fly like a butterfly, fart like a dragon
it does take some balls to completely change your combat system from real-time to turn-based, and some moves you can acquire are funny and all, but that's about as far as I can go in complementing it
I may just not be a jrpg fan, but to my knowledge this isn't even a particularly deep system even by your regular jrpg standards, and in my experience is just very boring most of the time, you spam your most powerful moves, heal when appropriate, rinse and repeat, there's really not much to it and on top of not being very satisfying it also just...makes you feel like you're not the one in control, if that makes any sense, it feels like I'm slamming action figures against each other and making them fight rather than fighting everyone myself like I did in all the previous installments, which makes it extremely hard to make any fight particularly exciting
the music took a hit as well in my opinion, in its desperate pursuit to modernize the series it just takes away a lot of the memorable melodies and cool guitar riffs that one may be used to hearing in these games at this point in favour of trap-styled drums and wubbly almost dubsteppy synths, when I was finished with this game I could think of like 3 tracks (original to this game) that I liked
and speaking of modernizing the series, with the yakuza fading out of relevance in the real world, the same thing happens here, where it feels like the game doesn't know what to do with its lore anymore, the returning characters were nice to see but they might as well just not be in the plot at all, the game doesn't really know what to do with them anymore, it feels like
now that the complaining is out of the way (yes I know that was a lot), the actual story of this game is good! most of the new characters are charming, even if not all of them are incredibly deep, the weird party that forms around Ichiban is fun to hang out with, and the plot has a fair share of its good moments, and even if it feels like it doesn't quite want to fully commit to subverting expectations that were established by the games that came before it, it is still enjoyable
all this said, this was a fun experiment to bear witness to, but if this is the direction this series is sticking with for the foreseeable future, it's hard for me to feel excited about the next entry if its improvements on this new formula aren't gonna be substantial
it's a good game, just maybe not the best yakuza game

while at first this game isn't the most engaging thing in the universe, it picks up a lot during its second half and becomes a lot more compelling as it starts being apparent that this game is not going to have a happy ending
a certain someone's flashbacks were the best part of the game, illustrating their believable and chilling descent into madness, which means they turn out to be a pretty good villain as a result
considering the fact that this combat system is pretty much just recycled from 0, the gameplay happened to be somewhat tiring, Kiryu's combat was already not great in the prequel and here it's the entire goddamn game, the penultimate boss fight in particular was so bad that I was tempted to lower my rating
concerning the side content I have not done that much of it so I can't really say how good it is (shoutout to Shinohara tho, best boy) which means I might update my review in the future if I go back to do some
all and all this was a solid first attempt at this sort of crime drama, and although some kinda clumsy bits of writing hold this story back from reaching its true potential, this game is a worthwhile experience nonetheless

this, this is where the beloved status of this franchise finally started to make sense to me
the at last realised combat system with its many playstyles has to be the first topic of discussion here, since it is just such an exhilarating system now, with so many approaches to combat with its multiple weapons, guns, style switching and other cool shit I'm probably not even aware of yet
the level design is mostly great, with it's challenging enemies and tough bosses (fighting Vergil is one of the coolest fucking things I've ever experienced in a videogame), with the only annoying parts being the occasional meh puzzle sections
there's an actual story now, with characters that have, well, character and stuff, it's fun and campy and very enjoyable all the way through
even the music got a serious upgrade, with some legitimately great battle tracks here and there
with DMC3 I can finally see why people like these games so much, I'll round this up to a 10/10 even though it's not quite perfect and has some flaws and is closer to a 9.5/10 really but I'm feeling generous since I had to go through the disasters that are 1 and 2 for this
man am I gonna be coming back to this a lot

review of Valhalla the Bart ender simulator
with a steam description that mentions waifus as a part of the game's appeal, you might expect, justifiably or not, less than stellar writing, but you would be pleasantly surprised
this game's writing is so incredibly mature, to the point where it makes the writing of most of the other games I have played seem shallow by comparison
it thrusts you into a believable dystopia without making it all feel too pointless and hopeless, gives you some stunningly real-feeling characters, each with their own struggles and memorable qualities, and there's some good use of second-hand worldbuilding to boot, all of that combined with the small-stakes story makes it all so easy to empathise with
the extremely unique choice system that presents itself in the form of drink-mixing does not at all overstay its welcome or even feel tacky in the slightest, I would argue it's actually much better than most choice systems in gaming because it never really tells you how important or meaningless your actions are, nor does it tell you if they are of short-term or long-term effect, there's no "character X will remember this" crap, the only way to know is to know the characters and how they would react in the first place, which can be hard but getting to know them so well is a pleasure in its own right if I dare say such a thing
the protagonist, Jill Stingray deserves a special mention, her character being an absolute delight to play as as her personality and character development throughout the game never ceased to be entertaining, a blank slate main character would have probably been a bad choice for this kind of game anyway, so I'm glad that they went above and beyond in making Jill brim with history and personality
the visuals in the game are fantastic, adding to the grim but not overly despair-filled atmosphere of Glitch city and (mostly) graceful and subtle characterisation of its denizens
and lastly, there's something to be said about a game that is so goddamn confident in its own soundtrack, that it literally lets you pick the assortment of songs from the jukebox, unafraid that it will break the atmosphere at any point in the game (and frankly it never did, which is kind of amazing for a game with so many tracks)
VA-11 Hall-A is a game that is brimming with confidence in just about every aspect of itself, and it is not for nought, for it is an amazing game more than worth being confident in
9.5/10 drinks mixed, lives changed, Barts ended

for what was supposed to be a final chapter in Kiryu's story it barely delivered on it in my opinion
there are way too many frustrating plot choices in this game for me to call this a good closer, particularly this game's refusal to use all but a handful of past characters in its plot when it clearly should have been possible
6 does have a cast of mostly likeable characters of its own however and most of them do get their chance to shine (sans the final boss, who was pretty awful and disappointing to be honest)
the gameplay is kind of just bad this time around, it's the first Yakuza game made with the dragon engine and it feels very underdeveloped, where as kiwami 2 was built on the same engine the combat was still fun and even though it wasn't the deepest thing in the world or anything, it definitely felt good, which I can't say about this game at all
this was not a bad videogame but it really could have used some more time in the oven

ambitious often to a fault, is missing a lot of quality of life features present in more modern entires, can be a bit of a chore at times due to map size and the characterisation of its cast is frequently kind of lacking
that being said, the way this game makes its gameplay and story work in tandem with each other and the many other things it did to push the series forward makes me respect it a lot even if it doesn't always succeed at what it's trying to do, and I think overall the story is not half bad especially considering all the hardware limitations that made the game rely on exposition a little too much sometimes
can't disagree with people who say that this deserves a remake