The friends of Ringo Ishikawa was a game that took me back to my teenage years, viewed through the sobering & cynical lens of hindsight. The titular Ringo & his friends are a bunch of classic Japanese delinquents, with seemingly no initial higher ambitions beyond their schoolyard gang warfare, entering their final year as students with graduation on the horizon. Despite being a gaggle of petty thugs who smoke cigarettes & have seemingly little interest in their own futures, it's shown as the plot goes on that there's more to each of these delinquents than let's on. Your violent, dumb-as-rocks lackey Goro is a surprisingly talented thespian. Your number one brawler Ken has the talent necessary for a shot at a boxing career in college. Even Ringo himself is a shockingly erudite scholar with an interest in literature, a once-promising career in karate, and is a surprisingly idealistic, loyal, man of virtue. The one thing holding them back is their gang lifestyle & ideas, something that resonated with me as someone who saw this same situation play out dozens of times in my youth.

My own high school wasn't great looking back on it. Violence & abuse were common occurrences, drug use & sex in the hallways was an unspoken fact of life, and basically everyone was a minority of some kind from a low-income background. Lots of people I knew came from broken homes, or were working part-time to put food on the table, or were otherwise struggling with something no kid should've been dealing with at that age, the kind of things that can make studying for your history exam seem like small potatoes. It's a structural issue decades in the making that leads to people getting trapped in places like these, and unfortunately not everyone is able to escape it. Schoolyard fights that escalated into shootings. Football players who graduate with bright prospects only to then get arrested for murder. Kids akin to Ringo's gang members like Masaru or Goro, who have zero sights beyond the now & fully believe they'll be set for a life of petty crime after graduation. The short-sighted violent mindsets people box themselves into that end up spelling their own ends because they can't escape the circumstances that put them there.

I vividly remember hanging out in the parking lot after school one day, and I saw a kid reading a book on the hood of his car. His friends came up to him and immediately dogged on him for this and the supposed weakness such a hobby would project on your image, and he sheepishly put it away in his bag before he left with his friends. It's a small event in hindsight, but it was called back to my mind crystal clear during a scene where Ringo's friends rip into their fellow member Goro for his new vested interest in acting.

Ringo, for all his virtues, for all the books you can make him read, for all the training he can undergo, for all the studying & knowledge you can try to impart on him, still fully believes that his gang of schoolyard bullies is going to last forever, despite it being made rapidly apparent that everyone is starting to move on and find their own callings. Ringo still gets into casual street fights & latches onto his childish notions of schoolyard ethics, of "official challenges" and "rules," even as things spiral out of anyone's control & everyone starts to get in too deep. Much like some of my peers that I saw in my youth, he's a bright soul with potential and promise that is being squandered by his own adherence to violence and unhealthy group mentalities & expectations, and the simple fact is that as the days go by, everyone around him is starting to realize that they need to grow up and move past it all.

Everyone except him.

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

"What about those who have no talent? Are their lives wasted from the start?"

--

"The book's about nothing."

The game starts with a battle inside a train. In the aftermath, the beaten thugs stay on the floor until the train stops. Once off, another fight begins. After that, you proceed to the next screen and another fight begins. This one has no end, just a fade to black and a title drop. No catharsis on any punch or on any victory. After that, another message. A year has gone by. The same gang feud is still going on and getting worse.

After this skip, the first thing you see is Ringo's professor telling him that the last days of high school are coming up, and it’s time to decide where to head on with your life. In here, the already decontextualized beat’em up setting gains a new dimension when noticing that the violence is not just non-cathartic, but a background. Some gangs fight each other, some others want to fight you, you can run away from any of them and if you get beat up there is no fail state, just another action in the world and waking at home after some rest.

This may be a disheartening view of the world just because, but when examining your own actions, it becomes evident that there is no other way, or not easily so. You have no financial support and will starve for most of the time, at the very least on the first days. Your only income source is to pick money from beaten thugs, by your own hand or not, and it’s easy to assume that most of the teenagers around are in a very similar place.

The means for covering basic necessities is just a small part, since Ringo’s life is explored in all its aspects, since he wakes until he goes to sleep. Here it is interesting to see his approach to hobbies or interests like literature, studies, or even exercise, be it through fights or through training with some masters. In any case, the result of taking interest in those topics will be some numbers going up. Simple abstraction or not, intentional or not, despite whether Ringo is interested in what he is doing or not, what remains is a cold number, an objective. This could be compared with how modern Persona games free time actions help you build stats making every decision a strategic decision, at least partially, but here the answer is more vague, or directly non-existent, there is no benefit to what to do or not to do because there are no good or bad outcomes. The usual short length on most events, just a few lines of dialogue, help to convey both the fugacity and sudden impact of the small moments and their relative insignificance on the bigger picture when searching for a change.

The game takes influence from Yakuza and Shenmue, and while it’s easy to see where it comes from, there is a major difference. There is no immediate catharsis on the infinite time for side activities like in Yakuza and no real objective to struggle for like in Shenmue. If anything, it looks more like what San Andreas would be if there were no missions, just going around the neighborhood as the days go by. But the days will eventually end. To me, the most similar game to Ringo Ishikawa is Boku no Natsuyasumi.

Of course, with a very different tone, there is a similar sense in getting up every day and going around from one screen to another looking for things to do in the city. Also, at least in my case, a certain routine started to appear, making each day like a small poetry exercise. I liked to go to some places at some time, to repeat some activities, to create my own daily plan in both games. In both, the intention is to get the better of every day. In Boku no Natsuyasumi, the conclusion was that even the days when nothing happened were as good as any other. In Ringo Ishikawa, even when something happens, the sense is that of still being lost, and then marching another day trying to find something.

Here is a lot to praise about how the map and the scenarios are constructed. Even though the tall infinite buildings can be seen in the background of many screens, the feeling when running around is that the place is too small and that there is a kind of life that cannot be escaped whatever you do.

If Kunio-kun and the eighties manga school gangster aesthetic suggest some sense of freedom through the sheer strength of youth, Ringo Ishikawa uses the template to illustrate the opposite, the end of the fantasy and the realization of how hard it is for a teenager to escape from where they are, or if it is even possible.

I went to school every day because I knew my friends were there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTeK48Z2HuA

An indie masterpiece I didn't click with.

Ringo Ishikawa is an intentionally directionless game. It provides a wide-open, beat-em up sandbox for you to explore. You have a plethora of choices available to you, different paths and minigames and stats to improve, different ways you can change the course of Ringo's life. But ultimately, those choices are so numerous they become... meaningless. Ringo still doesn't have a firm path that awaits him outside of high school. His friendships are still fracturing, all their prospects are grim, and its likely that they're about to enter some meaningless, dead-end lives.

The fact I didn't enjoy this game isn't the fault of the game itself. The game is designed to be melancholy and empty. That's a feature, not a bug. You have to find a joy in that feeling, that routine and aesthetic. Because this game is ALL aesthetic, full of secret ways to interact with the world. I fully believe its actually a perfectly crafted game, successful in everything its going for. I'm sure their follow-up game, Arrest of a Stone Buddha, is similarly brutal. Its just not something I could make myself devote a full playthrough towards.

I googled the ending and just. Goddamn. Gutting. Fuck, man.

Playing The friends of Ringo Ishikawa is an extremely strange experience. It's a game that obviously is made with a small team, and even less money. Yet despite that, the ambitions of this game are extreme. It tries to do so many different things with it systems.
I think the thing Ringo Ishikawa does most of all is make the players want to root for this game. At least, I wanted to root for this game. Tackling a life sim genre is extremely difficult, and while pared down, it still holds itself together in such a way that one can applaud.
Some of the best moments in Ringo Ishikawa happen when nobody is talking. It happens when Ringo studies until midnight, and the player decides that Ringo wants to go out on his balcony to have a cigarette. It doesn't do anything to the gameplay to do this. No stats go up. Nothing changes. It just feels like the natural thing to do at that moment. When on the balcony, a fight breaks down between rival gangs below. Sure, you could join them to get some experience. Or you could just keep smoking the cigarette for awhile until one side wins. That's what The friends of Ringo Ishikawa is all about.

If Kenka Banchou do a banchou life sim using the cool factor (supposing so, since the only with english translation is like this), The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa uses everything more depressive about them. Sure, you have cool stuff happening but is just a small time fantasy, the reality comes crushing right after.

Everything is made to reflex Ringo and his friends and even the player too. If Shenmue suggests things and made you think something, The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa ask directly. The cast is made of teenagers that already lose in life. Ken can't go to pro boxing because he always enters in fights and always end with a broken hand, Goro can't be an artist because is like everything is against him, Masaru have a gambling addiction being only 18 years old, Shiro try to do the right thing and always gets in fight and Ringo doesn't have anything anymore. He left the opportunity of being a national champion, he doesn't have the wish to do anything anymore, he can try to be a better student but for what? Everyone wants to fight him. Is just the very relatable moment in banchou works when you see the characters knowloding how everything sucks and even if they did the right choices the system is against them.

The mix of russian literature with japanese movies and mangas sure goes hard.

I spent a lot of this game reading, I wasn't reading anything really, Ringo was reading. Mostly books I'd never read, the kind I feel intimidated by, books that would go over my head. It felt like it gave me a little purpose with a routine, earning money to buy books and spending time to read the books. I didn't think there'd be a reward for it, I just did it, it became a nice little habit to find a scenic spot in town and just watch Ringo sit back and tear through Ulysses or something. Feels a bit stupid looking back on it but some in-game days I spent doing nothing but this. It came to an end, unceremoniously, ran out of books. Not much to show for, doing that didn't amount to anything tangible for Ringo or for me but it was some peace of mind in a way.

I had the freedom to do so much in this game, make Ringo be anything he could be, and I chose to create a basic routine anyone could do in real life, probably to greater benefit, not even sure why. Before the game came to an end I didn't really find a new main activity or routine to replace this with. Some little distractions, getting drunk, smoking, squatting, trying and failing to reenact that one cool shot from Blue Spring, small stuff. I just went on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

I blew through the game in like a day, the next day felt a bit emptier without loading up Ringo Ishikawa and continuing his daily life.

Sorry to sound corny but there's this one line in Texhnolyze I keep thinking about, "True freedom can't lean on anything. It's transient, lonely, arduous. You can't hope for any security or reward beyond it". That's how it felt, very beautiful, I'm still thinking about it.

Ringo Ishikawa is chivalrous. He's cowardly. But above all else, he's lost.

I was most compelled by the characters here, and certainly not the gameplay. It's the kind of game where you want a guide right beside you the whole way through, because you'll get fucked 50 ways to Sunday if you try to engage in combat early on. UX is a two-pack of ass in general.

The story is good, and all the characters have great dialogue. For a debut it's essentially a smash hit in writing and narrative, but the gameplay is an anchor that firmly weighs it down. My playthrough took 45 days ingame and clocked in at ~8 hours, and it got real dead by the end. You can say "That's the point!" all you like, but that doesn't mean it's a good one. A fixed 31 days would have created a tighter pace with more urgency, as well as encourage repeat playthroughs. Oh well.

You should watch The Friends of Eddie Coyle if you haven't already.

It's like a weird tone piece, it's so hard to explain this game. You look at it, and it's River City Ransom. You play it, and it's a lot like Punch Club's stat management. You'll encounter random scenes that play out like Persona conversations.

The story is almost nonexistent, but each scene is so perfect. The dialogue is True Detective levels of vague curtness. The ending comes out of nowhere, seemingly randomly, yet unavoidably.

How do you explain what makes this game so special? I don't even think I understand it myself. All the things I said above probably sound like negative points against the game. But although there are many things that are like parts of this, there is also nothing like this, and it will stick with you, sinking into you brain for weeks after the credits roll.

The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa was and is a polarizing game. By virtue of its design decisions and lack of QOL its going to alienate a lot of people, fitting for a game in part about alienation.

If there is one word to describe the game it is ballsy. Only a ballsy game that 25% of its buyers will refund as per the devs own account would let you loose in this 80s Japanese town with basically no guidance. And whilst some parts of this feel intentional and help the mood of the game as you slowly learn how to get ahead in several ways, some just feel petty and/or dumb. Yeo himself could tell me that not telling me how to read books by sitting in any seat and pressing R or having to press B + A to jump to be able to do pull ups(which you have to do to join at least one club) is an intentional part of his design and I wouldnt believe him, and also I would flick his ear for being annoying.

The hunger mechanic is also not explained at all and I was pretty stressed at first losing fights and days trying to scrape enough cash from fights to buy food, but then I got 10k yen from good grades and basically had no money problems from then on, aided by the fact I somehow read a book which apparently doubles the knowledge you get from going to class.

Ringo is a game about roleplaying, not because of its stat elements that very assuredly non RPGs have these days, but because so much of the game revolves around ultimately mechanically inconsequential but nonetheless engrossing stuff. The quality of its writing really shines when you spend an entire sunday reading the Brothers Karamazov so Ringo can give it a good rating on Goodreads and have a 3 or 4 text box discussion about it with a classmate. Its a game where you smoke a limited amount of smokes for 440 yen a pack, which AFAIK has no effect on anything at a mechanical level whatsoever. But its about what Ringo wants to become, maybe you want him to quit smoking. Get straight As and go to the gym every day. Or you can have him play pool and beating up other thugs 24/7.

Ringo is a game that almost alienated me, and honestly I think reading up how to read books at home and do pushups, as inconsequential as they ended up being, increased my enjoyment of the game rather than spoil it. I didnt do many of the "quests" cause in a move that is definitely intentional there is no transcript or anything, if a friend says "Yuko is near the station tomorrow you should go" or something youre just meant to remember where that is in a game without a map and also to remember what day youre on and other such things. I suppose I could replay it but this game is definitely one that loses its luster by the end, maybe intentionally but it didnt seem that way to me and honestly Im tired of speculating on authorial intent, my experience dragged on a bit towards the conclusion even if that ending was...well it gave me something to think about certainly.

EDIT : Always the mark of good art, I have kept thinking about this game after I have finished it, it occupies my mind in a way I hadnt anticipated. Im bumping it up half a star cause I think for what flaws it might have its captured my imagination.

Russian literature game.
It's a hardcore game that goes far beyond DISCO ELYSIUM when it comes to literary elements.(maybe) ...I was stunned by the ending. I felt like going out on the balcony and smoking a cigarette. I’m not smoker.

Anyway, what kind of game is this, where you are a kuniokun on the surface but a Gogol/Dostoevsky on the inside? lol
There's a term on the Japanese internet called "おそロシア = OsoRussia" , and I've seen a glimpse of the horror of Russia in this game.
It's a hard game to recommend. But it's definitely a game you won't forget.

A pun on Russia and the word 'horrible'. The term is used to joke about horrible events in Russia and its amazing culture and character.

The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a relatively short yet re-playable game about how far friendships can be stretched, how many beatings a man can take, and how we stack the deck against ourselves and pretend not to notice.

This game pushes Ringo into a poverty-induced whirlpool of violence and crime, as the only way to afford food in the early game (apart from when your friend, seemingly at random, shells out for you) is by either beating the yen right out of other dudes’ pockets, or by opportunistically scavenging coins from the unconscious forms of fallen gang members who you just watched get pounded into the dirt. In this way, you become a wild animal, a crow picking at scraps upon city pavements, consuming barely substantial crumbs one fingerful at a time.

Ringo doesn’t have parents. Nobody in the adult world seems especially interested in taking care of him, beyond coaches who, you’ve guessed it, train him to be a better fighter. Ringo’s teacher will present him with lump sums of yen every week if he gets good grades, and he will verbally encourage Ringo, yet this too implicitly rewards those who fight and scavenge on the street; to focus on school and to study effectively at home, Ringo must surely have a full belly, and in order to achieve a full belly, he must roam the city in search of other gang members to steal from. In the early game, I found myself caught in a cycle in which I lost multiple fights in a row, wasted a lot of days recovering in bed, and was always starving. I expected to receive a game over, but it didn't come. Ringo Ishikawa always got back up, no matter how I failed him, no matter how very hungry he claimed to be.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t get into fights. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I certainly wasn’t left to fend for myself, without parents, money, or food—not for any extended period of time, anyway. However, when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I went through a phase where I struggled to eat. Looking at food made me feel sick. Looking at myself made me feel sick. I replaced breakfast with extra time in bed, which helped ease the sleepless nights. I was recurrently dehydrated. I could eat lunch only on days where I could successfully separate my mind from my mouth and my organs. I had a much easier time with evening meals, though I don’t know why, and not always.

I was hungry a lot. Hungry, and empty.

I remember feeling like I was self-destructing. I often hoped that somebody might jump me on the way home in the dark, like getting into a fight might fix everything, but I wasn’t an initiator, and for whatever reason nobody initiated against me. I had become a ghost, I thought. One night, during the winter, I was looking out at the river that sliced the town in two. I thought about jumping into it from the bridge above. I hoped the shock of the cold might be enough to make me panic and drown. If not, at least it would make me feel something. Suddenly, a man I didn’t know appeared behind me, and said something about it being a nice night. This startled me. I was crying. Silently, I think, though I couldn’t be certain. I tentatively agreed with him. It was a nice night. Freezing cold, crystal clear. I…

Ringo Ishikawa is not a ghost. I don’t believe that he can become depressed. I don’t know if he can starve to death, though I don’t think he can. He can initiate fights and have fights initiated against him. No matter how bad his previous day was, he will sit down at a school bench, if instructed, and read classic literature for you—literature that was, and still is, too intimidating for me to read, regardless of the fullness of my stomach and the health of my bank account, and in spite of my degrees in writing and literature.

All that to say, this game did and did not make me feel like a teenager again.

É fácil de perceber quando um jogo tem confiança em sua mensagem - não há limite de orçamento que o pare quando um desses aparece. The friends of Ringo Ishikawa te coloca na posição do dito cujo, delinquente adolescente e líder de uma gangue da escola, constantemente matando aula para badernar, beber e lutar nas ruas - seu antepassado de bom aluno e prodígio karateca um espectro saudoso para todos os adultos da história. Porém, é aí que o jogo começa, o passado de Ringo definido, o futuro em suas mãos, já que está no controle de Ringo em todos os momentos deste último semestre de escola: se ele vai brigar na rua, é porque você foi lá e brigou; se ele vai voltar aos eixos, é porque você decidiu ir às aulas e estudar, não através de uma decisão binária em um menu, e sim pelo ato maçante de todos os dias ir para a aula no horário certo e estudar, gastando o tempo em que o jogador - e Ringo - poderiam estar fazendo algo mais divertido e interessante. Este ato de forçar o jogador a viver a vida de Ringo e tomar junto dele as decisões fáceis e difíceis que devem ser tomadas todo dia no andar massacrante e irrefreável da rotina e do tempo o aproxima da personagem e também a humaniza, mostrando que apesar do seu exterior de rebelde insuportável e grosso, Ringo está lidando com a mesma gigantesca tarefa de existir que todos nós estamos.

E como o jogo se mantém interessante no meio disso tudo? Ele é bem escrito, embora sua história seja um pouco escassa, porém, quem carrega todo o espetáculo é o senso de atmosfera impressionante que um jogo tão visualmente simples consegue conjurar. Ringo Ishikawa não é o jogo que é pelos momentos em que você tenta se encaixar em uma rotina para fazer seus pontos de matemática ou de soco subirem, mas sim no momento quando você, inspirado pela trilha sonora e pelo farfalhar das folhas nas árvores, pelo humor melancólico da cidade e pelo peso da situação, decide, não se importando com otimizações gamificadas, parar por uns 30-40 minutos e apenas ficar sentado no banquinho da praça ou escorado no corrimão da ponte e contemplar, a cabeça vazia do Ringo marionete sendo preenchida pela do Ringo pessoa e a do jogador, sentindo e transmitindo a onda de emoção arrebatadora que você tenta conter e ocupar com todo momento da rotina. O meu Ringo gostava de tirar os domingos para ficar lendo o dia todo na praça, e essa memória ficará comigo muito mais do que qualquer level up que um jogo pode me proporcionar.

O tom do jogo é de desespero e de rebeldia, retratando o comportamento deste grupo de jovens delinquentes como a resposta que encontraram para uma sociedade conformada e sem propósito. A violência presente nele é também sem propósito e quase totalmente opcional, o jogo começando com uma luta que, para os personagens é um evento de escala épica, porém é logo depois saltada pelo jogo no meio de seu clímax, indicando sua postura diante de todo este conflito - essa violência é apenas uma crise desesperada e um grito de desespero diante do terror da conformidade durante toda sua duração. Todas as vezes que levava meu RIngo para brigar nas ruas sentia como se estivesse tentando afastar esses demônios da rotina e do futuro, sublimar o sofrimento em algo físico e violento.

Embora a obra não seja perfeita, ela é do tipo que inspira através de seu puro ardor, fazendo com quem jogue consiga sentir mais do que só o que está presente na tela, captar a essência e a ideia de um artista que queria dizer tanto através de um meio que, embora tenha grande potencial, sempre o limitará pela dificuldade de sua produção. The friends of Ringo Ishikawa poderia ser e ter muito mais - mais diálogo, mais opções, mais reatividade, mais atividades - mas o seu cerne é claro e incorruptível, e digno de um respeito muito maior do que sua estatura parece projetar.

The friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a difficult game to explain, and a somewhat tough game to recommend to people. On the surface, it's a pretty basic looking indie game with obvious influences from River City Ransom and a hand deep in the pockets of "Yankii" Japanese delinquent lifestyles. But to say the game is more than that would be an understatement.

You are given no direction on how to play the game. Much like real life, you are left to your own devices to figure it out. At first, I felt a bit conflicted with this design choice, but as I continued to play, I grew to admire it. Should I hit the gym and work on my fighting skills? Maybe pick up a book and see what I can learn. Should I get my act together and actually go to class for once? All of these questions are left up to you, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Gameplay consists of doing various tasks, training your skills, fighting people, and growing as a person. You can talk to people, play games with them, get a part-time job, attend school, fight rival schools, etc. It's all about time management and what you want to do with your life.

Combat is pretty simple, consisting of punches, kicks, guards, and grapples. You can improve your fighting repertoire by training under various masters, but the general flow of combat changes little. Fights rarely feel different from one another regardless of who you are up against, which might make some players more willing to skip conflict altogether out of repetition.

The story and characters are also dependent on what you choose to do with your time during Ringo Ishikawa's final year of high school, and as a result, your playthrough will more than likely be different than everyone else's. This adds to replayability, but also helps the immersion into Ringo's world.

The music and presentation are top-notch. The spritework is like an evolution of River City Ransom's style, blending detailed backgrounds with simple, yet well-animated characters. The music is an easy 10/10 for me. This is exactly my kind of music, and it fits the style and subject matter of the game to a T.

My complaints with the game are few and do not stop this game from being great. The repetition of your routine may make the game feel like it's not moving forward. The combat, while fun to me, is understandably simple and could feed into the repetition for some. There are also instances where story events will eat an entire day's worth of time, leaving you with little to do for that day. This can be a little annoying when you planned to do something that is only available on specific days of the week, like Judo practice. Lastly, some of the characters (in my experience) do not receive as much focus as I would have liked, but this could be a result of my own playstyle rather than the game's fault.

If you are still unsure of giving this game a shot, let me put it straight—it's worth your time. It may be a bit tough to get a hang of, but you'll find your groove in time and wish it never ends.

While I had a good run, It's kinda hard to recommend The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa.

The first couple of hours were fun but after that, I didn't really have anything to do. I can only smoke and listen to melancholic music for so long before getting bored. I wish some in-game events didn't have such specific requirements, maybe that would help to fill these gaps the game has. But hey, maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, considering how it all fits at the end.

I'm looking forward to checking out the upcoming game from yeo "Fading Afternoon", and see how he can improve this formula.

Desde já agradeço qualquer um que ler isso aqui até o final :)
Essa provavelmente vai ser minha review mais longa de todas, mas eu tenho TANTO pra falar desse jogo e ele se conecta com tantas coisas pessoais minhas que ele realmente merece ser a maior review que eu puder fazer e me sinto orgulhoso de conseguir escrever tudo do jeito que eu queria.

Dois dos meus filmes preferidos da vida (Kids Return e Blue Spring, que recomendo absurdamente) tratam do mesmo assunto que esse jogo e da mesma maneira também, então já sabia bem o que esperar e mesmo assim me surpreendi MUITO. Todas as reflexões sobre a vida e o futuro que bate à porta, a melancolia, expectativas sobre os caminhos que vamos seguir, o tempo que está passando e que não temos controle nenhum sobre ele, amadurecimento, todos esses detalhes são muito presentes e realmente bem emocionantes e muito fáceis de se conectar.
É incrível ver um trabalho tão bem feito e por alguém tão apaixonado por essas histórias assim como eu (inclusive não sei se é isso mesmo, mas acho que tem uma referência de Tokyo Fist do Tsukamoto em uma parte do jogo que me deixou muito eufórico porque eu também amo muito esse filme). É simplesmente incrível, dá pra ver todo o amor por essa criação e essas referências estampado na tela a cada parte do jogo.

Pontos positivos!!!
ABSOLUTAMENTE TUDO????? Os personagens são incríveis e bem escritos, as interações entre eles são muito divertidas e naturais, os gráficos e trilhas sonoras são impecáveis, o combate é muito bem feito e realmente dá vontade de aprender todos os golpes e upar todos os atributos, os lugares são marcantes e bem distribuídos e as interações neles sempre trazem algo de diferente (o que é ainda mais importante sabendo que o jogo não tem mapa pra se guiar e quase tudo nele é só opcional).
Além de elevarem a qualidade técnica do jogo em geral, todos esses tópicos contribuem muito pro sentimento de imersão e te fazem se sentir genuinamente como um personagem presente nesse mundo, com o sistema de aulas e os compromissos da sua rotina incrementando tudo isso e realmente dando sentido pra mecânica do jogo e o modo como tudo vai sendo apresentado, sem deixar maçante nem mesmo as partes mais focadas em estudar, ler, fazer trabalhos ou assistir as aulas (que achei que seriam as partes mais fracas do jogo).

Pontos negativos!!!
Na verdade é um só, e que demorou um tempo pra realmente me afetar e causar algo negativo. No geral, o loop de gameplay é basicamente viver sua rotina fazendo as atividades espalhadas pelo mapa e ir interagindo com o mundo e os personagens, até que aconteça algum evento aleatório ou da história que faz a narrativa seguir adiante. Mas o fato de que não tem como ter ideia de quando ou como esses eventos vão acontecer, e muito menos ter algum controle sobre eles, faz com que você sempre tenha um certo receio de simplesmente perder um dia inteiro com algo que você não tem como controlar e vai acabar prejudicando seu progresso.
Na minha primeira gameplay, eu já tava quase completando todas as sidestories e prestes a pegar a maioria das conquistas quando o jogo simplesmente ACABOU. Tudo bem que já estava tendo uma construção pro final da narrativa e eu já sabia disso, mas o fato de que o último evento da história simplesmente acontece e depois disso já acabou seu save e não dá pra ter o mínimo controle disso, acaba podendo ser bem frustrante.
Não me afetou quando isso aconteceu (até porque a construção do final é muito boa e o final em si é incrível), então eu só comecei na hora outro save e fui fazendo tudo de novo. Mas algumas sidestories exigem rotinas BEM específicas e com muitas variáveis pra funcionarem, e ter esse medo de que em algum momento um evento vai acontecer e me fazer perder o dia inteiro e consequentemente todo o progresso acaba frustrando um pouco (medo esse que não é nem um pouco descabido porque acabou acontecendo TRÊS vezes comigo).
Não acho tão problemático assim, até porque acho o loop de gameplay muito bom de qualquer jeito, mas algum sistema (mesmo que seja o mais simples possível) pra controlar ou ter pelo menos uma noção do calendário de eventos ou simplesmente não permitir essa sobreposição de eventos secundários com as partes da história principal faria o jogo bem menos complicado, e não acho que ia afetar na imersão.

Mesmo que eu tenha falado bem mais sobre a parte negativa (até porque ela realmente é bem complexa), eu ainda considero esse jogo INCRÍVEL e com certeza é um dos favoritos da minha vida, poderia ficar falando ainda mais sobre os pontos positivos e essa review ia ficar maior do que já é, mas acho que o melhor jeito de mostrar os pontos positivos é recomendar que joguem e aproveitem todas as experiências que o jogo permite, principalmente os momentos mais simples (e que mais me dão saudade de viver também) como só andar por aí com seus amigos, sair pra comer e ocasionalmente sair no soco com alguém.
Também aproveitem e saiam pra dar uma volta por aí, ir em algum lugar bom e apreciar as coisas ao nosso redor, com alguma companhia ou não, realmente são momentos que valem a pena ser experienciados.

Fuckin loved it. Actual freedom. Go to school or don't, get a job or don't, fight in the street or don't.

One of those games you can just live in, sitting in the cafe reading a book to cool music, or hanging on the balcony with a cigarette watching a couple of lads having a scrap.

Feels like it was made for me, and the ending was like a gutpunch in extreme slow motion. I think about it often.

Platform: Switch
Hours: 9
man, this game is just so good. it's a social sim and a beat em up, but that's all in service to the writing and the art. it's a gorgeous game, and it's written like an actual novel. These characters speak like people, like real friends, guys who want to be tough, people who just want to give their life some kind of meaning. A couple of the lines in this game hit me so hard I put the controller down and stared at the words, the turn of phrase now locked in my skull, ready to be part of my life. This is a game that, if you get into the characters and their relationships, will make you think about your life. Your decisions. Your follow through. What you're even doing with the time you have every day. The social sim really drives this part home too. One time, I missed a tutoring session with a girl I'd wanted to get to know better, and the next day I spoke to her in the hallway. I said (something like) "Hey, sorry I missed our plans yesterday". She said "Oh that? Don't worry about it, I figured something out". And that was it. No second chances, no previous save to reload (the autosave is quite aggressive), no rewinding the relationship to make sure it works. I think I'll play this game again, someday when I'm feeling especially low, and let it destroy me.
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The friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a very humble attempt at a life sim ala Shenmue with RPG and beat em up elements, and for that, it's interesting. Not just a humble life sim, but a humble game as a whole. The sprites are limited, with most characters using the same assets, as if they were all done using an in-game character creator, and the music is all royalty free lo-fi beats.
The early hours are great, you get to soak in its melancholic atmosphere and it tells you very little, confident to let the player figure out its systems, though this is an issue with school clubs since it doesn't tell you that you need to be there before the scheduled time.

This is where the problems begin, people will tell you that the story will be different for everyone, and that's not really true, it's always the same. There's only some events you can miss (easily), some of them with no acknowledgement, like missing an important looking duel from a rival.
The story structure seems to be that events trigger when you're at a specific place around a certain time, rather than being tied to an objective or having a limited number of days. Some eat up a whole day which may fuck up your plans. As the game goes on, they get more and more scarce, and it took me two whole in-game weeks for each of the last two to trigger, in that time I had already done most of the side-content, not because I went out of my way to do it, there's just very little to do in this game, so I was stuck just wandering at every hour and place to try to trigger them. The story is sort of a character study and has some kinda poignant scenes, like the ending, but considering how much of a time investment this game is (21 hours for me, like half of them with nothing), it doesn't feel worth it.

I get you're supposed to feel empty and with no purpose, but the player doesn't start that way, and you get very little acknowledgement for the things you do acomplish. What happens if you read all the books in the library? Two of them (at random) give you stat boosts and an achievement but that's it, not even a comment about the books (they're "about nothing") or from Nami. What happens if you beat all the rival schools? Nothing, just an achievement. What happens if you just don't eat and starve every day? Nothing I can notice either, it doesn't seem to affect your health or stats. It's rare that I wish a game had branching stories and multiple endings, but it'd improve the game a lot, since the basis for a lot of stuff is already there, as it is, it just wastes your time.
Combat is also nothing, focused mostly on having big stats. Even blocking isn't manual, you just hold a button and if your stat is high, you have a bigger chance of blocking. Special moves you unlock in dojos from time you waste training, do less damage than normal attacks. Every encounter is the same, there aren't any bosses with unique moves or anything of the sort.
There's lots of weird bugs too, one time I got trapped at school at night, or Ringo just stopped wanting to sleep.

Normally I don't like giving scores, but I really think that the praise this game has here is undeserved, as someone that legitimately wanted to give it a chance. It just has too many problems. At the end of the day, I can only recommend it to die hards of life sims that want to see a modest, indie attempt at one. Keep an eye out for the dev though, I feel like he could do something truly great one day if he keeps at it.