Hey Yeo, just want to let you know that this game kept me alive in 2019. This game kept me going in a time where I had a messed up shoulder, left leg, no car, no job, and little money. Thank you. You and this game saved my life.

The friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a charming beat em' up.

Set in a random Japanese city, you play as Ringo Ishikawa. He’s a senior in high-school at a crossroads in his life. Being a leader of a school gang, Ringo needs to re-focus his path in life. Study in school, or train. The game begins very well. No title screen or intro card are shown. It’s just you and your bud fighting on a train. Lo-fi Hip-Hop plays and fits very well with the backdrop of the contemporary Japanese setting.
If you were to take the combat from Yakuza, River City Ransom and Scott Pilgrim, mix that in with slight school elements from the persona series, you’d have a good understanding of how this game plays. I’m playing on an Xbox controller, so my assigned buttons are different. You enter a fight stance by pressing the right bumper. The attack buttons are X for punch and Y for Kick. B initiates a grab and pressing punch in any direction does a judo throw. What developer Yeo gets right about the combat is how difficult it is. Those who are saying the combat is easy haven’t played past the first fight. Fighting by yourself against two or three opponents in the early game will have you knocked out easily. The difficulty is also due to the lack of hand-holding this developer created. You can train at very specific areas or by triggering persistent side stories.

The gameplay loop has you attend school, find places to train, fight, and repeat.
What sets this game apart from anything I’ve played in a while is the story and atmosphere. Maybe because I fought a lot in middle and high-school, but the way Yeo wrote the characters is very well done. The main character is extremely likable. He does not fit the archetype of a bad kid, he’s just Ringo. A dude that likes fighting, reading, and connecting with people. No one is a caricature of what a student is, they are just their own characters. Let me explain one instance. Within your classroom there is a nerdy student talking about video games. You indulge him and even have normal conversations with the guy. I thought it odd due to the main character being a gang leader. One of Ringo’s members asks him about it. “Why do you talk to that four eyes?” Ringo responds with saying “He’s an okay guy, I’ve known him since kindergarten. Games are all he has.” This is a conversation that could be missed if you didn’t take the time to speak to either student.
You can also learn different moves and combos through the various fighting gyms. So far there are three gyms: karate, judo, and boxing. You raise your stats by training and fighting others. Check the end of the review for tips on how to raise these stats. It’s a little cryptic at first.

The atmosphere is very well done. It’s an open world game with very interesting locales. Some areas are more dangerous than others and you’ll spend a lot of your time in the city fighting other school gangs and running back and forth to school.

Also, the music. Dear lord the music. Have you ever listened to those 24 hr lo-fi hip hop stations on youtube? If not, I highly recommend listening to them they’re very calming. All of the musical scores are or should be played on that station. The music provides a nice sense of serenity. Filled with calm hip-hop esque beats, the music drew me into the environments and the atmosphere. Noticed I said atmosphere three times, developer Yeo really nailed it.


This game is not without its faults however. Developer Yeo is a solo dev. He released a very solid game on his own and should be commended. There are a few bugs that I have experienced. One of them causes me to completely reset the game. Randomly your character would be stuck in place. Another bug completely stopped the music and crashed my game. The developer is getting on this and is very active in the discussion section. As I write this, he released a patch to major issues. Also since there is no handholding, some aspects of the game are needlessly confusing.
Overall The friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a really good game. If you like beat em ups, well written characters, and atmosphere I highly recommend it.
Score: 9/10

Tips
• You can train at the park. There are two pull up bars and a horizontal bar. Press the jump button to start the training
and hold punch. (These raise your health)
• You loot bodies of fallen foes by positioning yourself over them. Ringo will crouch on his own. Tap punch to search.
• Visit the muscle gym and judo gym frequently to start training with them.
• Recruit your gang members on the roof.
• Smoking cigs restores your health. You can buy more at the vending machine. (yes they do run out)
• Don’t go into the forest unless you’re rolling deep.
• You can run by double tapping the movement button
• Chill out

This is an odd one. If you think this is just some River City Ransom fan-remake, keep looking. This game is not it, but it is a lot more. What I mean is that there is fighting, learning new moves and gaining stats, but also there is daily high school life, a spot on representation of japanese delinquent (yankii) culture, along with nailing the japanese small town aesthetic.
The game, I think, is best described by two words. The first one is: Vague.

For example it's never stated what being hungry does to you ( I still don't know), you can't die from starvation from what I can tell. You can also smoke, but it's never stated what it's for (it actually heals you, so pop a squat and smoke a cig after a fight). The game is filled with little distractions, you can save up a lot of money, only to buy a TV and a Famicom, so you can play a very barebones shoot em up on a very tiny screen. You can read books, but most of them don't really do anything (read a 200 page long book and you only get a blurb of "This book is about nothing"). Yet you read them, and do these pointless side activities it's a very odd feeling. Never before did a game make me want to just sit down ingame, and watch the time go by, accompanied by stellar music.

The other word is Avos (авось), a Russian term, that is very hard to describe, so just look it up on wikipedia. This mainly applies to the story (and some of the gameplay elements, like, again, the books). It is very fitting, since from what I understand, the developer is Russian. Without spoiling anything, the game really does give you a weird existential trip, like a russian novel, but it's good.

And that is what's so surprising. The gameplay is too vague, and the story is too vague, and you feel hopeless and lost because of these two, yet, it all just works together, it feels very real, very human. I feel like if the dev would polish up some of the gameplay elements, make it less vague for people to figure things out and what does what, it would really benefit the game, along with maybe adding more side stories that have a conclusion, or give you different endings (like, what if you went to school every day and got straight A's? Would Ringo get in college? How would his environment react to such a drastic change of behaviour? Same if you just ignore school altogether). Keep an eye out on this guy, he's going to make a great game someday.

Is this a general recommendation? No, I don't think this game is for everyone. If you like Yankii culture, The Yakuza or Shenmue games, or Persona, you will like this too. I'd recommend you set aside a single day, get comfy, and play through the game, it can be very soothing. Also, you can tell it's good since it made me write this short story of a review.

This morning after waking up far too early, I decided to play and apparently finish up the game, and since it's still fresh I thought that I'd give my thoughts on the game. I will do my damndest to keep spoilers to a minimum.

Pros:

- Yeo /gets/ yankii culture. The delinquent walk and cigarettes are great additions to the feel. When I started playing, I knew that there was a firm appreciation for the culture.

- The fights get progressively more fun as you play. I was getting my butt whooped at the beginning and I definitely could feel myself getting stronger.

- Ambiance reminds me of Japan, really nailed it.

- Classic yankii stories, with a lot of characters that have a lot of life


Cons:
- No Endless mode, game is a certain amount of time and then you're done.

- A classic issue with these games is that they have very specific triggers, and there's apparently events all over that I missed that would've fleshed out my first play through.

- One of the trainers isn't available until mid to late game, and it's frustrating because I wanted to use that trainer much earlier but couldn't. Was a bit of a let down.

- There's one ending, which normally wouldn't be a problem but in this format of game multiple endings are a given, ESPECIALLY when the game sells itself with different playstyles, like being a straight A student or being a dropout. There's no choice at the end, making my decisions somewhat pointless.

Overall, I'd say that I definitely enjoyed the game, but there's some glaring issues that my love for the yankii genre covered up.

It's 4 in the morning. You can't sleep. You pick up a book: Anna Karenina. You flip a few pages; the words just mesh into one another. A heavy sigh escapes your lips as you get up and walk out onto the balcony. It's a school day, but who cares? Definitely not you. The rays of the rising sun sting your eyes as you try to drown out the miasma with cigarette smoke. A bunch of places pop up in your mind, teasing you with the possibilities of a moment of excitement - a fist fight. Where should you go, whose faces should you bash in? Does it matter? Does anything matter, really?

If I did this right, then you should now have a pretty good idea of what sort of game Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is. You go to school, you read books, you beat people up, you hang out with the boys... and yes, the world reacts to your actions, ever so slightly. Your fighting exp goes up, your stats increase, your grades get better, or not. Things happen. And yet, does it matter? Does anything?

French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus wrote "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide". And while suicide, or any kind of self harm isn't really a part of Ringo's world, this general feeling of complete lack of any real meaning, direction or even future is like a morning fog, filling the entire space of the game. The game achieves this in spite of giving you slight feedback about the results of your actions. If the primary objective of art is to inflict some very specific feelings to the viewer, then this game is some fine art indeed.

Everything else - the music, the aesthetic, the writing, even the individual mechanics for all the things Ringo can do (and there's quite a bit) - they just blend together and dissolve, becoming essentially invisible to you. All you see is Ringo's life as a whole; so I won't bore you with the details.

As a closing statement, let me tell you an anecdote I heard about this game. The developer is Russian, but the game takes place in late 80s/early 90s Japan. And apparently the depiction is so incredibly faithful that many Japanese people refuse to believe this game was made by someone who didn't grow up there - much less never visited. I can't comment on the accuracy of that claim, but if it's true, isn't that something?

Curator page

The game doesn't like explaining how to do stuff and neither does the developer.
Well, I do so here are some things I discovered along the way:

• On a gamepad: X to punch, Y to kick, RB to block or enable delinquent mode), LB to show the menu, Start to pause and if you hold Select you go back to the title menu. These can be changed at options on the title menu. I recommend changing kick to A because you have to press both punch and kick to jump.
  
• When you want to read a book, find a bench, sit on it by pressing the direction arrow towards it and while sitting press Block (RB). I had to research that one online. You can equip books on the bookshelf at home or buying a new one at the bookstore.
  
• There's no map in this game and the city is kinda confusing. I played a couple of days to get my bearings and then I started a new game. Not optimal.
  
• Classes are from monday to friday, 9 to 14. On saturdays there are tests and if you get all A's you can ask the teacher (1st floor, first room) for a scholarship of ¥10.000 every monday. Also, there'll be an option available for you to do research. It takes a while but it pays off.
  
• At first you'll suck at fighting, so backing away and kicking is a nice strategy. Also, gather your gang. Some are on the roof and 3rd floor classrooms.
  
• Do you want to work out at the tiny square? Jump on the bars. You have to hold punch until the movement is complete and then release it. At first you'll be able to do 5 reps or so, but over time you'll be able to do more than 20.
  
• To use the gym and/or attend boxing and/or judo classes? Just show up for a few days and exhaust the dialog options. They'll all give in eventually. This works for most things.
  
• Gym will cost ¥1.000 a day and you'll increase your HP by 25. The HP cap is 999.
  
• Yep, that's right: there's no shower. No wonder Ringo can't find a girlfriend.
  
• The game is measured by days. It lasts 50 days so make sure to do all you can in that time.
  
• Reading all the books in the school library (1st floor, last room) makes you learn school subjects faster. Totally worth it.
  
• Try not getting knocked out in the morning because it'll make you skip classes. Unless you don't wanna go to classes.

Now some issues I had with the game:

• The ending although fitting caught me by surprise and left a bitter taste in my mouth.
  
• Looting fallen enemies after the fight is buggy and bound to frustrate. Maybe disabling the collider of a looted enemy would help a lot.
  
• This "I'm not explaining this mechanic/mini game, you should find out on your own" feels pedantic and tiring. I abdicated my sunday to play this game and I can't afford to spend hours trying to figure out the instructions. It seemed like a SNES game (e.g. Harvest Moon) where they just don't tell you how to do stuff and that's it. It was great at the 90s because the cartridge was really expensive and we had to make the game last. Nowadays it just makes me feel played for a fool.
  
• Sometimes the game felt like an idle game. Such as reading or reseaching, for example. I just got my phone and started reading some stuff on reddit because it took way too long. It also bugged me because it seems like the developer wanted the game to last more time by squeezing some unpleasant waiting. And don't give me that "mood and aesthetics" crap.

Overall I enjoyed my experience and it was an interesting game. It's not for everyone but it's worth a shot!

Best purchase this year so far. The game has so much soul in it, every location is bursting with details and makes you fully immerse with the game's world, which is romantic yet brutal at the same time. I never thought that I would ever say this about beat'em up game - but it's world feels alive and realistic af. Combat system as well is very fun once you get used to it and it makes beating up your enemies really satisfying.
But for me the story was the most delightul piece of the game. It's the story about pivotal moments of every man's life. I cant escape the feeling that this story is something personal for the developer and it kinda makes you immerse even more and it doesnt let you go.
It's truly something special, 10/10

Mon - Fri: Get up, go to school, do my best in class. Maybe go to judo practice if I'm up for it. Hit the gym and lift. Round up my boys. Maybe jack some suckers for loot to sell at the pawn shop. Get some food. Go home. Study if it's not too late. Wake up and do it again.

Sat: Go to school, take tests. Yes! No school tomorrow. Round up the boys. Go on a jacking spree to make some booze money. Go to the bar. Get falling down drunk. Start a brawl. Wake up in bed the next morning, still drunk, with no memory whatsoever of how I got home. Go get some food for the hangover. Spend Sunday goofing off at the park. Maybe get in a fight. Study a little if I feel like it. Smoke a cig on the balcony feeling the Sunday evening blues. Go to bed.

It's interesting re-living high school from my perspective as a married father well past his high school years. My Ringo shows up to school more often than I did and studies more. I almost feel paternal toward him. It's as if I don't want him to make the same mistakes I did, because I know he doesn't have the long-term perspective that comes with age. There is no tomorrow when you're 17.

A game that can capture all that is a masterpiece in my book.

If this game is for you, it's incredible. As I'm sure other reviews mention, this game is more like a high school simulator than a pure fighting game like River City Ransom. But what it does, it does so well. It's hard to believe Yeo (the developer) was able to pack so much freedom into a relatively limited package.

And, yes, he *nails* the Japanese furyou thing. Furyou manga like Kyou Kara Ore Ha, Roku De Nashi Blues, Rookies, etc., are how I learned Japanese. This game feels like any one of those. Or all of them.

EDIT: People are saying the ending is weak, but I disagree. It's exactly right. Yeo, did you happen to base the ending off of Roku De Nashi Blues vol 42? It's great.

“They say that one of life's greatest tragedies is a talent gone to waste.”

“I see. There's just one thing I'm not clear about, sensei. What about those who have no talent? Are their lives wasted from the start?”

***

To reiterate the Store Page description, this game is not about beating up rival gangs, or taking over turfs, or anything. Welcome to the life which Ringo Ishikawa led in his last year of high school before graduation, and the story of those forgotten by society after they fail to achieve what was expected of them.

Little can delineate what makes this experience so powerful, as it’s an experience you need to have firsthand. You’re given just over thirty days to find your place in an open world sandbox filled with violence, loneliness, and a subtle sense of hopelessness. Immerse yourself in a complex and bittersweet story about growing up and growing apart. Wander around a poetically aimless world set to incredible lofi instrumental music and filled with urban blight. Try to find a sense of purpose from day to day. Fail.

"The friends of Ringo Ishikawa" is a freeroaming beat em up game. In this game, you take on the role of Ringo Ishikawa, a japanese highschool delinquent, who lives alone without any family members. And experience his daily life together with his four delinquent friends.

The player is given a lot of freedom in this game. You have your own apartment where you can return to, to save the game through sleeping, to read a book, or to sit down at your desk and study. Outside, you can go to school, visit the school's library, attend classes, pay close attention to the teacher and take notes during class or stare out of the window. Or you could be sitting in a cafe somewhere, drinking tea while killing time while smoking. Or maybe somewhere in a park, doing pull-ups to improve your max HP. Or just do what highschool delinquents are known to do, squatting in the corner smoking cigarettes and having fistfights with students from rival factions. The player will get hungry in this game, which will affect your academic performance and other things. You can spend the money you looted from KO'ed enemies or scholarship money from having good test result to purchase various food/drinks.

- Control & Combat -

This game has very simple control, like from good old nintento times. You need four keys to move in four directions, double tap to run. A key for punching, a key for kicking, and pressing punch and kick at same time, you jump. A "delinquent mode" key which when hold will allow you to dodge and block during combat.
Those "punch" "kick" and "delinquent mode" keys combined during or outside of combat situation allow you to perform some other actions. For example the kick button will light up a cigarette. "Punch" + "down" will make you squat. "Delinquent mode" + "Kick" will make you call out to npcs and sometimes even provoke a fight with students from other factions.
Beside those, you have a key to bring up the ingame menu, where you can check your stats. To quit the game or return to main menu, simply hold Esc for a few seconds.

The combat feels... I don't know how to call this. If you are facing more than one opponent at once, your attack will only hit one enemy, and the rest will be able to shower you with punches and kicks. Generally very hard to fend off against multiple enemies, even when you have maxed out your stats. Which is why it is recommended to roam the city in company of your delinquent friends. But it still feels very realistic, watching npcs actively punching and kicking each other while also trying to block and dodge hits is oddly satisfying.

Your main stats are punch power, kick power, throw power, and punch defense, kick defense, throw defense. Each of them has their own exp bar that fills up when you fight using those skills. If you punch alot, you gain exp for punch power. If you get punched, you gain exp in punch defense. So sometimes getting beaten up has its benefit too.

- Visual & Music -

The pixelated graphic is beautiful, the way how the characters stand and walk, every animation in this game looks gorgeous.

This game has execellent soundtracks. Just by watching the trailer and listening to the trailer soundtrack, I could feel that this game is not just some ordinary brawling game. From both the trailer soundtrack and the soundtrack during the ending of the game, I felt this loneliness and hopelessness that fit our protagonist's situation very well.

- Ending -

The ending of the game was nothing I could have ever expected. But to avoid spoiler, I am not going to reveal it here. Very understandable if people are shocked and feel betrayed by the ending, but I would like to remind you something that's written on the store page:

"[...] the main thing is the story I'm trying to tell. [...] I designed the game to make you feel this story. So it's not about [...], or [...], or anything. You just live there and feel. And that's all."

If we are to evaluate the game and its ending by that statement, the developer has done a great job. Whatever you feel at that very moment, that must be how the protagonist is feeling at that moment of the story.

- Conclusion -

Definitely a nice small game I would recommend if you enjoy games such as river city ransom. The game can be played as long as you want, if you have figured out a way to dodge story progression. During my first playthrough, I finished the game maybe in not more than 10 hours. That includes exploring and grinding and fooling around. But the game has more content than that if you decide to expore it fully. In the end, how many hours you get out of it, depends on you.

The story made me think about many things.
How far would you go for your friends when they need help?
How far would you expect your friends to go for you when you are in deep trouble?
Would you still stand by your friend when all odds are against you?

Once you have completed the game. You won't be forgetting this short but beautifully sad story for a long time.

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