Dracula, or, oh, maybe River City Ransom vs. Dynasty Warriors!  That’s right; your favorite street punks are at it again, this time in Han Dynasty China!   It’s time to take Kunio and the gang back in time!

In River City Saga: Three Kingdoms from developer APlus Co., Ltd. and publisher Arc System Works, Kunio and his buddies are playing the parts of the main characters of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the great novels of Chinese literature based on the history of the fall of the Han Dynasty from 169-280 CE.  In fact, your crew actually has their Nekketsu names listed next to the characters they play.  Kunio himself plays Guan Yu, one of the most fabled characters in all of Chinese history.  In fact, Guan Yu was later deified and is now known as Guan Di and actually worshipped.

Back to the game.  River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is a tongue-in-cheek retelling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, playfully hitting most of the major points of the story all while giving players ample chance to pummel an absolutely ridiculous number of thugs, much as you would expect from any respectable River City game.  The game is broken up into six chapters that tell the overall story of the Three Kingdoms from the perspective of Guan Yu, Lie Bei, and Zhang Fei detailing their brotherhood, camaraderie, and battle prowess in the face of overwhelming odds.  For anyone who has played a Dynasty Warriors game or a Romance of the Three Kingdoms game, this stuff should be pretty familiar.

Gameplay however is pure River City.  You walk into an area, pummel anything that moves, make a bunch of ridiculous expressions when you get hit, and generally just have a blast.  Much like the original games, Three Kingdoms lets you modify your character like an RPG-lite, earning new moves, skills, and equipment that slowly powers you up.  In addition to character levels, you will learn secret special moves, power up super attacks, and pick up a variety of helpful items along the way.   What’s great about the River City series is that they’re very much a pick up and play design.  There are no complex button combos or weird expectations.  You just run around beating up guys, taking the missions you want or the main missions, and having fun!

Three Kingdoms gives you access to Tactics attacks as well, starting with a nasty fire attack that burns everyone on screen.  Very effective stuff.  You also get combo attacks that can do massive damage to multiple enemies and even a slowdown attack that lets you pull off several moves before enemies can respond.   You can equip new moves and combos from the menu screen and buy new skills to learn, leaving Kunio with a wide variety of attacks to choose from.  Sadly some are ridiculously more effective than others though.

Three Kingdoms is designed loosely on the Dynasty Warriors template, which means that once you walk into a combat area, you basically get swarmed by enemies.  A single hit stuns you, allowing a horde to descend upon you and beat the tar out of you.  To avoid this, there are plenty of attacks that hit multiple enemies at once, clearing the way like a Hulk smash to allow you to attack at your leisure.  Unfortunately, due to the overall design of Three Kingdoms, these moves become more like a crutch and you really can’t fight effectively with many of the other ones available to you.  Even spending 20K or more on a super secret move often has little to no impact because the 5K one you bought two chapters ago does more damage to more enemies thanks to all the bonus skill points you can allot on the pause menu.

You’ll also notice that the map for Three Kingdoms is huge.  Fortunately, the game has wisely instituted a fast travel system that’s mostly quite effective at getting you where you want to go.  The price goes up every chapter but so do your earnings so it all balances out in the end, assuming you didn’t buy too many special moves and too much armor.  Wandering around the map raises your levels fairly quickly too and if you add a bit of combat in just for fun, you’re always able to complete the main missions with ease.

Naturally, River City Saga looks like a modern version of an old 16 bit game.  There are some 3D elements thrown in and you’re fighting on a 3D plane, but for the most part, this might as well be an old SNES-style game, though a lot more polished.  The hit radius for some moves is a bit off, meaning that if you’re trying to play with precision, don’t bother. This isn’t Devil May Cry.  Same goes for some of the weird environmental jump challenges.  You can actually get stuck in the background in a few of these, leading to the belief that they’re more of a tacked on thing than an actual important part of the game.

The game absolutely looks good though and the cartoonish artwork for all the Kunio characters is fantastic.  The costumes are excellent, the expressions are hilarious and the whole design vibe of Three Kingdoms is simply excellent.   The music does tend to get a little repetitive however and it would be nice to hear some modern takes on some of the tracks but it’s a minor sticking point for the sheer fun you’ll be having.

There’s an elegant simplicity to River City Saga: Three Kingdoms.  This is a game that is made for gamers with a focus on fun factor, silly combat, a surprisingly interesting storyline, and a whole lot of charm.  There just aren’t that many games out there that manage to capture the essence of the 16 bit era while still managing to preserve modern sensibilities in terms of gameplay.  Three Kingdoms absolutely knocks it out of the park here and while it might start to feel a bit repetitive if you don’t change your battle strategies here and there, there’s no question it’s a fun game that’s remarkably entertaining.  Even the little things are great, like being able to smash background pots for healing items, talk to the animals, and find hidden shops and areas if you explore carefully.

That overall simplicity of gameplay shows just how skilled APlus is at making fun, enduring games.  In fact, in addition to all this, there’s also a co-op mode that you can play online!  For the purposes of this review, we’ve stuck with the single player for simplicity’s sake but having all those bandits off your back so you can really showcase all of the fun moves in the game is a pretty appealing way to play River City Saga: Three Kingdoms!  The game also includes a gallery mode and recaps as you play through and unlock sections of the game.

The River City games have always been fun and River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is no exception.  This is a finely tuned game that pays attention to failures in previous series entries, adds a fun new setting, merges gameplay ideas with other franchises, and doesn’t take itself too seriously.  River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is a gamer’s game, one designed to simply while away the hours while you sit back and have a grand old time Barfing it up and pummeling every thug in reach.  The game has all the hallmarks of an enduring classic and it manages to be a fun, compelling adventure for pretty much anyone.  Oh, and there’s even a physical copy coming for Switch and PS4, though you may have to order it online!  River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is a must-own title for even casual beat-em-up fans and is well worth your time and cash!

This review is based on a digital copy of River City Saga: Three Kingdoms provided by the publisher.  It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both.  River City Saga: Three Kingdoms is also available on PS4 and PC on Steam.