PolaroidJack
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Dawn of Destiny:
Same meta as WC04 but did not release in Japan
It's now just hitting me that Dawn of Destiny is a completely nonsense subtitle. What the hell does 'Dawn of Destiny' mean. At least the GBA games had some allegory to the card game.
It's really neat to be playing a full simulator on Xbox, but what the fuck this is worse paced than World Championship 2004. This is a baffling addition to the lineup, to say the least. You start the game with a random deck from 3 choices and have the option to either do a single duel against three 'duel robots' or a 'triple duel' against 3 characters from the anime (also Shimon). Almost immediately this game rears its ugly side as you load up your deck with absolutely garbage vanillas, with maybe 1 or 2 power cards differentiated between the 3 random decks (like 35 of the given cards are similar across each deck). This wouldn't feel so bad but after you win a duel, instead of obtaining card packs like every other card game since the game boy advance- you pick one of three statues of the God Cards. Then, you are given 3 (5 if you beat a triple duel) cards of a random pool in which I have no idea what is being pulled. Sometimes you get a pretty good card and it feels like a mistake because most times you'll just get 2 petit dragons and a Turu Purin. Despite this not all hope is lost- the braindead AI from World Championship also makes a return and its currently on its last remaining cell of gray matter. Joey will absolutely have a full front row of monsters that could walk over the vanilla monsters you bricked on, stay on the defense for some reason, and then summon Time Wizard so that can flip a coin and have a 50% chance to wipe his own board (smartest Dawn of Destiny opponent). I guess it's at least playable under these conditions but it probably has a worse grind than WC04 because of the egregious card pulls. There's a GameFAQs guide that displays the listed pulls somewhere in its guide so maybe there's some method of weeding out certain pulls but its such a low amount with no guarantees and the chance for multiple cards to pop out (no shit I got three steel ogre grotto #1s in one pull) that there's not much fun in deckbuilding outside of removing a 1300 attack vanilla with a 1400 attack vanilla. Sure the earlier PS1 and Game Boy games had a single pull after each duel but hey, at least the fusion mechanics helped to mitigate this slightly AND they also had a password system of any kind.
There isn't much to talk about in all honesty, hell I even wished there was enough for me to talk about the card sets I missed out on in WC2004 but Dawn of Destiny is an even more barebones experience.
(Sidenote: As of writing this I have played a bit of 7 Trials to Glory! It feels so good to play 'real' yugioh...)
Same meta as WC04 but did not release in Japan
It's now just hitting me that Dawn of Destiny is a completely nonsense subtitle. What the hell does 'Dawn of Destiny' mean. At least the GBA games had some allegory to the card game.
It's really neat to be playing a full simulator on Xbox, but what the fuck this is worse paced than World Championship 2004. This is a baffling addition to the lineup, to say the least. You start the game with a random deck from 3 choices and have the option to either do a single duel against three 'duel robots' or a 'triple duel' against 3 characters from the anime (also Shimon). Almost immediately this game rears its ugly side as you load up your deck with absolutely garbage vanillas, with maybe 1 or 2 power cards differentiated between the 3 random decks (like 35 of the given cards are similar across each deck). This wouldn't feel so bad but after you win a duel, instead of obtaining card packs like every other card game since the game boy advance- you pick one of three statues of the God Cards. Then, you are given 3 (5 if you beat a triple duel) cards of a random pool in which I have no idea what is being pulled. Sometimes you get a pretty good card and it feels like a mistake because most times you'll just get 2 petit dragons and a Turu Purin. Despite this not all hope is lost- the braindead AI from World Championship also makes a return and its currently on its last remaining cell of gray matter. Joey will absolutely have a full front row of monsters that could walk over the vanilla monsters you bricked on, stay on the defense for some reason, and then summon Time Wizard so that can flip a coin and have a 50% chance to wipe his own board (smartest Dawn of Destiny opponent). I guess it's at least playable under these conditions but it probably has a worse grind than WC04 because of the egregious card pulls. There's a GameFAQs guide that displays the listed pulls somewhere in its guide so maybe there's some method of weeding out certain pulls but its such a low amount with no guarantees and the chance for multiple cards to pop out (no shit I got three steel ogre grotto #1s in one pull) that there's not much fun in deckbuilding outside of removing a 1300 attack vanilla with a 1400 attack vanilla. Sure the earlier PS1 and Game Boy games had a single pull after each duel but hey, at least the fusion mechanics helped to mitigate this slightly AND they also had a password system of any kind.
There isn't much to talk about in all honesty, hell I even wished there was enough for me to talk about the card sets I missed out on in WC2004 but Dawn of Destiny is an even more barebones experience.
(Sidenote: As of writing this I have played a bit of 7 Trials to Glory! It feels so good to play 'real' yugioh...)
2021
Finally finished this for my 550th log- only took uhhh a year and some months.
Perhaps the most eclectic FF so far. Even compared to earlier FFs it really stands out from the prior FFs but also I can't imagine any of the later games have a tone quite as odd as Final Fantasy V. It jumps from the usual epic grandeur of the series, traveling on Chocobos and Airships, dungeon crawling, building your party and conquering titans. However, it just as easily swaps to these cheesy as hell moments during cutscenes where our cast spouts TMNT and Power Ranger references. Bizarre that this stuff got brought over from the GBA and Smartphone versions but I guess this is just how the tone of FFV will go. Part of me wonders what the game would look like without most of these and I would groan but in truth this game has always felt like some sort of enigma to me. FFs in general have always had a weird vibe in my head with regards to my understanding. I never played any apart from 4 DS as a teen (didn't beat) and then several years later I decided to try this out on the GBA port. If I remember correctly, around the same time I would have been finishing Dragon Quest III so perhaps I was looking for another class customization heavy JRPG? I didn't get too far but since then I've always had a fondness for this one in particular and had since wanted to sit down and fully commit myself to FFV. Over the course of a year and several other FFs later this pixel remaster came out and I put in the time but I did sit down and come back to this one more than I had hoped for. Thinking on Final Fantasies as a whole for a moment, there's only a few of them that really 'stand out' as titans metaphorically, the ones that jump to mind as the name Final Fantasy is brought up. FFIV, VI, VII, and X are usually the strongest in my mind, not so much in terms of quality but typically as the ones most 'stand-out' and typical to the franchise. FFs I-III try to establish a winning formula with what RPGs can manage and do for the times, while 4 sticks to a dedicated cast and decides to tell a focused story, VI and VII remain titans of the franchise with little need for explanation as to why and onward it's kind of a grabbag, although X for some reason always had a fragment in my mind even as kid for some reason. 8, 9 and 12 I don't know much about although they usually fill out a chunk of my mind as wildly differing branches of what I know about Final Fantasy. I could also talk about XIV however as I've yet to dive deep into it I barely understand what's going on whenever people talk about that game considering its 6 versions in. I bring this up because V feels like this really weird side path between Final Fantasies IV and VI, so seeing as how gamers in the west during the 90s going from the former to the latter makes a lot of sense but going from the former to V is an odd path to take when tackling this linearly. You don't transition from tropey but large scale drama to generation-defining epic as smoothly as V, this klutz of a fantasy, decides to place its sweet self between the two entries.
I can't really complain though, this game can get really neat. Neat might be the best descriptor I can give- as its customizable classes aren't necessarily new, considering III DOES exist despite how often I forget it does, AND it often falls into the pitfalls that other class-heavy japanese rpgs do. Yet, this thankfully improves upon III's systems and provides enough tools that it doesn't leave you to dry as often as I convinced myself it would. What I mean by this is that I'm kind of an idiot in a lot of ways. But also! this game does like to play around with its bosses more often, and considering how many options you might have when it comes to classes it might be easy to place yourself in a corner. Quite often bosses would seem way more daunting than they were worth because I didn't take into consideration how many simple ideas just work. A lot of these bosses feel like puzzles, and sometimes the solution is as simple as 'Spellblade + Thundaga is way more powerful than you think' but the game has so many complex build options that I tend to skew into just 'but this thing had bigger number in normal random battle' which would lead to my demise in certain bosses. Other bosses just don't care about having resistances. One particular boss (or trio of bosses) I didn't wanna deal with turned out to be susceptible to Odin's Zanketsuken! Brilliant! This does lead to quite a few moments of complex, fairly frustrating encounters in which I kinda wished my own creativeness would just prevail rather than needing to untangle and cobble together some other strategy because I might have missed a certain blue magic or I don't have an adequately leveled black mage. Or maybe I'd rather perish a slow and arduous death than try to wrap my head around the intricacies of the beastmaster class for 5 minutes. It's not too often but I have the brain disease that makes me want to keep a character as one class as long as they can so that they can be extremely great at one thing, but also to have these classes kept to these characters so as to check out as many classes as possible. Unfortunately there are times where the best solution is to just break this disease and have two characters have the same class (or maybe I accidentally made Faris both the best DPS and the best Mage without realizing it- uh oh).
My main critical problem against the game itself is there are admittedly a few stinker classes. Buff Dancer! Make Berserker more interesting! There are possible ways that these more niche classes could be overhauled or more functional so as to make them stand out compared to more traditional but practical classes like Monk, Summoner or White Mage. Most of the classes work really well and switching from class to class is a lot easier than in 3, although understanding the upsides of certain jobs takes a bit of faith. 'Chemist is one of the best jobs in the game, trust me' I saw, 'Use Zenigage! It's what makes Samurai good!' the daimyo of Bal wailed. Nonsense, all I need is Krile to grab Berserk and stay a monk and do all the work. Dragoon isn't that good? Then how come I can jump? That's rad. (I should note I typed much of this before beating the final boss- a battle I mostly won on...Zenigage + Chemist using Mix! I mostly just didn't wanna rewrite this entire section) I say much of this as admittedly an apology to Final Fantasy V, similar to other class systems in gaming as my strategizing and planning really isn't as complex as perhaps the game would want me to think on. Maybe it's because Final Fantasy was still just a matter of the turn based combat that the class system would have some oddities I didn't take into consideration which kept me from being wholly engrossed in its system and more so entertained. Maybe I sound cheeky in this regard but I did wish my understanding of the classes for FFV was a bit clearer in-game. Mostly I wish the game was just transparent in what abilities I was getting so I could fully realize the utilities of my party and its jobs, but much of it turned into a party of swiss army knives with a little of columns A-C, a specialty in D and what I would have liked to be a mastery in E but a greater need at the moment for said character to be Column F instead. Perhaps better class planning in later replays would greatly trim the sloppy catalog of abilities I ended on, but that's for a later Polaroid. I mostly bring this up not in scathing criticism or in contradiction to its strongest and generally most acclaimed aspect, I mostly bring about my hiccups in the job system- as I admit I'm not certain how I feel about job systems in general at the moment. After sitting on Yakuza 7 for a while, I came to feel generally positive about the idea, but remembering certain flops and hiccups in how some classes progressed, on top of some other oddities regarding battles. Final Fantasy 3, being the first in the series to structure a job system for later games to build upon gets some slack for how early it is, but of course has its own can of worms in terms of balancing. Tactics, while I have yet to beat it, has an immensely deep class system, but gets into the territory of needing some guidance in unlocking other classes to diversify your team. Here in Final Fantasy V, while I enjoy the ease and speed in getting new jobs- as well as the amount of good jobs versus middling; I do think there's a major balancing problem. How come certain classes end on just 'Equip Axes' while others end on borderline game breaking abilities like Rapid Shot. Red Mage has the idea in knowing that to get the insane ability in 'Dual Cast' locked at a 1159 AP level cap but the Ranger’s ‘Rapid Fire’ is not only slightly more practical but only requires nearly half that in 600 ap. By the end of the game and once several classes are mastered, a lot of it starts to click and regular battles begin to become a joke, and I love it. I really just wish I had better planned who was gonna get what classes, as a lot of the late game was spent wondering why I spent as much time as I had in certain classes. Once I had finally sat down and got that chemist class leveled up I finally saw the appeal in abilities like Mix and Revive, but I don’t know why I spend so much time trying to make Berserker work. Hell, I never even got Black Mage maxed out, which felt strange.
Otherwise the game progresses about as similarly as other Final Fantasy, although the last third is kind of the least interesting part, with a late game party change and some pretty lackluster dungeons until the final stretch.
The pixel remastered soundtrack is pretty great, and some of the remastered effects look really great but I'm still on the fence on how the actual spritework looks part of the time. I am disappointed however that the game lacks much of the bonus combat that was added to the GBA and defunct PC release.
Overall I was really looking forward to playing this, and all things considered a lot of the game's charms and structure is very enjoyable but sometimes its quirk gets in the way of taking it too seriously- it still has one last push before it reaches the heights of the series' epic status nowadays. Certainly this and other FFs prior have their stellar moments and memorable moments, but with the help of hindsight and some knowledge of FF6- its hard to really compare most of the stuff that came beforehand. This was definitely my favorite thus far, but the third act and some of the cast really keep it from being my favorite of the bunch. Would still greatly recommend it primarily for its unique battling and progression system.
Perhaps the most eclectic FF so far. Even compared to earlier FFs it really stands out from the prior FFs but also I can't imagine any of the later games have a tone quite as odd as Final Fantasy V. It jumps from the usual epic grandeur of the series, traveling on Chocobos and Airships, dungeon crawling, building your party and conquering titans. However, it just as easily swaps to these cheesy as hell moments during cutscenes where our cast spouts TMNT and Power Ranger references. Bizarre that this stuff got brought over from the GBA and Smartphone versions but I guess this is just how the tone of FFV will go. Part of me wonders what the game would look like without most of these and I would groan but in truth this game has always felt like some sort of enigma to me. FFs in general have always had a weird vibe in my head with regards to my understanding. I never played any apart from 4 DS as a teen (didn't beat) and then several years later I decided to try this out on the GBA port. If I remember correctly, around the same time I would have been finishing Dragon Quest III so perhaps I was looking for another class customization heavy JRPG? I didn't get too far but since then I've always had a fondness for this one in particular and had since wanted to sit down and fully commit myself to FFV. Over the course of a year and several other FFs later this pixel remaster came out and I put in the time but I did sit down and come back to this one more than I had hoped for. Thinking on Final Fantasies as a whole for a moment, there's only a few of them that really 'stand out' as titans metaphorically, the ones that jump to mind as the name Final Fantasy is brought up. FFIV, VI, VII, and X are usually the strongest in my mind, not so much in terms of quality but typically as the ones most 'stand-out' and typical to the franchise. FFs I-III try to establish a winning formula with what RPGs can manage and do for the times, while 4 sticks to a dedicated cast and decides to tell a focused story, VI and VII remain titans of the franchise with little need for explanation as to why and onward it's kind of a grabbag, although X for some reason always had a fragment in my mind even as kid for some reason. 8, 9 and 12 I don't know much about although they usually fill out a chunk of my mind as wildly differing branches of what I know about Final Fantasy. I could also talk about XIV however as I've yet to dive deep into it I barely understand what's going on whenever people talk about that game considering its 6 versions in. I bring this up because V feels like this really weird side path between Final Fantasies IV and VI, so seeing as how gamers in the west during the 90s going from the former to the latter makes a lot of sense but going from the former to V is an odd path to take when tackling this linearly. You don't transition from tropey but large scale drama to generation-defining epic as smoothly as V, this klutz of a fantasy, decides to place its sweet self between the two entries.
I can't really complain though, this game can get really neat. Neat might be the best descriptor I can give- as its customizable classes aren't necessarily new, considering III DOES exist despite how often I forget it does, AND it often falls into the pitfalls that other class-heavy japanese rpgs do. Yet, this thankfully improves upon III's systems and provides enough tools that it doesn't leave you to dry as often as I convinced myself it would. What I mean by this is that I'm kind of an idiot in a lot of ways. But also! this game does like to play around with its bosses more often, and considering how many options you might have when it comes to classes it might be easy to place yourself in a corner. Quite often bosses would seem way more daunting than they were worth because I didn't take into consideration how many simple ideas just work. A lot of these bosses feel like puzzles, and sometimes the solution is as simple as 'Spellblade + Thundaga is way more powerful than you think' but the game has so many complex build options that I tend to skew into just 'but this thing had bigger number in normal random battle' which would lead to my demise in certain bosses. Other bosses just don't care about having resistances. One particular boss (or trio of bosses) I didn't wanna deal with turned out to be susceptible to Odin's Zanketsuken! Brilliant! This does lead to quite a few moments of complex, fairly frustrating encounters in which I kinda wished my own creativeness would just prevail rather than needing to untangle and cobble together some other strategy because I might have missed a certain blue magic or I don't have an adequately leveled black mage. Or maybe I'd rather perish a slow and arduous death than try to wrap my head around the intricacies of the beastmaster class for 5 minutes. It's not too often but I have the brain disease that makes me want to keep a character as one class as long as they can so that they can be extremely great at one thing, but also to have these classes kept to these characters so as to check out as many classes as possible. Unfortunately there are times where the best solution is to just break this disease and have two characters have the same class (or maybe I accidentally made Faris both the best DPS and the best Mage without realizing it- uh oh).
My main critical problem against the game itself is there are admittedly a few stinker classes. Buff Dancer! Make Berserker more interesting! There are possible ways that these more niche classes could be overhauled or more functional so as to make them stand out compared to more traditional but practical classes like Monk, Summoner or White Mage. Most of the classes work really well and switching from class to class is a lot easier than in 3, although understanding the upsides of certain jobs takes a bit of faith. 'Chemist is one of the best jobs in the game, trust me' I saw, 'Use Zenigage! It's what makes Samurai good!' the daimyo of Bal wailed. Nonsense, all I need is Krile to grab Berserk and stay a monk and do all the work. Dragoon isn't that good? Then how come I can jump? That's rad. (I should note I typed much of this before beating the final boss- a battle I mostly won on...Zenigage + Chemist using Mix! I mostly just didn't wanna rewrite this entire section) I say much of this as admittedly an apology to Final Fantasy V, similar to other class systems in gaming as my strategizing and planning really isn't as complex as perhaps the game would want me to think on. Maybe it's because Final Fantasy was still just a matter of the turn based combat that the class system would have some oddities I didn't take into consideration which kept me from being wholly engrossed in its system and more so entertained. Maybe I sound cheeky in this regard but I did wish my understanding of the classes for FFV was a bit clearer in-game. Mostly I wish the game was just transparent in what abilities I was getting so I could fully realize the utilities of my party and its jobs, but much of it turned into a party of swiss army knives with a little of columns A-C, a specialty in D and what I would have liked to be a mastery in E but a greater need at the moment for said character to be Column F instead. Perhaps better class planning in later replays would greatly trim the sloppy catalog of abilities I ended on, but that's for a later Polaroid. I mostly bring this up not in scathing criticism or in contradiction to its strongest and generally most acclaimed aspect, I mostly bring about my hiccups in the job system- as I admit I'm not certain how I feel about job systems in general at the moment. After sitting on Yakuza 7 for a while, I came to feel generally positive about the idea, but remembering certain flops and hiccups in how some classes progressed, on top of some other oddities regarding battles. Final Fantasy 3, being the first in the series to structure a job system for later games to build upon gets some slack for how early it is, but of course has its own can of worms in terms of balancing. Tactics, while I have yet to beat it, has an immensely deep class system, but gets into the territory of needing some guidance in unlocking other classes to diversify your team. Here in Final Fantasy V, while I enjoy the ease and speed in getting new jobs- as well as the amount of good jobs versus middling; I do think there's a major balancing problem. How come certain classes end on just 'Equip Axes' while others end on borderline game breaking abilities like Rapid Shot. Red Mage has the idea in knowing that to get the insane ability in 'Dual Cast' locked at a 1159 AP level cap but the Ranger’s ‘Rapid Fire’ is not only slightly more practical but only requires nearly half that in 600 ap. By the end of the game and once several classes are mastered, a lot of it starts to click and regular battles begin to become a joke, and I love it. I really just wish I had better planned who was gonna get what classes, as a lot of the late game was spent wondering why I spent as much time as I had in certain classes. Once I had finally sat down and got that chemist class leveled up I finally saw the appeal in abilities like Mix and Revive, but I don’t know why I spend so much time trying to make Berserker work. Hell, I never even got Black Mage maxed out, which felt strange.
Otherwise the game progresses about as similarly as other Final Fantasy, although the last third is kind of the least interesting part, with a late game party change and some pretty lackluster dungeons until the final stretch.
The pixel remastered soundtrack is pretty great, and some of the remastered effects look really great but I'm still on the fence on how the actual spritework looks part of the time. I am disappointed however that the game lacks much of the bonus combat that was added to the GBA and defunct PC release.
Overall I was really looking forward to playing this, and all things considered a lot of the game's charms and structure is very enjoyable but sometimes its quirk gets in the way of taking it too seriously- it still has one last push before it reaches the heights of the series' epic status nowadays. Certainly this and other FFs prior have their stellar moments and memorable moments, but with the help of hindsight and some knowledge of FF6- its hard to really compare most of the stuff that came beforehand. This was definitely my favorite thus far, but the third act and some of the cast really keep it from being my favorite of the bunch. Would still greatly recommend it primarily for its unique battling and progression system.
Not much I can say that hasn't been said before, but yeah its pretty clear why this is considered one of the greats in gaming. Very rough in some areas and felt very funny going through this on a wii (haven't touched one in 4-ish years), but after a while it just felt right.
I will note that despite the typical stuff that's brought up as being the 'worst' parts of this game- (like Ashley or the constant quick-time events) I never had much of an issue with these. Instead my least favorite segments are never brought up- like I've never heard anyone talk about this U3 fight.
Bosses can be hit or miss, but nothing feels quite as good as mowing down hordes with the shotgun or riding on the back of a bulldozer firing an smg. I'll have to sit on it before I consider it a favorite but its certainly up there. It's just hard to hate this kinda game.
I will note that despite the typical stuff that's brought up as being the 'worst' parts of this game- (like Ashley or the constant quick-time events) I never had much of an issue with these. Instead my least favorite segments are never brought up- like I've never heard anyone talk about this U3 fight.
Bosses can be hit or miss, but nothing feels quite as good as mowing down hordes with the shotgun or riding on the back of a bulldozer firing an smg. I'll have to sit on it before I consider it a favorite but its certainly up there. It's just hard to hate this kinda game.
Yugioh World Championship 2004
Japan OCG: May 2002
North American: July 2003
(Fiber Format)
What a time for Yugipedia to die :(. This was my main source for referencing dates, deck lists, sets and etc. for these reviews so it's database getting fucked is a real shame.
Anyway fuck Fandom, I hope a good chunk of Yugipedia can get restored.
This is a really disappointing follow up to one of the better games so far. It's a fine enough simulator but its AI and Structure really hamper what should be just a straight improvement. While SDD felt like a tournament setting -building a deck from scratch, getting the itch to try all these kinds of deck ideas out- this one never really satisfied that itch.
I was wondering how this game would differ from earlier games aside from the card list, but immediately starting the game the first thing I noticed was certain features being missing from prior games. Where the hell is the password function? Or an in-game calendar with tournaments and bonus packs like in Eternal Duelist Soul? Or like any kind of writing? You just click on a duelist and they start dueling with no dialogue or flavor text whatsoever.
Duelists also have a 'theme' now on top of their usual character-specific deck archetypes. Now Rex Raptor is not only a Dinosaur based deck but also a defensive based deck? I get the idea but like, there's not really much of a 'win condition' when looking at his decklist. To elaborate: he doesn't have many of the best defensive monsters in Giant Soldier or labyrinth wall- or anyway to capitalize on stalling opponents or making this any kind of functional deck? Like no Sword & Shield even? It's just a bizarre combination of dinosaur monsters and somewhat high defense monsters. Never mind that by this games standard this just means any monster that has a higher defense than attack- meaning he'll just summon the worst 'Level 3 400ATK/1200DEF No Effect' thing from the first few waves of Yugioh cards. But please! Ignore all of that because everyone also has a copy (or multiples!!!) of each and every generically powerful spell card. The worst part about deck composition in this game is despite how trash a lot of the opponent decks are, almost everyone has a set of just POWER spell cards, even if they're not relevant to the duelist or their strategy. After the first three duelists everyone will just have a dark hole/raigeki/change of heart/harpies duster/magical cylinder/etc. just because they're the only other good cards they could think to put in the deck? I don't really get it. It shouldn't really bother me but it feels really unearned when a duelist just uses Raigeki to clear my board but then sends out a 750atk monster like- just give me the win at this point, my AI opponent is CLEARLY coping and shitting itself. This also gets to be EXTREMELY annoying later on in the game as opponents will just not abide by the in-game banlist and run multiple copies of raigeki, delinquent duo or snatch steal.
As I'm relatively new to the YGO modern meta, I can't say my deckbuilding is all that good myself yet. I still have to go by guides and others' recommendations on how many copies of 'X' card I should use in a given deck. However, enough time has provided me some understanding as to what makes a deck functional and interesting- not so much how many 'GOOD' cards you have but whether or not the good cards in your deck help fulfill your winning condition. For example, you COULD have a bunch of cards like Forceful Sentry, Delinquent Duo, Confiscation and White Magical Hat, and this does work for early hand destruction decks. But it's not all-powerful; going second and having drawn these 4 cards and maybe 2 duds- your opponent might have already set a bunch of backrow and had a monster that White Magical Hat (Atk= 1000) can't readily get over (Atk =<1000, as crashing it won't resolve the discard effect). It's a very specific example for sure, but the more I've played and the more I make a deck myself, the more often I come across flaws or patterns in my opening draw, or the more noticeable the 'power' of each draw gets when it comes back around to my turn. Here it's just the weirdest tempo of characters having maybe 5-8 cards that resemble some strategy or pretty powerful cards- but if you get over that strat all the opponent is left with are vanillas. Bakura has a lot of equip spells and Maha Vailo, along with Slate Warrior; pretty powerful cards! Does he have any other cards to help facilitate this to a competent enough deck? Not really. 18 pretty great cards but 14 of these are equip spells, and the rest are just generics (Upon looking up decklists Bakura has a better vanilla defensive monster in Defense Rat than Rex does in his entire ‘High Def’ deck).
I don't want the games to start out with the strongest, most beefed out versions of each strategy but I would prefer if the first few waves of duelists had more unique spells or monsters to make fighting certain opponents standout. I'd say later opponents seem to better utilize their decks to their fullest extent- starting out with Joey. But before then it's a good chance that your opponent just over-extends into running out of cards outside of vanillas.
The AI is also just really really dumb. Like targeting their own Mystical Space Typhoon dumb. Like- tributing their Jirai Gumo for a weaker monster dumb (thanks Weevil). Like, playing spells and traps even though Imperial Order or Royal Decree (both negate the activation of Spells/Traps respectively) are up. Like, won't attack a monster for some reason despite having a higher attack than defense dumb (had a Goblin Attack Force on field in defense and Joey just decides to sit there not wanting to attack???). It's bizarre- even later opponents will seemingly have these weird quirks where they just don't play as adequately as they could. Despite the fact that some of them just plain cheat! Most of the time the AI will just know what kind of flip card you have or what cards not to attack. Also this game now has ‘Stats?’ and they’re kinda neat indicators for what they have. However! They also have a luck stat! All this can lead me to believe is that under certain circumstances, the AI will just pull whatever card they need to out your board! Very neat.
The game does want you to get some pretty good cards and encourages you to do so- unfortunately this is done by locking Tier 3 opponents behind pulling certain cards from packs and having them in your trunk. However, most of these ‘Tier 3’ cards are really good cards like Harpies Feather Duster, or Jinzo so you’d want to put it in your deck- taking them out of your ‘trunk’. In other words this means IT’S NOT IN YOUR DECK, THESE TIER 3 DUELISTS JUST DISAPPEAR IF YOU TAKE YOUR SINGLE COPY OF "X" CARD AND PUT IT IN YOUR DECK. You can't fight Mai with a Harpie's Feather if you only have the one, you can't fight Joey with Jinzo if you only have the one (this one can be REALLY annoying with how often he has Ring of Destruction). These guys needing one specific card in the trunk is annoying enough but then you get to Pegasus, who needs not one BUT THREE copies of rare cards meaning if you don't have these by the time you've fought everyone enough you just have to sit and grind incessantly. I get it- if you want a card sometimes they can be very rare and you'll get a bunch of dupes of cards you'll never use and you'll end up with seven House of Adhesives or something. But in this game's case it's not because I really want Toon World, it's because I NEED it to unlock these guys, beat them 7 times and unlock the next wave of duelists. By the time I got done with meeting all other requirements for other duelists I would have still needed to grind to get Barrel Dragon from the Barrel Dragon card pack.
At least in Stairway to the Destined Duel most of the progression in the game is centered around the base fighters you start out with, with unlocked characters like Bandit Keith being a bonus. Here, you unlock the second wave by getting a certain amount of cards in each of the starter packs, then by getting specific cover cards from various packs (Barrel Dragon, Toon World/Summoned Skull/BEWD, Harpie's Feather Duster, Jinzo), all of which are rare and this game does NOT have a guaranteed rare in each pack so you just as easily spend several duels seeing absolutely nothing. Hell, in the Pegasus’s case you could get DOUBLES of other cards before getting the last of the 3 toons. It’s really frustrating and by the time I realized what I needed to do I just wanted to drop it from how much of a waste of time it seemed.
Along with WC04 we get the Pharaonic Guardian set of cards, a combination of the similarly named pack in Japan but also the 'New Ruler' set. I'd go over it in its entirety like with other entries but to be completely honest because I dropped this midway through I really didn't get to see any of these in play. Also Dawn of Destiny uses cards approximately to the same format as this so I might wait until that review to go over those cards.
Overall it's still a functional Yu-gi-oh simulator but I think this is the biggest downgrade in this subsection of YGO games. The lack of a lot of features and mechanics really brings this down but on top of that the AI/structure of battling duelists here doesn't feel nearly as solidified as prior titles and gets to be more repetitive with how it gates you off in later rounds. Really nice to have been playing this on actual hardware though, on a japanese copy no less.
Japan OCG: May 2002
North American: July 2003
(Fiber Format)
What a time for Yugipedia to die :(. This was my main source for referencing dates, deck lists, sets and etc. for these reviews so it's database getting fucked is a real shame.
Anyway fuck Fandom, I hope a good chunk of Yugipedia can get restored.
This is a really disappointing follow up to one of the better games so far. It's a fine enough simulator but its AI and Structure really hamper what should be just a straight improvement. While SDD felt like a tournament setting -building a deck from scratch, getting the itch to try all these kinds of deck ideas out- this one never really satisfied that itch.
I was wondering how this game would differ from earlier games aside from the card list, but immediately starting the game the first thing I noticed was certain features being missing from prior games. Where the hell is the password function? Or an in-game calendar with tournaments and bonus packs like in Eternal Duelist Soul? Or like any kind of writing? You just click on a duelist and they start dueling with no dialogue or flavor text whatsoever.
Duelists also have a 'theme' now on top of their usual character-specific deck archetypes. Now Rex Raptor is not only a Dinosaur based deck but also a defensive based deck? I get the idea but like, there's not really much of a 'win condition' when looking at his decklist. To elaborate: he doesn't have many of the best defensive monsters in Giant Soldier or labyrinth wall- or anyway to capitalize on stalling opponents or making this any kind of functional deck? Like no Sword & Shield even? It's just a bizarre combination of dinosaur monsters and somewhat high defense monsters. Never mind that by this games standard this just means any monster that has a higher defense than attack- meaning he'll just summon the worst 'Level 3 400ATK/1200DEF No Effect' thing from the first few waves of Yugioh cards. But please! Ignore all of that because everyone also has a copy (or multiples!!!) of each and every generically powerful spell card. The worst part about deck composition in this game is despite how trash a lot of the opponent decks are, almost everyone has a set of just POWER spell cards, even if they're not relevant to the duelist or their strategy. After the first three duelists everyone will just have a dark hole/raigeki/change of heart/harpies duster/magical cylinder/etc. just because they're the only other good cards they could think to put in the deck? I don't really get it. It shouldn't really bother me but it feels really unearned when a duelist just uses Raigeki to clear my board but then sends out a 750atk monster like- just give me the win at this point, my AI opponent is CLEARLY coping and shitting itself. This also gets to be EXTREMELY annoying later on in the game as opponents will just not abide by the in-game banlist and run multiple copies of raigeki, delinquent duo or snatch steal.
As I'm relatively new to the YGO modern meta, I can't say my deckbuilding is all that good myself yet. I still have to go by guides and others' recommendations on how many copies of 'X' card I should use in a given deck. However, enough time has provided me some understanding as to what makes a deck functional and interesting- not so much how many 'GOOD' cards you have but whether or not the good cards in your deck help fulfill your winning condition. For example, you COULD have a bunch of cards like Forceful Sentry, Delinquent Duo, Confiscation and White Magical Hat, and this does work for early hand destruction decks. But it's not all-powerful; going second and having drawn these 4 cards and maybe 2 duds- your opponent might have already set a bunch of backrow and had a monster that White Magical Hat (Atk= 1000) can't readily get over (Atk =<1000, as crashing it won't resolve the discard effect). It's a very specific example for sure, but the more I've played and the more I make a deck myself, the more often I come across flaws or patterns in my opening draw, or the more noticeable the 'power' of each draw gets when it comes back around to my turn. Here it's just the weirdest tempo of characters having maybe 5-8 cards that resemble some strategy or pretty powerful cards- but if you get over that strat all the opponent is left with are vanillas. Bakura has a lot of equip spells and Maha Vailo, along with Slate Warrior; pretty powerful cards! Does he have any other cards to help facilitate this to a competent enough deck? Not really. 18 pretty great cards but 14 of these are equip spells, and the rest are just generics (Upon looking up decklists Bakura has a better vanilla defensive monster in Defense Rat than Rex does in his entire ‘High Def’ deck).
I don't want the games to start out with the strongest, most beefed out versions of each strategy but I would prefer if the first few waves of duelists had more unique spells or monsters to make fighting certain opponents standout. I'd say later opponents seem to better utilize their decks to their fullest extent- starting out with Joey. But before then it's a good chance that your opponent just over-extends into running out of cards outside of vanillas.
The AI is also just really really dumb. Like targeting their own Mystical Space Typhoon dumb. Like- tributing their Jirai Gumo for a weaker monster dumb (thanks Weevil). Like, playing spells and traps even though Imperial Order or Royal Decree (both negate the activation of Spells/Traps respectively) are up. Like, won't attack a monster for some reason despite having a higher attack than defense dumb (had a Goblin Attack Force on field in defense and Joey just decides to sit there not wanting to attack???). It's bizarre- even later opponents will seemingly have these weird quirks where they just don't play as adequately as they could. Despite the fact that some of them just plain cheat! Most of the time the AI will just know what kind of flip card you have or what cards not to attack. Also this game now has ‘Stats?’ and they’re kinda neat indicators for what they have. However! They also have a luck stat! All this can lead me to believe is that under certain circumstances, the AI will just pull whatever card they need to out your board! Very neat.
The game does want you to get some pretty good cards and encourages you to do so- unfortunately this is done by locking Tier 3 opponents behind pulling certain cards from packs and having them in your trunk. However, most of these ‘Tier 3’ cards are really good cards like Harpies Feather Duster, or Jinzo so you’d want to put it in your deck- taking them out of your ‘trunk’. In other words this means IT’S NOT IN YOUR DECK, THESE TIER 3 DUELISTS JUST DISAPPEAR IF YOU TAKE YOUR SINGLE COPY OF "X" CARD AND PUT IT IN YOUR DECK. You can't fight Mai with a Harpie's Feather if you only have the one, you can't fight Joey with Jinzo if you only have the one (this one can be REALLY annoying with how often he has Ring of Destruction). These guys needing one specific card in the trunk is annoying enough but then you get to Pegasus, who needs not one BUT THREE copies of rare cards meaning if you don't have these by the time you've fought everyone enough you just have to sit and grind incessantly. I get it- if you want a card sometimes they can be very rare and you'll get a bunch of dupes of cards you'll never use and you'll end up with seven House of Adhesives or something. But in this game's case it's not because I really want Toon World, it's because I NEED it to unlock these guys, beat them 7 times and unlock the next wave of duelists. By the time I got done with meeting all other requirements for other duelists I would have still needed to grind to get Barrel Dragon from the Barrel Dragon card pack.
At least in Stairway to the Destined Duel most of the progression in the game is centered around the base fighters you start out with, with unlocked characters like Bandit Keith being a bonus. Here, you unlock the second wave by getting a certain amount of cards in each of the starter packs, then by getting specific cover cards from various packs (Barrel Dragon, Toon World/Summoned Skull/BEWD, Harpie's Feather Duster, Jinzo), all of which are rare and this game does NOT have a guaranteed rare in each pack so you just as easily spend several duels seeing absolutely nothing. Hell, in the Pegasus’s case you could get DOUBLES of other cards before getting the last of the 3 toons. It’s really frustrating and by the time I realized what I needed to do I just wanted to drop it from how much of a waste of time it seemed.
Along with WC04 we get the Pharaonic Guardian set of cards, a combination of the similarly named pack in Japan but also the 'New Ruler' set. I'd go over it in its entirety like with other entries but to be completely honest because I dropped this midway through I really didn't get to see any of these in play. Also Dawn of Destiny uses cards approximately to the same format as this so I might wait until that review to go over those cards.
Overall it's still a functional Yu-gi-oh simulator but I think this is the biggest downgrade in this subsection of YGO games. The lack of a lot of features and mechanics really brings this down but on top of that the AI/structure of battling duelists here doesn't feel nearly as solidified as prior titles and gets to be more repetitive with how it gates you off in later rounds. Really nice to have been playing this on actual hardware though, on a japanese copy no less.
1986
PolaroidJack’s ‘Mid' March Birthday Weekend Castlevania-athon Collection Extravaganza Part 1:
Starting up a collection of games across my catalog of either things outside of my usual comfort zone or I’ve been wanting to get off the backlog for a long while. This collection was only a few bucks and I didn’t have too many major plans outside of it being my birthday, so I decided to try out some of the games as my Castlevania repertoire and write down a brief summary of my runs.
Also I saw the badge that said ‘log 5 games in 1 day’ and figured I wasn’t gonna find much chance otherwise without stretching it a bit.
I’m sorry to say that Classicvania is not my forte.
Castlevania 1 is a very intriguing game historically. Practically I guess it works? It’s very basic and I got done with it in about an hour so my thoughts are exactly super solid compared to later ones. It’s basically what I expected, jank and all so I didn’t have too much frustration- but I don’t have much praise to give it outside of its legacy.
Starting up a collection of games across my catalog of either things outside of my usual comfort zone or I’ve been wanting to get off the backlog for a long while. This collection was only a few bucks and I didn’t have too many major plans outside of it being my birthday, so I decided to try out some of the games as my Castlevania repertoire and write down a brief summary of my runs.
Also I saw the badge that said ‘log 5 games in 1 day’ and figured I wasn’t gonna find much chance otherwise without stretching it a bit.
I’m sorry to say that Classicvania is not my forte.
Castlevania 1 is a very intriguing game historically. Practically I guess it works? It’s very basic and I got done with it in about an hour so my thoughts are exactly super solid compared to later ones. It’s basically what I expected, jank and all so I didn’t have too much frustration- but I don’t have much praise to give it outside of its legacy.
PolaroidJack’s ‘Mid' March Birthday Weekend Castlevania-athon Collection Extravaganza Part 2:
Definitely a weird one to judge. With a guide (sorry, I did want to get these done in a reasonable manner) it’s obviously not too bad but I can’t imagine why this is the direction you’d go in after Castlevania 1. It’s also maybe the easiest of the bunch, with very few legitimate challenges outside of tedium and understanding what villagers are telling lies and where you should be heading and… this is castlevania 2?
On the one hand I ask this because I really didn’t have much of an idea of what this game was like- but also I didn’t have much of a problem with it. It’s not good, but nowhere near one of the worst things I’ve played. In some ways I think its charming- but nowhere is it near all that 'impactful' in a sense, everything is just a bit too monotonous in structure and aesthetic.
Definitely a weird one to judge. With a guide (sorry, I did want to get these done in a reasonable manner) it’s obviously not too bad but I can’t imagine why this is the direction you’d go in after Castlevania 1. It’s also maybe the easiest of the bunch, with very few legitimate challenges outside of tedium and understanding what villagers are telling lies and where you should be heading and… this is castlevania 2?
On the one hand I ask this because I really didn’t have much of an idea of what this game was like- but also I didn’t have much of a problem with it. It’s not good, but nowhere near one of the worst things I’ve played. In some ways I think its charming- but nowhere is it near all that 'impactful' in a sense, everything is just a bit too monotonous in structure and aesthetic.
1989
PolaroidJack’s ‘Mid March’ Birthday Weekend Castlevania-athon Extravaganza Part 3:
This one hurts.
Aesthetically this is such a cool game, with a lot of neat sections and a lot of branching paths, alternate characters, neat levels for the NES, a great chiptune soundtrack…
But this was when I REALLY started to realize how much I didn’t like Classicvania. I really don’t like how limited you are on health. I really don’t like how cramped boss arenas feel. I really don’t like how precise the platforming can get. I REALLY don’t like that last one and a bunch of these games get real cheeky with being oh so precise with how far off you heel has to be at the edge of a platform, leading you to fall like a brick to your death. I also do think its a fucking cop out to have a bunch of sections where you fall down a pit even though its obvious there’s a section of the map right below the section you’re on. It really made me appreciate Mega Man more. Even though I don’t find those faultless, it never felt AS needlessly petty with dropping to a previous segment of a level in some Mega Man stages as it does through each of these Castlevanias.
At least characters like Sypha help mitigate a lot of difficulty, but I did have trouble recognizing when certain sections would really benefit from a character swap leading to major frustration on certain bosses.
I still think its neat for the NES, and its certainly easier in ways compared to the western release but goddamn I wanted to love this game rather than tolerate it by the end.
This one hurts.
Aesthetically this is such a cool game, with a lot of neat sections and a lot of branching paths, alternate characters, neat levels for the NES, a great chiptune soundtrack…
But this was when I REALLY started to realize how much I didn’t like Classicvania. I really don’t like how limited you are on health. I really don’t like how cramped boss arenas feel. I really don’t like how precise the platforming can get. I REALLY don’t like that last one and a bunch of these games get real cheeky with being oh so precise with how far off you heel has to be at the edge of a platform, leading you to fall like a brick to your death. I also do think its a fucking cop out to have a bunch of sections where you fall down a pit even though its obvious there’s a section of the map right below the section you’re on. It really made me appreciate Mega Man more. Even though I don’t find those faultless, it never felt AS needlessly petty with dropping to a previous segment of a level in some Mega Man stages as it does through each of these Castlevanias.
At least characters like Sypha help mitigate a lot of difficulty, but I did have trouble recognizing when certain sections would really benefit from a character swap leading to major frustration on certain bosses.
I still think its neat for the NES, and its certainly easier in ways compared to the western release but goddamn I wanted to love this game rather than tolerate it by the end.
PolaroidJack’s ‘Mid March’ Birthday Weekend Castlevania-athon Extravaganza Part 3.5:
That sure was Castlevania: The Adventure.
That sure was Castlevania: The Adventure.
1990
PolaroidJack’s ‘Mid March’ Birthday Weekend Castlevania-athon Extravaganza Part 4:
I really shouldn’t think this (especially since a better edition exists on the game boy) but this might have been the best thing I’ve played throughout this weekend. I can’t really explain it, just thank god I don’t have to fight Death or deal with several of the worst segments in a row (just a stage or two). Much of this was mitigated thanks to the collection save states but I can recognize that two of the final three stages are just the biggest pain in the ass so I can’t sing praise. But there’s also a quiz battle with Lady Liberty and you can guess the color of cancan dancers' bottoms so like, I had a bit more fun here than I thought I would.
I really shouldn’t think this (especially since a better edition exists on the game boy) but this might have been the best thing I’ve played throughout this weekend. I can’t really explain it, just thank god I don’t have to fight Death or deal with several of the worst segments in a row (just a stage or two). Much of this was mitigated thanks to the collection save states but I can recognize that two of the final three stages are just the biggest pain in the ass so I can’t sing praise. But there’s also a quiz battle with Lady Liberty and you can guess the color of cancan dancers' bottoms so like, I had a bit more fun here than I thought I would.
1991
PolaroidJack’s ‘Mid March’ Birthday Weekend Castlevania-athon Extravaganza Part 5:
Without a doubt the best of the original 4. Not even close. But its still got some pangs. Notably the last few levels are still a pain in the ass as ever, with a really terrible boss gauntlet (thankfully they had enough empathy to checkpoint you to before the start of each boss, you don’t have to fight all 4 back-to-back). Controlling your whip makes a huge difference on how you’re able to handle threats, it feels like you can finally style on certain enemies with enough quick thinking.
My main complaint is just certain ideas on how the whip being out ‘works’. Mainly complaining here about the Death fight. Why the fuck does holding your whip out but keeping still allow you to take all those shots. If that weren’t the way to steamroll that fight I would have killed myself trying to beat the gauntlet with how fast he throws out his ‘sickles’.
I also didn’t realize until super late that you could extend your reach when swinging with the whip by pressing up and down, leading to some more late game frustration.
A lot of my main complaints from prior games still stand here but I do think the added freedom of movement with regards to yourself (you can control your jumps now! revolutionary!) and your whip helps this game in the long run.
Without a doubt the best of the original 4. Not even close. But its still got some pangs. Notably the last few levels are still a pain in the ass as ever, with a really terrible boss gauntlet (thankfully they had enough empathy to checkpoint you to before the start of each boss, you don’t have to fight all 4 back-to-back). Controlling your whip makes a huge difference on how you’re able to handle threats, it feels like you can finally style on certain enemies with enough quick thinking.
My main complaint is just certain ideas on how the whip being out ‘works’. Mainly complaining here about the Death fight. Why the fuck does holding your whip out but keeping still allow you to take all those shots. If that weren’t the way to steamroll that fight I would have killed myself trying to beat the gauntlet with how fast he throws out his ‘sickles’.
I also didn’t realize until super late that you could extend your reach when swinging with the whip by pressing up and down, leading to some more late game frustration.
A lot of my main complaints from prior games still stand here but I do think the added freedom of movement with regards to yourself (you can control your jumps now! revolutionary!) and your whip helps this game in the long run.
2019
Technically finished this on 2/18, but it took me a while to finalize a review.
The pillar of maximalist design in video games, and a shining standard for the RGG studio for years to come. Yakuza 5 feels like an enigma of a title, bizarrely sitting in place of the Yakuza series prior to many other entries and yet standing atop many of these with regards to how imperative this of a moment this is for the series. Even playing a bit of the Judgments, Yakuza 0, other Dragon Engine games, etc. 5 feels like a game changer. It doesn't take long to hear about the insane amount of content and variety that's been sewn throughout Yakuza 5, even compared to other titles, although this begs the question as to how the quality stands. If you saw my Yakuza 4 review you might have an idea that I don't like that game, and you would be correct! However, more than that I felt as though Yakuza 4 trips over many of its ideas- not really knowing where to strike hard and floundering in terribly paced vignettes and a frankly claustrophobic idea for where the franchise should leap to. 4 characters with the same Kamurocho, a plot as shallow as it is nonsensical, and a single handful of neat new ideas that I wanted to interact with. It's known that this project wasn't originally supposed to even involve Kiryu but even so 4 feels like such a troubled title and particularly because over the horizon I knew something else was coming. 5 succeeds so much over the corpse of 4 I'm frankly embarrassed for it. Quality is not sacrificed for quantity in Yakuza 5 and most dips in quality I can brush over. There's a lot to talk about so I figured I'd just divide each portion of thought into the games 5 acts.
Kiryu
Opposite to Yakuza 4, we start out with Kiryu for the game and I think that's an immediate improvement. We also see that he's been placed in a situation much more intriguing than we last saw him, as we've moved to a completely different location, he's taken up a new job, and neither Haruka nor any of the Morning Glory orphans are anywhere to be seen. He's also got an extremely stylish new coat- definitely appreciate the new look. Kiryu's story is overall fine, although I think the biggest boon is just how much Yakuza 5 wants you to know they want to keep you in its embrace, with these fairly long, entirely voiced cutscenes as Kiryu talks with his boss, Nakajima (great character) or other yakuza trying to egg Kiryu out of his hiding. Yakuza 5's plot is... intricate to say the least and it certainly wants you to know it but I can respect how much it wants to feel like its closing its curtains. Lotta cameos and references from the last few game pop up, even in Fukuoka- including a relative to Komaki with Sosuke, Date shows up for a side story questioning what his next steps in life are, and more as the game continues. Despite these returns from the past- Fukuoka still makes for a refreshing vacation from Kamurocho. I don't know if I entirely prefer this or Okinawa with regards to Kiryu locales but it certainly has more side content for people to gorge on. Most of the staples are here, along with a new taxi driving side story with two different playstyles, along with a funky 'trash' collection feature and a whole 'Soba Noodle' minigame, all exclusive to Kiryu's segment here. Kiryu also plays pretty well here, although his ‘Climax Heat Action’ didn't really set in for me until much later in the game (i.e. the Finale).
Saejima
Similar to Yakuza 4 on the other hand, Saejima is our follow up to the first part- and just like last time we have to go through a prison segment. This one isn't nearly as grating as the prior game’s escape but it's probably the slowest paced part of the game, maybe my least favorite segment. That said it's an IMMENSE glow up from his prior appearance; no cop chases in sight, the prison segment doesn’t end in a horrible boss fight, no gross sexual tension with a minor- Saejima just needs to fight bears and have imaging trips of the outside world! Speaking of the latter- I appreciate just how many weird stylistic turns this game takes. There's a whole meditative- inner looking segment in the prison in which we take a trip through Tsukimino and even go on a date with our mental hostess. It's just a bizarre trip to take as it lasts a good 30 minutes and happens twice while you're in the prison, but it's a really neat segment that I don't think the series has done before. We also get quite a bit of insight as to how Saejima plays, and again MAN did they improve upon his moveset. He's still kinda wonky at first but once you upgrade his kit he becomes an immense force, with easily double the health of others with less chance to get staggered. Of course it's also hard not to bring up the whole hunting village and its sidequest, I basically chugged this entire section down when I first arrived but its so astounding. Overall minigame is great, I genuinely can't believe just how much effort all of these sidequests get, with their own side stories and research done to liven up the new locales. I will echo Zapken's point however that the translation doesn't take the opportunity to mention that they’re a Matagi village, which I think would have been a great opportunity to dive in on and talk about this specific section of Japanese human geography.
Haruka/Akiyama
Time and time again we come across the same argument in gaming about 'non-violent' approaches to combat or progression and I do applaud such efforts, even though I generally prefer some kinds of action/combat systems in my games. SMT might have you talking with demons however those systems are a nice compliment to a phenomenal battle system, while Undertale takes a simplistic but effective combat system to contrast the very specific and puzzling ways to converse and befriend your opponents. Non-combat can be quite fun when done in a manner that feels suitable and engaging. So listen, as cool or funny as it might sound to have Haruka take on Yakuza and big swarms of baddies, I genuinely think her main gameplay be these dance battles is such a nice break in the game.
By this point I'm maybe 30-40 hours deep into a game that's known for pretty frequent enemy encounters/pop-ups. It was so goddamn nice to play as a character that could walk around Sotenbori and not be interrupted at ALL, with dance battles just being an optional encounter in fixed locations. Hell, a good bit of Haruka's gameplay is pretty optional, as you can quit at the last minute of the Princess League and the story progresses as normal.
This part also merges with Akiyama's section so the two share Sotenbori and it's actually really neat! It would have been easier for Kiryu and Haruka to have shared a part and maybe have the narrative be like "Haruka and Kiryu move from Kamurocho to Sotenbori, but Kiryu has to distance himself so blah, blah." and "Akiyama travels to Fukuoka to open a new branch of Sky Finance!" but I think Akiyama being the one to meet up and connect with Haruka is actually really neat and connects the two considering their relation to Mirei Park and overall philosophies. The two didn't share but so much screen time (if any i dunno) in Y4, so it's pretty cool when Akiyama's segment just so happens to bump into Haruka's and we can start swapping between multiple characters for the first time. The one thing I'll say about Akiyama is that because his section is merged into another it kinda feels like he gets less overall content comparatively. Each character gets an insane amount of content to go along with each of their parts, and Haruka is different enough to feel like a different game. Akiyama doesn't have much else to fall on for unique minigames or sidequests. I guess if you lump new features into parts rather than character then each part feels fulfilling in that sense bar the Finale, but personally I would have liked each character to have had at least one side game to tinker around with. It doesn't matter too much by the end of the game, although there was a noticeable difference in levels between every other character and Akiyama.
Shinada
Ah. The odd one of this collective. Like Tanimura in the prior game, 5 contains a character with no other appearance outside of this collection and as such I wasn't sure what to expect going into his section. Not only is he the odd one out of the bunch, but he's not Yakuza, he doesn't seem all that influential and he's the last segment until the finale. While I'm not entirely sure I'd call this my favorite part, I might just say Shinada might be my favorite addition to this game as a whole. I really didn't get Tanimura and I'm not certain I ever will. Meanwhile, Shinada immediately piqued my interest- he's a sad sap brought down by forces outside his control despite his clear talent. He's an earnest and almost childlike man, working in the sex industry as a journalist. His ass is broke as fuck and his stomach empty, but his heart is as big as ever. He...was classmates with Daigo? Huh.
Shinada's a weird ass character and his whole arc feels very bizarre considering its placement here at the end. But once his part gets going I think its placement makes a little more sense. I do wonder whether switching Parts 3 and 4 would have made more sense but I don't have any major issue with Shinada being so late in the game. His part's incredibly weird, starting off with very little money and seemingly having little to do with the plot- it really feels like you just transitioned into a whole different game. After some baseball side stories and other sidequests- it becomes really funny to see broke boy Shinada suddenly carrying around 20,000 dollars in his back pocket. Shinada's moveset is fine overall, and I think his weapon specialty in theory is neat, but not really something I engaged with too much. I did enjoy getting the pole charging move and running around in circles to stunlock enemies though.
One last note: There was a tiny moment, and it's not hard to notice or encounter naturally where you can just pick up a baseball bat with the intent to use it as a weapon; however, Shinada- as a former baseball player, disgraced and barred from his dream career- simply picks it up, inspects it and lays it down and can't be picked up again. I'm an absolute sucker for tiny details like this, and I feel like I miss them so often but just seeing this small interaction with Shinada and his past during a combat section was just one of the several shining moments from Y5 that'll stick in my mind as I look back at the series. I think his arc at least ends on a solid note, as Ill get to later, so I can't be too hopeful in him returning to another game. But if he ever does a cameo in a later title I'll pop off. Very glad to finally understand who Shinada is.
Finale
Finally, all the pieces come together...kinda. All throughout this mass of a game I gotta be real honest, the story has not been the major strength so far- at least when it comes to conciseness or any kind of... it's not the hardest to follow or the most absurd, it's just a lot to take in and by the time it reaches the final few hours there's a lot of stuff that feels REAL loose. I was really uncertain as to how much of it would actually tie in or matter as much as other throughlines. Maybe there would be a massive epilogue to help? Maybe the finale would be some Metal Gear Solid 4 mass of cutscenes? I wasn't too sure, all I could do was press forward into Kamurocho for the first real time in the game (You start Saejima in Kamurocho but I didn't bother exploring tbh). Most of these finale chapters act to provide a final few stretches with each character before the grand finale, but there's still some stuff to explore and tinker around with. Firstly, I must say bravo to RGG for instilling a deep sense of fear within me in a way I didn't expect. As I was doing the rounds in Kamurocho, I decided to use a taxi and head up towards E. Shichifuku St. I was half paying attention but instinctually marched forward, only to notice someone by Kamurocho Hills run off screen. I had only just noticed that for a half second but his pathing looped back around that small park area in the front to start chasing me from behind and this random guy's encounter procs. This wouldn't have frightened me if it wasn't for the fact this dude is jacked, has a really intimidating face and as I described, will chase you once he notices you. All the dude does is fight you as part of the Victory Road storyline but from then on this guy continues to patrol Kamurocho but unlike say, Mr. Shakedowns there's no way to really track this guy. For the most part this guy appeared whenever I had just gotten out of a taxi so there's just this sense of keeping a guard up for whenever I fast travel and the guy loading into crowds right behind whichever character I'm using. Yakuza 5, continuing to surprise me even to its last few hours!
This finale is dumb, a few reveals that are either too obvious or kinda just too stupid, the usual endgame dungeon fighting segments- the Yakuza norm for most of the final chapter. However, the literal FINAL chapter is something to write home about. Easily my favorite finale in the series. Just a great collection of action and character moments, the only fumble maybe being the final boss. It's alright but not the most insane fight in the series. Otherwise every other character has a fantastic final cutscene to conclude the game with, with equal parts sincere, heartfelt moments like Takasugi letting Shinada know people truly miss him, and equal parts absurd GAS like a large crowd of Omi Alliance, Yamagasa, and Kitakita family members kneeling to Akiyama for felling Kanai. The only thing more absurd is knowing this isn't really the end of Kiryu's story, which does make me hesitant to what direction Y6 and eventually Yakuza Gaiden take.
Needless to say, I really enjoyed this entry. It's not unheard of in this industry that a series can ping pong from one of its worst entries to one of its best (DMC2 to 3 more notably so), but I'm so glad that it was the case here.
It’s nowhere near perfect, far from it. However with how big of title this is it’s got one hell of a batting average with only a few segments or elements I really ‘dislike’. Hell, there’s a lot of stuff I still hadn’t sunk my teeth into like any of the cabaret games, chicken racing or snowball fights.I'll have to take a break from playing more of the games with how heavy this one felt but man is it great to have it off my back now. 80 hours of playtime and only ~50% completion, baby!
(Sidenote: I had plans to discuss how much of a ‘Dream’ game this felt- thinking my acknowledgment on how often the game uses ‘dream’ was solely my own idea. Little did I realize much of the fanbase already beat me to the punch- and the subtitle of the game is even called ‘Fulfiller of Dreams’ in Japan! Here I thought I was clever…regardless I enjoy how that's the theme of the game, some people are just haters)
The pillar of maximalist design in video games, and a shining standard for the RGG studio for years to come. Yakuza 5 feels like an enigma of a title, bizarrely sitting in place of the Yakuza series prior to many other entries and yet standing atop many of these with regards to how imperative this of a moment this is for the series. Even playing a bit of the Judgments, Yakuza 0, other Dragon Engine games, etc. 5 feels like a game changer. It doesn't take long to hear about the insane amount of content and variety that's been sewn throughout Yakuza 5, even compared to other titles, although this begs the question as to how the quality stands. If you saw my Yakuza 4 review you might have an idea that I don't like that game, and you would be correct! However, more than that I felt as though Yakuza 4 trips over many of its ideas- not really knowing where to strike hard and floundering in terribly paced vignettes and a frankly claustrophobic idea for where the franchise should leap to. 4 characters with the same Kamurocho, a plot as shallow as it is nonsensical, and a single handful of neat new ideas that I wanted to interact with. It's known that this project wasn't originally supposed to even involve Kiryu but even so 4 feels like such a troubled title and particularly because over the horizon I knew something else was coming. 5 succeeds so much over the corpse of 4 I'm frankly embarrassed for it. Quality is not sacrificed for quantity in Yakuza 5 and most dips in quality I can brush over. There's a lot to talk about so I figured I'd just divide each portion of thought into the games 5 acts.
Kiryu
Opposite to Yakuza 4, we start out with Kiryu for the game and I think that's an immediate improvement. We also see that he's been placed in a situation much more intriguing than we last saw him, as we've moved to a completely different location, he's taken up a new job, and neither Haruka nor any of the Morning Glory orphans are anywhere to be seen. He's also got an extremely stylish new coat- definitely appreciate the new look. Kiryu's story is overall fine, although I think the biggest boon is just how much Yakuza 5 wants you to know they want to keep you in its embrace, with these fairly long, entirely voiced cutscenes as Kiryu talks with his boss, Nakajima (great character) or other yakuza trying to egg Kiryu out of his hiding. Yakuza 5's plot is... intricate to say the least and it certainly wants you to know it but I can respect how much it wants to feel like its closing its curtains. Lotta cameos and references from the last few game pop up, even in Fukuoka- including a relative to Komaki with Sosuke, Date shows up for a side story questioning what his next steps in life are, and more as the game continues. Despite these returns from the past- Fukuoka still makes for a refreshing vacation from Kamurocho. I don't know if I entirely prefer this or Okinawa with regards to Kiryu locales but it certainly has more side content for people to gorge on. Most of the staples are here, along with a new taxi driving side story with two different playstyles, along with a funky 'trash' collection feature and a whole 'Soba Noodle' minigame, all exclusive to Kiryu's segment here. Kiryu also plays pretty well here, although his ‘Climax Heat Action’ didn't really set in for me until much later in the game (i.e. the Finale).
Saejima
Similar to Yakuza 4 on the other hand, Saejima is our follow up to the first part- and just like last time we have to go through a prison segment. This one isn't nearly as grating as the prior game’s escape but it's probably the slowest paced part of the game, maybe my least favorite segment. That said it's an IMMENSE glow up from his prior appearance; no cop chases in sight, the prison segment doesn’t end in a horrible boss fight, no gross sexual tension with a minor- Saejima just needs to fight bears and have imaging trips of the outside world! Speaking of the latter- I appreciate just how many weird stylistic turns this game takes. There's a whole meditative- inner looking segment in the prison in which we take a trip through Tsukimino and even go on a date with our mental hostess. It's just a bizarre trip to take as it lasts a good 30 minutes and happens twice while you're in the prison, but it's a really neat segment that I don't think the series has done before. We also get quite a bit of insight as to how Saejima plays, and again MAN did they improve upon his moveset. He's still kinda wonky at first but once you upgrade his kit he becomes an immense force, with easily double the health of others with less chance to get staggered. Of course it's also hard not to bring up the whole hunting village and its sidequest, I basically chugged this entire section down when I first arrived but its so astounding. Overall minigame is great, I genuinely can't believe just how much effort all of these sidequests get, with their own side stories and research done to liven up the new locales. I will echo Zapken's point however that the translation doesn't take the opportunity to mention that they’re a Matagi village, which I think would have been a great opportunity to dive in on and talk about this specific section of Japanese human geography.
Haruka/Akiyama
Time and time again we come across the same argument in gaming about 'non-violent' approaches to combat or progression and I do applaud such efforts, even though I generally prefer some kinds of action/combat systems in my games. SMT might have you talking with demons however those systems are a nice compliment to a phenomenal battle system, while Undertale takes a simplistic but effective combat system to contrast the very specific and puzzling ways to converse and befriend your opponents. Non-combat can be quite fun when done in a manner that feels suitable and engaging. So listen, as cool or funny as it might sound to have Haruka take on Yakuza and big swarms of baddies, I genuinely think her main gameplay be these dance battles is such a nice break in the game.
By this point I'm maybe 30-40 hours deep into a game that's known for pretty frequent enemy encounters/pop-ups. It was so goddamn nice to play as a character that could walk around Sotenbori and not be interrupted at ALL, with dance battles just being an optional encounter in fixed locations. Hell, a good bit of Haruka's gameplay is pretty optional, as you can quit at the last minute of the Princess League and the story progresses as normal.
This part also merges with Akiyama's section so the two share Sotenbori and it's actually really neat! It would have been easier for Kiryu and Haruka to have shared a part and maybe have the narrative be like "Haruka and Kiryu move from Kamurocho to Sotenbori, but Kiryu has to distance himself so blah, blah." and "Akiyama travels to Fukuoka to open a new branch of Sky Finance!" but I think Akiyama being the one to meet up and connect with Haruka is actually really neat and connects the two considering their relation to Mirei Park and overall philosophies. The two didn't share but so much screen time (if any i dunno) in Y4, so it's pretty cool when Akiyama's segment just so happens to bump into Haruka's and we can start swapping between multiple characters for the first time. The one thing I'll say about Akiyama is that because his section is merged into another it kinda feels like he gets less overall content comparatively. Each character gets an insane amount of content to go along with each of their parts, and Haruka is different enough to feel like a different game. Akiyama doesn't have much else to fall on for unique minigames or sidequests. I guess if you lump new features into parts rather than character then each part feels fulfilling in that sense bar the Finale, but personally I would have liked each character to have had at least one side game to tinker around with. It doesn't matter too much by the end of the game, although there was a noticeable difference in levels between every other character and Akiyama.
Shinada
Ah. The odd one of this collective. Like Tanimura in the prior game, 5 contains a character with no other appearance outside of this collection and as such I wasn't sure what to expect going into his section. Not only is he the odd one out of the bunch, but he's not Yakuza, he doesn't seem all that influential and he's the last segment until the finale. While I'm not entirely sure I'd call this my favorite part, I might just say Shinada might be my favorite addition to this game as a whole. I really didn't get Tanimura and I'm not certain I ever will. Meanwhile, Shinada immediately piqued my interest- he's a sad sap brought down by forces outside his control despite his clear talent. He's an earnest and almost childlike man, working in the sex industry as a journalist. His ass is broke as fuck and his stomach empty, but his heart is as big as ever. He...was classmates with Daigo? Huh.
Shinada's a weird ass character and his whole arc feels very bizarre considering its placement here at the end. But once his part gets going I think its placement makes a little more sense. I do wonder whether switching Parts 3 and 4 would have made more sense but I don't have any major issue with Shinada being so late in the game. His part's incredibly weird, starting off with very little money and seemingly having little to do with the plot- it really feels like you just transitioned into a whole different game. After some baseball side stories and other sidequests- it becomes really funny to see broke boy Shinada suddenly carrying around 20,000 dollars in his back pocket. Shinada's moveset is fine overall, and I think his weapon specialty in theory is neat, but not really something I engaged with too much. I did enjoy getting the pole charging move and running around in circles to stunlock enemies though.
One last note: There was a tiny moment, and it's not hard to notice or encounter naturally where you can just pick up a baseball bat with the intent to use it as a weapon; however, Shinada- as a former baseball player, disgraced and barred from his dream career- simply picks it up, inspects it and lays it down and can't be picked up again. I'm an absolute sucker for tiny details like this, and I feel like I miss them so often but just seeing this small interaction with Shinada and his past during a combat section was just one of the several shining moments from Y5 that'll stick in my mind as I look back at the series. I think his arc at least ends on a solid note, as Ill get to later, so I can't be too hopeful in him returning to another game. But if he ever does a cameo in a later title I'll pop off. Very glad to finally understand who Shinada is.
Finale
Finally, all the pieces come together...kinda. All throughout this mass of a game I gotta be real honest, the story has not been the major strength so far- at least when it comes to conciseness or any kind of... it's not the hardest to follow or the most absurd, it's just a lot to take in and by the time it reaches the final few hours there's a lot of stuff that feels REAL loose. I was really uncertain as to how much of it would actually tie in or matter as much as other throughlines. Maybe there would be a massive epilogue to help? Maybe the finale would be some Metal Gear Solid 4 mass of cutscenes? I wasn't too sure, all I could do was press forward into Kamurocho for the first real time in the game (You start Saejima in Kamurocho but I didn't bother exploring tbh). Most of these finale chapters act to provide a final few stretches with each character before the grand finale, but there's still some stuff to explore and tinker around with. Firstly, I must say bravo to RGG for instilling a deep sense of fear within me in a way I didn't expect. As I was doing the rounds in Kamurocho, I decided to use a taxi and head up towards E. Shichifuku St. I was half paying attention but instinctually marched forward, only to notice someone by Kamurocho Hills run off screen. I had only just noticed that for a half second but his pathing looped back around that small park area in the front to start chasing me from behind and this random guy's encounter procs. This wouldn't have frightened me if it wasn't for the fact this dude is jacked, has a really intimidating face and as I described, will chase you once he notices you. All the dude does is fight you as part of the Victory Road storyline but from then on this guy continues to patrol Kamurocho but unlike say, Mr. Shakedowns there's no way to really track this guy. For the most part this guy appeared whenever I had just gotten out of a taxi so there's just this sense of keeping a guard up for whenever I fast travel and the guy loading into crowds right behind whichever character I'm using. Yakuza 5, continuing to surprise me even to its last few hours!
This finale is dumb, a few reveals that are either too obvious or kinda just too stupid, the usual endgame dungeon fighting segments- the Yakuza norm for most of the final chapter. However, the literal FINAL chapter is something to write home about. Easily my favorite finale in the series. Just a great collection of action and character moments, the only fumble maybe being the final boss. It's alright but not the most insane fight in the series. Otherwise every other character has a fantastic final cutscene to conclude the game with, with equal parts sincere, heartfelt moments like Takasugi letting Shinada know people truly miss him, and equal parts absurd GAS like a large crowd of Omi Alliance, Yamagasa, and Kitakita family members kneeling to Akiyama for felling Kanai. The only thing more absurd is knowing this isn't really the end of Kiryu's story, which does make me hesitant to what direction Y6 and eventually Yakuza Gaiden take.
Needless to say, I really enjoyed this entry. It's not unheard of in this industry that a series can ping pong from one of its worst entries to one of its best (DMC2 to 3 more notably so), but I'm so glad that it was the case here.
It’s nowhere near perfect, far from it. However with how big of title this is it’s got one hell of a batting average with only a few segments or elements I really ‘dislike’. Hell, there’s a lot of stuff I still hadn’t sunk my teeth into like any of the cabaret games, chicken racing or snowball fights.I'll have to take a break from playing more of the games with how heavy this one felt but man is it great to have it off my back now. 80 hours of playtime and only ~50% completion, baby!
(Sidenote: I had plans to discuss how much of a ‘Dream’ game this felt- thinking my acknowledgment on how often the game uses ‘dream’ was solely my own idea. Little did I realize much of the fanbase already beat me to the punch- and the subtitle of the game is even called ‘Fulfiller of Dreams’ in Japan! Here I thought I was clever…regardless I enjoy how that's the theme of the game, some people are just haters)
2016
In preparation for playing and finishing certain games on my docket and basically assuming I'll leave them with mostly high to perfect scores for these games, I figured to even it out by playing a lot of just pure mid or garbage. Perhaps then I can get a better perspective on things- widen my scope and truly come to appreciate the wonderful things in life.
I didn't play much of this though, maybe 30 minutes. I think I had better level design in custom stages for that flash Ben 10 Alien Force game on Cartoon Network's site.
I didn't play much of this though, maybe 30 minutes. I think I had better level design in custom stages for that flash Ben 10 Alien Force game on Cartoon Network's site.
Japan OCG: July 2001
NA TCG: March 2003
(Pre- "Joey-Pegasus" format)
Another good simulation of the Yu-Gi-Oh format at that point in the series, although it's held back slightly by the delay of getting new cards from the updated card list. Labyrinth of Nightmare isn't the most groundbreaking of packs with regards to the Yu-Gi-Oh meta, however it contained a handful of neat additions and themes that would have been nice to experiment with if these cards didn't take a while to obtain. At the very least, there's not necessarily a main goal or so much as a story to really gauge where you should be at- it's fundamentally the most open YuGiOh game to date and would have been the perfect game to have on car trips/vacations, with the usual chunk of neat packs to open but also a lot of extra goodies to unlock and achieve through grinds. Really the only 'end-game' (and when I decided to put the game down) was when the 'Pyramid Puzzle' event concluded, the only real story even to occur that mirrors the Marik/Card Hunter section of Battle City, but doesnt go past that into finals or any major tournament or anything. Beating this just unlocks a few more features like allowing once randomly encountered card hunters to be fought more easily on the map, a new tournament type and a new completion status element appears at the top of your options menu, filling out symbols once you achieve feats such as opening every type of pack, obtaining every card, beating a tournament 10 times, etc. Otherwise the game continues the same, with no other end goal. Mainly the game consists of you traversing a map screen with several districts, populated by random citizens to talk to and duelists to battle. Every action taken moves the player to that district and allows them to see the adjacent districts, but also moves the day forward. The only things distinguishing the days are Saturdays hold tournaments in a random district and Sundays will always give a free weekly pack of 5 cards. Otherwise it's off to the races, duel as much as you want.
Much like Eternal Duelist Soul, you are given the choice between 3 decks (although the actual contents is determined by several pools of random cards), and just like EDS this doesnt skimp out on the good stuff. Depending on which of the 3 decks, you're given the same amount of cards but 5 cards are different out of 3 colors, each color having two pools of 5 cards to fill the gap. Most of these 5 cards are extremely powerful and relate to the color of the deck: green is good spells, black is monsters and red is traps. Before I knew the card pools I picked the green deck and found myself grabbing maybe one of the best pools as it contained Pot of Greed, Snatch Steal, Nobleman of Crossout, Premature Burial and Harpie's Feather Duster. Other cards in the pools include the San-Witch combo, Jinzo, all 5 Exodia pieces, Torrential Tribute, Imperial Order, Mirror Force Bell(??? not called Ring oddly) of Destruction, Upstart Goblin and Swords of Revealing Light. Doing the math, EDS has a bit more variability but still give you a ton of power cards, but SDD's main 35 cards still contain a ton of power cards, including Graceful Charity and MST.
In general the 'good stuff' cards you can get are way easier to obtain, which is nice but can completely steamroll a lot of the competition early on. I didn't go without losing a few times, but you can easily make a meta deck that trounces most of the cast. I'm glad that the decks begin as good as they do, and the opponents aren't immediately weak, but after the first chunk of the game (lets say after 20 battles) your deck can have most everything you need to counter most everyone else. Probably the best way to go through the game is to save clearly stronger opponents for later- however my idea was to just battle each opponent in a row so that they all had the same level of victories at a time, then beat them a 10th time all in a row and unlock the Destiny Board pack, which includes most of the . Mako, Rex and Weevil are probably the easiest with Tea, Grandpa following ahead and the rest having a solid line-up of counters and range of strong offense/defense. There is a better sense of flexibility here, and if you lose a couple of times then Mokuba appears in the world map to act as a noob-friendly fight as none of his cards really top higher than 1400 attack and his AI doesn't seem to understand card effects, so this can serve as a means to earn easy packs, but he's not exactly an engaging duelist. Overall the curve is slightly better, as I do recall Eternal Duelist Soul having pretty competent duels right out the gate in the first wave of duelists with only those 5 to pick from- whereas this has several more opponents ranging in difficulty to pick, and an 'easy mode' to fall back on. That said it does begin to plateau once you've fought each fighter a few times, so I kinda wish the duelists evolved and changed their strategies after a while. Maybe have X duelist have an additional strategy they could load up after you win Y times against X duelist (eg have Mako's 'penguin soldier/'flip-centric' strategy lean more into that at first but after 5 wins turn into a standard beatdown with Umi? not sure). Rather it seems like most duelists use a combination of two strategies that aren't incoherent but don't exactly have a solid win-condition. Funny enough I think the clearest two win-cons in the game come from Kaiba which makes sense and Tea of all duelists? I saw her Fusion sage and get out her Joan way more than a few times and it didn't seem like other duelists had such a plan. It is funny how certain characters have their own strategies that can be easily countered, though. Using Kaiba as an example: he would be this ultra scary boss, utilizing Cyber-Stein to pay 5000 LP to bring out Blue Eyes Ultimate turn 1, towering over any conventional monsters and jumping further in tempo than the other characters do. That said this is such a hilariously easy strategy to read and counter, his only backrow is usually a 'Negate Attack' or 'Mirror Force' which isn't that scary as this allows you to either Snatch Steal, Change of Heart (even funnier than SS since Kaiba pays the 5000 for BEUD but the difference in you stealing and attacking with BEUD against the leftover Cyber Stein kills him), Trap Hole, Dark Hole, Copycat, Raigeki, Man-Eater Bug, etc. the threat away. The amount of removal that just deflates this strategy is hilarious. Genuinely, Joey is a much harder opponent in this regard since he often carries a wider arrange of spells and traps.
To try and differentiate from the prior Eternal Duelist Soul strategy, I tried to think of a different goal from the hand control I utilized then. Unfortunately there's not as many great options at disposal as 'Good Stuff' medley. GOAT format hasn't fully matured and there's a lot of strategies that only come into play a few packs later. Labyrinth of Nightmare contains most notably the mask spell/traps, and the 'Destiny Board' cards. The former being a series of equip spells and traps that contain a variety of buffs, debuffs, battle tricks or control options, while the latter is an alt win conditions that procs once the player plays all 5 destiny board cards in the backrow and spells 'F-I-N-A-L' (or D-E-A-T-H in jp). This pack also contains the 'Revival Jam' cards that was most notable in the anime for Yugi's victory against a seemingly impenetrable defense (Sadly Lava Golem isn't out until later). Unfortunately none of these strategies are really that notable outside of the anime. In reality the best Labyrinth of Nightmare cards are actually pretty underrated, or otherwise didn't become staples until much later. Cards really begin to see a shift toward utilizing the graveyard as a source of power and the banish pile as the true final destination for cards. Monsters like Bazoo the Soul Eater and Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer boast a strong 1800 atk but really benefit having abilities that banishes your cards for a buff or sends opponents GY cards to the banish pile, respectively. The pack also contains Gemini Elf but she's been in games since Dark Duel Stories which is really fucking with my perception of how these cards are released, only compounded by me not realizing Ring of Destruction also wasn't released until a few packs later in the TCG. Torrential Tribute being a board wipe upon summon, Magic Cylinder being a redirect of battle damage, and the large equip totals you can reach with Mage Power or United We Stand (see Maha Vailo), are pretty notable releases in the pack. Along with these are other infamous such as: Gilasaurus which would eventually help bolster the 'Magical Scientist FTK', Amazoness Archer which can do burn damage multiple times a turn for tributing 2 monsters (only banned in OCG), Jowgen the Spiritualist, which became a standard in Spellbook decks and helped get 'Last Turn' banned, and Card of Safe Return, which allows a draw if you Special Summon from grave (not once per turn??? of course its banned). Above all else though this game would have been a must buy if you were a duelist, as the game came bundled in with cards- but not just any cards. Valkyrion is a neat boss monster for the magnet warriors but nothing too special, Sinister Serpent is deceptively powerful as 'discard' fodder as it returns from the GY to the hand each turn, and Harpie Feather Duster is a must-have, destroying all spell and traps on the opponents side, a staple that continues to see play (or at least side deck rep) today. Overall the card additions to SDD are pretty solid, but much of the standout cards take a while to grab or aren't the most explosive. Still, Labyrinth of Nightmare and this game do mark a pivotal shift in the metagame and way cards function.
The main issue is just that I look into the typical decks by the end of GOAT format, and much is still missing by this point in YGO, we still haven't gotten to the Gravekeepers, the Chaos cards, PAC-MAN, pure Hand control, Umi beatdown, Zombies, Monarchs and other finalized decks in GOAT format by the end of 2005. I guess you can do Clown Control, Last Warrior lock-out, and some other neat decks but much of the deck building still falls on very proto-thematic philosophies where the best deck is still a 'Beatdown' deck but maybe with a specific flavor of a given attribute. Each subsequent pack still gives the same amount of 'good' cards from this point on (mostly, kinda) so this isn't the fault of the game or the distribution of cards but I do plan as later games (given that all other variables remain positive) begin to have larger times gaps between releases and more booster sets fill out the pool, will just get better as the access to more variety will incentivize more kinds of playstyles and in a sense, replayability. Sidenote, why is mystic tomato so hard to find? There's a lot of cards like these that seemed pretty essential during the meta around this time and Tomato has yet to really show up in my playthroughs despite stuff like Sangan and Witch being pretty easy to snag in this game. All three of these are some of the strongest 'recruiters' (ie cards that pull another card from the deck according to a given criteria, such as any monster with less than 1500 atk/def or have 'dark' attribute). It's just fairly odd to not see it at all in the game during my playthrough not in any pack early on nor in any opponent's deck (afaik), but Shining Justice (the light attr. equivalent) and Giant Rat (the earth attr.) are pretty par for the course. The card is only available once you reach 10000 duelist points, which isn't difficult but was about where I put the game down. It does get me thinking about how the strategy and thought about the meta has evolved over time; was Mystic Tomato considered superior over several other cards in the meta, even other staples? I do know about certain battling philosophies such as Solemn Judgment not being as universally played due to a mindset where the 'pay half your current LP' condition was deemed too risky. Maybe the self-replacing 'pull from deck to field upon destruction' was considered more lucrative than Witch/Sangan's more broader but perhaps slower 'pull from deck to hand' effect? Very interesting/perplexing to think about, especially since the latter cards were more limited on the banlist at the time anyway. Also funny to think about how many of the much harder and grindier packs to get contain cards that aren't really all that good, just kinda fan-servicey or subpar. At the end of the day at least, most cards are available anyway through the password system, but I do try to avoid that myself. By the end of the game much of my deck looked similar to how I left EDS, although I did try to swap in a few different flavors here and there to spice things up, like Toll/Chain Energy burn (terrible idea), Clown Control (very impractical when incomplete) and Maha Vailo. Maha Vailo is a very funny card, gaining an additional 500 attack points for each equip spell attached to it, including stuff like Premature Burial. A Premature Burial Maha Vailo on top of Sword of Dark Seated and Axe of Despair turns a 1550 attack card into a 3050 and then its effect puts it to a whopping 4550, and this isn't the worst it can get. Sadly, Mage Power and United We Stand are fairly late in the game to get, otherwise I would have run as much as I could. I wish Ben Kei was available to create this juggernaut of an equip spell deck, but alas.
I also wish there was an actual calendar or any way to see how many weeks have passed. You can only tell what day it is but there's no other measurement of what time has passed, and certain packs and events go off a weekly timer as to when you first see them, like the KC Cup. Trying to find tournament locations and proc events such as the Card Hunter encounters can be kinda odd as I swear its only in one corner of the map and might take a week or two after the warning announcement to pop up. In this regard its kind of hard to get a feeling as to how you actually progress into the Pyramid Puzzle quest, especially when I encounter Lumis and Umbra twice but it didn't seem like a different encounter. Of course, this is in reference to a duo during the Battle City arc this is based off of and you can't really fight two duelists at the same time so it could have been a fight against Lumis and then Umbra but as two separate card hunter encounters? I'm wasn't sure at first, the dialogue and play-style didn't seem any different. It only took me a while to find out that certain townspeople will appear as Rare Hunters. I had figured these encounters were based off a random encounter, but you'd fight each member in a set order from Strings to L&U to Exodia guy to Arkana to Odion, etc. Nah, actually I found Arkana last despite Odion being like a second in command for Marik, very weird and I'm glad I realized that sooner than later because I didn't talk to any towns person between then and the start of the game.
The tournaments are kinda hard to find at times, but they're a neat function once you do find one on a Saturday. I still don't entirely think the side deck is necessary against any of these opponents but its still neat you can set one up just in case you have a specific but flawed strategy in mind and need potential backups in a best of 3 format. More interestingly I think are the 'Target' weeks where you're asked to seek out two specific duelists that are given to you and beat them for a special pack. This is a neat idea, and got me to understand the kind of patterns that each of these duelists follow. What does confuse me is that there's supposedly interruptions that can happen if two duelists are on the same district on the map? I tried seeing what I could get but each duelist was matched already to a certain combination. Tea was always in the same area as Bakura, Kaiba was usually alone or with Ishizu, Joey was usually alone, Yugi was usually alone, etc. I don't know if that's a case of me playing the game onVBA or what.
Overall it's slightly better than the Eternal Duelist Soul, but only by a slight degree. It's got more cards and a lot of the best cards are extremely easy to get once you know what packs have what, but because of this much of the later chunks of the game feel like a grind. Originally I was gonna place this about similarly to EDS but the lack of any major story kinda just frees you to do anything, at your own pace. Once I realized this, I figured this would actually be an excellent game to have had as a kid or on a long trip, definitely has that 'On a deserted island' feel. It's not as big a jump in card pool as I had hoped, but all things considered it's an improved game and better intro to the card game than Eternal Duelist Soul.
NA TCG: March 2003
(Pre- "Joey-Pegasus" format)
Another good simulation of the Yu-Gi-Oh format at that point in the series, although it's held back slightly by the delay of getting new cards from the updated card list. Labyrinth of Nightmare isn't the most groundbreaking of packs with regards to the Yu-Gi-Oh meta, however it contained a handful of neat additions and themes that would have been nice to experiment with if these cards didn't take a while to obtain. At the very least, there's not necessarily a main goal or so much as a story to really gauge where you should be at- it's fundamentally the most open YuGiOh game to date and would have been the perfect game to have on car trips/vacations, with the usual chunk of neat packs to open but also a lot of extra goodies to unlock and achieve through grinds. Really the only 'end-game' (and when I decided to put the game down) was when the 'Pyramid Puzzle' event concluded, the only real story even to occur that mirrors the Marik/Card Hunter section of Battle City, but doesnt go past that into finals or any major tournament or anything. Beating this just unlocks a few more features like allowing once randomly encountered card hunters to be fought more easily on the map, a new tournament type and a new completion status element appears at the top of your options menu, filling out symbols once you achieve feats such as opening every type of pack, obtaining every card, beating a tournament 10 times, etc. Otherwise the game continues the same, with no other end goal. Mainly the game consists of you traversing a map screen with several districts, populated by random citizens to talk to and duelists to battle. Every action taken moves the player to that district and allows them to see the adjacent districts, but also moves the day forward. The only things distinguishing the days are Saturdays hold tournaments in a random district and Sundays will always give a free weekly pack of 5 cards. Otherwise it's off to the races, duel as much as you want.
Much like Eternal Duelist Soul, you are given the choice between 3 decks (although the actual contents is determined by several pools of random cards), and just like EDS this doesnt skimp out on the good stuff. Depending on which of the 3 decks, you're given the same amount of cards but 5 cards are different out of 3 colors, each color having two pools of 5 cards to fill the gap. Most of these 5 cards are extremely powerful and relate to the color of the deck: green is good spells, black is monsters and red is traps. Before I knew the card pools I picked the green deck and found myself grabbing maybe one of the best pools as it contained Pot of Greed, Snatch Steal, Nobleman of Crossout, Premature Burial and Harpie's Feather Duster. Other cards in the pools include the San-Witch combo, Jinzo, all 5 Exodia pieces, Torrential Tribute, Imperial Order, Mirror Force Bell(??? not called Ring oddly) of Destruction, Upstart Goblin and Swords of Revealing Light. Doing the math, EDS has a bit more variability but still give you a ton of power cards, but SDD's main 35 cards still contain a ton of power cards, including Graceful Charity and MST.
In general the 'good stuff' cards you can get are way easier to obtain, which is nice but can completely steamroll a lot of the competition early on. I didn't go without losing a few times, but you can easily make a meta deck that trounces most of the cast. I'm glad that the decks begin as good as they do, and the opponents aren't immediately weak, but after the first chunk of the game (lets say after 20 battles) your deck can have most everything you need to counter most everyone else. Probably the best way to go through the game is to save clearly stronger opponents for later- however my idea was to just battle each opponent in a row so that they all had the same level of victories at a time, then beat them a 10th time all in a row and unlock the Destiny Board pack, which includes most of the . Mako, Rex and Weevil are probably the easiest with Tea, Grandpa following ahead and the rest having a solid line-up of counters and range of strong offense/defense. There is a better sense of flexibility here, and if you lose a couple of times then Mokuba appears in the world map to act as a noob-friendly fight as none of his cards really top higher than 1400 attack and his AI doesn't seem to understand card effects, so this can serve as a means to earn easy packs, but he's not exactly an engaging duelist. Overall the curve is slightly better, as I do recall Eternal Duelist Soul having pretty competent duels right out the gate in the first wave of duelists with only those 5 to pick from- whereas this has several more opponents ranging in difficulty to pick, and an 'easy mode' to fall back on. That said it does begin to plateau once you've fought each fighter a few times, so I kinda wish the duelists evolved and changed their strategies after a while. Maybe have X duelist have an additional strategy they could load up after you win Y times against X duelist (eg have Mako's 'penguin soldier/'flip-centric' strategy lean more into that at first but after 5 wins turn into a standard beatdown with Umi? not sure). Rather it seems like most duelists use a combination of two strategies that aren't incoherent but don't exactly have a solid win-condition. Funny enough I think the clearest two win-cons in the game come from Kaiba which makes sense and Tea of all duelists? I saw her Fusion sage and get out her Joan way more than a few times and it didn't seem like other duelists had such a plan. It is funny how certain characters have their own strategies that can be easily countered, though. Using Kaiba as an example: he would be this ultra scary boss, utilizing Cyber-Stein to pay 5000 LP to bring out Blue Eyes Ultimate turn 1, towering over any conventional monsters and jumping further in tempo than the other characters do. That said this is such a hilariously easy strategy to read and counter, his only backrow is usually a 'Negate Attack' or 'Mirror Force' which isn't that scary as this allows you to either Snatch Steal, Change of Heart (even funnier than SS since Kaiba pays the 5000 for BEUD but the difference in you stealing and attacking with BEUD against the leftover Cyber Stein kills him), Trap Hole, Dark Hole, Copycat, Raigeki, Man-Eater Bug, etc. the threat away. The amount of removal that just deflates this strategy is hilarious. Genuinely, Joey is a much harder opponent in this regard since he often carries a wider arrange of spells and traps.
To try and differentiate from the prior Eternal Duelist Soul strategy, I tried to think of a different goal from the hand control I utilized then. Unfortunately there's not as many great options at disposal as 'Good Stuff' medley. GOAT format hasn't fully matured and there's a lot of strategies that only come into play a few packs later. Labyrinth of Nightmare contains most notably the mask spell/traps, and the 'Destiny Board' cards. The former being a series of equip spells and traps that contain a variety of buffs, debuffs, battle tricks or control options, while the latter is an alt win conditions that procs once the player plays all 5 destiny board cards in the backrow and spells 'F-I-N-A-L' (or D-E-A-T-H in jp). This pack also contains the 'Revival Jam' cards that was most notable in the anime for Yugi's victory against a seemingly impenetrable defense (Sadly Lava Golem isn't out until later). Unfortunately none of these strategies are really that notable outside of the anime. In reality the best Labyrinth of Nightmare cards are actually pretty underrated, or otherwise didn't become staples until much later. Cards really begin to see a shift toward utilizing the graveyard as a source of power and the banish pile as the true final destination for cards. Monsters like Bazoo the Soul Eater and Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer boast a strong 1800 atk but really benefit having abilities that banishes your cards for a buff or sends opponents GY cards to the banish pile, respectively. The pack also contains Gemini Elf but she's been in games since Dark Duel Stories which is really fucking with my perception of how these cards are released, only compounded by me not realizing Ring of Destruction also wasn't released until a few packs later in the TCG. Torrential Tribute being a board wipe upon summon, Magic Cylinder being a redirect of battle damage, and the large equip totals you can reach with Mage Power or United We Stand (see Maha Vailo), are pretty notable releases in the pack. Along with these are other infamous such as: Gilasaurus which would eventually help bolster the 'Magical Scientist FTK', Amazoness Archer which can do burn damage multiple times a turn for tributing 2 monsters (only banned in OCG), Jowgen the Spiritualist, which became a standard in Spellbook decks and helped get 'Last Turn' banned, and Card of Safe Return, which allows a draw if you Special Summon from grave (not once per turn??? of course its banned). Above all else though this game would have been a must buy if you were a duelist, as the game came bundled in with cards- but not just any cards. Valkyrion is a neat boss monster for the magnet warriors but nothing too special, Sinister Serpent is deceptively powerful as 'discard' fodder as it returns from the GY to the hand each turn, and Harpie Feather Duster is a must-have, destroying all spell and traps on the opponents side, a staple that continues to see play (or at least side deck rep) today. Overall the card additions to SDD are pretty solid, but much of the standout cards take a while to grab or aren't the most explosive. Still, Labyrinth of Nightmare and this game do mark a pivotal shift in the metagame and way cards function.
The main issue is just that I look into the typical decks by the end of GOAT format, and much is still missing by this point in YGO, we still haven't gotten to the Gravekeepers, the Chaos cards, PAC-MAN, pure Hand control, Umi beatdown, Zombies, Monarchs and other finalized decks in GOAT format by the end of 2005. I guess you can do Clown Control, Last Warrior lock-out, and some other neat decks but much of the deck building still falls on very proto-thematic philosophies where the best deck is still a 'Beatdown' deck but maybe with a specific flavor of a given attribute. Each subsequent pack still gives the same amount of 'good' cards from this point on (mostly, kinda) so this isn't the fault of the game or the distribution of cards but I do plan as later games (given that all other variables remain positive) begin to have larger times gaps between releases and more booster sets fill out the pool, will just get better as the access to more variety will incentivize more kinds of playstyles and in a sense, replayability. Sidenote, why is mystic tomato so hard to find? There's a lot of cards like these that seemed pretty essential during the meta around this time and Tomato has yet to really show up in my playthroughs despite stuff like Sangan and Witch being pretty easy to snag in this game. All three of these are some of the strongest 'recruiters' (ie cards that pull another card from the deck according to a given criteria, such as any monster with less than 1500 atk/def or have 'dark' attribute). It's just fairly odd to not see it at all in the game during my playthrough not in any pack early on nor in any opponent's deck (afaik), but Shining Justice (the light attr. equivalent) and Giant Rat (the earth attr.) are pretty par for the course. The card is only available once you reach 10000 duelist points, which isn't difficult but was about where I put the game down. It does get me thinking about how the strategy and thought about the meta has evolved over time; was Mystic Tomato considered superior over several other cards in the meta, even other staples? I do know about certain battling philosophies such as Solemn Judgment not being as universally played due to a mindset where the 'pay half your current LP' condition was deemed too risky. Maybe the self-replacing 'pull from deck to field upon destruction' was considered more lucrative than Witch/Sangan's more broader but perhaps slower 'pull from deck to hand' effect? Very interesting/perplexing to think about, especially since the latter cards were more limited on the banlist at the time anyway. Also funny to think about how many of the much harder and grindier packs to get contain cards that aren't really all that good, just kinda fan-servicey or subpar. At the end of the day at least, most cards are available anyway through the password system, but I do try to avoid that myself. By the end of the game much of my deck looked similar to how I left EDS, although I did try to swap in a few different flavors here and there to spice things up, like Toll/Chain Energy burn (terrible idea), Clown Control (very impractical when incomplete) and Maha Vailo. Maha Vailo is a very funny card, gaining an additional 500 attack points for each equip spell attached to it, including stuff like Premature Burial. A Premature Burial Maha Vailo on top of Sword of Dark Seated and Axe of Despair turns a 1550 attack card into a 3050 and then its effect puts it to a whopping 4550, and this isn't the worst it can get. Sadly, Mage Power and United We Stand are fairly late in the game to get, otherwise I would have run as much as I could. I wish Ben Kei was available to create this juggernaut of an equip spell deck, but alas.
I also wish there was an actual calendar or any way to see how many weeks have passed. You can only tell what day it is but there's no other measurement of what time has passed, and certain packs and events go off a weekly timer as to when you first see them, like the KC Cup. Trying to find tournament locations and proc events such as the Card Hunter encounters can be kinda odd as I swear its only in one corner of the map and might take a week or two after the warning announcement to pop up. In this regard its kind of hard to get a feeling as to how you actually progress into the Pyramid Puzzle quest, especially when I encounter Lumis and Umbra twice but it didn't seem like a different encounter. Of course, this is in reference to a duo during the Battle City arc this is based off of and you can't really fight two duelists at the same time so it could have been a fight against Lumis and then Umbra but as two separate card hunter encounters? I'm wasn't sure at first, the dialogue and play-style didn't seem any different. It only took me a while to find out that certain townspeople will appear as Rare Hunters. I had figured these encounters were based off a random encounter, but you'd fight each member in a set order from Strings to L&U to Exodia guy to Arkana to Odion, etc. Nah, actually I found Arkana last despite Odion being like a second in command for Marik, very weird and I'm glad I realized that sooner than later because I didn't talk to any towns person between then and the start of the game.
The tournaments are kinda hard to find at times, but they're a neat function once you do find one on a Saturday. I still don't entirely think the side deck is necessary against any of these opponents but its still neat you can set one up just in case you have a specific but flawed strategy in mind and need potential backups in a best of 3 format. More interestingly I think are the 'Target' weeks where you're asked to seek out two specific duelists that are given to you and beat them for a special pack. This is a neat idea, and got me to understand the kind of patterns that each of these duelists follow. What does confuse me is that there's supposedly interruptions that can happen if two duelists are on the same district on the map? I tried seeing what I could get but each duelist was matched already to a certain combination. Tea was always in the same area as Bakura, Kaiba was usually alone or with Ishizu, Joey was usually alone, Yugi was usually alone, etc. I don't know if that's a case of me playing the game on
Overall it's slightly better than the Eternal Duelist Soul, but only by a slight degree. It's got more cards and a lot of the best cards are extremely easy to get once you know what packs have what, but because of this much of the later chunks of the game feel like a grind. Originally I was gonna place this about similarly to EDS but the lack of any major story kinda just frees you to do anything, at your own pace. Once I realized this, I figured this would actually be an excellent game to have had as a kid or on a long trip, definitely has that 'On a deserted island' feel. It's not as big a jump in card pool as I had hoped, but all things considered it's an improved game and better intro to the card game than Eternal Duelist Soul.
2019
This review contains spoilers
I want to begin this review stating that I always enjoy hearing the feedback and opinions of others before tackling a game. The medium of gaming is so varied and tactilely-dependent that for many games no two playthroughs are going to be the same game even if said game is linear in structure. Some people go through 2D Mario games in a brisk or casual manner going through levels in a jovial trot, while others may partake in the same game speeding through levels and performing riskier movements in the name of testing one's own skill. Games are so much fun to talk about and they're even more fun when realizing my own weaknesses and limitations with regards to the medium that I best engage in. It's incredibly hard for me to not like or extend an olive branch to games even when I know there's troubles, I often feel as though I go too easy on my critiques and final thoughts on a work. I'm also an incredibly patient man; in my Xenoblade 2 review if I didn't mentally slap myself after several hours of grinding for the last and rarest blade I had yet to roll, I'm certain I would have spent however long it would have needed to take to get that blade, even if I never used them. I've never been prescribed any form of OCD or adjacent disorder, nor have I ever gone to a psychiatrist or physician for the purpose of diagnosing or ascribing any kind of label to my patterns of game 'completion' or 'progression', whether it be 100& completion or some predetermined, arbitrary goal (e.g. 'I want to get all Blades in XB2', or commonly in Playstation games '50% trophy sounds good on a first run'). Often times, even when I know that my curiousities in filling out an imaginary checklist of progression might bring more friction into a playthrough I do usually find some enjoyment in the long run of having explored some corner of a game that I otherwise might have just skipped over had I considered a more casual trimming of the game. I don't care about Agate nor her obnoxious Blade Quest in XB2 but damn if it doesnt feel good to say that I know it doesn't feel good. Some people might disagree and enjoy the worldbuilding of this minor race and characterization of Agate, some might not have even cared to do the Blade Quest in the first place because of how off the beaten path it is. This depth in which Xenoblade and many similar large games have instilled into their worlds makes for an interesting case study of the ways certain gamers might tackle 'break time' in open world or 'less-than-linear' games. Now, Yakuza. Yakuza is a lot like Xenoblade.
...
Well, not really, however I do always wonder how people tackle the games within the Yakuza/RGG series with regards to its charcuterie board of minigames, sidestories, character completion and distractions. Not to mention each game's usual 'unique' side game such as the Kiryu real estate in Y0, Majima Construction in YK2, and the entire school subsection in Lost Judgment. Each game usually does an excellent job at drawing me in to suck out a several 10s of hours of playtime to see what the game has to offer, and I'm typically satisfied with each game, even with the varying degrees of quality some minigames might have. The first exception to this format was Yakuza 3, a game in which I didn't spend but so long in as much of the side minigames didn't entice me as they usually did, and the side content such as the Hostess minigame was a lot less involved as later iterations would make it. For the most part, I spent my time in Yakuza 3 mostly doing the main story and a small chunk of the side stories, and most of the revelations. This makes it one of the shorter games I've spent my time with, but I thoroughly enjoyed my first run through 3, seeing the new locales in Okinawa and getting to know its residents. One of the games' biggest detractions was honestly whenever Kiryu had to be dragged back to Kamurocho. I'm not starting to dislike Kamurocho, and in 3 much of the story content that goes on there is pretty good, and being accompanied by Rikiya once was a fun time, leading to some fun sidestories. However, I couldn't help but feel as though my interest in the city was waning, and me knowing of other locations in later games was starting to creep in. Okinawa served as a good vacation from the usual layouts and locales of the city, and I appreciate 3 for its reprieve from the usual Yakuza vibes.
Yakuza 4 doesn't help.
Part 1: Akiyama
Perhaps the best section of the entire playthrough, and I do appreciate his segment a lot in hindsight. At the time that I was playing as him, however, at the time that I was going through his story I was just going through the motions. I wasn't sure just how the story was going so I took much of it at face value and -knowing that there was certain plot elements people didn't sit right with- I was kind of trying too hard to look for any detail that seemed off or sloppy. But thankfully, Akiyama's section is relatively tame and manages to feel like an actual yakuza game. His moveset of kicks is also the best in the game, as it becomes incredibly satisfying to loop enemies and bosses into a flurry of kicks and sweeps that do a fair amount of damage. This was also where I probably spent most of my overall playtime, as I usually spend the majority of 'hobby' time at the start of a playthrough. Did most of my baseball, bowling, karaoke and whatnot as Akiyama. There's honestly not too much to say with Akiyama as his chapter progresses pretty normally, my only real complaint being that it drags you into doing the hostess minigame and that hasn't really improved in any significant way from Yakuza 3 so that's a bit boring. Otherwise a really solid addition and hopefully a good sign for things to come, right? (3/4)
Part 2: Saejima
Chapter 1
The nightmare of this game begins almost immediately, as the second part opens on a series of cutscenes, including one of our main conflicts in the grand scheme of Yakuza 4- the murder of 18 yakuza inside a Ramen joint 25 years ago at the hands of Saejima. Unknowingly this seems like no issue, but we'll come to understand why I bring this up later. Then, once the cutscenes end, we open up on a prison segment with Saejima. This isn't the best first impression as aside from a few fights this is primarily just a fetch-quest within the courtyard and a few cutscenes before the typical Yakuza combat set-piece. Before that, I will say Yamazaki's reappearance from the ending of 3 is very funny to say the least, but its a neat enough tie-in from that game that I don't have any problems with it immediately. The prison combat section would be the perfect time for Saejima to truly show his abilities as a fighter. Unfortunate for Saejima, he has perhaps the worst playstyle thus far in the series. It really takes a while for him to feel good at all, and his reliance on heavy hits in a game with incredibly wonky ai guarding, heat gauge loss and dodging. Yakuza 3 had its issues in some fights, although certain other aspects to Kiryu's fighting style kinda balanced things out in my mind, such as his upgraded combo finishers, his grabs and his full list of revelations. With this game however, many of its combat issues really begin to shine through with this stage and in particular its main fight with Saito, the prison warden. He’s possibly the worst fight in the game (and honestly series) just in terms of the disadvantage you’re at by this point in the game. A lack of any real prep time, no saving graces around the arena, a boss with a weapon that proves stun too often, and a clunky player character all-around make this a horrible experience, for sure. The only main benefit here is that the arena is spacious enough that if you grabbed that charging tackle moving you have a better time whittling down his hp in a manner he doesn’t avoid. (0)
Chapter 2
Literally one fight and a cutscene. Also one of the grossest cutscenes in the series. (0)
Chapter 3
Probably the one reprieve Saejima ever gets in the game, as it feels like you get to play Yakuza. Unfortunately, as I had spent much of my time goofing around as Akiyama I figured I’d spend chapter 3 mostly tackling the rest of the story. What I didn’t know was after a certain point the games railroads you not toward a certain objective per se, but definitely away from certain other areas I wish I could back up. After progressing far enough into the chapter, you can’t get back to the sewers to upgrade Saejima’s skills despite probably needing to head out to craft a better pickaxe (I swear this was immediately after I left the sewers in the first place). Then the game has you go and seek out the florist, leading to mostly wandering around until you find Purgatory, and do the typical purgatory arena fight.
Also fuck that cop chase minigame (0).
Chapter 4
As if it couldn’t get any worse the big man has a stealth segment as well, threatening you with game over if a cop catches you. Also you get one last interrupti- I mean side quest at the most inopportune time as the entirety of Kamurocho is crawling with cops that can allegedly, immediately, end your game. I don’t really care about the plot summary anymore. (0)
Part 3: Tanimura
Chapter 1
Tanimura is a middling at best, scum of the earth at worst, crooked protagonist. This is the only chance in the series he gets to strut his stuff and I’m incredibly glad it is. His main characterization is gambling, the most tired gimmick in the series. He gambles while he’s supposed to be on duty, and one of the first scenes we see of him is turning a blind eye to human trafficking for cash. Much of the first part just feels like complete plot dump and by this point the fatigue has set in.
It’s very hard for me to start tolerating a game after a really rough segment, and I tend to parallel my thoughts on a terrible game as similar to drowning. It doesn’t really matter whether I survive or not, how terrible the feeling of struggling really poisons my vibe for the following section so if it doesn’t rescue me, it only feels worse the longer I can’t gasp a pocket of air. Tanimura sure isn’t that breath of fresh air. These long ass plot dumps and uninteresting character sections, the police scanner being…something.
Even the docks section doesn’t really pique any interest. I don’t know who this cop is, and by most of my understanding he seems like an average joe that possibly fights better than most (unfortunately I also don’t like this fighting style but let’s say he fights well). Here he goes, barreling through this Takeshi’s castle ass dungeon at the docks, with oil barrel action and hordes of brutal yakuza abound. I don’t know who Tanimura is! How can he do all these things! I don’t care how cool your OC is! At least Saejima is shown to have the guts and physique that we can believe he’d be able to take out waves of enemies, and Akiyama (along with Hana, possibly) seem to have better street experience in dealing with thugs or rowdy sorts. Tanimura doing all these fancy moves means nothing to me because I know his ass isn’t going anywhere after this game.
Also by the end of this segment we see more plot stuff about our antagonists and whatever, my main point to bring up here is we begin the pattern of just unnecessarily corny, melodramatic and cliched killings/betrayals. Yakuza games are abound with such cliches but I feel as though whenever they partake in such tropes it usually sets well with the narrative in a logical and emotionally satisfying manner, whereas I could see that this game was just gonna keep killing all these plot-central characters they just introduced and I know I’ll never see again. (0)
Chapter 2:
More plot dump. I’ve decided not to delve too deep in the plot because it really isn’t that good. I didn’t care about any of what the game was offering. You get introduced to the teacher for Tanimura, a character named Nair and I knew this girl was trouble from second one. When hanging with a friend I showed him where I was at and he directed me to try one of her sparring sessions. He showed me just how much damage she takes if you try to tackle her the normal way (very tiny chips of health, I barely dented her) and I lost. Then, he showed me that you have to cheese her by parrying her into a corner and not letting her gain any spatial advantage or upper hand. Needless to say, I didn’t want to talk to Nair. More plot dump and running around Kamurocho. Dead dad drama. Missing brother drama. Then a segment chasing/fighting toward the Homeland. (0)
Chapter 3:
Little Asia is kinda neat, but a real pain in the ass to walk through since its camera is constantly up your ass. You go a room. You end the chapter. You learn something. (0)
*I* learned a few chapters back that this game had extraordinarily terrible pacing.
Chapter 4:
You get a call from Kido and head to the docks and engage in a boat chase and…this is hilarious. The one point I’ll give Tanimura is that this got to the point of stupidity where it looped back around into being somewhat enjoyable. This boat chase where you just spam Triangle and fire at your just disgraced rat cop boss. I don’t think he ever got a shot back at me, just spamming the fire button and trailing slowly behind him stuns him hard enough to not ever fire the gun I think he has(?). You have one last boss fight and more betrayal/murder/backstab of the cast ensues.
I was gonna give this chapter a point but then I remembered this was the point of the story in which you learn about rubber bullets. (0)
I’ll give Tanimura this, he gets brownie points for that Russian roulette side story though.
Part 4 Kiryu
Chapter 1:
Fucking JINGU??? (0)
Chapter 2:
Finally you get to play as Kiryu, and you know what. Finally. This chapter only lasts like 5 minutes gameplay wise as, if you step anywhere near Millennium Tower, the cutscene that ends the chapter just starts. But THIS was a breathe of fresh air I needed. (1)
Chapter 3:
The plot shit just gets worse and worse the more you learn about it, so I’ll just focus on what really grinded my gears. You return to Date and Yasuko goes missing, yeah? I swore that this was meaning that she was gone maybe an hour or more, and Date was just waking up after a short but powerful enough dose that she escaped to a certain location. I don’t know if I missed a cutscene or a hint or what but apparently she’s only about 15 feet away and somehow I completely missed going north and triggering this. I spent the better part of 30 minutes just scouring Kamurocho and trying my best to logically determine where she was in this entire city. Fortune tellers were useless, npcs said nothing, most places were closed off anyway due to rain/plot! Hell I even went into theatre square and triggered the gang side quest for kiryu and thought that was a story relevant thing I needed to accomplish beforehand! Nope! She was just right outside my building!…At least the fight with Akiyama and Tanimura was fun. (0)
Chapter 4:
Finally we learn about Kido and his discovery of the 100 billion yen or something, anyway we go to West Park and have our final dungeon encounter, solely as Kiryu. This goes on for a long, long time and at least that means we get to build up Kiryu quite well before the end. Those firearm dudes and the grappling guys fucking suck though, hope nothing like that ever happens again in this game. More killing, betrayal whatever at the top of the tower. (1)
FINALE:
All things considered, the finale of this game was shaping up to be pretty fun. And.. at the start it is! We have our protagonists swag away from a funeral, suited up and looking up to the rooftop of the millennium tower. We cut away to our enemies, already positioned up there and we don’t just rise to meet them- we descent from helicopter to confront them. Akiyama serves as our first fight against Arai and I love this fight. Man does Akiyama just lay a hurt down on this man, he really got the long end of the stick by the end of the game. Next is Saejima versus Kido, a matchup I wasn’t sure I was fond of but then I remembered…I had bought 5 guns for a stupid achievement… and I began wailing on 3/4ths of a single color of his health bar. I don’t know why he’s allowed to recover, only I can do that! But oddly, I took him down with a bit of trouble but nothing rough. Then, Kiryu and Daigo finally settle it… was this fight supposed to be hard? Except actually it was, I was kinda getting my ass kicked here I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong. But after a bit of attrition, even Daigo the head of the Tojo fell. Lastly… we have Tanimura versus…this old man… and like 18 fucking other dudes.
What the fuck were they thinking.
The reason there’s that red color next to this game review is this stupid ass boss fight. Seriously, how many guys did you think you needed for this one fight? And its main boss is holding a gun, which is certainly always a fun time in yakuza games. I don’t even remember which old dude it is as I’m typing it out, why is this the final boss? Why do I keep fucking dying. I’ll say it here and end it quick like I did this game because I really don’t wanna spend more time talking about this game. The first three fights get the 3 points I arbitrarily made up mid-review, but I thought they served a neat purpose. The fourth point doesn’t go to this final fight (the final score is an 8/20 by this stupid measure I made) and in fact I’m using a lot of willpower to not tank this game further than I already am because I have to say: A finale really makes a game.
Hell, it makes a lot of things in media. A lot of games in my time have usually felt buffed because I thought it ended extremely well, and usually if a game fizzles out toward the climax it doesn’t stick as well after the credits roll. Yakuza 3 does an excellent job at the former. I loved the final fight and the change to the title screen music post-completion, it felt really satisfying to beat it. On the contrast I refused to beat this game. I could not beat this fight, primarily because I had not prepared myself as well as I had hoped and also because quite frankly this fight just sucks. I didn’t think my final trial was going to be 12 obnoxious ass dudes and some dude with a pistol that constantly ran away.
My greatest enjoyment and ultimately the reason I quit trying to fight the boss was the image in my mind that the last moments of Tanimura (a character I don't like but ultimately don't despite for the record) being this absolute pile on of fully armored, combat knife wielding bodyguards beating the absolute living hell out of him.
He has a gun!! Why doesn't he use it???? Like in combat!! Please!!!
...........................................
I enjoy thinking back through games, especially ones i had some trouble with. Not necessarily hated, just games with obvious segments where it felt as though I sunk time for thinking a certain way about an issue or tackling a goal in a wrong way.I love thinking back through and wondering 'what if on a second playthrough long in the future I did X, Y or Z? Yeah that'd certainly help'. The way we go about games and do our runs can shape up to mean a lot by the end of a game. With Yakuza 4 I feel so bad nearing the end because I don't think there's much I'd wanna do to really rectify any hardship I did have with it. I'm not looking forward to any future playthrough or engaging with this game any more than I already have. I had some idea of why this game wasn't nearly as praised as others in the franchise but I wasnt sure to what extent it'd attach to me. By the end of Akiyama's act, I was still fairly optimistic in what the game had to offer. Only to realize that much of the game worth experiencing was fulfilled by that point.
...
Well, not really, however I do always wonder how people tackle the games within the Yakuza/RGG series with regards to its charcuterie board of minigames, sidestories, character completion and distractions. Not to mention each game's usual 'unique' side game such as the Kiryu real estate in Y0, Majima Construction in YK2, and the entire school subsection in Lost Judgment. Each game usually does an excellent job at drawing me in to suck out a several 10s of hours of playtime to see what the game has to offer, and I'm typically satisfied with each game, even with the varying degrees of quality some minigames might have. The first exception to this format was Yakuza 3, a game in which I didn't spend but so long in as much of the side minigames didn't entice me as they usually did, and the side content such as the Hostess minigame was a lot less involved as later iterations would make it. For the most part, I spent my time in Yakuza 3 mostly doing the main story and a small chunk of the side stories, and most of the revelations. This makes it one of the shorter games I've spent my time with, but I thoroughly enjoyed my first run through 3, seeing the new locales in Okinawa and getting to know its residents. One of the games' biggest detractions was honestly whenever Kiryu had to be dragged back to Kamurocho. I'm not starting to dislike Kamurocho, and in 3 much of the story content that goes on there is pretty good, and being accompanied by Rikiya once was a fun time, leading to some fun sidestories. However, I couldn't help but feel as though my interest in the city was waning, and me knowing of other locations in later games was starting to creep in. Okinawa served as a good vacation from the usual layouts and locales of the city, and I appreciate 3 for its reprieve from the usual Yakuza vibes.
Yakuza 4 doesn't help.
Part 1: Akiyama
Perhaps the best section of the entire playthrough, and I do appreciate his segment a lot in hindsight. At the time that I was playing as him, however, at the time that I was going through his story I was just going through the motions. I wasn't sure just how the story was going so I took much of it at face value and -knowing that there was certain plot elements people didn't sit right with- I was kind of trying too hard to look for any detail that seemed off or sloppy. But thankfully, Akiyama's section is relatively tame and manages to feel like an actual yakuza game. His moveset of kicks is also the best in the game, as it becomes incredibly satisfying to loop enemies and bosses into a flurry of kicks and sweeps that do a fair amount of damage. This was also where I probably spent most of my overall playtime, as I usually spend the majority of 'hobby' time at the start of a playthrough. Did most of my baseball, bowling, karaoke and whatnot as Akiyama. There's honestly not too much to say with Akiyama as his chapter progresses pretty normally, my only real complaint being that it drags you into doing the hostess minigame and that hasn't really improved in any significant way from Yakuza 3 so that's a bit boring. Otherwise a really solid addition and hopefully a good sign for things to come, right? (3/4)
Part 2: Saejima
Chapter 1
The nightmare of this game begins almost immediately, as the second part opens on a series of cutscenes, including one of our main conflicts in the grand scheme of Yakuza 4- the murder of 18 yakuza inside a Ramen joint 25 years ago at the hands of Saejima. Unknowingly this seems like no issue, but we'll come to understand why I bring this up later. Then, once the cutscenes end, we open up on a prison segment with Saejima. This isn't the best first impression as aside from a few fights this is primarily just a fetch-quest within the courtyard and a few cutscenes before the typical Yakuza combat set-piece. Before that, I will say Yamazaki's reappearance from the ending of 3 is very funny to say the least, but its a neat enough tie-in from that game that I don't have any problems with it immediately. The prison combat section would be the perfect time for Saejima to truly show his abilities as a fighter. Unfortunate for Saejima, he has perhaps the worst playstyle thus far in the series. It really takes a while for him to feel good at all, and his reliance on heavy hits in a game with incredibly wonky ai guarding, heat gauge loss and dodging. Yakuza 3 had its issues in some fights, although certain other aspects to Kiryu's fighting style kinda balanced things out in my mind, such as his upgraded combo finishers, his grabs and his full list of revelations. With this game however, many of its combat issues really begin to shine through with this stage and in particular its main fight with Saito, the prison warden. He’s possibly the worst fight in the game (and honestly series) just in terms of the disadvantage you’re at by this point in the game. A lack of any real prep time, no saving graces around the arena, a boss with a weapon that proves stun too often, and a clunky player character all-around make this a horrible experience, for sure. The only main benefit here is that the arena is spacious enough that if you grabbed that charging tackle moving you have a better time whittling down his hp in a manner he doesn’t avoid. (0)
Chapter 2
Literally one fight and a cutscene. Also one of the grossest cutscenes in the series. (0)
Chapter 3
Probably the one reprieve Saejima ever gets in the game, as it feels like you get to play Yakuza. Unfortunately, as I had spent much of my time goofing around as Akiyama I figured I’d spend chapter 3 mostly tackling the rest of the story. What I didn’t know was after a certain point the games railroads you not toward a certain objective per se, but definitely away from certain other areas I wish I could back up. After progressing far enough into the chapter, you can’t get back to the sewers to upgrade Saejima’s skills despite probably needing to head out to craft a better pickaxe (I swear this was immediately after I left the sewers in the first place). Then the game has you go and seek out the florist, leading to mostly wandering around until you find Purgatory, and do the typical purgatory arena fight.
Also fuck that cop chase minigame (0).
Chapter 4
As if it couldn’t get any worse the big man has a stealth segment as well, threatening you with game over if a cop catches you. Also you get one last interrupti- I mean side quest at the most inopportune time as the entirety of Kamurocho is crawling with cops that can allegedly, immediately, end your game. I don’t really care about the plot summary anymore. (0)
Part 3: Tanimura
Chapter 1
Tanimura is a middling at best, scum of the earth at worst, crooked protagonist. This is the only chance in the series he gets to strut his stuff and I’m incredibly glad it is. His main characterization is gambling, the most tired gimmick in the series. He gambles while he’s supposed to be on duty, and one of the first scenes we see of him is turning a blind eye to human trafficking for cash. Much of the first part just feels like complete plot dump and by this point the fatigue has set in.
It’s very hard for me to start tolerating a game after a really rough segment, and I tend to parallel my thoughts on a terrible game as similar to drowning. It doesn’t really matter whether I survive or not, how terrible the feeling of struggling really poisons my vibe for the following section so if it doesn’t rescue me, it only feels worse the longer I can’t gasp a pocket of air. Tanimura sure isn’t that breath of fresh air. These long ass plot dumps and uninteresting character sections, the police scanner being…something.
Even the docks section doesn’t really pique any interest. I don’t know who this cop is, and by most of my understanding he seems like an average joe that possibly fights better than most (unfortunately I also don’t like this fighting style but let’s say he fights well). Here he goes, barreling through this Takeshi’s castle ass dungeon at the docks, with oil barrel action and hordes of brutal yakuza abound. I don’t know who Tanimura is! How can he do all these things! I don’t care how cool your OC is! At least Saejima is shown to have the guts and physique that we can believe he’d be able to take out waves of enemies, and Akiyama (along with Hana, possibly) seem to have better street experience in dealing with thugs or rowdy sorts. Tanimura doing all these fancy moves means nothing to me because I know his ass isn’t going anywhere after this game.
Also by the end of this segment we see more plot stuff about our antagonists and whatever, my main point to bring up here is we begin the pattern of just unnecessarily corny, melodramatic and cliched killings/betrayals. Yakuza games are abound with such cliches but I feel as though whenever they partake in such tropes it usually sets well with the narrative in a logical and emotionally satisfying manner, whereas I could see that this game was just gonna keep killing all these plot-central characters they just introduced and I know I’ll never see again. (0)
Chapter 2:
More plot dump. I’ve decided not to delve too deep in the plot because it really isn’t that good. I didn’t care about any of what the game was offering. You get introduced to the teacher for Tanimura, a character named Nair and I knew this girl was trouble from second one. When hanging with a friend I showed him where I was at and he directed me to try one of her sparring sessions. He showed me just how much damage she takes if you try to tackle her the normal way (very tiny chips of health, I barely dented her) and I lost. Then, he showed me that you have to cheese her by parrying her into a corner and not letting her gain any spatial advantage or upper hand. Needless to say, I didn’t want to talk to Nair. More plot dump and running around Kamurocho. Dead dad drama. Missing brother drama. Then a segment chasing/fighting toward the Homeland. (0)
Chapter 3:
Little Asia is kinda neat, but a real pain in the ass to walk through since its camera is constantly up your ass. You go a room. You end the chapter. You learn something. (0)
*I* learned a few chapters back that this game had extraordinarily terrible pacing.
Chapter 4:
You get a call from Kido and head to the docks and engage in a boat chase and…this is hilarious. The one point I’ll give Tanimura is that this got to the point of stupidity where it looped back around into being somewhat enjoyable. This boat chase where you just spam Triangle and fire at your just disgraced rat cop boss. I don’t think he ever got a shot back at me, just spamming the fire button and trailing slowly behind him stuns him hard enough to not ever fire the gun I think he has(?). You have one last boss fight and more betrayal/murder/backstab of the cast ensues.
I was gonna give this chapter a point but then I remembered this was the point of the story in which you learn about rubber bullets. (0)
I’ll give Tanimura this, he gets brownie points for that Russian roulette side story though.
Part 4 Kiryu
Chapter 1:
Fucking JINGU??? (0)
Chapter 2:
Finally you get to play as Kiryu, and you know what. Finally. This chapter only lasts like 5 minutes gameplay wise as, if you step anywhere near Millennium Tower, the cutscene that ends the chapter just starts. But THIS was a breathe of fresh air I needed. (1)
Chapter 3:
The plot shit just gets worse and worse the more you learn about it, so I’ll just focus on what really grinded my gears. You return to Date and Yasuko goes missing, yeah? I swore that this was meaning that she was gone maybe an hour or more, and Date was just waking up after a short but powerful enough dose that she escaped to a certain location. I don’t know if I missed a cutscene or a hint or what but apparently she’s only about 15 feet away and somehow I completely missed going north and triggering this. I spent the better part of 30 minutes just scouring Kamurocho and trying my best to logically determine where she was in this entire city. Fortune tellers were useless, npcs said nothing, most places were closed off anyway due to rain/plot! Hell I even went into theatre square and triggered the gang side quest for kiryu and thought that was a story relevant thing I needed to accomplish beforehand! Nope! She was just right outside my building!…At least the fight with Akiyama and Tanimura was fun. (0)
Chapter 4:
Finally we learn about Kido and his discovery of the 100 billion yen or something, anyway we go to West Park and have our final dungeon encounter, solely as Kiryu. This goes on for a long, long time and at least that means we get to build up Kiryu quite well before the end. Those firearm dudes and the grappling guys fucking suck though, hope nothing like that ever happens again in this game. More killing, betrayal whatever at the top of the tower. (1)
FINALE:
All things considered, the finale of this game was shaping up to be pretty fun. And.. at the start it is! We have our protagonists swag away from a funeral, suited up and looking up to the rooftop of the millennium tower. We cut away to our enemies, already positioned up there and we don’t just rise to meet them- we descent from helicopter to confront them. Akiyama serves as our first fight against Arai and I love this fight. Man does Akiyama just lay a hurt down on this man, he really got the long end of the stick by the end of the game. Next is Saejima versus Kido, a matchup I wasn’t sure I was fond of but then I remembered…I had bought 5 guns for a stupid achievement… and I began wailing on 3/4ths of a single color of his health bar. I don’t know why he’s allowed to recover, only I can do that! But oddly, I took him down with a bit of trouble but nothing rough. Then, Kiryu and Daigo finally settle it… was this fight supposed to be hard? Except actually it was, I was kinda getting my ass kicked here I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong. But after a bit of attrition, even Daigo the head of the Tojo fell. Lastly… we have Tanimura versus…this old man… and like 18 fucking other dudes.
What the fuck were they thinking.
The reason there’s that red color next to this game review is this stupid ass boss fight. Seriously, how many guys did you think you needed for this one fight? And its main boss is holding a gun, which is certainly always a fun time in yakuza games. I don’t even remember which old dude it is as I’m typing it out, why is this the final boss? Why do I keep fucking dying. I’ll say it here and end it quick like I did this game because I really don’t wanna spend more time talking about this game. The first three fights get the 3 points I arbitrarily made up mid-review, but I thought they served a neat purpose. The fourth point doesn’t go to this final fight (the final score is an 8/20 by this stupid measure I made) and in fact I’m using a lot of willpower to not tank this game further than I already am because I have to say: A finale really makes a game.
Hell, it makes a lot of things in media. A lot of games in my time have usually felt buffed because I thought it ended extremely well, and usually if a game fizzles out toward the climax it doesn’t stick as well after the credits roll. Yakuza 3 does an excellent job at the former. I loved the final fight and the change to the title screen music post-completion, it felt really satisfying to beat it. On the contrast I refused to beat this game. I could not beat this fight, primarily because I had not prepared myself as well as I had hoped and also because quite frankly this fight just sucks. I didn’t think my final trial was going to be 12 obnoxious ass dudes and some dude with a pistol that constantly ran away.
My greatest enjoyment and ultimately the reason I quit trying to fight the boss was the image in my mind that the last moments of Tanimura (a character I don't like but ultimately don't despite for the record) being this absolute pile on of fully armored, combat knife wielding bodyguards beating the absolute living hell out of him.
He has a gun!! Why doesn't he use it???? Like in combat!! Please!!!
...........................................
I enjoy thinking back through games, especially ones i had some trouble with. Not necessarily hated, just games with obvious segments where it felt as though I sunk time for thinking a certain way about an issue or tackling a goal in a wrong way.I love thinking back through and wondering 'what if on a second playthrough long in the future I did X, Y or Z? Yeah that'd certainly help'. The way we go about games and do our runs can shape up to mean a lot by the end of a game. With Yakuza 4 I feel so bad nearing the end because I don't think there's much I'd wanna do to really rectify any hardship I did have with it. I'm not looking forward to any future playthrough or engaging with this game any more than I already have. I had some idea of why this game wasn't nearly as praised as others in the franchise but I wasnt sure to what extent it'd attach to me. By the end of Akiyama's act, I was still fairly optimistic in what the game had to offer. Only to realize that much of the game worth experiencing was fulfilled by that point.
I'm somewhat showing my bias as I do enjoy some of Hololive streams from time to time, but:
It's like Vampire Survivors but free, looks better, has a strafe, each allows more interesting builds since each character has a unique power up, and these characters have a better defined synergy immediately because of this.
I was a lot more pleased with this type of 'Vampire Survivor' clone, so much so that I legit wanted to donate a bit to support the project- but the game's creator has stated they prefer not to receive any monetary compensation.
All things considered while I'm still not as addicted as some to this kind of formula I'll be keeping an eye on updates for this in the future.
It's like Vampire Survivors but free, looks better, has a strafe, each allows more interesting builds since each character has a unique power up, and these characters have a better defined synergy immediately because of this.
I was a lot more pleased with this type of 'Vampire Survivor' clone, so much so that I legit wanted to donate a bit to support the project- but the game's creator has stated they prefer not to receive any monetary compensation.
All things considered while I'm still not as addicted as some to this kind of formula I'll be keeping an eye on updates for this in the future.