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Jacob   United Kingdom (Great Britain)
 
 
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I expected this game to be a lot more fun, based on my experiences with the first. I bought this to play co-op with 3 friends locally and most of our time playing was spent frustrated, dying and with no money to improve our characters, leading to further deaths and loss of money.
While sections were definitely enjoyable, the majority of our play session was spent angry at having to hide from the police for the umpteenth time or being unable to complete a mission where a fat man runs away through the sewers with no hope of catching him, without grinding our agility stat by busting parking meters and then spending money on overpriced, not even fishy, merv burgers.

I decided to request a refund as I just simply wasn't having fun. A good idea and concept but exceptionally poorly executed.

Edit: Above is my hastily written original review. Since I have received comments telling me it's bad or that I didn't like the game because I'm bad at it, below is a longer, more in depth review.

I believe that most of the issues I have with the game is to do with the currency and how it is tied to deaths.
Leveling up in this game increases your maximum possible stats, but in order to increase those stats to their new maximum, you need to eat food, read books or go to the sauna. A lot of these activities are expensive. The sauna is the most cost efficient way to get health back, but suffers from only increasing your maximum health. You can't busy other stats without eating food.
If you're spending all your money on food, you may have some difficulty in surviving, since your health will rarely be fully replenished by eating. This is especially true when playing with multiple players. It's difficult to make sure that wealth is evenly distributed, so some characters will get more food and therefore more health and stats than others.
Dying halves your currently held money. Players who die a lot will be in sore need of stat upgrades to improve their chances of survival, but they won't be able to purchase the because they don't have the money.

Problems with money leads to grinding. It isn't very fun to sit in the same area, repeatedly going into a shop buying some food then leaving to bust up parking meters for more dosh (this seemed to be the most time efficient way to make cash). This all while avoiding thugs and police so you don't die before you can spend that cash.
Each coin is worth 10 cents. I think the lowest cost food was 90cents. For 4 people to get one stat increase, you'd need to kill about 10 guys. This candy bar would not heal you anywhere near to full health and gives poor gains.

I haven't talked about unlocking moves. These also cost money. $8 for the cheap ones, $20+ for higher tiers. Without these upgrades, your characters will feel very similar to each other. Each character starts out with two attack buttons (for most, this is punch and kick), a special attack and perhaps a discussion grab action other than throw. In my play time I was able to find two dojos which would train new moves. We managed to save money for 2 or 3 move upgrades each. These still didn't do much to make combat seem more interesting. My character, a luchador, gained the ability to attack enemies behind him with an elbow drop and to hit downed enemies. This didn't do much to increase my interest in combat. It seems like having more abilities from the start would make it at least more fun to grind for stat upgrades, which we have already discussed is a major part of the game.
I have no qualms with grinding if the gameplay is fun, but if I must grind to unlock the ability to make the game fun, by accruing sufficient wonga to unlock the abilities that make the game enjoyable, that just isn't right.

I couldn't fully appreciate the combat given the lack of options available to me. It seems like there are far too many characters on screen though. With 4 human players and 10 or so enemies on screen, as well as potentially non-hostile civilians and the police showing up, it can be very hard to tell which character is yours, or if you're accidentally trying to bludgeon your partner, inside the mass of bodies.
The only place you won't get attacked is in the safe houses. Even out on the shopping streets, you'll get attacked by thugs. Fight back while stood outside Merv burger and you might accidentally hit a civilian or an unsuspecting parking meter. That's when the police show up to take you down for mugging or vandalism. The police don't drop money, so it's pointless to fight them. If you're near a safe house, you can walk in and back out and they'll leave. If not, your only choice is to run to a safe house or the sewers, or to fight them all and hide in a dumpster. This can be difficult, especially if they repeatedly stun you with tear gas grenades
I understand that the police are there as a risk-reward system for mugging people or for getting parking meter money, but the risk far outweighs the reward.

I had completed 27% of the story by the time I stopped playing, after failing multiple times to catch a plot key character who runs away through the sewers. To trigger his event again, you must fight a large mob of Goths.
If there was no grinding necessary, I doubt getting to this point in the story would have taken an hour. 4 hours of new content with countless of grinding seems to be the way to 100%. At least if the grind was fun, it would be worth it.
Recent Activity
7.3 hrs on record
last played on 25 Dec
41 hrs on record
last played on 25 Dec
82 hrs on record
last played on 17 Dec
Comments
Hinarf 27 Jun, 2017 @ 5:15pm 
I read your river city ransom review and it just sounds like you sucked really bad at the game.
operator 8 Jun, 2013 @ 7:44am 
U wot m8?