Going purely by its insanely long title, you'd think Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san!: A River City Ransom Story would be yet another solid game in the River City aka Kunio-Kun series. There would be high school students, street gangs, shops to visit, butts to kick, all the classic staples of an entry in the long-running beat 'em up franchise.
While this does have high school students and it is a beat 'em up, that's where the connections to the series end. Stay Cool Kobayashi-san! is an absolute mess that drags the River City name through the mud for a dull, non-sensical slog of a game.
I Need To Go Back In Time To Forget This Story
I don't even know where to begin with the story of Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san!, as it's completely insane, but not in an entertaining way. As far as I can tell, Kobayashi, a boss from other better Kunio-Kun games, meets with the series lead, Kunio, to introduce him to a new friend of his named Mizoguchi. Seems pretty normal so far, right?
Well, it turns out that Mizoguchi is a time traveler from the future. You would think the concept of time travel would be a bigger deal, but we kind of brush right past that revelation. Mizoguchi then reveals to Kunio that they're about to fight some evil time travelers, which seems like something you might want to discuss with someone before you draft them into a battle against their will. On top of an incoming time war, Kobayashi's best friend - who's just a random person that the game has you assign a name to - has been kidnapped by those very same evil time travelers, and you'll have to rescue them along the way. From there, you're plopped down into the game so you can start punching goofy looking bad guys in the face over and over.
Needless to say, this story is complete nonsense. Characters that we've never met just randomly appear and then say a bunch of exposition involving the past, the future, evil unnamed corporations, weird spirits that possess people, robot cats that save your game, and other gibberish that doesn't add up. It's like someone took the script for a bad anime, shredded it, glued it back together, and then added in River City Ransom characters. This could partially be blamed on the poor localization job, but I don't even think a competent English translation could save a story as mind-numbingly awful as this.
No Weapons, No XP, No Money, No Fun
There are certain components that tend to show up in most River City games. There's ordinarily weapons lying around for you to pick up that help you bash enemies more efficiently. There are RPG elements so you can gain experience points, level up, and generally feel some sense of progression. Usually, you earn money so you can buy food to restore health, go to dojos to learn new moves, or acquire other helpful items. These are just some of the hallmarks of this franchise that helped make it stand out among other, lesser beat 'em up games.
Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san! says screw all that and tosses all the fun parts right out the window. There's nothing that you would find in a good Kunio-Kun game here, and instead, we just have a tedious, repetitive brawler. You basically just punch the same enemies repeatedly until you've defeated enough of a certain type of enemy to spawn a boss character. You then just punch that guy or gal or robot until they're dead, and then move on to the next monotonous section. You do get a special move that you can charge up, but aside from that, your move set is pretty pathetic.
Special abilities only amount to either regaining some of your health, making your special meter bigger, or calling in some of Kobayashi's gang members to help fight. You can only access these abilities when Mizoguchi is around, which is incredibly stupid because you can switch between having Mizoguchi or Kunio as your sidekick at any time, but unless Mizoguchi is hurt, why would you ever switch to Kunio and lose your special abilities? This developer managed to make a Kunio-Kun game where there's little to no incentive to play as Kunio, which again begs the question, why did this need to be a Kunio-Kun game in the first place?
Don't Worry, It's Boring To Look At Too
The game isn't helped by its visuals. Levels are sparse and drab, consisting of grey walls, nondescript buildings, or empty outdoor spaces that are easy to forget. When it comes to enemy design, you tend to fight moronic masked henchmen wearing black jumpsuits that have slight color variations or flying robots that are either cube or ball-shaped. Some of the bosses have an alright look, but there's nothing to get remotely excited about.
The music is painfully uninteresting, sounding like the kind of bland blues rock you'd hear in any low-rent, small-town bar. The sound design would normally not even be worth mentioning at all if it wasn't for the horrendous noise that the standard enemies make. Each time they attack it's like they found the most shrill monkey sound effect they could afford and sped it up for maximum annoyance.
Stay Lame, Kobayashi-san
I have no earthly idea why this needed the River City Ransom name attached to it. You could cut all the Kunio-Kun references and just make this a completely separate time travel beat 'em up and nothing would change all that much. But then fans of River City Ransom wouldn't be lured into playing it, which is likely the sinister plan behind this game's branding. Worse of all, not only is this a painfully boring, repetitive beat 'em up, but in order to get the true ending, it requires you to play through it multiple times. Which is asking a lot because it's not worth playing through once, let alone a second or third time.
There's no reason to bother with this game. In fact, there's already been a great River City Ransom game released this year that completely blows this out of the water. River City Girls is a fantastic game that honors the series' legacy, has amazing music and characters, and features gameplay that's actually enjoyable. Play that instead, because Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san!: A River City Ransom Story is about as far away from cool as you can get.
A Nintendo Switch copy of Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san!: A River City Ransom Story was purchased by TheGamer for this review. Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san!: A River City Ransom Story is available on Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC.