Toradora... I mean, Yakuza Foura.
You start out with a different protag, Shun, and I actually like him, he's just a financial dealer that allies with homeless people, the Yakuza are just stuck in his path for better or worse which I think is nice to set yourself outside of the box for a minute.
It really gives a new perspective on Kamurocho in general because you're no leader of it, you're just a guy that sees trouble all the time. You know of Kazuya but so does everybody else, you know what he's done, you see its effects. For one, you can knock people's teeth out, including your own!
I like that your allies are homeless people. But it goes beyond that, shows just how deep this goes through the eyes of different characters. And man, I understood why people liked Majima but I get more reasons every time, he's not just one thing, he's kind of the unsung protagonist of this saga.
With Saejima, his route (literally) navigation is dumb. It makes sense to venture into the underground but you get twisted all around and it just gets tedious. It made me not want to do the side stuff because I didn't know what route to take, so make sure that you do whatever you're going to do as soon as it's introduced to you, that way you can keep track of it. If not, there's a place at the end of the game before the final battle where it lets you revisit all the characters and their side missions to your leisure, but you still have to follow the weird routes with Saejima.
Now, next is Tanimura who is a 29 yo. Hey, wait, the plot takes place over 25 years so this guy-That's smart, could've been cool if he was born then but to show just how much time has passed to have a whole new generation be in line. This is the part where I decided I was going to take my time with it, I'd spend days doing side-quests and just leveling up because the first two seemed like they were fleeting.
With an action game of this caliber, you begin to see the calm in the eye of the storm. Check out the Hangout or the Cuez Bar in the underground mall where Lyn Inaizumi type music plays. It's nice. Meeting characters like Nair and learning her movesets and story, it's like a story away from the story but good enough to be apart of yours personally.
Lastly, our original protag, Kiryu, that gets roped into this and kind of expands on what happened in Yakuza 1. I would like to see a game expand on what happened while Kiryu was in jail but I do see us getting a ton of spinoffs already so it's probably not far behind.
There are a lot of enemies with batons that I've come to despise and always took me the longest, never learned how to handle them. It's got a weird obsession where it tries to impress you or fake you out. "Uh-oh, someone got shot but did they actually get shot? Or is it a twist murder?"
But this game is in a weird spot for me rank wise because it has the ingredients to be great and perhaps even second favorite so far due to its scheme, story, characters and gameplay toss-up but it's also the most disappointing because it could've used those elements to much greater effect so I can't really say what I prefer it over or if I prefer others over it, I'm in the middle with it and even after a nice break of time to settle my opinion, I feel the same way, so I may just never get over that.
You start out with a different protag, Shun, and I actually like him, he's just a financial dealer that allies with homeless people, the Yakuza are just stuck in his path for better or worse which I think is nice to set yourself outside of the box for a minute.
It really gives a new perspective on Kamurocho in general because you're no leader of it, you're just a guy that sees trouble all the time. You know of Kazuya but so does everybody else, you know what he's done, you see its effects. For one, you can knock people's teeth out, including your own!
I like that your allies are homeless people. But it goes beyond that, shows just how deep this goes through the eyes of different characters. And man, I understood why people liked Majima but I get more reasons every time, he's not just one thing, he's kind of the unsung protagonist of this saga.
With Saejima, his route (literally) navigation is dumb. It makes sense to venture into the underground but you get twisted all around and it just gets tedious. It made me not want to do the side stuff because I didn't know what route to take, so make sure that you do whatever you're going to do as soon as it's introduced to you, that way you can keep track of it. If not, there's a place at the end of the game before the final battle where it lets you revisit all the characters and their side missions to your leisure, but you still have to follow the weird routes with Saejima.
Now, next is Tanimura who is a 29 yo. Hey, wait, the plot takes place over 25 years so this guy-That's smart, could've been cool if he was born then but to show just how much time has passed to have a whole new generation be in line. This is the part where I decided I was going to take my time with it, I'd spend days doing side-quests and just leveling up because the first two seemed like they were fleeting.
With an action game of this caliber, you begin to see the calm in the eye of the storm. Check out the Hangout or the Cuez Bar in the underground mall where Lyn Inaizumi type music plays. It's nice. Meeting characters like Nair and learning her movesets and story, it's like a story away from the story but good enough to be apart of yours personally.
Lastly, our original protag, Kiryu, that gets roped into this and kind of expands on what happened in Yakuza 1. I would like to see a game expand on what happened while Kiryu was in jail but I do see us getting a ton of spinoffs already so it's probably not far behind.
There are a lot of enemies with batons that I've come to despise and always took me the longest, never learned how to handle them. It's got a weird obsession where it tries to impress you or fake you out. "Uh-oh, someone got shot but did they actually get shot? Or is it a twist murder?"
But this game is in a weird spot for me rank wise because it has the ingredients to be great and perhaps even second favorite so far due to its scheme, story, characters and gameplay toss-up but it's also the most disappointing because it could've used those elements to much greater effect so I can't really say what I prefer it over or if I prefer others over it, I'm in the middle with it and even after a nice break of time to settle my opinion, I feel the same way, so I may just never get over that.