It's been a series that has been on my radar for a while and finally I begin my journey through the Yakuza (or Like A Dragon as it's now called) series.
I had seen the out of context gifs with that shined with an appealing over the topness that I knew I would love and finding out the development team behind the series, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, were what eventually became of Sega’s Amusement Vision studio, the masterminds behind F-Zero GX, one of my favourite games of all time and whose story mode was full of the same silly over the topness that I was seeing from Yakuza, I knew I had to try this series out.

Set in 1988, Yakuza 0 takes place in Tokyo and Osaka as an economic boom is hitting Japan and the nation is growing in ways that everybody wants a piece of the pie to try and make bank. At the centre of it all is a plot of land in the Kamurocho district of Tokyo. Dubbed “The Empty Lot”, this piece of land is vital to the Tojo Clan of Yakuza and their redevelopment project. It's the Dojima Family within the Tojo Clan in particular that are going after the Empty Lot and have three lieutenants vying to become Sohei Dojima’s main man as he aims to become the next clan patriarch.
The game kicks off with protagonist Kiryu being framed for a murder on the Empty Lot and subsequently leads him to leaving the Dojima Family as he tries to protect his adoptive father, Shintaro Kazama of the Kazama Family in the Tojo Clan, from punishment for his “crime”. This leads to Kiryu being found and recruited by a real estate agent, Tetsu Tachibana, who claims he will clear Kiryu’s name if he can acquire the Empty Lot before Dojima. This obviously puts Kiryu at odds with his former Yakuza family and leads to a high stakes race to find the owner of the Empty Lot as Kiryu becomes hunted by the Dojima family. It's a really intriguing set up and had me thoroughly invested as Kiryu's story took twists and turns to its conclusion. Kiryu himself is a very compelling character, a young man who strongly believes in his ideals and is so determined to protect the people he cares about, he ends up trying to walk this dangerous path alone. It leads to gripping moments between Kiryu and characters like Akira Nishikiyama, his best friend who consider each other brothers having grown up together in the same orphanage, and Jun Oda, Tachibana’s right hand man and someone who Kiryu starts to bond with as they work together under Tachibana. There's a lot I love about Kiryu, he's this very reserved and quiet kind of man with a strong demeanour, yet he's awkward with fashion and you put him front of a karaoke machine and all of a sudden he's belting out tunes and put his heart into his performance. He refuses to kill anyone and deep down has a very kind heart. He feels like someone who isn't built for the Yakuza life yet is constantly drawn into it due to his incredible fighting prowess.

Our other protagonist is Goro Majima, a man who is currently working as a cabaret manager in a club in Sotenbori, Osaka. Sotenbori is Majima's “cage” where he is being forced to stay as a disgraced former Tojo Clan Yakuza. Majima cannot leave Sotenbori with eyes on him everywhere and has to report to Tsukasa Sagawa, a high ranking Omi Alliance officer. Majima's story kicks off when he is given an order to kill someone by the name of Makoto Makimura by Sagawa, and doing so will reinstate him into the Yakuza. Things start to fall apart for Majima when he finds out his target is a blind woman who is being targeted by various Yakuza families and he can't bring himself to kill her and instead tries to rescue her while also trying to pull the wool over Sagawa’s eyes as he tries to figure out how to get himself out of the mess he finds himself in.
Majima is a very fun character and having him act kind of the opposite to Kiryu by trying to get back into the Yakuza while Kiryu left and is fighting against them is pretty cool. What makes Majima fun is his different personas. The mask he puts on as a cabaret manager where he acts in service of his customers to the point of claiming the “customer is his king” leads to some fun moments as he diffuses situations with wit and charm. Once he's free from that mask though, he's a brutal fighter who few can handle. There's an ounce of craziness in his eyes when he's in a fight but through his time with Makoto you see a man who has a good heart deep down but the world around him keeps trying to break it. I found Majima to be a great protagonist too and had a great time as the story switched perspectives.

The way Yakuza 0 tells its story is through 2 chapters at a time focusing on one protagonist before switching to the other protagonist for the next 2 chapters. Once you head into the second half of the game the plot lines start tying together and it's incredible as the reveals start coming in and your like OH WOW so that thing from Kiryu's story ties in with thing from Majima's story and by the end as everything comes together you've got this stunning finale as both Kiryu and Majima push forward to complete their stories in this game. It's a huge testament to the writing that all the plot threads woven end up working well together by the end and I loved my journey through the main story.

But what about all that wackiness that was pulling me in, after all the main story is a gripping and emotional tale so where does the silliness come in? Well my friends, that's what the substories are for. Dotted around each district are plenty of weird and wonderful people for Kiryu and Majima to get involved with to help solve their problems. You've got stuff like Kiryu training a nice girl to become a dominatrix because she's taken on the job to try and gain confidence in herself and stop people walking over her. Majima finds a crazy old lady butting in front of him in line and she starts calling him a pervert when he calls her out for it. Mr. Libido is a man in his underwear who's constantly thrusting everywhere and talking about how often he needs to release himself. The world of Yakuza is full of strange people but it makes for a wonderful dichotomy alongside the main story where it feels like it maintains a beautiful balance of parody like substories and a drama filled main story.
Kiryu and Majima each have one large sub story to dive into relating to their jobs. Kiryu has a real estate substory where you essentially play monopoly and try and buy up all the properties in five districts to usurp the five kings who are currently in control and trying to own everything. You get to set characters you meet through substories as advisors and bodyguards for properties and watch as the money rains in from your ever expanding empire. On the Majima side, he helps out a cabaret club as he tries to defeat the five kings of the entertainment districts who are trying to close down their competition. Here you recruit women and train them as cabaret girls in an RPG like game where you can buy them equipment to alter their stats. Once you're ready, open up and pick which girl hosts which customer and help out when problems arise. It's a really fun sub game with a lot of depth to it. In fact, I loved both of these sub games but they both require a pretty hefty time commitment and I was enjoying the main story too much to fully invest my time into everything they had to offer unfortunately. They're a great way to acquire money and I believe you can unlock a fourth combat style through them though I do wish the time investment required to get the most out of them wasn't so hefty.

I've dabbled a little bit into the gameplay so far but what do you actually do in Yakuza? Its genre is a hard one to pin down as it's like an action adventure rpg with a brawler combat system. The game is set in the two main areas of Kamurocho and Sotenbori and you never really get to leave these two hubs. While walking around, enemies will spot you and run up to you and that will engage you in combat with them, basically like overworld encounters in an rpg. Combat is full brawler mode where you press square and triangle to pull off combos, circle to grab, and cross to dash left/right/back/forward. L1 acts as a block and R1 acts as a strafe. You have a heat gauge which fills as you pull off successful attacks and when the right opportunity arises you can pull off brutal flashy attacks that deal a lot of damage. On top of that, each character has 3 unique fighting styles (with a fourth unlockable) that you can switch to during battle on the d-pad. For example Kiryu has Brawler which does what it says on the tin, it's a basic brawler moveset of punches and kicks. Rush is a speedy moveset that gets in a lot of punches and kicks with less damage and knockback. And finally Beast where Kiryu can seamlessly pick up items during his standard attack combos and work them into it. Beast is a much slower combat style and can be difficult to use because of that. Having so many styles at your disposal and the flashy close ups during a heat attack makes the combat really fun. The fact you can pick up objects and weapons lying around as well makes each battle feel a little different as you work out what style works best for which situation and area you find yourself in. My only complaint with the combat is when the game starts throwing enemies with guns at you. It can be annoying fighting a group of enemies and all of a sudden you hear a bang and then you fall to the floor losing a huge chunk of health all because there was a guy hiding just off screen with a gun.
The reward for battles is money which acts like exp in a way. You can use money to literally invest in yourself (hilarious concept, I love it) and unlock stuff on the skill trees to improve the combat abilities for each fighting style.
They go above and beyond with side content in the game, making the worlds of Kamurocho and Sotenbori feel like actual locations you would hang out in. You go to a karaoke bar, you get to play a full on rhythm game to sing along with. You go to a bar and there's a pool table, you can play a full fledged pool minigame or if you prefer darts then there's usually dart boards in there too. Pop into an arcade and there's even proper arcade machines emulating full Sega classics like Outrun. Genuinely it's impressive how above and beyond they went with the optional content in this game and I found myself at times just getting lost in a few games of pool or going to the disco on Friday nights to dance to the Friday night song. It's hard to think of anything that really fleshes out so many different side games to the point they feel like they would fit in a collection of stuff or be their own full games if there were more songs.

On the soundtrack side of things there's a lot to love. The karaoke and disco songs like Judgement and Friday Night are a lot of fun while combat features different music depending on what style you're using and it's different variations of this kind of electronic style of music to pump you up. The intro cutscene to the game has this banger guitar theme going on and in cabaret battles for Majima you get this really nicely paced guitar theme playing called Interplanetary Spark. It's a really strong soundtrack and it was cool to hear some similar styles from F-Zero GX being used again here.

Yakuza 0 is an incredible game that manages to tell a compelling story of two men trying to find their place in the world. It's a story that wonderfully ends up tying the two different perspectives together by the end in a really satisfying way. On top of that there's so much fun side content to delve into that you could find yourself lost in the game for over 100 hours if you really wanted to. It's the perfect blend of serious and over the top, full of colourful characters and I'm glad that I finally found time to give the series a try.

It's been a series that has been on my radar for a while and finally I begin my journey through the Yakuza (or Like A Dragon as it's now called) series.
I had seen the out of context gifs with that shined with an appealing over the topness that I knew I would love and finding out the development team behind the series, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, were what eventually became of Sega’s Amusement Vision studio, the masterminds behind F-Zero GX, one of my favourite games of all time and whose story mode was full of the same silly over the topness that I was seeing from Yakuza, I knew I had to try this series out.

Set in 1988, Yakuza 0 takes place in Tokyo and Osaka as an economic boom is hitting Japan and the nation is growing in ways that everybody wants a piece of the pie to try and make bank. At the centre of it all is a plot of land in the Kamurocho district of Tokyo. Dubbed “The Empty Lot”, this piece of land is vital to the Tojo Clan of Yakuza and their redevelopment project. It's the Dojima Family within the Tojo Clan in particular that are going after the Empty Lot and have three lieutenants vying to become Sohei Dojima’s main man as he aims to become the next clan patriarch.
The game kicks off with protagonist Kiryu being framed for a murder on the Empty Lot and subsequently leads him to leaving the Dojima Family as he tries to protect his adoptive father, Shintaro Kazama of the Kazama Family in the Tojo Clan, from punishment for his “crime”. This leads to Kiryu being found and recruited by a real estate agent, Tetsu Tachibana, who claims he will clear Kiryu’s name if he can acquire the Empty Lot before Dojima. This obviously puts Kiryu at odds with his former Yakuza family and leads to a high stakes race to find the owner of the Empty Lot as Kiryu becomes hunted by the Dojima family. It's a really intriguing set up and had me thoroughly invested as Kiryu's story took twists and turns to its conclusion. Kiryu himself is a very compelling character, a young man who strongly believes in his ideals and is so determined to protect the people he cares about, he ends up trying to walk this dangerous path alone. It leads to gripping moments between Kiryu and characters like Akira Nishikiyama, his best friend who consider each other brothers having grown up together in the same orphanage, and Jun Oda, Tachibana’s right hand man and someone who Kiryu starts to bond with as they work together under Tachibana. There's a lot I love about Kiryu, he's this very reserved and quiet kind of man with a strong demeanour, yet he's awkward with fashion and you put him front of a karaoke machine and all of a sudden he's belting out tunes and put his heart into his performance. He refuses to kill anyone and deep down has a very kind heart. He feels like someone who isn't built for the Yakuza life yet is constantly drawn into it due to his incredible fighting prowess.

Our other protagonist is Goro Majima, a man who is currently working as a cabaret manager in a club in Sotenbori, Osaka. Sotenbori is Majima's “cage” where he is being forced to stay as a disgraced former Tojo Clan Yakuza. Majima cannot leave Sotenbori with eyes on him everywhere and has to report to Tsukasa Sagawa, a high ranking Omi Alliance officer. Majima's story kicks off when he is given an order to kill someone by the name of Makoto Makimura by Sagawa, and doing so will reinstate him into the Yakuza. Things start to fall apart for Majima when he finds out his target is a blind woman who is being targeted by various Yakuza families and he can't bring himself to kill her and instead tries to rescue her while also trying to pull the wool over Sagawa’s eyes as he tries to figure out how to get himself out of the mess he finds himself in.
Majima is a very fun character and having him act kind of the opposite to Kiryu by trying to get back into the Yakuza while Kiryu left and is fighting against them is pretty cool. What makes Majima fun is his different personas. The mask he puts on as a cabaret manager where he acts in service of his customers to the point of claiming the “customer is his king” leads to some fun moments as he diffuses situations with wit and charm. Once he's free from that mask though, he's a brutal fighter who few can handle. There's an ounce of craziness in his eyes when he's in a fight but through his time with Makoto you see a man who has a good heart deep down but the world around him keeps trying to break it. I found Majima to be a great protagonist too and had a great time as the story switched perspectives.

The way Yakuza 0 tells its story is through 2 chapters at a time focusing on one protagonist before switching to the other protagonist for the next 2 chapters. Once you head into the second half of the game the plot lines start tying together and it's incredible as the reveals start coming in and your like OH WOW so that thing from Kiryu's story ties in with thing from Majima's story and by the end as everything comes together you've got this stunning finale as both Kiryu and Majima push forward to complete their stories in this game. It's a huge testament to the writing that all the plot threads woven end up working well together by the end and I loved my journey through the main story.

But what about all that wackiness that was pulling me in, after all the main story is a gripping and emotional tale so where does the silliness come in? Well my friends, that's what the substories are for. Dotted around each district are plenty of weird and wonderful people for Kiryu and Majima to get involved with to help solve their problems. You've got stuff like Kiryu training a nice girl to become a dominatrix because she's taken on the job to try and gain confidence in herself and stop people walking over her. Majima finds a crazy old lady butting in front of him in line and she starts calling him a pervert when he calls her out for it. Mr. Libido is a man in his underwear who's constantly thrusting everywhere and talking about how often he needs to release himself. The world of Yakuza is full of strange people but it makes for a wonderful dichotomy alongside the main story where it feels like it maintains a beautiful balance of parody like substories and a drama filled main story.
Kiryu and Majima each have one large sub story to dive into relating to their jobs. Kiryu has a real estate substory where you essentially play monopoly and try and buy up all the properties in five districts to usurp the five kings who are currently in control and trying to own everything. You get to set characters you meet through substories as advisors and bodyguards for properties and watch as the money rains in from your ever expanding empire. On the Majima side, he helps out a cabaret club as he tries to defeat the five kings of the entertainment districts who are trying to close down their competition. Here you recruit women and train them as cabaret girls in an RPG like game where you can buy them equipment to alter their stats. Once you're ready, open up and pick which girl hosts which customer and help out when problems arise. It's a really fun sub game with a lot of depth to it. In fact, I loved both of these sub games but they both require a pretty hefty time commitment and I was enjoying the main story too much to fully invest my time into everything they had to offer unfortunately. They're a great way to acquire money and I believe you can unlock a fourth combat style through them though I do wish the time investment required to get the most out of them wasn't so hefty.

I've dabbled a little bit into the gameplay so far but what do you actually do in Yakuza? Its genre is a hard one to pin down as it's like an action adventure rpg with a brawler combat system. The game is set in the two main areas of Kamurocho and Sotenbori and you never really get to leave these two hubs. While walking around, enemies will spot you and run up to you and that will engage you in combat with them, basically like overworld encounters in an rpg. Combat is full brawler mode where you press square and triangle to pull off combos, circle to grab, and cross to dash left/right/back/forward. L1 acts as a block and R1 acts as a strafe. You have a heat gauge which fills as you pull off successful attacks and when the right opportunity arises you can pull off brutal flashy attacks that deal a lot of damage. On top of that, each character has 3 unique fighting styles (with a fourth unlockable) that you can switch to during battle on the d-pad. For example Kiryu has Brawler which does what it says on the tin, it's a basic brawler moveset of punches and kicks. Rush is a speedy moveset that gets in a lot of punches and kicks with less damage and knockback. And finally Beast where Kiryu can seamlessly pick up items during his standard attack combos and work them into it. Beast is a much slower combat style and can be difficult to use because of that. Having so many styles at your disposal and the flashy close ups during a heat attack makes the combat really fun. The fact you can pick up objects and weapons lying around as well makes each battle feel a little different as you work out what style works best for which situation and area you find yourself in. My only complaint with the combat is when the game starts throwing enemies with guns at you. It can be annoying fighting a group of enemies and all of a sudden you hear a bang and then you fall to the floor losing a huge chunk of health all because there was a guy hiding just off screen with a gun.
The reward for battles is money which acts like exp in a way. You can use money to literally invest in yourself (hilarious concept, I love it) and unlock stuff on the skill trees to improve the combat abilities for each fighting style.
They go above and beyond with side content in the game, making the worlds of Kamurocho and Sotenbori feel like actual locations you would hang out in. You go to a karaoke bar, you get to play a full on rhythm game to sing along with. You go to a bar and there's a pool table, you can play a full fledged pool minigame or if you prefer darts then there's usually dart boards in there too. Pop into an arcade and there's even proper arcade machines emulating full Sega classics like Outrun. Genuinely it's impressive how above and beyond they went with the optional content in this game and I found myself at times just getting lost in a few games of pool or going to the disco on Friday nights to dance to the Friday night song. It's hard to think of anything that really fleshes out so many different side games to the point they feel like they would fit in a collection of stuff or be their own full games if there were more songs.

On the soundtrack side of things there's a lot to love. The karaoke and disco songs like Judgement and Friday Night are a lot of fun while combat features different music depending on what style you're using and it's different variations of this kind of electronic style of music to pump you up. The intro cutscene to the game has this banger guitar theme going on and in cabaret battles for Majima you get this really nicely paced guitar theme playing called Interplanetary Spark. It's a really strong soundtrack and it was cool to hear some similar styles from F-Zero GX being used again here.

Yakuza 0 is an incredible game that manages to tell a compelling story of two men trying to find their place in the world. It's a story that wonderfully ends up tying the two different perspectives together by the end in a really satisfying way. On top of that there's so much fun side content to delve into that you could find yourself lost in the game for over 100 hours if you really wanted to. It's the perfect blend of serious and over the top, full of colourful characters and I'm glad that I finally found time to give the series a try.

20 years… 20 years since Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door originally released on GameCube in 2004 and now here we are in 2024 with a remake on Switch… I can feel the bones creaking. Does the game stand the test of time though? And does the remake enhance or break anything along the way?

The original TTYD is one of my favourite games of all time, doing what I feel a lot of the GameCube library did, which was taking the foundation of a great N64 game and building something that reaches that next level on it. In this case, TTYD built on the great N64 Paper Mario (which had already used the foundations of Super Mario RPG and branched off in its own direction) and came out with something that still 20 years later, is heralded as the best Mario RPG.
I know the vocal crowd on TTYD have been annoying over the years, constantly dismissing the newer entries but even as someone who found a lot to love in The Origami King, coming back to TTYD made it pretty clear that the Paper Mario series did lose something around the Sticker Star era onwards. It had lost its soul.

Booting up TTYD you're instantly greeted with a boat travelling on the seas towards a place called Rogueport and it's near immediate to see the spark the series had lost a lot of. Rogueport is this grimy port city. Graffiti lines the walls of the buildings, the citizens are rough and jaded, and yeah, we all know about the noose that sits in the middle of the town. It's unlike any other place you'd find in a Mario game and that's what makes it special. This isn't the usual grassy plains or desert, it's a foreign feeling port town that oozes character from the moment you step into it.
And it's not long before the characters show off their uniqueness too. Early on you meet your first partner character in Goombella, a female Goomba, an archaeology student who is dressed with a hard hat and a ponytail who has a lot of sass about her. Immediately you get a feel for the character and you get so much more from her in a few seconds than you do from a generic Goomba. The Origami King and Color Splash still had charm to the characters in the writing but it's incredible how much more you get from just a silly costume on a Goomba.
Even in the first conversation with Goombella as she's telling you about Rogueport, you can see a couple of mobsters Pianta beat the crap out of a unique design guard character saying “da boss sends his regards”. Like the silly Pianta introduced in Sunshine, yeah they're dressed up in black suits and shades like they're the mafia, you just don't get that kind of thing in most Mario titles!

That's what I mean by TTYD having soul though and the game oozes with it. Chapter 2 takes place in a forest that looks like it was drawn on one of those black cards where you scratch it to reveal colour underneath and it's citizens are these gray little Pikmin like creatures called Punies. Chapter 4 is set in a place called Twilight Town and it's this beautiful dusk setting with the sky looking something like a crayon style drawing similar to Yoshi's Island’s art style and it's citizens are these little green humanoid creatures whose shading is black and they're all a little depressed because they rarely see daylight. It's just so cool seeing the diversity and creativity and uniqueness in this game because even after 20 years, it still stands out amongst other Mario titles.

Same goes for Mario's party members where you start off with the usual species, like Goombella the Goomba and Koops the Koopa, but then they start giving you characters like Flurrie, a ghost like former actress who refuses to go outside without her necklace, and Vivian, a shadow who’s been bullied by her sisters and struggling to find her place in the world (don't worry, I'll talk about the localisation changes when I get to what's changed/new in the remake). It's a game that freshens up the familiar stuff from Mario while doing tons of new things on top of that and that's a big part of why I love the Mario RPGs, they weren't afraid to do weird and wonderful stuff to stand out from all the other Mario games.

Moving onto the writing, TTYD is a wonderfully self aware and charmingly written game. I mentioned the Pianta mobsters earlier but you've also got stuff like chests who curse Mario by giving him new abilities like turning into a paper plane and as you find each chest, Mario is more and more done with the schtick to the point you kinda feel bad for the last chest because his whole curse speil has been ruined. There's this whole tournament arc where you meet a big yellow bird calling himself the Rawk Hawk (I dare you to say that fast three times haha) and he's so clearly based off Hulk Hogan it's hilarious.
There's also the end of chapter stuff where the game gives you Peach sections as you see what's happening to her while she's held captive by the game’s villains called the X-Nauts. She ends talking to a computer called Tec who comes across all creepy at first, claiming it's fallen in love with Peach but somehow it still manages to become a pretty heartfelt and emotional experience as Peach teaches Tec what love is and the two form a bond as they help each other.
And there's small playable Bowser sections where he's always a step behind in the hunt for the crystal stars and is constantly being frustrated by that. It's also cool they gave him a few 2D platforming levels to play too as a little throwback to the original Super Mario Bros.

The battle system is also held in high regard with this game and for good reason too! Building off the turned based system in Paper Mario 64, the battle system here sees the usual timed button presses for extra damage and defence along with partners helping Mario out in battle with their own unique movesets (like Goombella can analyse enemies to show their HP, Koops is great for hitting multiple enemies on the ground in his shell). Battles take place on a stage where props can fall down and you can appeal to the crowd by doing stylish manoeuvres during attacks through timed button presses that will help build up your special gauge quicker. It's a really fun way to use the paper/pop up story book aesthetic for battles. When you add in the badge system as well that allows you to customise Mario’s moveset as well as grant him special skills like being able to jump on spiky enemies, you can find a lot to experiment with here. It's a proper turned based RPG system here where levelling up will allow you to increase HP, FP (for special/unique attacks) or BP (for badges) and it gives you a reason to participate in the overworld encounters which you can gain and advantage in by attacking an enemy with your hammer or jumping on them.

All that to say that TTYD is a brilliant experience at its core but what does this Switch remake change or do different? Well the most notable thing is they somehow made the already great looking GameCube game look even better. Characters have defined layering that better highlights the paper aesthetic and the new lighting system brings in detailed shadows and reflections, giving a shine to every location. This has unfortunately come at the cost of reducing the game’s framerate from 60fps to 30fps which does slightly change the button timings on attacks but honestly, it didn't cause me any issues once I got used to it and personally, while I would prefer 60fps, I find a stable 30fps to be fine for an RPG. I did experience some minor dips in some scenes where tons of characters appear on screen but otherwise it's a solid experience and I think the graphical update is worth it, especially when you see the two versions side by side.
Backtracking has been cut back in many areas with additional warp pipes along with a main hub with warp pipes to every world now being in one place.
Game overs now give you an option to restart from the last area you were in before you lost instead of your last save which is nice and saves a lot of time.
As alluded to earlier, a portion of dialogue relating to Vivian has been changed to more closely represent what was in the original Japanese script that was altered in the original GameCube release. Vivian now has dialogue saying that it took her while to realise that she wasn't her sister's brother but in fact their sister and that made their bullying worse, confirming that she is a trans character which I'm grateful that they went and fixed this in the localisation this time. Representation is important and Vivian’s storyline of finding a place where she belonged away from the bullying she received was always something I'm sure many trans people could relate to and having it confirmed in the localisation now will only make her more relatable to a lot of people.
The soundtrack has been fully re-done with an in-game badge being obtainable if you'd prefer the original GameCube soundtrack. You'd be missing out though because they added unique variations on the battle theme FOR EVERY AREA and it's incredible. Some themes now have vocal harmonies in them that are gorgeous and I had completely forgotten how the final dungeon had mixed elements of the Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World underground themes and it made me smile every time I caught the transition. The updated soundtrack is incredible in every regard and it manages to still tap into that GameCube vibe even with the updated instruments.
There's other minor additions with some post game bosses that I didn't seek out but otherwise this is a fairly faithful remake and one where it's pretty easy to miss a lot of the changes and tweaks because they fit in so effortlessly.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remains the pinnacle of Mario RPGs in my opinion. It oozes charm and character through witty writing and fun character designs in a beautiful world full of unique and imaginative locations. A battle system that lets you experiment with a simple badge system that allows you to tweak your Mario build and a beautiful face lift makes this RPG still stand tall after 20 years and hopefully revisiting it will inspire (and Nintendo relaxing their rules) the dev team at Intelligent Systems to make another Paper Mario that is full of the charm and soul that Thousand-Year Door has.

So as someone who recently got hooked into Trails and has enjoyed every game I've played in the series, the idea of a mobile title to collect my favourite characters for a little bit before I inevitably fall off due to the usual gacha mechanics and timers and stuff, was something I could get on board with. I mean like, haven't had the chance to play as characters like Kevin and Anelace in such a long time, surely a mobile title could give me some joy from that alone if nothing else? Well….

Let's start off with a bit of context surrounding Trails of Cold Steel: Northern War and its announcement to release in the West. A mobile game based off the anime of the name (an anime that while I enjoyed seeing a bit more of the North Ambria situation, it was pretty meh) and whose release in Japan in 2023 was met with hilarious bugs like T-posing Richard S Crafts. It's global announcement was through a twitter account that no one knew of until days after it was first made and from there, a steady schedule of lies and deception was clear for all to see.
The twitter account quickly grew in followers to give the illusion of popularity as it was soon clear the majority of the followers were bots.
The goal of 1 million pre registrations with a free Elie being the reward was so impossibly lofty for a series this niche and a game based off an anime few liked, that when it was met, it was clearly a lie.
The twitter account tweeting in English in a way some picked up as probable machine translation.
Why is this important? Well if there was that much lies and deception before the game even launched, what do you think the actual product was going to be like?

I wanted to give the game a fair chance and see how it was for myself so I ignored the red flags from pre-release. I mean how bad could it be really?
Pretty much awful on every level, that's how bad it could be. Developer Userjoy immediately hits you with scenes ripped straight from the anime, in Japanese, with no subs. When you do start seeing English text, it's readable but is awkward to read, even for short tutorial sentences. Then you start diving in further and it becomes clear that the whole thing was machine translated with massive errors like Towa being labelled “The Azure Chevalier” or Duvalie being called “Speed Du Barry”. Characters will have their gender constantly mixed up in descriptions and the whole thing is so bad to the point you can only laugh at it.
The gameplay is just basic battles using a similar system to the main games only the whole thing is automated to the point it feels pointless, with outcomes basically being decided on “power levels”
The 3D models look off just enough that they give off uncanny valley vibes.
Some of the gacha prices are just insane. Rixia and some gacha currency is currently listed at something like 84% off and is still over £60?!?! There's no way that is 84% cheaper than what it usually is. It's so clearly a deceptive way to try and fool the unsuspecting into thinking they're getting a good deal but come on, it's literally more expensive than 90% of full game releases these days. FOR A RIXIA JPEG AND GACHA CURRENCY.
One of the launch banners is a “free trial” that lets you re-roll until you get a character you want…. Only to ask you for £16.99 if you want to actually keep that character, meaning the “free trial” is literally just to try and hook you into the gambling like mechanics of gacha in hopes that you will be lured into spending money on it. I knew there were predatory gacha out there but this was my first time seeing it in action and wow, it feels disgusting.

This is something we can all laugh at but it also sucks as a recent fan seeing just how easily Falcom will let one of its most valued IP be licensed out and treated like garbage. The two animes I've watched for Trails were animated poorly and now this gacha game is trash in almost every aspect. I completely understand that Falcom is a small company and they operate on a tight budget, part of their charm is how much love and care is put into their games despite the monetary limitations, but you gotta do some quality control when licensing out your IP because stuff like this will never be forgotten, just look at Nintendo and the Zelda CD-I games they've tried to bury.

There is one positive to take from this: it shows just how bad the literal machine translation is and how important it is to have actual professional people localise something. The fact that I've put more time and care into writing a review for this compared to what they did for translating the game is a damning indictment. On top of that the game itself is dull and automated as well as full of predatory gacha elements to the point that you just have to call it out for the garbage it is. I'll give it half a star for letting me see Anelace again before uninstalling.