How to Unlock and Swap Recruits in River City Girls 2

I can’t say I’ve ever been in a turf war, but based on what I’ve seen in movies, it’s an accepted norm that anyone who gets most of the snot beat out of them is obligated to do what the snot-beater says, lest the remainder of their snot be beat out of them. Considering you’re going up against an entire yakuza syndicate in River City Girls 2, you need all the snot beat-ees you can possibly muster. Here’s how to unlock and swap recruits in River City Girls 2.

How to Unlock and Swap Recruits in River City Girls 2

Just like in the first River City Girls game, you can recruit the enemies you encounter (and beat down) on your various jaunts around River City. However, as River City Girls 2 is a much more open-ended game, this system has been refined a bit, giving you a little more freedom in how your recruits are managed.

To actually recruit an enemy, you need first to defeat every other enemy in the scene. This means, if you’re in an open area, defeating every enemy that randomly spawns in, or if you’re in a screen lock, defeating every enemy that specifically attacks you. Either way, once you’re down to the last enemy and you’ve pummeled them close to the end of their health, they’ll take on a submissive pose and a begging symbol will appear over their heads. To recruit them in this state, just walk up to them to grab them, then press either the left or right trigger on your controller.

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You can store two recruits at once, calling them for an assist by pressing the same trigger you recruited them with. Unlike in the first game, where recruits had a set number of uses, your recruits have health bars now, which drain when they take a hit while assisting you. As long as they don’t take a hit, you can call them out indefinitely.

Swapping Out Recruits

If you recruit another enemy while your recruit slots are already full, don’t worry, the old one doesn’t go away. They’ve just been sent to your reserves. Whenever you’re in a hideout area like Kyoko’s house, you can see your recruits milling about somewhere like in Kyoko’s kitchen. If you interact with the recruit menu, denoted by the purple door with a person symbol on it, you can bring up your recruits menu and see who’s in your reserves.

If you want to swap someone in, just select them from the list and choose the recruit slot you want to put them in. You can do this from any hideout; if you recruit someone whose ability doesn’t work out for you, just return to the hideout and you can get your old recruit back at no charge.

There are multiple recruits for each enemy category, so try to collect them all! They’re like Pokemon, except this game’s more explicit about how you conscript them to your cause.