In terms of senseless beat ’em up motion specializing in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Musou video games have lengthy been the one present on the town. However Kunio-kun and his associates are again with a themed journey to supply one other angle to the historic carnage. It’s been fairly a while since a correct Kunio-kun sport was launched, which was both River Metropolis Ransom: Underground or River Metropolis: Tokyo Rumble, relying on how you’re feeling about these. River Metropolis Saga: Three Kingdoms has all the basic components of the sequence, albeit with a special setting, however the query stands: is River Metropolis Saga: Three Kingdoms value it?
The sport begins with a short introduction to the setting. It begins off with Guan Yu (who seems to be and acts like Kunio-kun) in his village. However the Yellow Turban Insurrection casts a shadow on the countryside. Guan Yu instantly runs into Liu Bei and Zhang Fei, inflicting the three to enter the village and grow to be sworn brothers underneath some peach timber. Clearly, River Metropolis Saga: Three Kingdoms focuses on a Shu kingdom story. The sport is split into six chapters, with the primary specializing in preventing again in opposition to the Yellow Turbans, whereas the following one has the heroes going up in opposition to the villainous Dong Zhuo, which additionally introduces Cao Cao. You already know the place that is going.
That is well-worn territory for followers of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, however the execution is cute right here. The characters are all Kunio-kun characters principally dressed up as Romance of the Three Kingdoms ones. Much less necessary characters with acquainted faces pop up all through the story as properly. Every chapter can simply take a few hours relying on when you do sidequests and when you really feel like grinding, so there’s a great quantity of content material right here, though that’s par for the course for the sequence. The environments are a combination of 2D and 3D components, with all the characters being 16-bit sprites. It’s charming, if just a little jarring at instances.
Kick and kick once more
The world of River Metropolis Saga: Three Kingdoms is surprisingly giant, as you maneuver your character by a bunch of interconnected cities and roads. You possibly can pay a small charge to quick journey to any main location that you just’ve been to, which is properly value it contemplating all of the working round you’ll be doing. Enemies spawn on the roads and drop cash and expertise, making it value it to repeatedly get into scraps.
The fight, whereas stable, just isn’t all that nice in comparison with different beat-em-ups, nonetheless. As a substitute of being skill-based, it revolves round stats. Enemies roam in teams and have the identical normal motion guidelines because the participant. That implies that everybody punches, kicks, blocks, and will get stunlocked at any time when they’re hit. Critically, you simply get stunlocked continually, to the purpose the place I solely approached enemies through jump-kick. When you accrue sufficient expertise, you stage up and achieve 5 stat factors to allocate to varied talents, akin to punch, kick, throw, protection, and weapon assaults. But it surely’s preferable to choose one and pump stats into that with a view to keep threatening to your foes.
You’ll use cash to buy new armor, therapeutic gadgets, and particular assaults, however many of the particular assaults make it to be able to’t use your default strike, which is awkward. It led to me largely sticking with a selected assault that I acquired early on. You’ll additionally get tremendous assaults and ways assaults, the primary of which calls hearth arrows down in your foes. River Metropolis Saga: Three Kingdoms is fairly good and has loads to see and do in comparison with different video games within the style, but it surely’s additionally missing by way of gameplay. For those who’re a fan of the sequence or the thought of wandering China and beating up thugs is interesting, then the sport is definitely value it. Simply be ready for some archaic gameplay components.
