Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest For Booty is a quick but engaging little sidegame for the series. I saw it on PS Now many times but never got around to playing it because I always thought it was a full game, but once I learned that it was actually only a few hours long I figured it would be the perfect game to beat in one sitting and feel like I was actually making progress with something while im sitting here sick as hell. And well, there really isnt much to say about it. Its not different from the other Ratchet games I played. Thats to say it doesnt do anything new but its still a really fun time. The story isnt really there but its funny and entertaining. Theres a few annoying parts and bad checkpoints but theres not much to complain about either. Its just a short little fun time that you probably wont remember much of and sometimes thats just what you need.

Time Played - 5 hours 9 minutes
Nancymeter - 75/100
Game Completion #52 of 2022
May Completion #2

early thoughts: definitely their best pack in a while but still far from the top. Honestly this says more about how mediocre 8 and especially 9 were, lol.

- Tee KO is great but it's not much different from the one released like 7 years ago. Addition of other kinds of shirts and fonts is cool
- TimeJinx is really fun, super simple but it's a neat permutation of a trivia game. Definitely done before but not in Jackbox before I believe which is cool
- Dodo Re Mi initially seems like it would be this pack's Zeeple Dome, but it's actually pretty decent. It's not, like, good, but it's funny and it works surprisingly well for a rhythm game on a website over the internet, and the ability to hear it playback at the end really makes it work. It's a fun novelty, definitely not something to buy this pack for but it's worth playing a couple games of it
- FixyText is... eh. I'm sure it does okay in some crowds but I gather a lot of people playing this especially right now (october 2023) are just going to have walls of "skibidi rizz gyatt ohio", lol. Playing it is kind of a clusterfuck but that's definitely the intent so i guess if you think clusterfucks are funny then it's ok!
- Hypnotorious is the bad game here. Every single one of these packs always has like at least one borderline unplayable game and it's this one this time. Sad, since it's probably their first truly shit social deduction game. It's long, it's boring, it's not funny, and everyone either answers in a way that totally gives away what they are or just types in nonsense. Multiple people groaned when the second round started. Avoid.

While I would say its probably the weakest of the three i've played so far, but its still Yakuza so it was good. The combat was very fun especially with all the ragdolling, and I much prefer the upgrade system to the one in 0 and Kiwami. However, the story is where it falls apart a bit for me. Kaoru is a great character (which of course means she wont be returning) but the story feels kinda underwhelming compared to the high stakes of the two before it. Quite a few plot points that feel like they should have a bigger importance on the story are kinda just brushed over and solved like they're nothing. Thankfully the finale, despite the typical villain way overexplaining things giving the good guys time to win was honestly really great and that kinda made up for the rest. The side content I didnt do much of because I dont have time for that, but I will say Kamurocho looks really pretty in the new engine. Theres also the Majima Saga, a nice little prequel to the events of the game that gives some very welcome closure to 0. Majimas fighting style is very flashy but without upgrades lacks depth, thankfully the whole thing is like an hour long so its not really bothersome. Overall a really good game thats mostly underwhelming story holds it back from me loving it.

Nancymeter - 84/100

Amazing game with an amazing plot. Although the first game was already good, there were some aspects to it that undermined it, which this game took and improved upon to make an absolute banger of a game. Some parts of it were a little frustrating but overall not hugely impactful on my experience, I still had a blast playing this. Very well-paced too, with one of the best final boss buildups I've ever experienced.

I wish RGG wouldn't be so reluctant to use Yakuza characters where it would make sense, because a couple characters did show up, but kind of awkwardly didn't say anything at all and just stood there. Overall though, I love the Judgment cast a lot and I'm really sad that Yagami's actor may not be able to return to the series because his agency is awful.

It's basically a Yakuza game so it already gets a decent score for me. I think this was the best take on the brawler combat yet, it was a lot of fun to just be always bouncing around, kicking off walls, leapfrogging over enemies, etc. Plethora of minigames too, but not as many as you'd expect.

Not going to spoil the plot, but I liked it until I didn't. I felt like it fell kinda flat towards the end, and the two main antagonists (I don't mean Hamura) turned out to be really uninteresting, and it felt like an obligation to fight them rather than just let the plot continue normally which would have cornered them anyway. I enjoyed the main cast, but they were somewhat shallow too. Yagami feels very much like a stereotypical tough guy most of the time but Kaito was cool, Mafuyu was great too when they weren't throwing her into bad damsel-in-distress situations (they could have easily made her as kickass as Saeko in Like a Dragon), but she had pretty good chemistry with Yagami and I liked watching them interact. The other "party members" are alright but nothing too special.

There was also not enough detective stuff. I wanted to present evidence more than like two times through the whole game (what's the point of even having case files if you're not going to use them??), and actually have a part in solving the mystery with more deduction stuff like in Ace Attorney. Instead, most detective stuff is either chase missions (QTE fest) that got old pretty quick and weren't dependent on any kind of skill, stalking missions (those were fun, at least), and occasionally going into first person view and scanning the environment (or doing the same thing but with a drone). Again, it never really felt like I was solving a mystery aside from just watching it play out and I hope they do that better in the sequel.

Overall, I'm excited for Lost Judgment, but I'm more excited for the next true Yakuza game.

As someone who feels like they're in a constant game of tug of war with each Yakuza game they play, I was genuinely surprised with how much I ended up enjoying Ishin. As far as ones I've completed go, this very well may be my second favorite in the series.

Yakuza games are often funny and unique, with really entertaining characters. I really think Kiryu is one of the best protagonists of all time. But theres always some things that bring them down for me. Grueling pacing, terrible boss design and lackluster endings are what a lot of this series has left me with. Most of the games make up for this overall (besides Yakuza 4. Sorry I dont usually like to use reviews to insult other games but god I fucking despised playing that). But starting with 0 which does have some of the same issues but is by far the strongest I've beaten yet has made the entire series onwards feel a bit disappointing. Especially with my last two experiences, Yakuza 5 and 6. I never ended up reviewing them but they did so much that I wanted from the series and I really felt the Yakuza love again (much needed after 4), but then both of them completely dropped the ball for me with some of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever experienced.

So yeah, I made sure my expectations were tempered for this one. Which I think in the end made me enjoy it more. Its completely fair to expect the mainline series to be high quality but in most cases its understandable to expect a spinoff to be a little weaker. But damn, not this one.

I'm not really familiar with the history behind what inspired the story, but the small amount I do know tells me they definitely took some liberties. I can't really comment on if thats a good thing or not, but the way they play off of some of the real life events is pretty damn cool. Even without the history aspect, its just a badass story to begin with. And my god, characters are getting murdered every other chapter. I love that shit. And! Half of them aren't ridiculously stupid fake out deaths, hallelujah. I can't really get into too much detail because of spoilers but, for basically every Yakuza game there's a few chapters in the beginning or near the middle where I want to cry myself to sleep, but with Ishin I was hooked the entire time past the end of chapter 1.

The combat is already pretty fun. Yakuza needs more guns. Wild Dancer obv is the most entertaining but Swordsman and Gunman are both fun in their own right. Brawler is completely useless, barely touched it lol. The card system is fine, It wasn't implemented all that great and the best cards in the game are free DLC so I just used those the whole time, but It existing is neat. There's also the Another Life farming sim side mode that was cute and fun but for a reason I'm about to get to, I didn't get too far into it.

By 'about to get to', I mean we're going to talk about it right now. The only thing I really disliked about this game is how god damn grindy it is to interact with the side stuff. I usually skip a lot of the side content in this series but I like to do a bit of it when its one of them I particularly like, and it really felt like this one was fighting against me. The battle dungeons are absurdly long, everything in Another Life takes ages (also you can't pay off Haruka's debt with your own money normally for some dumb reason) and trying to upgrade weapons and make the blacksmith actually useful is a nightmare. The light rpg elements and how slow everything is really take away from wanting to interact with much of that.

But that rather large-but-not-really issue aside, this was definitely one of the most surprising games I've played in a minute. Very high contender for the most fun and best written game in the series.

We are now at the blog portion of this review. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR and my final score if you don't care about all that. Things have been going solid, this was one of 5 games I beat in a day (not in their entirety obv) the other day so I'm pretty proud of that. Found a sealed copy of Persona 4 Arena for PS3 so happy to get that. Been playing Breath of the Wild too. Not sure what my next review will be but a MGRR one is quite likely. Also been doing a lot more creative writing which made trying to do write this review harder than usual. I hope this turned out good enough and you enjoyed reading it. If you did, thank you <3

-----TLDR-----
+ Great story
+ Fun gameplay
+ sexy music
- Extremely grindy side content

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 41%
Time Played - i forgor I'll add this in later
Completion #3 of May
Completion #92 of 2023

Progressively falling in love with classic Tales, and this was no exception. Having a main protagonist already set in their ways with little room for growth is a risk, but Yuri is such an entertaining character that it more than made up for it. The party dynamic was really strong too; I really enjoyed the main cast as a whole. The story was a little weak, though.

I think this was the game where I really started to figure out how the combat system of these games work, and once I got things going I had a really good time with it. Overall a very solid game, and I would more than likely go back and do the extra stuff at some point.