River City Ransom EX is an improved version of the original game River City Ransom. The story is pretty much the same, Ryan's girlfriend has been kidnapped by Slick and his army of thugs and it's up to Alex and Ryan to rescure her and defeat Slick. Now onto the gameplay, you go from each section of River City beating up gang members along the way in order to gain money. Money is used to purchase new techniques, stat improvements, and healing items. Its simplicity gives it challenge and the moves that you can learn give the game a little depth and more entertainment value. Another good feature placed into the game is a special code that allows you to make your very own River City Ransom character (XTRA1-Custom Self Item). The detail that went into this little extra cheat along with a few other cheats make the game a little more interesting. If the game is to easy for you, crank up the difficulty, increase the enemy numbers or pretty much modify the game anyway you like to. The games options during gameplay allow you to change the obstacles (collision effect on things), kick, punch, special, weapon, throw, damage increase or decrease, and even increasing or decreasing the gravity (play it Matrix style with tough enemies and very low gravity). Overall the game has the same bosses, same gangs plus a few new ones, but the difficulty from the original one to this improved version has also shown itself. The enemies on normal difficulty are stronger, smarter, and work in groups. Each gang also varies in attack strategy, weapon usage (if any), and how much money they drop. The bosses each have their own special attacks and get tougher as you get further in the game. Having trouble fighting Slick's army of thugs? Now you don't have to fight alone with the new gang system. You can have up to 4 members in your gang (yourself as 1 and three other people). This neat little feature can help out on tougher bosses and if you are able to get the maxium gang members recruited you can face off against Slick with reinforcements (basically a tougher version of the final fight in RCR). All of these improvements are great, but their is only one tiny little flaw in the game. In the original version, a second player could join in and help you. In RCR EX you either fight alone, with a gang, or with the computer. Other than not having a two player co-op mode, this game is fantastic. Improving the main game, adding new features, and keeping the same stuff that made original good, River City Ransom EX is a great beat em up game!
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