Being just born in 2001 I cannot say how initial public reaction was at the time, but playing this in 2023 I can def tell this was an extremely daring sequel to the first and gaming in general. The gameplay is much more smooth now and very responsive compared to the first game I had some gripes (tbh I suck donkey balls as this game so user error probably) but those did not compare to the first in the slightest. There's so much the game does that cutting edge for its time but still holds up extremely well, the player interaction with the environment is top tier and actively makes you wanna explore avidly. Experimentation is far less punishing in this game compared to mgs 1 and the tools at use and all the gadgets are fun to mess around with the A.I (lol).

Story wise this has some of the best thrills i've had from a story in a minute. So many little details are laid throughout the story to give hints to the plot its great to really dissect this games dialogue to just see the foreshadowing happening throughout almost every interaction. Plot wise this game is fucking nuts it has so many twist and turns that its kinda amazing I dont hate any of them and its all very thematically cohesive with the overall message of the game. Switching from Snake to Raiden was EXTREMELY daring but it really was a fantastic choice and Raiden is def my favorite of the two.

Overall I really loved this game despite being 20+ years old it still holds up well and its def one of my favorite media from this year.

Y̵a̵k̵u̵z̵a̵ Like A Dragon Mission: “ K̵i̵r̵y̵u̵ Joryu, we need you to save the cancer-riddled children of Sunflower Orphange from the Big Baby Breakdancing Gang! I’ll give you 5,000 Bronze Dragon Points if you can finish them off with this flaming dildo shaped like a copyrighted anime character and livestream it all on Snitch.tv!”

Y̵a̵k̵u̵z̵a̵ Like A Dragon Cutscene: “I’ve survived past the point of death so many times, often in the place of others who meant so much more to me than I could have known in the moment. Only now, as I face my own end, do I understand the true pain of feelings left unsaid. I tried to live without regrets, but the consequences of a life left living are inevitable.”

------------------------

Long - though comparatively short by franchise standards - periods of drama wholly contingent on the viewer's pre-existing knowledge of plot and history from Yakuza 0, Yakuza, Yakuza 2, Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, Yakuza 5, Yakuza 6, Judgment and Yakuza: Like A Dragon exist in tandem with tutorials for complex game systems like "using the map" and "doing a kick", highlighting the epic contradictions this saga repeatedly unfolds and upholds upon itself. If you're an insane member of this subcultural phenomenon and have played through all ten games in the series, there is no spiritual need for anything beyond Kiryu's story, but ultimately all the Level-Up Daily Login Bonuses are in service of this game's overarching theme of going through the duties while you watch the exterior world move further away from you and begin to accept life in the interior world built for you by the actions of your past. Either you're new to this and woefully out of your depth (don't worry, Joryu will help you), or you've always known the man who erased his name and are now compelled by brotherly honour to remain with him until the end.

I was excited but also skeptical of the direction of the series coming into Gaiden, the first continuation of the mainline story after Nagoshi left and one that is following up Y6, to what I think is an amazing conclusion to one of my favorite characters of all time, they could have very easily fumbled the bag. This game not only exceeded those expectations, but also became one of the best stories I ever experienced, any prior doubts I had are now absolutely gone, they know what they are doing man

I think one of the most impressive thing about this game is how it integrates itself into the overarching story between Y6 and Like a Dragon. There are many fanservice-y and callbacks to previous games but are all interwoven and executed perfectly into the story. The major characters in this game are amazing, some even near the top of my favorite characters in this series. The ending absolutely broke me, I didn't think they could follow up the ending of Y6 this well to the point it brought me to tears. People say the story is too short (around 10-15 hours max) which is understandable, but the content we got is absolute quality.

The substance for a game supposedly only made in 6 months is incredible. The side activities are classic but done well. The substories are once again amazing. The combat is incredible, we really came a long way from 6, Kiwami 2 and even Judgment.

I will prob go and Platinum this game later on since it looks a lot easier than other RGG games but yeah tdlr I did not expect this to be probably my top 2 media of the year lol (Lost Judgment still better)

Proper review at a later date.

I just wanna say, this is honestly one of my favorite RGG games.

And they even brought back my favorite character from Yakuza 5, Taichi Suzuki.

No words for this game.

I've trying catching up to the series and nothing but praise about this series can't put into words, first game without Nagoshi and that geniuely put me into the feeling of being worried about the future especially the shoes to fill after the Judgment duology.

Safe to say my worries are geniuely gone, even with the circustances that they could've choose, I'm so glad they went with the route of the making just a short game but really impactful to Kiryu's character from the events of Y6. The game just feels a culmination of what makes Kiryu one of my favorite character of all time and how the people he interacted in these past games even if it was just a little push to start moving forward. The amount of respect for the RGG team with Nagoshi work is just too much to speak, just really tells the impact of him made RGG what they are right now.

Kiryu's character writing is one of the things that had me worried the most but good god, everything about this game and the finale just proved how much i love this series to no end and geniuely had me crying.

Gaiden feels the complete sendoff to Kiryu and one of the things that will never leave my head and i have nothing about but to thank RGG and Nagoshi for writing such a fantastic game and franchise that will never leave my head.

Perfect, but the original already was.

I imagine that my reaction to hearing about a Resident Evil 4 remake was pretty similar to most: confusion. What about Resident Evil 4 needed to be remade, really? The game was about a decade ahead of its time when it dropped in 2005, and virtually every third-person shooter made since then has had some of Leon Kennedy’s sharp-jawed, Bingo-quipping DNA inside of it somewhere. Moreover, the idea of trying to do Resident Evil 4 but again — or God forbid, better — is still kind of laughable. You’re going to remake one of the greatest and most influential games ever made on a lark to see if you can do it too? Good luck.

But, lo and behold, they did it. Resident Evil 4 Remake is a fucking phenomenal game. The combat is heavy and satisfying, it’s a delight to look at, the characters are all enjoyable, and I put thirty hours into it over the course of about a week and a half without really even noticing. I finished one playthrough, finished Separate Ways, and then immediately started another run on a harder difficulty. When I'm done with that run, I'm going to play it again, and again. It’s perfect.

How much does it deserve to be celebrated, though, when what it’s based off of was that good to begin with?

I’ve heard people talk about “remake culture” quite a bit in recent years in relation to video games, and I don’t think it’s an entirely wrong observation that the same games seem to be releasing a lot lately. Naughty Dog is perhaps the easiest studio to point and laugh at over this — The Last of Us is a series that’s about to have a higher number of remakes of its original games than the actual amount of original games — but it is something of a trend in the industry right now. Granted, we’ve been getting high-profile remakes and remasters of games for about fifteen fucking years now, so it’s hardly new, but people seem to be, for whatever reason, noticing it more lately. Common criticisms drifting up now are that remakes are lazy, and overly safe, and cash-grabby. I agree insofar as the fact that I’d vastly prefer if more games could look forward, rather than back. There are a lot of very talented creators out there with a lot of fresh concepts that ought to be allowed to flourish, and it’s stifling the maturity of the medium to insist that we just keep playing the hits every night with a different band.

Despite this, it remains evident that not all remakes are created equal. I found the Dead Space remake to be a complete bastardization of the original, with slippery, weightless gunplay and animations, and little actually improved aside from bringing back Gunnar Wright and some more technically impressive lighting effects. By contrast, I was surprised at how much Resident Evil 4 Remake impressed me, introducing much more committal combat into the original’s stage design and vastly expanding a lot of the systems that went woefully underused back in 2005. Both games have exceptional scores in both popular games coverage and right here on Backloggd, so either I missed something major in Dead Space, or people are just so predisposed to celebrating something good and old being new again that they just hand it a high score without really thinking about it. I’m sure it’s reductive, but I’m willing to bet it’s the latter. If you don’t trust me to say it, I’m certain that these high-profile, mega-budget companies making the fucking things would take my position; why would they be cranking these things out with the massive budgets and marketing campaigns that they’ve had if they weren’t confident people were going to drop everything to get a copy on release day? Saying you’re going to take something that people enjoyed and just make it again is an almost surefire way to guarantee a boatload of sales from those so caught in the hype cycle that they won’t even wait to see if it’s been fucked with before they buy it.

Anyway, I’m getting off-track. The point to make here is that I think there’s a single element that really makes Resident Evil 4 Remake stand out from among its more cynical contemporaries.

It was very clearly made by people who love the original.

“Yeah, yeah, the multi-million dollar game was made with goddamned love”, I know. But there are so many small changes here that I seriously doubt you’d be able to make or notice without having a deep appreciation and understanding for what the original was doing. EA never had a clue what made Dead Space great. Yasuhiro Anpo and company down at Capcom, however, get it.

Early on, during the village fight, there’s this tall tower standing down by the church entrance. There’s not much in there — just a herb and a ladder leading up — but this was an immensely safe spot to hide in the original. You could climb all the way up to the top, hang out for a few seconds, hop back down before the ganados started throwing molotovs at you, and then repeat. You could wait out the entire fight just by doing a simple loop of climbing up, dropping down, and then climbing back up again, and they couldn’t do a thing to stop you. Naturally, knowing about this safe spot, I went up the ladder and prepared to dig in. It was at this point that the floor gave out under Leon’s feet and dropped him right into the middle of the crowd congregating at the bottom.

To come up with a trap like this requires a few things on the part of the developers:
a) to know about the safe spot in the original game,
b) to expect the player to also know about the safe spot in the original game,
c) to bait the player into attempting to use the safe spot in the remake (by making the fight significantly more demanding)

It doesn’t sound like much, but take a second to consider the amount of understanding you need to have about Resident Evil 4 to be aware that the safe spot actually existed in the first place. It’s a decently-known exploit — enough so that the original developers accounted for it when they put out the game — but it’s nothing that a casual player would be aware of. It’s a remarkably small change in the grand scheme of things, but there’s a constant stream of these equally small changes throughout that add up to truly distinguish this from its predecessor. It’s just enough to keep old players disoriented while still being able to recognize what’s here. It’s a bit less of a remake and more of a remix. It feels like a very high-budget fangame, and I mean that in a good way.

With the release of Separate Ways adding back in a little more story context and some previously-excluded areas that I missed — the sewers, my beloved, are back — Resident Evil 4 Remake feels like a complete experience. I imagine that you’ll have a worse time without the DLC, and that kind of sucks when that shit came free with the original as long as you didn’t buy it on Gamecube. I managed to cop the base game and Separate Ways on sale for about fifty bucks, and they added Mercenaries mode to this in a patch at some point in the past couple months; this is definitely a game that is significantly better now than it was when it came out, which I think is kind of regrettable. It’s barely been out for eight months and I’m having a way better time for less money than people who picked it up on day one. This is a broader condemnation of the industry, I suppose. I like it when games come out feature-complete, and I'd argue this didn't. But hell, what does, anymore?

I do have my quibbles with the game. Unarmed enemies are the most dangerous fuckers alive because of that unblockable lunge they do that covers about two miles of distance and has to be ducked under at a precise time if they don’t flinch from being shot, which happens a lot on the harder difficulties. Knife parries are exceptionally overpowered and essentially give you a “get-out-of-bad-positioning free” card for a significant portion of the game. A lot of the music has been changed from its original synth-y sound to more of a Hans Zimmer-esque orchestral score, and that’s a major disappointment; the sequence where Mike comes down in his chopper is easily the worst offender of the lot, sounding like something pulled directly off of the Dark Knight Rises soundtrack. The reticle sway when Leon aims is a little extreme and definitely should have been tuned down a little. There’s something intangible that I feel was lost in getting rid of the tank controls and the stationary aiming; Resident Evil 4 definitely controls a bit more like everything else now, rather than controlling like what inspired everything else.

Even with those complaints, this is still a phenomenal title. I think the developers of this remake understood way more about what fans of the original wanted than anyone was expecting them to, and they’ve created something that stands alongside one of the greatest games ever made. By no means does it replace nor exceed the original, but it’s on the same level, and that alone is a borderline unthinkable achievement.

And they didn’t “make the mine thrower good” in this. It was always good, you cowards.

Red Dead Redemption 2 took years to be made
Baldur's Gate 3 took at least 4 years to make
The Titanic Movie took over an year
YOU had 9 months to be made

Like a Dragon Gaiden took 6 months, and yet it is better than rdr2, bg3, titanic and you! Long live RGG

”I am never going to play that fucking shit in my life,” I said after reading Cab’s review on Tsukhime, circa April 2022. However, regardless of telling myself that, the morbid curiosity of playing whatever this game was has lingered in my head for quite some time. Probably not helped by me getting a bit into Melty Blood at the time, alongside watching the Ufortable adaptation of Unlimited Blade Works. But, if you know me at all, the biggest roadblock was of course the adult content. Not that I mind a story reflecting sexual themes, as those are important stories to tell, but more in the fact that the way Tsukihime presents those themes is gross and immature. However, my friend DomencioDovanna let me know of a fan patch that entirely skips the pointless time sink that is the adult scenes, while still not undercutting the themes, and he helped me set it up. Thanks!
It’s truly fascinating seeing Nasu’s humble beginnings in the VN industry. While not his first written work (that would be Garden of Sinners, iirc?), it was the first of his stories to be in the Visual Novel format. Context is very important to Tsukihime’s release, as it was a game made by about less than 10 people on a shoestring budget. In fact, all of the visual assets were made by one person, that being Takahashi Takeuchi. Both his artwork alongside Nasu’s writings share nice parallels in being extremely earnest, but still very amateurish and yet to fully bloom into their greatest potential. And that’s what’s so endearing about Tsukihime. Behind the blurry photographed backgrounds, the poor handling of sexual themes, the sometimes janky spritework, the occasionally repetitive prose- there’s a clear effort here to tell a memorable story. It’s probably one of the most honest and impressive games I’ve played, and it’s that context of its development that heightens my respect for it overall.
I don’t want to delve into the story very much here, because ultimately I would like you, the reader, to see what lies under the moon yourself. It’s a story about how important the choices in our lives matter. It’s a story about overcoming our trauma and finding a greater understanding in ourselves. And yes, it is a story that is telling us that life is worth living. It has these wonderful heroines, and each route is truly unique. It’s a game that’s both comfortable yet unnerving, fills us with sorrow but also gives us joy, it can disgust us yet can be so beautiful.
If you have ever wanted to try out Tsukihime, now is the time. The english patch by mirror moon has been out for years, and even offers a SFW patch for the game as I described above. You can play it on a multitude of platforms, even including a fantastic web version that is soon to be the definitive edition of the game. The plus disc also has a translation by mirror moon, and is also worth checking out after the main game, alongside a translation of the sequel(?) Kagetsu Tohya, by Mr Fortayee. And of course, the remake is going to be getting an official translation next year, which I am very excited for! If you don’t have the patience though, there is an already existing translation patch for the Switch version by Tsukihimates.
Despite all of what I’ve said, I can’t exactly recommend Tsukihime. It’s absolutely not a game for everyone, and your enjoyment of the experience is going to vary. But I think if you can look through the cracks, you can find a fantastic narrative that may stick with you for a long time. And lastly, a thank you to Dr Delicious who sat through all of my liveposting throughout my playthrough, and gave me much more insight into the story that made me appreciate the experience even more as a whole.
” - —- Thank you. I’m glad I met you, Sensei.”