Personally, I really do love this katamari thing

Katamari Damacy was, in my humblest opinion, a straight 5/5, shit rocked. How do you follow-up perfection? You can't reinvent the wheel, you can't vastly change the gameplay, all you can do is expand on the perfection, and that's what they did.

(Note: I chose this version over the original release because I wanted to see the Royal Reverie content, and there's enough quality of life improvements to justify it.)

Now, this game takes the formula of the original and puts it in various new lights, with unique and engaging scenarios that really shake things up for the player. Both games are excellent at continuously delighting me with new and fun ideas. I personally don't like some types of levels where you have to guess or only pick up specific things, I'm more of a roll up literally everything kinda guy, but the variety is what was needed, and it goes down nice and easy.

As for any downsides, I kinda wanted more maps to be honest? Or some maps are just not used to their full potential, like there's some really awesome levels you only see maybe twice. Give me more of that please? Also, I was kinda hoping the story was more expanded on, but really we just get some king lore, which is neat I guess.

One of the biggest detractors is the soundtrack. There are some good tunes in this game but man, the first games soundtrack absolutely SMOKES this one.

The ending also felt very abrupt, the final levels didn't really feel like you were getting close to the end like in the first game.

also on gameplay fronts, there's a lot of in-game loading and object pop-in, which can kinda break that flow state you get in. I'm obviously nit-picking here but y'know, I'm trying to explain why this is a slightly inferior sequel.

This game really just functions as an expansion to the first game rather than a full-on second game imo. Still though, we really do love Katamari, and this is an easy recommendation for anyone.

If you are sad that bloober team is going to stomp on everything that Silent Hill 2 is all about with their eventual dogshit remake than don't worry because the best silent hill game made since 3 is right here! Enjoy this game while you can before people try and tell you it’s overrated or nothing but annoying people talk about it and get you mad

After losing my save when the game came out and putting off replaying back to where i was 2 years later i am happy i finally did it. I knew i would love it, i knew it would be amazing and still it blew me away.

Similarly to Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, I’m incredibly confused how this is the highest rated game of the series in recent memory.
When reaching the end of that game, I found myself thinking that the reason it was so well received was not because it was actually better than the last one (it absolutely wasn’t), but just because it was the MOST of one of those games yet.
I can’t shake the feeling that that’s the case here. While Remake drew a 4-8hr section of the original game up to about 35hrs, it felt relatively focused aside from a couple of dud chapters and boring side quests which feel like a series staple at this point.
Rebirth on the other hand feels lost; never able to balance the more sincere but serious tone established in Remake and the desired quirkiness of the ‘97 original. It also stumbles at nearly every hurdle with how they have chosen to implement the open world aspects. While promising in the open hours due to a seemingly more hands off approach, it’s quickly turned into another map clearing checklist. Only this time on top of this standard open world fair, you’re also treated to constant harassment from one of the worst characters in a video game; incessantly calling you to tell you that you just activated a tower right after you just activated a bloody tower. There’s this immense friction to the open world in this game; a constant stopping and starting which really kills any sense of momentum you might be gathering. By chapter 10, I was so checked out of the open world activities and how badly they felt just tacked on that I tried just mainlining the story. However, level requirements forced me to go back and do them just to eke out a few more levels.
As far as the story is concerned, there were at least a few moments where it felt relatively consistent. I hated that the game started in media res, with near to no setup dovetailing out of Remake. I felt compelled to continue at least.
As things progressed it became increasingly clear that while Remake only had to introduce the story and could play freely in that space up to the point of leaving Midgar, this one has to tackle a midpoint. It never feels like there’s clearly established stakes other than this aimless wandering; every few hours you are quickly told “the princess is in another castle” and it’s time for “next location” and ferried off to another open world map littered with banal activities and a litany of new mini games. It’s genuinely hard to shake the feeling that they realized this would be the same length as the last game for what should be a much bigger part of the story if they didn’t stuff it to the brim with side content. Unfortunately quantity over quality definitely beat out the alternative, but Queen’s Blood is good at the very least.
Liked the combat for the most part, it feels like some good changes were introduced from the previous game. However party management is so atrocious in this game and at several points I felt like the game was actively screwing me over because it locks you into mandatory story sections with a few specific party members. If you’ve got one party member you’ve not paid attention to or not outfitted adequately, as I had, these sections are utterly unbearable (looking at you Chap 12, I’m sure most people will know what I mean).
Really don’t know how they’ll pad the next one to make it a “full length” game, but after this one I doubt I’ll be rushing to play it whenever it does come out.

"Don't say stuff like that, it's depressing"
- Sora Kingdom-Hearts (2013)

Two weeks after the day I began the game, I have finally finished Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, my most anticipated game of 2024. What I imagined would be my surefire GOTY runaway pick, with Final Fantasy VII Remake being a game I beat three times, ended up being something I couldn't even smile at in completion. The ramifications of a changing games industry on Square Enix have been plentiful, with a large creative downfall since Final Fantasy XII hit the late-stage PS2 in 2006, the series has had a handful of ups and a plethora of downs. For every Final Fantasy XVI or VII Remake, there were three FFXIII's and a Crisis Core in tow. Quantity beseeched lack of quality, and the legendary fervor the series had invoked for decades previous had largely escaped. With the aforementioned XVI and VII Remake, it seemed like Square had finally righted the ship, creating action-rpg experiences with their familiar franchise that were quality in both narrative and mechanical scope... so what happened with Rebirth? I will divulge below.

I'll start with the good, and to give credit to the Rebirth team there is quite a bit of positives about this title in its entirety. The most immediate and obvious boon to Rebirth and the legendary world of Final Fantasy VII is... the world itself. Shortly after the completion of chapter one the game opens up to a faux open world (in reality, this is open zone) that beckons Cloud and the rest of Avalanche's splinter cell to roam across it. Throughout the fourteen chapters of the game the world and environment are thrown at the player to ooh and ahh at, beautiful beyond words especially in contrast to the 1997 title. Historical moments from twenty seven years ago are brought into HD in a manner that not even I could imagine, with my mouth agape at so many of the backdrops and cities recreated within Rebirth. Familiar places (of which I shall not divulge in respect to spoilers) blew me away. For a game that was developed effectively in four years, it is almost impossible to believe how hard the team led by Naoki Hamaguchi must have worked to not only create, but faithfully bring back to life, a world that was rich back then into the modern gamescape. As I motioned throughout Cloud's journey and came across familiar sites, my brain superimposed the 1997 titles' pre-rendered backgrounds and polygonal Cloud in front of me. There's a significantly delicate line that had to be walked across to be faithful to what was originally imagined and entered into the annals of media history by Yoshinori Kitase while also putting together an engrossing and interactive world for the zeitgeist of pop culture, and yet they found success. Colors pop, the world is filled to the brim with flora, fauna and perfected asset-placement to make it feel lived in. Each biome/locale is visibly different from the rest, granting a linear benchmark for players to cite where the memorable moments of their journey lie and how far they've come... it's impressive and one of the better done worlds that I've experienced in recent memory.

Character writing remains another highlight that carried over from Remake, with some of the original titles' most heart-gripping and serious moments taking place in Rebirth. The nice thing about having a thirty plus hour experience and the events that took place after Cloud joined the squad in Midgar is that the party is very familiar with one another. Barrett takes a more mature role, often playing the voice of reason to Cloud's ever-growing disillusionment. Aerith and Tifa become best buds gushing over the blonde bombshell's buster sword skills, while also careful of his Sephiroth-borne fragility. Red becomes a trusted confidant, friend, and much more than the lab-rat you find him as in the tail-end of Remake. Couple these in with new crew additions like Yuffie, Vincent, Cid, and Cait and you've got a colorful crew (mostly) ready to save the day. They all play off each other well too, keeping the focus on the effectively apocalyptic nature of the world they're in but not allowing the fear and anxiety to overwhelm them, often quipping with one another on their route with jokes and aimed gags. The lightheartedness of the in between moments in Rebirth gave this game legs that are very hard to convey without voice acting and simply as text upon a screen. Aerith, Red, Cloud, and even asinine characters like Cait are legitimately funny throughout this title. My only real gripe about the character writing is that Yuffie, a completely optional character in the Original FFVII talks WAY too much about Materia and how EVERYTHING has to be excused for her involvement because it could result in a cool-hip new materia for Wutai. That got old real quick, but thankfully tapered off in the game's final few chapters. There were a few moments where the tear ducts wanted to rev up, all moments that originated in 1997 but didn't come to emotional fruition until 2024. Moments like these drive home how special this remake series is, not only to FFVII itself but also for the history of gaming at large. The ability the Rebirth team has to bring these special scenes to life is going to do a lot for people who have grown up knowing Cloud and the gang for as long as they've been around.

Per usual I won't speak on the greater narrative at hand, but I do strongly believe it does a great job in not just remaining faithful to the original vision developed by Kitase, but expounding on the landmark moments as well. As I touched on in the previous paragraph, the VA work and modified writing a great job on their own, but the longform dedicated cutscenery is the right hook to the emotional network of Rebirth. You can tell this game was expensive to develop for a lot of reasons, but for the sake of this point its most evident in the advanced effort put into the CGI. I was yet again pausing ad nauseum taking screencaps of characters faces, beautiful backdrops, summons, cool moves, and epic fights. Because everything looks so damn good, it makes the moments that were so narratively impressive in the first title even more so in Rebirth. Character deaths, story arcs (Red's and Barrett's in particular) are tear-jerk extravaganza's because of the visual sheen that everything has.

Other miscellaneous congratulations to this game are in order for having an actual enjoyable card game (the first since Triple Triad in FFVIII) in Queen's Blood, and for also having one of the best introductory chapters in any title that I’ve ever played. To echo the former, I didn't realize how cavernous the minigame content would get within Rebirth, but Queen's Blood kept going, and it felt better and generally more fun with the more cards I got. I found myself restarting matches less and thinking more creatively against advanced opponents, it was cool!

Unfortunately that is where the good within Final Fantasy VII Rebirth generally stops for me, in the Final Fantasy VII of it all. The moments they re-created and breathed new life into were f** awesome, but what the team added and engulfed the title into was largely fluff work that waned my enjoyment of Rebirth greatly.

There's a real power in having a concise game, in a linear narrative or a controlled game that beckons the player to complete it in a structured manner. Now if you've read my reviews thus far this may seem like it combats my affinity for player agency, but it really doesn't. The best games are once that allow players to meld their playstyle to a journey that doesn't waste their time or ask them to embark upon completion of side content that exists without point. My favorite Final Fantasy titles are FFX, FFXVI, and FFVII Remake... some of the more "linear" titles that the series has to offer (XIII was not good, I choose to forget about it.) These three games push the player through loss, intense conflict, entire character arcs, and changed worlds without forcing the player into sidequest hell. This is where Rebirth falters so greatly that I could hardly believe what I was dealing with, even so much to think I was being pranked early into chapter two of fourteen. I rolled my eyes so hard that they almost fell out of their socket when nobody's favorite AI Chadley mentioned the "TOWERS" that Cloud would have to find across each region to map out the other sidequest chains. You go to a tower, of which there were probably six to eight for each of the game's major regions, and these towers would shine light on the location of special fights, lore spots that decreased the power of the area's summon, protorelic locations that involve a major sidequest line with a secret boss, and scavenging hunt locations. All of these suck by the way, none of them were enjoyable.

The Ubisoft-ification of the industry at large plagues open world titles, forgoing the legitimate interest these massive lived out zones can have in favor of map markers that are nothing more than things to complete. You backtrack, climb, hide, slide, and glide all over Final Fantasy VII Rebirth just to tick a checkmark and get on with your marry way. Where XVI and VII Remake succeed is that the only side content that involved, are sidequests of which there aren't really that many. People had a qualm with the volume of XVI's side quests, but Rebirth's feels as if it were tripled, especially with the length that these have. It was fun to become engrossed with the populous of these new locales and fulfill their requests as you do in Remake, however the vast majority of these end with you fighting some big bad monster at the end to right all of their wrongs. This got old REAL quick, as you enter a new area ready to become engrossed in the legendary narrative and beautiful world just to be met with a litany of orange "GO HERE FOR TOWERS" and green "MONOTONOUS SIDEQUEST" notices with a full on checklist to work through as soon as you arrive. My major qualm here is that there's a legitimate power into letting players breath and become involved in the world that has been meticulously laid before them. When I get to [insert location] I want to be wowed by the overwhelming forest and beautiful greens and blues that bring it to life. I want to meet the characters that will guide Cloud along his journey and the troubles that are soon to follow before I'm beckoned to engage with recycled mechanical content that feels more like a chore than a game. I wouldn't've had as much of an issue with this if it was lower in volume or didn't persist for as long as it did... but for ten of the games first twelve chapters (2-11,) I was doing a thousand yard stare as I powered through tower after tower and fought fiend after fiend to quell whatever concern villager after villager had. I became tired, and that's something that let me down more than anything else with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

And while I'm complaining about the Ubisoft plague on Square Enix' household, can we talk about those Moogles? like... what is this? Why is this? Who is this? Remember that one story of the Composer for the Resident Evil Dualshock edition who gave us the butt trumpets because he convinced everyone at Capcom that he was deaf, but he actually wasn't and had absolutely no idea how to compose video game music? Do we have a certain situation with the design of the moogle here? Moogles by the way were another genuinely awful minigame mechanic within Rebirth, forcing you to round up five or so moogles into a round pen while they throw a cacophony of mysterious attacks at you. Cloud does this inside of a moogle chief's mushroom house while nightmare fueling music plays. The hero of a resoundingly serious narrative in which the fate of the world as we know it and the entire population within is on the line, is running in circles pushing these Lovecraftian creatures together so he can buy some... books? It sucks and it isn't even the worst of the side content that you as the player are asked to complete because it holds rewards that make you and your party stronger.

The other is the completion of the protorelic questline, rewarding you with the ability to transmute top of the line gear and a summon that is stronger than most of the ones you'll receive. None of these protorelic questlines are fun, and there's one again for each major region that Cloud finds himself in. Four times the player in these areas will be asked to engage with a certain minigame to get closer to retrieving a protorelic. In the first area this is Queen's Blood which is... doable. In the second it's Fort Condor, raise your hand if you had ANY fun playing Fort Condor in the 1997 title or in the Intermission content for Remake. See? I don't even need to know who you are, what you look like, or where you are to know that ZERO people in the world are raising their hand. With Fort Condussy in mind, another region asks Cloud to learn how to play Battle Bots to obtain this gear... for what reason? Couldn't tell you! Is it thematically relevant to the narrative or world at hand? No! Is it fun at all? No! Does it make you, the player, feel like you've used your time accordingly? Absolutely not! But hey, there's useful gear hidden behind this questline so you better do it! The worst offender doesn't materialize until the last chapter of the game in which you are asked to play "Cactuar Crush" with a goblin named Kid G. Do yourself a favor right now, if you don't care about a minor sidequest spoiler, and look at what Kid G from Rebirth looks like. You'll want to wish you never read that sentence. Cactuar Crush is a minigame in which you have to kill a certain amount of nobody's favorite Final Fantasy recurring Cacti in a restricted time span. The kicker is that these cactuar have varying resistances that force the player to switch up their strategy to combo and kill. In theory this sounds like an engaging minigame to take part in, perhaps getting creative with movesets and attack combos. In reality though you're using Yuffie and Aerith to frantically take out these repulsively loud enemies in an awfully short period of time, stressed to hit a score that is definitely too high for the amount of time given and the ease it is to be docked points when you're hit. Add the awfully repulsive volume and frequency in which these cactuar make noise and you'll wish it was never a part of the game. That's my take on sidequest and tertiary content of FFVII Rebirth. You could offer the rebuttal to the above of "just don't do it," but there's unfortunately a sizable amount of useful material, gear, and experience stowed away within.

Not far removed from the amount of fights that these minigames and secondary content throws you into is my qualm with the combat and weapon upgrading at large within Rebirth. Final Fantasy VII Remake largely got it right, with fights that could be repetitive but it was pretty well split between humanoid enemies within Shinra and fiends that were found within the world. Bossfights weren't recycled for the most part, and they weren't perfect, but they were doable and outside of the Rufus fight... pretty easy to get through on your first go. Rebirth flips that one on its head and says "how about we bring a lot of those boss fights back, make you fight the same people two, three, maybe four times, and make the combat harder just because." Too many times to count was I getting hit by room-wide AOE's that I had to pre-plan for, of which could wipe my party to zero. Too many times were Barrett and Aerith being targeted by moves that they legitimately could not dodge out of because their i-frames don't exist and their rolls take them three feet one way. You'll get hit by everything and it'll hurt. Now I beat Remake three times, zero of those on hard, but I never felt that the game was too difficult. I didn't per se with Rebirth either, but every boss fight took WAY too long. Enemies felt like sponges and the stagger/pressure conditions on most of these boss encounters were infuriating. Add that into a reused offering of the special foes you fight, the frequency of which you do so, and many of these fights having pause points where you can't do damage because the boss needs to get a voice line/cutscene/move in, and you have an exhausting endeavor. That's my major gripe with this title, it's exhausting in all the wrong ways. I don't have an inherent issue with long games, pointing at Red Dead Redemption 2 and Persona's 4 and 5 for example. What these games do is give you ample moments to rest between monotonous moments of grind or boss-fighting. Rebirth throws it at you for effectively the entire ninety some hour runtime. Fights are long, against bosses and world enemies alike, and you never really feel... strong, an issue which may sound doltish to complain about but damnit after spending the entire first game being a badass SOLDIER with a crew of badasses, I want to feel like a badass! There was never a point in which I felt like I was amply handling world or story enemies with ease, despite being appropriately leveled. Sometimes you do just want to gun down a room of Shinra soldiers and get on with it, you don't always need to hit Yeoman First Class-Kun with forty buster sword hits to fell him. Simply, I felt like you as a powerful character who is tasked with destroying one of gaming's most sinister villains never actually feel as strong as you should and it removes some of the buy-in I had to the narrative pacing of Rebirth.

Another element to this game that made the character power of this game feel off was the way character levelling is done. Gone is the "yeah that makes sense" of Remake in favor of an obfuscated sphere grid that puts emphasis on party synergy over physically endorsing the strength/power of each character. I get that the larger cast makes this make more sense as an approach to take, but man does it just... not feel good. Remake's Intermission episode that came out with the Intergrade release forecasted the inevitability of Rebirth putting an emphasis on team-based combat, so I knew this was coming, but I think Rebirth goes about it the wrong way. Instead of letting you choose between stronger individuality and a cohesive team approach to combat, you're effectively forced into the latter. Even then though, it's just giving your party members more capabilities to synergize with each other and execute maneuvers with more and more members of your team. Once more, I understand why they did this but I think it throws the heroic power that the narrative beckons for into the gutter in favour of a misaligned execution of party mechanics.

Add these issues in with other slight complaints like the Kingdom-Heartsification of how FAST enemies move around the arena, and also an entire chapter where you play as Cait Sith for too long (longer than one minute) and you have a title I wish I liked a lot more than I did. It pains me to say, with how much I anticipated Final Fantasy VII Rebirth that the Final Fantasy VII parts were largely the only things I enjoyed about this game. I had this marked on my calendar for months, avoiding any demo content, and trailers, any State of Play material, because I enjoyed Remake so much. Due to the effects of Ubisoft on the industry, there’s too much content, most of which I found to be lacking of any real sort of enjoyment. I thought Rebirth would continue to put an effortless cherry on top of the dessert that was the original Final Fantasy VII. Instead they created a new dish and man, I wouldn't order it again. It seems the public at large enjoy it and critical reception of Rebirth is high, but I don't know if I could recommend it to anyone.

Translator’s note: “wealth” means “padding.”

It can’t be stressed enough how much Infinite Wealth’s core gameplay tweaks salvage it. This marks an all-time high for the Dragon Engine games’ responsiveness in terms of just fundamentally moving around, both Ichiban and Kiryu turning and 180ing with an unprecedented level of fluidity, but the real star’s the combat’s new emphasis on positioning. The movement circle’s so impactful for such a seemingly minor addition; lining up back attacks, proximity bonuses and the directions enemies get knocked in is an endlessly engaging triptych with suitably punchy feedback, as well as the best justification of the engine’s ragdoll physics outside of Lost Judgment’s big enemies, and only improves as you fiddle with party members’ equipment, jobs or builds. Kiryu’s fighting styles are arguably better differentiated here than in the game they’re from, which is emblematic of the extent to which all these pre-existing assets and gameplay concepts get freshened up by the genre switch. Despite retaining some of 7’s issues which’re less understandable in a game that already has a foundation to work off of, like a poor battle camera regularly obscuring enemies’ attacks and allies sometimes just not performing chain attacks when they trigger, it’s overall legitimately at the point where I can picture this being someone’s favourite turn-based RPG based on its mechanics rather than solely for how conceptually unique it is.

Playing so well’s an absolute lifeline given its relentlessly sluggish pacing. There’s an early segment in which Ichiban needs $30 to pay an information broker, and if you already have at least $30 he actually comments on how it’s already sorted, but instead of letting you just pay the broker at that point (as you weirdly can when this exact scenario resurfaces much later), you instead have to get roped into a substory which isn’t even really a substory since it’s bloating the main story to play a minigame to make the money you already have first, then travel back and only then pay him. The fatigue a situation like this brings on’s initially lessened by said minigame being great, but its introduction would’ve been a more unambiguous highlight if you’d been permitted to find it on your own and is quickly exacerbated by how often this happens; sizeable portions of the next three or four chapters are comprised of mandatory, agonisingly slow tutorials for shallow knock-offs of games Yokoyama was pretending this series is too cool for fewer than a couple of years prior. He talked big pre-release about how much longer Infinite Wealth is than the others, and although he wasn’t lying, it would’ve been good to mention that this is only because the typewriter monkeys under his dominion are masters of stretching out what could be single button presses into entire hours.

Some kind of stride’s finally hit with Kiryu’s segments – the core theme of recognising his mortality and appreciating the time he has left’s particularly resonant, as someone whose family’s seen one stage 4 cancer diagnosis and other health scares in recent years – but it’s also got the side effect of making the rest of the narrative that much thinner comparatively. In the same game partially revolving around the terminal illness of a character whom a decent amount of players will have essentially grown up alongside, I just can’t get invested in nuclear waste disposal, the unintentional humour brought about by a Vtuber interviewing yakuza figureheads or Ichiban’s efforts to assure child-gassing Dick Dastardly that they’re still nakamas to the extent that the amount of time dedicated to these seemingly expects you to, especially not with the lifeless substory-esque presentation the cutscenes for these plot threads often have or villains so tepid and hard to believe. Never mind that the Geomijul can hack government satellites but can’t doxx a famous streamer, whose decision was it to make the most American-as-interpreted-by-the-Japanese looking centenarian you’ve ever seen speak English like he’s fresh off the boat from the Tokugawa shogunate? I don’t know if it’s more or less dire than how Ichiban’s either unable to speak English or fluent in it depending on what the given scene demands. The camerawork’s presenting Bryce like he’s on the brink of attaining godhood or something and I’m giggling every time he speaks. The mismatch between voice and character’s sillier than all the plot twists people meme about combined.

His home turf’s enjoyable to explore at first thanks to an impressive amount of detail relative to its size, but the scale ultimately detracts more than it adds. Bigger in-game worlds wouldn’t feel so misguided for these games if Lost Judgment hadn’t already solved the issue of boring traversal; compared to its skateboard, the segway’s much slower to whip out, put away or move around on, more expensive, vulnerable to enemy encounters, prevents you from picking up valuable materials, doesn’t even require player input and has no tricks to perform or any means of interacting with the environment at all. Taken together with still being able to immediately fast travel to any taxi from the map, plus the fact that doing so’s cheap as chips, it becomes redundant not long after it’s introduced and with it goes most reasons to actually engage with this huge, meticulously crafted city. The likes of Kamurocho and Sotenbori stand out from the worlds of most vaguely comparable games for being small enough that you’ll naturally come to know them street by street and getting from A to B’s never arduous. Conversely, Hawaii and (this and 7’s version of) Yokohama are pretty much the definition of what Hideaki Itsuno was talking about here.

Regressions like these are only so frustrating because the occasional flashes of greatness shine so bright, though even those are weighed down by a disproportionate amount of them being relegated to a protagonist who’s supposed to have passed the torch roughly four times as of Infinite Wealth, which seems especially egregious when you consider how often its core cast reflect on the importance of moving on. The route 7 decided to go down was a much needed one that I’m still on board with in theory, and Ichiban remains a pot of potential narrative gold (which I don't think either 7 or IW fully capitalise on outside of Aoki's final scenes in the former), but it’s increasingly difficult to be confident in his ability to carry a franchise on his back when his own creators don’t seem to be themselves. His last scene ending on a punchline at his expense is so uncharacteristically insincere for these games, like an exclamation mark punctuating my confusion at this being their biggest break commercially and critically. If I wasn’t a big proponent of trusting people to know what they like instead of rationalising silly reasons why they might feel differently from you, I’d assume that the Daidoji are both real and responsible for the inherent RGG bonus that factors into Backloggd’s average score calculations.

The net gameplay improvements here are too substantial to suggest that Infinite Wealth isn’t worth playing, but at the same time, I reckon it’d be made largely redundant by its own predecessor if you could somehow surgically remove them and retrofit them into it. Eagerly anticipating this series’ sense of direction appearing as a bartender in the next one.

"Really hoping Yakuza 8 makes substantial improvements, otherwise they'll need to have a story with an even bigger gut punch then this one." - AlphaOne2, 2023.
Oh how the Monkey's Paw curls this fine day...

Rating this the same as Like A Dragon 7. If you want the short of this, game is very good but wait for a generous sale. I didn't pay full price as I was gifted $20 from a Steam gift card, but thankfully for you these games tend to go on sale often. Give it time and you'll be set, or pirate bay is always an option I'm not a cop do what you please. Especially if you want New Game plus, which man that DLC shit is rancid, but after 90 hours of playtime I'm not itching to get back into this anytime soon. There really is no need to invest in that crap, the base game is plenty. Maybe too plenty.

Gameplay is a noticeable upgrade. The combat in Like A Dragon 7 became utterly exhausting by the end, wearing out its welcome well before the credits. Infinite Wealth has so many, much needed changes that make combat far more interesting. The general flow is still the same, but there's a lot more intentionality to it.
Firstly the big one: moving your character before selecting an attack. You can now plan where to send a enemy flying; where they could crash into one of their friends to hurt them as well, hit a wall for extra damage, or next to a party member where they'll whack them in midair (assuming they have a high enough affinity). You can perform combo attacks if you initiate an attack next to a party member, or move behind an enemy to guarantee a critical hit. Every character, regardless of their job, can now utilize improvised weapons, and with the addition of moving your characters it is much more reliable to make use of your environment. It saves quite a lot of resources when instead of your fire spell, you could simply swing a giant oil barrel and have it explode on a enemy group for massive fire damage.
There's more clarity when utilizing skills. It will highlight the area of effect of your range attacks, plus show arrows on where enemies will be launched to. It does mean that attacks that effect every character is a lot rarer; whether that's a heal, a buff, or a super move. Sounds like a downgrade but it really doesn't make much of a difference since Infinite Wealth has a smoother level curve then its predecessor. They've more or less gotten rid of the obnoxious jumps in difficulty that plague the endgame of 7, so long as you aren't avoiding every single battle. Though if your someone who likes to do extra content then you'll likely end up overpowered for certain battles. I've had boss fights where the boss only got off one or two attacks before they were already dead. Pretty anticlimactic, but it was my choice with how much unnecessary grinding I did in this game.

The job system is mostly the same as 7, with the exception of inheritance skills. In 7, specific skills from every job would be permanently added to a character's repertoire when unlocked. It was not only limiting since you couldn't choose what skills to carry over, but if mastered a lot of jobs then your skill list would become very cluttered with all kinds of skills you don't care for. Infinite Wealth instead has every skill from a job capable of being carried over. Now it's up to you whether your chef can football tackle through a crowd of yakuza, or breakdance so hard that they get a speed increase, or take out two revolvers and start blasting their asses. Unlike 7, it really is not necessary for every character to master every job as you can only equip so many inheritance skills (I wished I recognized that sooner, would've saved a lot of time). Your free to unlock any skills that seem interesting or fit your playstyle, but every character's exclusive job keeps their individuality so party members won't lose their own niche.
A much, much appreciated feature is the smackdown. Think Earthbound where if your statistically overpowered than a low level enemy then you can wipe them out instantly. You do receive a small experience penalty from the battle if won this way, but money and items aren't affected. Plus you really shouldn't be grinding on low level enemies to begin with. All it does is save your time, which with how prolonged this game already is, it absolutely needed this.

They haven't fixed everything from 7. Enemies and party members can still get caught on terrain even with being able to position the latter, sometimes a enemy will move out of the way just as select your A.O.E attack so don't end up catching every foe you were hoping for, going for a basic attack can be awkward if you want to be close enough for the proximity damage bonus but there's a nearby weapon that your character would automatically pickup with a element the enemy resists; just in general there's a air of awkwardness and clunkieness to the combat. Far from refined.
At the same time I feel the combat has really found its niche as a something that's very scrappy and fast paced, and occasionally indiscriminately chaotic. I've had times that I accidentally knocked a foe into a pile of explosive barrels which then exploded and caused a chain reaction that left everyone burning to death. Sometimes I would cause unintentional combos with one character sending a foe towards another party member where they would kick the enemy into the wall, and then yet another one would come over and stomped on their balls for good measure. It isn't impossible to get bored of this battle system, but it's a step in the right direction. More control yet just enough randomness in the player's favor to keep things fresh.

Speaking of steps in... a direction, story... yay.
Apologies in advance for the vagueness in this section, but I don't like discussing the finer details of a plot since it's always more valuable to experience it yourself and come to your own conclusions. And my conclusion is that there's too much. Too many characters, too many themes and morals, too many moving parts, too many twists, and so, so many exposition dumps. God damn do characters love to talk about anything and everything. This is a issue in other Like A Dragon games for sure, and that isn't to say every extended dialouge sequence has no reason for existing. But it doesn't help when certain aspects of the plot come with a air of "Out of touch dad explains what is "hip" with the kids these days". Basically there are subject matters that the writers lack the nuance and knowledge to convey correctly, and if you have any basic understanding on these subjects that it can be hard to swallow. They had too much they wanted to say, not all of which was profound to begin with, and it's very noticeable where things got shafted for time. Especially when they're still talking.
I don't know if I'm just more busy nowadays with preparing my new house to move into (shits expensive), but my attention span for plot dumps and exposition scenes has gotten real short. And it's a shame since there are plenty of dialouge pieces that are entertaining and interesting, but that tends to be relegated to the side content.

It wouldn't be Like A Dragon without its minigames and side stories. We got shogi, blackjack, poker, mahjong, other gambling games that I have no clue how to play, batting cages, fishing, randomly generated dungeon crawling, Pokémon Snap but with "weirdos" in Hawaii, swimming and collecting trash, just straight up Pokémon catching and battling but everyone is just some dude, Crazy Taxi but your a food delivery boy on a bike, a online dating sim where you have to make your own profile and even pay (in-game) cash to make your profile nicer looking, and a seriously in-depth Hawaii resort simulator where you gather resources and build your own island paradise for guests as you protect the resort from trash pirates. That last one might as well be its own game cause my god there's so much to it and I don't have all day to explain the intricacies of that. As a whole I enjoyed these distractions quite a lot more then previous titles. The island resort sim especially caught me off guard with how fun I found it to be.
The smaller side quests were alright, but I felt the more emotionally driven ones fell flat to me. I don't know, I find it harder to care when every side character feels the need to explain their whole life story to me at the start of every quest. And I do mean every character. Am I being too harsh? I don't want to come off as someone who tells others how to write their stories, and maybe I was just getting fatigued playing this game, but it's not a good sign when I start skimming your dialouge because it just isn't engaging me.
You know what was? Bingo. Or rather the Bingo Board, where you get to learn fun factoids of your party members while walking across Hawaii. Finding out what they do in their spare time, what food they like, personal grievances they have, flaws they're working on fixing; can't get enough of that small talk. It also improves their affinity stat, which unlocks more inheritance slots your party members can equip, so it's worth going after these. And I will say that this probably the funniest Like A Dragon game I've played yet. The ludicrous scenarios and the utterly bizzare special moves had me chuckling a handful of times. The less serious sidestories and summons especially had me giggling like a idiot.

I'll be real this review was exhausting to make (kind of like this game). There's so much more I was planning to talk about the story side of things and how conflicted it made me. The bit of good with the story made the bad especially stick out, particularly with how characterization flip flop between pretty great to "...huh?" But with this being my third draft of this piece, I've realized that I just wasn't enjoying myself having to talk about the plot. It's funny because this isn't even a story I find particularly offensive or bad as a whole, it feels more confused then anything. Regardless I do feel this a notably better game then 7, and I hope to see more improvements going forward with the series. Just, give it a few more drafts next time around, and maybe tone down the scale.

You also have a playlist you can create, with all kinds of songs from other games, that you can listen during traversal and I want this to be in every game from now on. Let me listen to Open Your Heart in the Elden Ring DLC you cowards.