It's no exaggeration to say that River City Girls 2 was my most-anticipated beat 'em up of 2022. The first game is an all-time favorite, and the second offers an increase in scale and numerous improvements. However, when RCG2 launched in December, hardcore fans quickly noticed that the game's frame rate was off. Whereas RCG1 runs at a smooth 60 FPS on all platforms, part 2 is stuck at 30. While some players didn't notice the difference, for others (including me), RCG2 just doesn't feel right in its current state.
At launch, WayForward quickly released a beta patch on Steam that fixed the single-player frame rate, but that beta version doesn't fix online multiplayer woes. The developer has mostly stayed silent about the status of the promised fixes for consoles and PC since then. On WayForward's Discord, we did learn that the difficulty in correcting the frame rate comes as a result of RCG2's frame rate being tied to other in-game systems and mechanics, hence the long wait for a fix.
Thankfully, WayForward finally offered an update this week via Twitter and other social media platforms:
We've been hard at work on a River City Girls 2 performance patch on all platforms, and we are nearly finished testing and getting ready to submit it to first parties for approval. We'll update you once we have a solid date. Thanks for your patience!
The announcement doesn't say just when the title update is coming, but it does say that it will soon be submitted to console makers. Once it has been approved, we can expect another announcement with a firm release date. After that, at long last, River City Girls 2 should run and play just as smoothly as the first game! We'll complete a playthrough and publish our long-awaited co-op review at that time.
Why not celebrate the good news with a freshly-released music video?
River City Girls 2 supports 4-player local co-op, 2-player online co-op, and cross-play. The North American version of River City Girls 2 sells for $39.99 on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam. The killer soundtrack is also available for $11.49 at Amazon and other digital music stores.