River City Ransom: Underground / YMMV

Demonic Spiders:
- The Rich Kids, who have a number of annoying, highly damaging attacks, have a surprising amount of resilience, and, like many other enemies, tend to come in groups.
- The clones near the end, where they not only hit hard and block often, but also drop no money at all. The suited clones are even stronger and can use rayguns, plus replicate if weak.
Disappointing Last Level: Everything after getting to and past MERV tower is generally considered fairly weak; MERV tower pulls a pretty significant Difficulty Spike, forcing you to fight enemies while avoiding a helicopter with guns, and afterward, the clone enemies are rather spam-happy, and don't give much money or experience, along with the final act overcompensating on the meta-humor and difficulty, leading to what's generally considered a fairly subpar final act.
Goddamned Bats:
- Cops show up in force if you happen to damage something or hit a civilian, show up in even more force if you beat the first group of cops, then proceed to pop up on every screen until you get into a safe house or can clear out all enemies so you can hide in a dumpster. To add insult to injury, they don't give any money or EXP. At low levels, they may qualify as Demonic Spiders. Various patches have since toned down the cops' aggressiveness, as well as granting a small EXP reward for defeating them.
- The generic enemies wearing green shirts and beanies, due to having the most defensive AI in the game, to the point some of their tactics make it certain they're breaking pre-established rules laid out by the game (such as backing away from you at the exact speed you're sprinting at them, which was eventually fixed in the sixth patch), making it hard to land a hit on them, and ignoring them is difficult due to the fact that they're very fond of hitting you while you're fighting someone else, or while you're in the middle of a combo.
- The Nerds and the Warlocks, mostly due to being one of the few ranged attackers in the game. The Nerds chuck different chemicals from afar, while the Warlocks have a mid-ranged magical attack and a long-ranged magical bat summoning technique. Both of these enemies tend to use these attacks while you're preoccupied with another enemy.
- Just about all the regular gangs become this after defeating the Bee Brothers thanks to them gaining new (and annoying) attacks (all of which make the milk run that much harder):
  - The Bombers (white shirted "'80s Tough Guy" mooks) gain a lunging tackle that they usually telegraph by keep a lot of space between you and them (similar to the beanie gang), however, if they're approaching you, they can spontaneously lunge at you without warning. Before that, however, they also have a "super punch" move (actually them pulling out brass knuckles to belt you with) that knocks you across the screen, and it's fully capable of knocking you into the next screen if you aren't careful. Luckily, it's horribly telegraphed and makes an obnoxious sound while they're attempting it, so it's easier to deal with than the tackle.
  - The Luchas gain a twirling spin-tackle that they don't telegraph at all, and are even capable of doing it while you're comboing them.
  - The Roids (the jock gang) get a new throw that they can dish out, also without warning and able to knock you off the screen.
Good Bad Bugs:
- Chris has an ability that allows her to, when at very low health, get a rage mode that allows her charged attacks to come out faster and makes her stronger. This mode stays after a respawn, allowing you freer access to her quicker charged moves and strength.
- Normally, Tex runs into the sewers for his chase sequence, which is a difficult map to navigate well enough to catch up to him and hit him. However, it's possible to glitch him out on the screen he spawns in and make him run into the park instead, which is much easier to deal with (thanks to vertical movement being naturally slower than horizontal movement). This glitch was removed in a later update, but Tex is made easier to catch in the sewer to compensate.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Ryan and Cyndi are on good terms, despite no longer being an item. This wound up being hilariously ironic, because in River City Girls, their base characters Riki and Mami are still together...at least until the secret ending is unlocked in the 1.1 patch, at which point Riki does date Kyoko in earnest.
Low-Tier Letdown:
- Due to how slow Rudy is in his most basic attacks, and how a lot of his more powerful moves are relegated to the store (including the grappler moves touted in his playstyle), some players just don't bother with trying to level him up. It wasn't helped there was a bug where, upon unlocking him, his stats were at the absolute lowest, which was quickly patched and had an easy fix for those who started before then (resetting his stats puts them to where they should have been).
- Chris was even worse. Not only were her normal attacks very slow, but she could only combo off of them if she was in rage mode (which turned out to be a bug), effectively making her unplayable, and it didn't help that you got her very late in the game, at a time where leveling her up simply wasn't feasible, especially given her extremely low health pool, the difficulty of the mooks at that point in the game, and the fact that very few of them dropped money. A later patch changed most of this, making her more along the lines of Difficult, but Awesome.
- Mike already had similar mobility and utility issues as Rudy, but once a patch hit that removed damage from throwing downed enemies, Mike, whose playstyle was primarily built around throwing enemies, was rendered nearly useless, putting a character who was already in a bad position in an even worse one. The thirteenth patch makes many of his unlockable moves standard, and also brought throw damage back.
Obvious Beta: The game was released in a rather buggy state on Steam; a lot of characters' moves were either unresponsive or didn't work (in one case allowing Alex to be able to buy Ground Pound, a move he can't use, because it's not from his moveset), the menus had issues, the multiplayer had a rough launch, and you couldn't play as enemies you fought in Arena Mode. While a few of these were addressed with patches pretty soon after release, such as fixing some of the unresponsive moves, UI issues, the Arena Mode, and online multiplayer, it's clear a lot of work was still needed for the game. With the last update released in 2018, however, it seems unlikely that these issues will ever be addressed.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- The Day/Night cycle has been criticized; it locks you out of numerous useful stores at night time, there are story events that rely on it being a particular time of day, but the game rarely ever tells you which time it should be, and being too slow, slowing down a lot of the gameplay's pacing.
- And then there's the wanted system: if the player attacks a civilian or things like parking meters, the police will start chasing the player. The problem is that it's very easy to accidentally do this while fighting the crowds of mooks. If this happens, it's often the best idea to just stop whatever you were doing and run to the nearest hideout (this will reset the wanted level). The system has been criticized for being frustrating and something that doesn't work well in a beat 'em up game. An alternate solution is to find a dumpster and dive in once you've cleared out the mooks and police in that area, but that's unfortunately only applicable to a few places that aren't that far from hideouts anyway.
  - As of the 13th patch, a warning timer now appears when you cause an initial incident. The cops won't attack so long as you don't cause any more problems before the timer expires, giving you a chance to readjust your actions.
That One Level:
- When you first visit Cyndi's house, she assigns you to go out and get milk. What should be a relatively simple task is mired by: the milk not being an inventory item, requiring it to be carried, one hit being enough to destroy it, which isn't helped by how frequently and abundantly enemies spawn, nor how they'll sometimes attack as soon as you enter the screen, neither route back is particularly tantalizing (the forest is a platforming section, the subways becoming more randomized at this point, and you still have to dodge enemies either way), and then having to fight a boss and her crew. While you can put the milk down in a safe area to take out the enemies and the enemies don't specifically target it, it's still too vulnerable to risk getting into a fight. And sometimes the event flag for getting the milk to Cyndi's won't activate, forcing you to go outside and fight the boss again. The mission has since been patched to allow the milk bottle to be hit around three times, making the mission a bit more tolerable.
- The chases are particularly hated, where the goal is to hit the person you're chasing, which isn't terribly easy and poorly explained, but especially Tex's, due to the fact that the area he runs to (the sewers) is essentially a platforming segment (which he'll trivialize) with Bottomless Pits that he'll sometimes kill himself in.
The Scrappy: The villain of the game, Dr. D, due to the character having no coherent goal or motivation, the overuse of meta humor revolving around him, and the fact that before it was patched, his final form could get you stuck bouncing off the wall and preventing you from dying.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: It's said in the game that at least four of Slick's generals are back in town in the present day, but you only ever get to fight Otis; you only chase and apprehend the other three throughout the first half, with the justification that they're not in their prime anymore.

YMMV / River City Ransom: Underground

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