River City Saga: Three Kingdoms Next

전작에서 아케이드 모드로 다양한 캐릭터로 플레이하는 재미가 좋았는데 이번에 짤려서 몹시 아쉽습니다. DLC로라도 내주면 좋겠어요. 그외에는 전작과 거의 같은 감각으로 플레이할 수 있고, 열혈팬이라면 재미있게 할 수 있을듯합니다.

I gave up. The game play is poorly executed. Repeated fights again and again with the same enemy. The progress to story line is boring. You have to talk to someone, then go to another town, back and forth many many many times.

What happens when you take the cast of the River City/Kunio Kun series and place them in an ancient Chinese setting? You get River City Saga Three Kingdoms. As a direct sequel, 'Next' is a continuation of the storyline established in the first Three Kingdoms game. Removed from their usual High School setting, the cast of River City gang portray characters lifted from the 14th century Chinese novel Romance of The Three Kingdoms. Yet, River City's depiction on the classic novel takes artistic liberties of it's own by injecting humour and comical gameplay elements into the mix. Elements such as teaming up with a Tiger Mask-inspired Pro-Wrestling tag team. or summoning a motorcycle as a powerup to mow down droves of enemies (despite motorcycles not being invented for another couple hundred years) are just two examples of Next's unique, slapstick humour on display. Players familiar with River City's 2D Beat 'Em Up/RPG gameplay will have no issue finding their footing in Next. All of the hallmarks from past River City titles such as leveling up, unlocking move upgrades, visiting shops, or acquiring special moves are all present in Next. One feature I tend to find useful is the ability to fast-travel to certain locations from the pause menu. Instead of being forced to travel through numerous towns to reach a certain destination on their own, players can select towns they've already visited and click on them to be instantly transported to their location. Players can also use the pause menu to see which tasks and objectives are needed to be done next. In some cases, clicking on these tasks will also transport the player to their location, simplifying the process. Besides completing the regular chapters, Next also offers harder versions of each stage for experienced players to test their skills or get more mileage in terms of replay value. The music and presentation of Next is superb. Tracks range from beautiful, laid back traditional Chinese period piece arrangements to guitar-driven BGM's that serve as the perfect backdrop for fights about to take place. Backgrounds are adorned with temples, Chinese shops, and even scenic pastures with horses grazing in open fields. Perhaps the one glaring detractor in my opinion is the plethora of text that players have to sift through. The amount of dialogue between characters feels, as other reviewers have put it, makes Next feel like a graphic novel over a River City Spinoff. At times, I've found myself simply skipping over the wealth of character interaction just to get back to the game itself. In comparison, fellow River City title Melee Mach!! offers an option to skip over all text entirely. Such a feature should have been implemented in Next. Overall, an enjoyable addition to the River City franchise, and proof that Kunio and friends can be adopted to just about any theme in the world of video games.

１周目。 配役不足とはいえ新キャラ女多すぎ。 まだドッジボールとかサッカーとかホッケーに男キャラいただろとか、悪役にもケンとかよしひろいるだろとか言いたくなります。 あと、史実を半端に意識したせいか、味方の離脱の茶番劇がひどいです。 メガネが壊れただの、こむら返りだの、実にくだらない理由で茶番が挟まり話の腰が折れる。だるいことこの上ありません。 足を引っ張るだけのNPCなんて必要ないんですよ。 ていうかストーリーだけでなく戦闘でも役に立ってないんですよね。 NPC相手に発動された超必殺技をもらい事故して死んだときは、さすがにイラっとしてしまいました。 おまけに、これまた史実を意識して不仲設定（割とどうでもいい）とかつけてきてるのがダメ。 どこで地雷が爆発するんだろ、と意識しだすと話が楽しめません。 あっち行け～、こっち行け～も多すぎ。別にやばくもないのに何度も撤退するくにおが違和感だらけ。 もうね、くにおなんだから、関羽（くにお）が突っ込んでフルボッコでいいんですよ。 関羽（本物）さんは怒るかもですけど。 で、２周目です。 前作やった人ならくにお三国志は周回要素があり、３周で全部の話を楽しめる作りになってることはご存じだと思いますが……。 はい、全然改善されてませんでした。 １周目は史実とか無視できなかったんだな、２周目でストレスフリーな話にしてくれるんだろうなって期待したんです。 別にそんなことありませんでした！ それどころか周回要素も前作に比べてパワーダウン。 基本的に分岐の裏側を見せてくれる形なのですが、まあ、その……最初から見せろと言いたくなるような展開ばかり。 おまけに実質２ルート（前作は３ルート）しかない分岐でした。 あと終盤にかけて火力のバランスがおかしくなってきて、ボス戦が一瞬で倒すか一瞬で死ぬかのどっちかになりがちなのもバランス悪かったですね。 前作みたいにボスの必殺技でしか死なない難易度とどっちがいいのかと言われると、まあ微妙なのですが。 ただ前作からやってきたプレイヤーとしては、三国志やり切ってくれたというのは大きな評価ポイント。 三国志といえば赤壁の戦い以降はぱっとしない（失礼）のもあり、赤壁までしか扱ってない作品も多い中、本作はくにお君として綺麗に走り抜けてくれました。 真ルートの最後に出て来るラスボスさんのお言葉は、そのままこの作品への評価になっていると思います。 決して歴史をないがしろにしたわけではない、というのは賛も否もひっくるめて良い点だと思いました。 これがくにお三国志、これでいいのだ。はい、その通りでした。 ちなみにBGMは今回も当たりでした。終盤にかけては怒涛の名曲揃いで素敵。 地味に挽歌からボス戦のBGMアレンジが来てたのはうれしかったです。

前作の様々な不満点が改善されています。どういう点かをあげていきますと、 ダウンしたザコ敵に追撃ができるようになりました。前作は敵がダウンしてから起き上がった後、無敵時間が終わるのを待ってからまた殴るということしなくてはならなかったのですが、今作はバトルがサクサクできるようになりました。これが一番の改善点だと思います。 また名声システムを廃止してストーリー中の選択肢により難易度を変更できるようになりました。これにより何回も繰り返して名声を上げたり下げたりしなくても難易度クリア埋めができました。またストーリー中で難易度変更の選択肢が出るところまでスキップできるのもありがたかったです。 そしてこれは賛否あると思いますが全体的に難易度が緩和されたのが良かったのではないかと思います。前作では回復する間もなく即死させられたり、一部の攻撃以外1しかダメージが与えられないようなことが度々起こりましたが、今作ではそのようなことはほとんどありませんでした。 戦闘関連以外では、前作と比べてそれぞれキャラが活き活きしているように感じられました。また史実では戦死しているようなところがマイルドな表現にされており比較的明るい雰囲気でストーリーが進められるのもよかったと思います。どこかで見たことがあるようなパロディネタも散りばめられております。 正直プレイする前は、前作のような苦行をまた繰り返す覚悟をしていたのですが、製作スタッフの改善しようとする努力がいたるところに感じられました。 しいて言うならば難易度が優しすぎて弱冠やりごたえが無いところや、仲間の武将を召喚する計略の、仲間をすべて集めたときに貰える報酬などが少し残念でしたが、なかなかの良作だったと評価できると思います。

Decent game, it literally is just Three Kingdoms but more so if you enjoyed the first game you'll also like this. I wasn't expecting a sequel to ever exist just cause the first game ends right after the Battle of Red Cliffs which I felt was a reasonable point to cut things off, since in history Guan Yu is killed years after the fact. With this game, they go up to the Battle of Wuzhang Plains with all the key figures from the first game kept alive. For positives, the story is cool and felt engaging throughout most of it. Outside of all the characters who got to return, there are plenty of great additions to the cast with faces from Field Day, Baseball, Fighting Legend, Super Sports Challenge DS, Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun Special, Riki Densetsu, Tokyo Rumble, and Rival Showdown. It was very nice to see some of these previously unexplored characters be given a bit of a spotlight or seeing people who were strangely absent from the first game. Throughout the story I felt there was some clever and funny writing that subtly reminded the player that everyone is only acting in a play and aren't [i]actually[/i] these Chinese warlords. You'll sometimes see someone casually mention modern technology (such as their phones) in a conversation with either no one batting an eye or a funny in-character explanation that tries to make sense of it. This gets more blatant later on as Sima Yi comes into the picture since he's played by Tobioka, a character who's entirely centred around technology and robots which is good fun as it lets the story go off the rails in how ridiculous it is towards the end. Alt routes are still here, though work very differently now. Instead of having the Comedy and Hot-Blooded routes at the end of each chapter, there are instead 4 different points within each chapter where the player can up the difficulty and choose what they want to do. Some of these are as simple as just playing an extra or more difficult fight, though some of these are genuinely very cool (chapter 1, 2, and 4's endings being my favourites). The new system was fine and definitely made going back to get all these easy, as the paths also serve as checkpoints in the chapter select menu you can just jump right into. I do however miss the Comedy option of these as they were very funny in the first game. Combat feels great, they essentially got rid of any restrictions that made combat feel limiting in the first game and made it more akin to Historical Period Drama where you can just hit almost anything. Regular enemies no longer have i-frames getting up and can be hit while on the ground with the previous game's behaviour understandably only being retained for bosses. The new bike makes getting around very convenient, but fast travelling between places you've been to is also completely free now so money is no longer a concern for this in early chapters. For negatives, the biggest one to me was the lack of an extra gamemode. The first game had China Heroes which transformed the story into a traditional Arcade beat em' up with the ability to play as a buttload of characters. It supported up to 4 players which made it a fun mode to play with friends, though could get old if played too much due to the limiting combat. It would've been a great opportunity to build on it with the sequel's combat improvements, though the devs opted to not include any extra modes in order to focus on core gameplay and being able to pack more into the story. This unfortunately killed a lot of replayability, as once you're done all the story content there's nothing left to do. Presentation can feel very cheap at points. The first game was fine enough and had pretty sleek looking UI, though some aspects were comparatively a downgrade such as going from the animated cutscenes of Rival Showdown to standard dialog portraits. This isn't entirely bad as the artwork made for these games is fantastic, but I don't like how many new or returning characters don't have a wide range of portraits like the prominent characters of the first game did. It results in there being parts where the expression very clearly isn't matching the tone of what's being said. The devs also got rid of the cool as hell boss battle graphics and used regular dialog portraits for them instead which was incredibly lame. The new remixes are fantastic, though they're very far in-between as it feels like the the first game's soundtrack is being reused far too much for my liking. Lastly there's some other strange oddities like how I immediately noticed upon starting up for the first time that the devs didn't even bother giving the game a custom icon, so you instead just see the default Unity logo? One gameplay change I didn't like was the skill point system. They had something similar in Downtown Nekketsu Jidaigeki on the 3DS, though in execution its boring and makes money feel less important. I enjoyed being able to explore for different shops that'd let me buy new techniques. The previous game even had secret shops hidden away in the map that'd sell you the signature moves of other characters, though in this game the 2 hidden shops only sell you boring armour. The only things you really spend money on is food and armour, in which the latter you could easily earn from enemy drops anyway. To reiterate what I said at the start, the game is more than fine and will be fun if you liked the first Three Kingdoms, though I do think it's a weaker package overall.