{"id":92382,"date":"2019-04-22T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/friends_of_ringo_ishikawa"},"modified":"2019-04-22T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T19:00:00","slug":"review-the-friends-of-ringo-ishikawa-this-wayward-youth-has-unexpected-facets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/04\/22\/review-the-friends-of-ringo-ishikawa-this-wayward-youth-has-unexpected-facets\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Friends Of Ringo Ishikawa &#8211; This Wayward Youth Has Unexpected Facets"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/friends_of_ringo_ishikawa\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/friends_of_ringo_ishikawa\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"The friends of Ringo Ishikawa Review - Screenshot 1 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/95686\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/95686\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"The friends of Ringo Ishikawa Review - Screenshot 1 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/friends_of_ringo_ishikawa\"><strong>The friends of Ringo Ishikawa<\/strong><\/a> has plenty of beat-\u2019em-up DNA in its makeup. You\u2019ll often get into scraps while roaming the streets of its Japan-inspired setting. You\u2019ll throw rival gang members over you shoulder, deliver roundhouse kicks to the face and land jab after bloody jab. But those little skirmishes are only one small part of its whole, a rich tapestry of ideas that isn\u2019t content to simply be one thing or another.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, \u2018TfoRI\u2019 has more in common with <strong>Street Gangs<\/strong> (or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nes\/river_city_ransom\"><strong>River City Ransom<\/strong><\/a> as its known outside of the EU) than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/megadrive\/streets_of_rage\"><strong>Streets of Rage<\/strong><\/a>. If anything, it\u2019s a simulator for the rigmarole, angst and perennial boredom of your teenage years. Sure, there\u2019s an RPG levelling system. There are survival game-esque metres tracking your hunger. You can even string combos together to knock back enemies when you\u2019re being swarmed in a brawl. But it\u2019s the way it embraces the mundane that makes this indie offering so unusual.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"The friends of Ringo Ishikawa Review - Screenshot 2 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/95685\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/95685\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"The friends of Ringo Ishikawa Review - Screenshot 2 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>As a teenager whittling away the final months before high school graduation and the looming expectation of college, the titular Ringo finds himself battling a perpetual sense of boredom. There are classes to go to at high school &#8211; where you\u2019ll increase your XP in return for attendance &#8211; but you can just as easily play truant and hang out with your friends instead. It\u2019s a game purposefully designed to shed the normal questlines of an RPG, instead it\u2019s a snapshot of a young man\u2019s life where there\u2019s very little guidance of what to do next.<\/p>\n<p>Your hometown is full of things to do, and which ones you try first are entirely up to you. You and your gang might wander the streets looking for trouble, holding \u2018R\u2019 to enter \u2018Delinquent mode\u2019 so you slow down your walk, slouching your posture, hands in pockets, eyes waiting for an invitation to throw down. You might head to the local cafe to get a bite to eat, or stroll home and fire up your games console. There are also a slew of mini-games to try out (including ping-pong and poker) around town. In the end, you might just prefer to hand out on a park bench, smoke a cigarette or two and attempt to look cool in that way very few of us every truly succeeded at during those years.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"The friends of Ringo Ishikawa Review - Screenshot 3 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/95683\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/95683\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"The friends of Ringo Ishikawa Review - Screenshot 3 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>There\u2019s a conscious decision on behalf the developer to make The friends of Ringo Ishikawa less of a traditional \u2018game\u2019 and more of a collection of activities filling the life of a certain character. There are a handful of prompts on-screen to explain the basics of combat &#8211; one button for punches, one for blocks, another for kicks and a fourth for grappling\/throws &#8211; but other than that there\u2019s very little in terms of hand-holding. What do classes actually entail, do they involve any mini-games and how do they benefit your character? You have stats, but how do you affect them and what benefit do they provide? It\u2019s a game that purposefully does away with traditional signposting and it\u2019s both a positive and negative.<\/p>\n<p>With its fragmented story &#8211; which flits between different parts of the summer months &#8211; it makes a point of subverting the traditions of the RPG by doing away with more obvious quests templates and simply sending you off to seek conversations, with the focus more on what you do with the rest of your time making up the meat of your experience. It\u2019s more like the <strong>Persona<\/strong> games or <strong>Shenmue<\/strong> in this regard, with the option to attend a gym to increase your stats or the chance to get a part-time job (which you can also lose, should you decide to avoid your shifts).<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s refreshing to see a world given a little more life than simply asking you to scroll from left to right, brawling your way through enemies until an arrow flashes on screen to tell you to proceed. But that lack of direction can sometimes make understanding the minutiae of how its mechanics fit together more of a drag than it should. Once you <em>get<\/em> how The friends of Ringo Ishikawa comes together, it\u2019s <strong>Breakfast Club<\/strong>-esque romanticism of delinquent youth makes for something truly engaging, but even without something as simple as a map to consult, you\u2019ll really need to stick with it to find that connection.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Screenshots really don\u2019t do The friends of Ringo Ishikawa justice. What looks like a traditional side-scrolling brawler is actually something far more intricate. It\u2019s more of a teenage simulator than anything, and with some really well-written dialogue (filled with the kind of malaise and sense of directionless rebellion we all experienced in our formative years) there\u2019s a really interesting story to be found. Its everyday activities will remind you more of <strong>Bully<\/strong> or Shenmue than Street Gangs\/River City Ransom, just don\u2019t expect to have your hand held as you head out into the world to discover them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The friends of Ringo Ishikawa has plenty of beat-\u2019em-up DNA in its makeup. You\u2019ll often get into scraps while roaming the streets of its Japan-inspired setting. You\u2019ll throw rival gang members over you shoulder, deliver roundhouse kicks to the face and land jab after bloody jab. But those little skirmishes are only one small part [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}