Get this trash off my PS4.
This game was a fucking SLOG to play and a stain on the fist of the northstar franchise
as a huge fan of both Yakuza and HNK i was really excited to play this and was met with the biggest dissapointment ever
To start off, the combat is actually really fun,probably my 4th favorite in the series
The issue rises at the awful upgrade system (you barely get upgrade orbs) and how stupidly high the healthbars are.
Besides that, the story is terrible.It spits in the face of the source material and completely assasinated all the tension and emotion in the story. There's so many changes it's literally impossible to list them all.
Do not play this game.
Do not look at this game.
It doesn't exist.

I love RGG games and I originally started this one back when it came out but I need up not getting very far but I couldn’t remember why. Seeing it on my shelf, the only RGG game I haven’t completed I decided to give it a spin before Infinite Wealth comes out.

The beginning was so drawn out, I was playing for five hours before I felt like I had any agency to play how I wanted, chapter six of a ten chapter game before it resembled anything like the other RGG games. It really didn’t feel good having Kenshiro sitting in jail thinking about past battles and then just dropped into a basic brawl with bandits several times in a row while waiting for a gladiator match to begin. The game even offers to let you do these battles over and over again if you so choose for experience because you haven’t had any freedom up to this point.

I'm sorry to say that the pacing issues remain throughout the campaign including irritating fetch and padding quests all the way through the final chapter. At one point I was told to go find info about a POI and I had to go to six different locations before being told to wait at home until it's dark, visit a seventh, wait until morning, drive to an eighth, find out my vehicle can't pass an obstacle, drive back to Eden, be given the equipment I need, but it's damaged. Drive back to the place I just was to pick up rusty screws, drive back to Eden, repair the part, drive back to the place and pass it only to be told that my quarry is back in Eden. This happens repeatedly during the games runtime and by the end I was sick of being told to wait until another time of day and check out a place only to have a fun fight and repeat the whole thing again.

If this was my first impression of RGG studios I would be very hesitant to try another.

not a full review but as a fighting game player, I loved playing through this game, it feels like a more action oriented yakuza with more combos and abilities you can pull off in combat. you can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

My main problem with is that this game is that comes close but falls short of checking every box I have. A solid foundation that just needed some more fine tuning and development to make it a full fledge game.

the combat is just lacking a few extra mechanics.
the main story could have been longer with more fights from important characters.
the driving sections feel terrible, and they didn't need to.
its a bit confusing to know what your supposed to be doing for side missions.
and post end gameplay is very confusing without looking at a guide and grindy.

if you have a ps4 its definitely worth trying out if you like the slightly over the top somewhat gritty style. Though I didn't have the motivation to 100% it, which is a shame because I really wanted too. I never watched anything about Fist of the north star before but I did enjoy the characters.

it also comes with built in throwback arcade games from sega with I thought was a nice add on but not a reason to get this.

As an adaptation of the original FOTNS it could've been alot worse than what we got.

The story itself is a half assed adaptation of the original story, including a bunch of original characters that aren't really that memorable.

However, the gameplay makes up for most of it:
The combat is fantastic and feels exactly how i imagine a FOTNS game should play like, the bosses are some of the best in the series, and the qtes with kenshiro doing his 100 fist rush attack are always incredible.

The Mad Max type driving is pretty surprising considering it has never been present in an RGG game before(apart from 5 but that was racing and driving a taxi), its responsive, intense and fits with the series.

The ost is abit forgettable apart from some of the bosses themes and this game's rendition of Receive You and bafflingly no Ai Wo Tormiodose, which i think even Ken's Rage had.

Overall, it has some of the best gameplay in the spin off line up of RGG games, and is probably the only FOTNS game out there that's worth trying apart from like, the ps2 fighting game.

I was super psyched at the concept of this game when it was announced and I bought it a month or two after it came out in Japan with the (quite reasonable) assumption that it would never be coming out in America. Well it was announced and came out here and I still hadn't finished it, so I decided it was high time to finally play through this game that just couldn't seem to grab me. Compared to other games in the series (that I have played), it's got its lows and highs relatively, but I still enjoyed my time with it well enough. I played through on hard mode and mucked around a TON for side stuff to do, so it took me about 35 hours to finish.

The game's story is definitely one of the biggest complaints I have. I know that given that I've only played Yakuza 1 and 2, I'm a bit spoiled for the quality of storytelling in those games, but this is a real step down from even Yakuza 1's unfinished-feeling pre-Kiwami story. You really might as well not even bother trying to do the Yakuza "walk around the city and try and do fun things" stuff until at least chapter 6 because the previous chapters are so linear and railroaded that there are actually relatively few sidequests to do during them. The main story itself is very tied to its source material, and I would say that is often a chain around it's neck rather than any kind of boon. A lot of the story feels like fanservice pandering to show off Kenshiro fighting iconic bad guys who are just shoved into the story because they just wanted to have him fight that guy. The story is constantly being pulled between the traditional story and its iconic characters and the new alt-universe story the game presents that has the bulk of the narrative taking place around one city (Yakuza-style). The narrative and characters are definitely the weakest part of the game in a series that I associate with at least decent if not great narrative and character writing.

The side-activities are all pretty familiar to anyone who's played a more recent Yakuza game. You have the host club, bar tending, a rhythm game, colosseum fights, as well as (what I assume is a new addition) buggy racing. This game adds a big open map you can drive around in a buggy in outside the main city, but it feels a bit tacked on not because of how good the driving is (which is pretty fun), but because of the relative dearth of content to actually find out exploring the desert. The other mini-games are really only any more interesting than in the other games by virtue of the narrative finding an excuse for Kenshiro to reluctantly be doing these silly things instead of the main quest, which is actually quite funny (especially the rhythm and bartending games).

The main meat, and where I'd say this is actually one of the best in the Yakuza series, is the combat. This game has totally revamped how the heat action system works and it is SO fun. Although the game doesn't really have any items you can pick up, the heat actions are now tied to enemy positioning and enemy stuns. If you can get behind an enemy or stun them, you can press circle to activate one of Kenshiro's Fist of the North Star techniques for a bunch of extra damage through a small set of QTE actions. There's even a pre-technique other QTE you can do by pressing circle again with the right timing mid-stun and it'll pull off a quick-execution. The big techniques and quick-executions make combat flow super smoothly and a LOT of fun. It is definitely the main thing that makes this game stand out among others in the franchise alongside the FotNS fanservice.

The game's presentation is a bit of a mixed bag. While the character models look great, the cutscenes are beautiful, and the mid-battle in-game cutscenes are also amazing, the other parts of the game seem really oddly underanimated by contrast. The in-game cutscenes that are detached from battles have a very odd and robotic feel to them because characters are voiced but barely ever actually move. They're just standing stoically at one another speaking, and it very often looks really unnatural even for FotNS. It's not a game breaker or anything, and the stuff they nail does look GREAT, but it's something that really pulled me out of any immersion in the narrative/world pretty frequently.

Verdict: Recommended. This game isn't a brilliant Yakuza game, but it's a really fun video game. It's probably the second to last (just ahead of 6) of the 5 Yazkua games out on PS4 I'd recommend for someone's introduction to the series given how much better the writing is in 0-Kiwami 2, but if you're in the mood for a different kind of brawler RPG then this is one you'll probably enjoy, especially if you like ridiculous head-exploding nonsense that comes with the Fist of the North Star license.

Hokuto Ga Gotoku é bacana, mas no fim acaba sendo meio desnecessário. Seu desenvolvimento pelo visto foi mais tranquilo já que a galera tava focada nos jogos da dragon engine, e mesmo com o jogo tendo sido lançado após a criação dela, ele ainda usa a mesma do 0/Kiwami, só que bem nerfada, reusando muitos assets. Eu gosto bastante de Hokuto no Ken, li parte do mangá e vi um pouco do anime, é uma boa obra que parando pra pensar casou muito bem com o estilo da RGG. Kiryu tem uma grande semelhança com o Kenshiro que acaba ficando ainda mais evidente pelo fato dele ser dublado pelo lendário Takaya Kuroda que dubla o mesmo, aliás não só ele mas todos os personagens do jogo tem vozes dos personagens de Yakuza. Hokuto no Ken não tem lá o plot mais profundo, mas capricha na simplicidade, entregando momentos memoráveis e emocionantes, coisa que a franquia Yakuza tem pra dar e vender, então uma história original contada por eles ia dar bom, não? Eh...

A história de Lost Paradise é um grande nada, onde nada acontece, tirando algumas boas cenas de ação ela é totalmente esquecível. Os personagens do mangá aparecem mais pra fan service do que qualquer coisa e os novos não impressionam muito. Rola um plot twist no último capítulo que só prova que essa história foi feita no automático, sendo totalmente sem nexo, e olha que eu tolero muita coisa que a RGG já fez. De verdade, eu gostaria de ter algo a dizer sobre, nem que fosse pra criticar o quanto ela poderia ser ruim, mas a história é literalmente um grande nada.

O gameplay do jogo é bacana, sendo um dos jogos mais desafiadores da franquia, mas é quase um Blockuza 3 2.0, onde vários inimigos grandes não vão reagir ao seus golpes enquanto milhares de minions ao redor vão acabar com a sua raça. As boss battles são realmente o maior destaque do jogo, seja com os novos personagens ou contra os do mangá, rolou um capricho maior nessa parte. O gore também é incrível, os inimigos literalmente explodem o tempo inteiro e é bem satisfatório. Agora o conteúdo secundário... meu Deus do Céu. Porque diabos eu gostaria de passar horas grindando peças dirigindo num deserto vazio em um buggy? A platina desse jogo é considerada uma das mais difíceis dos games da RGG, e até alguém completar a sanidade já vai estar morta.

Lost Paradise é bacana, diverte tanto quem gosta de Yakuza quanto obviamente Hokuto no Ken, mas no fim acaba sendo um pouco desnecessário sua existência, já que não muda muita coisa ter jogado e não entrega lá uma experiência incrível, tendo uma história nula, gameplay bacana mas pouca coisa realmente divertida de fazer no side content.

Okay, I've seen a lot of undeserved negativity for this game, and for this time around I want to make a more serious review for this title as I feel like this game is incredibly overhated.

Fist of the North Star: Lost paradise is a good game with phenomenal gampeplay (second best in the Yakuza series imo) an even better OST. Most people acting like it's a slog are mostly being hyperbolic, this game is fine (outside of a few things that I will mention later).

Now I wanna start by listing a common complaint I've seen in this review section. Many people claim that this game "barely gives you any upgrade orbs and is a slog to get through", this is purely an issue that comes to a certain playstyle where you avoid doing any amount of side content, but this creates an issue (and thus, one of the cons of this game), where this game's upgrade system has upgrade orbs spread across various minigames and substories, even purchasable in places like the Colosseum and Racing shops; but with this arises a problem; what if you just want to quickly complete the story without doing any side content? It's a valid criticism and I understand, but for me side content has always been apart of Yakuza's charm, and I didn't really mind. Outside of a few instances, anyway.

Almost everything to do with the buggy feels undercooked. Exploring the wasteland itself is fun and listening to songs from Sega's library is also fun, but the issue mainly arises when you find out the main way to get a large majority of the items are through randomly dropped treasure maps; which gets slowly but surely incredibly annoying as the drop rate for maps increases by the end of the game. It got to a point where I was getting treasure maps when I least expected nor wanted it and the fact there wasn't any real alternative to get a large amount of the items found without it kind of stunk. Racing is also frustrating at times, mainly because the overall drift is way too high and you end up hitting walls and obstacles fairly frequently. It's not Yakuza 5 Taxi racing.

Another thing that was grindy as all hell was the 100 million substory. TL;DR you have to give 100 million to an old lady because you broke her vase. Whilst the bounty hunter substories and Cabaret Club may help a lot in achieving this goal, it still takes a long time to properly accomplish. My advice is grind out Hostess clubs until you get Make it rain 2 and then just grind that mission over and over.

Everything else though? I heavily enjoyed! The boss fights are incredibly fun (aside from the big fella, who's just okay) and their themes are also very good! Shout out to Toki and Jagi's theme, they're both easily some of the best boss themes RGG has to offer in both very different ways. The combat is also some of the best in this game too, probably my favourite alongside Yakuza 5 Kiryu (Although I will say I prefer this style's burst mode over 5), Talismans, whilst had absurd cooldown times, was a really fun gimmick and I found myself using them a lot more than I initially expected, and I'd give a special shout out to Bartending. Probably one of my favourite minigames in a Yakuza game.

So, yeah. Whilst this game isn't perfect, it definitely doesn't deserve the shit people give this game. It can be grindy at points but it wasn't to the point where I decided to stop doing all side activities and focus on completing the story. Overall, I'd recommend this game thanks to the stellar combat, boss fights and ost (seriously, the second to last boss fight ROCKS and the Jo fight is especially fun in this game, iykyk), just keep in mind you'll need to partially do side content as well (even if it's just a fight in the Colosseum to get enough points for orbs).

Pretty decent Yakuza-like! Certainly not the greatest, actually closer to the bottom, but I'd still rather play it than, like, 4, Kiwami 1 or Dead Souls. Its biggest sin is probably that it feels a bit low budget, with a very short story padded out with side content and mandatory substories that can feel a bit grindy and as if they're really just there to distract from the fact that the plot has no clear direction until, like, the final two chapters of the game. That in itself is not necessarily an issue since there's still fun to be had with the more episodic structure and fantastic boss fights, but being forced to do pointless drives through the game's sort of open wasteland isn't the most fun, or having basically every mini-game in the game be introduced in a mandatory story segment. The story and characters are probably the main draw of the series to me, but also the fact that you can really engage with it as much as you want and just ignore the rest, but there's really no escape from most things here and it just makes the game so much less interesting. Sure, there're are always some mandatory mini-games and the like in each game, but not to this degree, and they're honestly usually of higher quality. Bartending is fun, sure, but buggy racing and the revamped hostess manager, for example, are just incredible downgrades from 0's hostess mini-game and 5's taxi missions, and the game's own take of karaoke just isn't good enough.

That lack of variety is also seen in the side content which is limited to a few activities, but which are all extremely grindy. Like, I've gotten the platinum and 100% in each Yakuza game released before this one, and I honestly don't think I would ever want to 100% the completion list here because it'd just be doing the same few things a million times over. Like, hostess maker sucked in 3 and 4, and nothing is as bad as that in this game, but basically everything requires spending as much time as that did outside of, like, getting good scores in the arcade games. Substories, outside of the one requiring you to get 100 million in whatever the game's currency's called, are still pretty fun and while they certainly do feel more in the spirit of Yakuza than Fist of the North star, it didn't matter much since I was playing as Kiryu rather than Kenshiro.

What really saves Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise is that the combat is simply very good. It might seem like it'd become pretty boring always having to finish off an enemy with a short cut scene + quick time event, but you pretty quickly gain enough tools as to not have to do that, and even still, I don't think any of the hidden techniques (the game's heat actions, but with the twist that using them doesn't require filling up any meter) ever got old since there's so many of them and for so many different situations, making fights against large mobs really fun when you can really just go wild with what you know. As mentioned, boss fights are also for the most part among the best in the entire series. Wouldn't say they're the most challenging, but there is a lot of love and care put into the presentation and gameplay of them to match their original IP while in a Yakuza context. Especially the fight against Souther (translated here as Thouzer???) is probably the highlight of the entire game, but they're all really good. There're also amulets which give you either special attacks or different buffs and they can be pretty useful, but whatever you do, do not try to get them all to level 7.

All in all a decent game, but nothing special for the most part. Soundtrack goes unreasonably hard at points, though, so props for that.

This game is... fine. However, it should be noted that I am not a Fist of the North Star fan and have very limited knowledge on the franchise so I won't be commenting much on its story or its faithfulness to the source material.

If you've played any Yakuza or Judgment game, you'll know what to expect from this one, it's the same song and dance and it's all very solid. Despite coming out after Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2 which used the new Dragon Engine, Lost Paradise uses a modified version of Yakuza Kiwami engine which debuted in Yakuza 5. For some odd reason, the sprint button that Ishin introduced was removed but the combat is fun and smooth, feeling distinct from what came before but still very familiar. Instead of grabs and throws, there's a bigger emphasis on QTEs and heat actions to locate pressure points and blow enemies' brains out. It all feels very fluid both in one-to-one encounters and group fights.

Lost Paradise's biggest downfall, however, is in its pacing. Too many times are you sent off to do some meaningless busy work or partake in mandatory sidequests and this oftentimes results in absolutely nothing. Chapter 10 is a prime example of this.

Personally, I got the most enjoyment out of this game by using the Kiryu costume DLC since (from the perspective of a Yakuza fan) most of the game's novelty comes from hearing familiar voices come out of these characters.

Aside from that, it's your average Like a Dragon game and that makes it really good but without any attachment or familiarity with its source material and some distracting shortcomings, Lost Paradise unfortunately doesn't stick out much in my eyes and is my least favorite game in the franchise as a result. I can only truly recommend this game to someone who is a fan of Fist of the North Star, though being a Yakuza fan also helps. However, as someone who is only a Yakuza fan, this game didn't do all too much for me.

I find it really hard to talk about Lost Paradise. In one view, it's probably the most original and "out there" RGG game. In a sequence of every damn game taking place at a major city in the Tokyo region, it's a harkening to a world in which there is little left outside of the apocalypse. On the other side -- this is without a doubt a budgeted, cut-short, effort-lacking game that doesn't deserve the RGG label it gets. I'd rarely recommend this to a Yakuza fan unless they really have nothing else.

To start with the good, and maybe the only full-out good thing in this game is the story, for the most part. I feel like it's pretty interesting in the way they develop Kenshiro and the side cast. It honestly made me want to read the manga to get better reads on the various villains of this game too, considering some of them enter and are killed off by Ken in seconds, despite them having a much more needed presence. Combine this with one of RGG's better end-game twists and you have a good-decent story. It's nothing to turn up to, just something that does sweeten the pot.

Everything else I say from this point onward just comes with a massive caveat. The gameplay is good until it's not. Some combat interactions are these satisfying beatdowns where you dart between thugs as you send them to hell with head-explosions. The next encounter you'll just accidentally beat someone up to an unsatisfying thud as they explode and you forget to do your heat moves. Speaking of heat moves, this game is ultra-prolonged in combat due to that. Heat moves can sometimes be 20 seconds when fully fleshed out and still barely put a dent in the "giant" enemies. Or worse, actually unlocking the body upgrades and having a jab kill most enemies in the game in one shot. it just feels like a less weighty combat system with infinite heat moves in a way with their stagger system. It's really the worst RGG has felt since 3 & 4 for combat, and this game came out in 2018.

The side content? What content? Don't be fooled by 80 or so substories -- a good 50 of them are what can only be described as cutscenes or playing into the side content. 15 are basically headhunter missions building to an "epic" showdown with some D-list character, in which the only saving grace is the insane amount of money you get. How about 15 missions where you make someone a drink and they talk about life? How about a substory in which you have to grind 100 million dollars -- and the best way to grind it is doing a mission in the hostess club which gives you about 1.2 million dollars a run. After you've already done 40 hostess missions to get to that one. This is objectively the worst RGG game for side content. The substories suck, there are really no minigames outside of Bartender Ken that are "new" in the franchise. There's no good way to respite from the main story as there is in every other damn RGG game.

The music is fine, the open world is...fine, and the grind for all of the damn Talismans is enough to render even the most veteran trophy hunter a suicidal mess.

Even though this is probably one of the worst RGG games, I don't hate it. I just think no one should play this outside of someone who really is a RGG completionist or really damn bored. It looks cool, but it's really just a middling Yakuza game with an okay story. Probably just better keeping on reading the manga.