So this game has a lot of small issues. The fight styles are hardly balanced, to the point that you can't really use them all in an effective way unless you play on NG+. And this can be seen also in the weapon manufacturing, since there's no way other than a ton of grinding to get to craft the higher tier swords and guns and armour.

But despite of these and many other flaws this is one of the best Yakuza out there. The story is great and intriguing, the city is well realized and fun to explore. It features some of the best characters in the series. And the substories and minigames are aplenty and really fun.

Don't let the title fool you, this is just another Yakuza game. Exactly the same combat, exactly the same stupid, frustrating mini-games, exactly the same kinds of characters. And that's not a bad thing necessarily, as the Yakuza games are enjoyable enough. I've only played 6, 0, and one of the Kiwami games, and I've liked them but always felt varying levels of anger and frustration with their formula, which hasn't changed in the slightest.

The story is pretty deep, lots of characters, lots of stuff happening, goes to some very dark places at times, goes to some extremely light hearted and goofy places too....Its impressive writing for a video game. Graphics and music are fantastic, its always one of the things I love about these games is the presentation and attention to detail.

These games live and die by their side content though, and a huge portion of your play time will be running around (and taxiing) to complete these side quests and mini games. I'm just gonna give a rating for each of these in Lost Judgement, so without further ado:

Dance Club: 7/10. Fun rhythm based mini game, great music.
Robotics Club: 2/10. Awful. Most frustrating and hardest (often due to bad RNG) mini game. Also running around endlessly to find random parts to upgrade your bots is so boring and time consuming, and expensive too.
Boxing Club: 7/10. Fun boxing game that is fairly nuanced and enjoyable to play, hard but not too hard.
Biker Club: 4/10. Not particularly fun, and fairly hard mini game. the awful forced camera angle ruined it for me.
Skater Club: 6/10. Way too easy, literally finished it in like 5 minutes. But its pretty fun.
Photography Club: 2/10. Awful story, only 2 easy as piss missions. Yawn.
E-sports Club: 3/10. You play Virtua Fighter 5 a few times against easy as piss AI. Boring.
Casino: 4/10. Way too short and way too easy. But blackjack and poker are fun to play.
Girls Bar: 1/10. Jesus Christ this sucks. Time consuming, expensive, annoying as fuck, all the girls are fucking robots with no brains. Made me really miss the hostess club game from yakuza 0.

yeah, so mostly very average to fucking terrible in quality. And that's about 60-70% of the total game time, so a real time sink. I mean, I skip every single cut scene and dialogue scene, because its time consuming and also really really boring, and it still takes up like 20-30 hours. Its fucking ridiculous.

One last thing that never gels with me about these games: the weird balance between super violent, super dark, at times super fucked up adult story telling. And then the absolutely ridiculous, over the top, silly, goofy side quests and story moments. Like, one minute Yagami is super emotional about a teacher who gets brutally fucking murdered, the next minute he's teaching dance moves to a high school girls club. Its just really really weird, and for me it just never really sits well. But that's just Yakuza isn't it?

He deixat el joc a mitjes parcialment no per culpa del propi joc sino per cansament dels videojocs en general (he acabat jocs molt pitjors i molt més llargs). Seguidament un bombardeig de les meves sensacions en les primeres 4h, totalment subjectives i sesgades en gran part pel context personal (no ideal) on l'he jugat:

-El protagonista és l’estereotípic heroi amb un honor irracional que el fa semblar subnormal.
-Els altres personatjes, la pilot clàssica nena d’anime antipàtica que en el fons és bona gent i la altra noia sense res destacable.
-És un joc molt estrany, fa moltes coses però tot manera superficial: puzzles, missions, roleplay, decisions on tens poquíssima agència…
-Les parts on camines les pitjors, quan estàs en la nau prou bé. Puzzles sense dificultat on només camines d’un costat a l’altre i presiones una tecla
-M’agraden les parts on vas per diferents punts de l’espai trobant altres personatjes i events, hauria estat bé un joc que profunditzés en això
-Estil artístic i música molt bé

I think the premise, writing, and game in general is cool, but found the console experience a bit frustrating.

Controls are finicky when it comes to clicking the right object, character often stops for several seconds if you walk into anything, don't feel like I can zoom into the environments enough to see important objects like keys.

During the few combat parts I have a hard time seeing what is highlighted or when It's actually my turn. I end up mashing on attack and end up healing or picking the wrong target.

For Reference I've played stuff like Disco Elysium and Norco on controller with little issue.

A below average platformer, an average experience. Wavetale's aesthetic is almost cool, but ruined for me personally by a certain "crunchiness" that it has and the clunky nature of a lot of the animations (especially cutscenes). The controls feel fine in some aspects and annoyingly stiff in others, which clashes heavily with the aesthetic. Combat is a joke, which would be fine if they didn't try to pretend like it should be a significant component of the game. Alas, you'll find yourself mashing away your single attack over and over on one of the few enemy types.

I didn't actively hate my time with it though, despite my gripes. There are certainly parts of the game where the movement is satisfying but usually its more about the spectacle and less about actually feeling in control. Finally, the narrative actually charmed me quite a bit by the end despite the previously mentioned bad cutscene animations. I can tell the voice talent cared about making the characters their own, even if they aren't award winning actors.

This game is nearly impossible to recommend at the retail price of $30, but I won't say it's not worth a try in the future on sale.