I'm happy to say it's about damn time we got to play this game over here in the west. It's such a good game. The story is top notch, and it keeps you interested in the twists and turns all along the way.
Gameplay is what you expect from the Like A Dragon series. It's fluid, fun to use, and leveling up feels so good to do in this one. Generally I stick to one style and just focus on it, but in this game, using all four was a blast. Later on you unlock abilities to swap between the styles fluidly during a combo, and that opened up so much strategy and situational planning.
Leveling up is super simple this time around. You just play the style you want to level up, and it naturally will give you points to spend in that skill tree. However, there is a general level up system as well, allowing you to place points in any skill tree. You can then swap those out for a specialized skill point and use that generic skill point again. I hope all games going forward use this system because it's simple and it rocks.
Now for the big negative: this game is not optimized like it should be. It runs fine for about 60% of the game, but then you get to the bigger bombastic scenes with effects and the game will chug on PS4. (Not sure if this happening on any other consoles or PC) One boss fight in particular dropped the fps to around the 10-15 mark. I usually don't care about fps, but when it actively ruins the timing for parrying attacks or my rhythm in attacking, that sucks, and it's a shame it shipped like that.
The team has said they are working on future patches to address those issues, so keep an eye out for those. Hopefully this gets fixed in the future.
I also found myself once again enjoying all the side content. Like A Dragon really knows how to make side quests fun, interesting, and varied. I always go out of my way to make sure I do them before advancing the story. I think this is the only series of games I ever do that in.
So in summary, it's a good game that needs some optimization still, but I still recommend playing it. It's a real fun ride.
Gameplay is what you expect from the Like A Dragon series. It's fluid, fun to use, and leveling up feels so good to do in this one. Generally I stick to one style and just focus on it, but in this game, using all four was a blast. Later on you unlock abilities to swap between the styles fluidly during a combo, and that opened up so much strategy and situational planning.
Leveling up is super simple this time around. You just play the style you want to level up, and it naturally will give you points to spend in that skill tree. However, there is a general level up system as well, allowing you to place points in any skill tree. You can then swap those out for a specialized skill point and use that generic skill point again. I hope all games going forward use this system because it's simple and it rocks.
Now for the big negative: this game is not optimized like it should be. It runs fine for about 60% of the game, but then you get to the bigger bombastic scenes with effects and the game will chug on PS4. (Not sure if this happening on any other consoles or PC) One boss fight in particular dropped the fps to around the 10-15 mark. I usually don't care about fps, but when it actively ruins the timing for parrying attacks or my rhythm in attacking, that sucks, and it's a shame it shipped like that.
The team has said they are working on future patches to address those issues, so keep an eye out for those. Hopefully this gets fixed in the future.
I also found myself once again enjoying all the side content. Like A Dragon really knows how to make side quests fun, interesting, and varied. I always go out of my way to make sure I do them before advancing the story. I think this is the only series of games I ever do that in.
So in summary, it's a good game that needs some optimization still, but I still recommend playing it. It's a real fun ride.