Definitely the weakest RGG game, but that doesn't mean it's bad. The combat can be awkward if you are used to the Yakuza/Judgment games with the absence of a proper grab and heat gauge. It also feels like fights take too long cause the heat actions take a good chunk of time up in fights; you probably spend more time looking at the heat actions rather than fighting the hordes of enemies. Boss fights are very weirdly balanced as some are too hard or pathetically easy, and also the long fights don't seem to give you any healing items along the way. As a fan of the series, it's enjoyable seeing all the fan service they provide with the characters in the talismans and fights from the series. The open world is pretty much any standard RGG game; compact but filled to the brim with stuff to do. The story is pretty boring at first, but picks up with a pleasent twist in the story. This game is definetly for fans of Fist of the North Star, but if you're familiar with the Yakuza/Judgment games, I believe you can still get some enjoyment out of the game.

Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise is the grindiest game I’ve ever played, and it’s the only RGG Studio game I have no desire to replay anytime soon, which kinda feels weird to say, as a pretty diehard fan of their work. But let’s start from the top.

Instead of starting by talking about the story, which is what I usually do in my reviews, I’d like to start off with what I consider by far the most abhorent part of this game — you cannot level up Kenshiro fully in a single playthrough. This game is designed around multiple playthroughs.

Grinding for max level is nothing new in the Yakuza games, which Lost Paradise is a spin-off of (looking at you, Kiwami 2). However, in Kiwami 2, I didn’t need to forcefully start a New Game+ to grind, as tiresome as the grinding for stats in that game is. Aside from robbing the player of a genuine feeling of improvement over the course of a long journey, instead retreading the same content two or even three times, this multiple-playthrough design just isn’t fun.

The story is serviceable at best. Considering Fist of the North Star is a pretty long series, I did not expect Lost Paradise to be a retelling of the manga, and I was correct. Lost Paradise is far closer to an alternate universe than anything else; some familiar characters, some newcomers, new story, new setting. The story itself just wasn’t engaging — at no point was I at the edge of my seat — but it’s decent enough to get going.

However, the way some characters are utilized confuses the hell out of me. In particular, I’m referring to Rei, Raoh and Thouzer (… man, I really prefer “Souther”). The latter two just show up, Kenshiro kicks their asses, they threaten to kill him and then… exit the story. Considering how important to the storyline of Fist of the North Star those two are (hell, Raoh is the main overarching antagonist of the original series!), I find it insane that they’re just filler arcs at best in this game. It really feels like they’re ticking off fanservice boxes. As for Rei, he has a bit more plot involvement, but… same issue, really.

My other issue with the story is the padding. At several points you’re asked to stop and go get materials somewhere, ask around the overworld for information, do a substory, or go wait at Kenshiro’s room (… why not just automatically skip time at these points instead?). On the other hand, some plot points come at you faster than a bullet train, such as when Thouzer shows up with no buildup. This game’s pacing is completely off, and in desperate need of an editor.

Lost Paradise has the biggest open world in the RGG Studio catalog. The main city, Eden, is about the size of Kamurocho, but outside that lies the wasteland, which is much, much, much bigger, and is travelable by a (weirdly glitchy) buggy, which you can customize.

While cool for the first time you step outside, it quickly becomes a chore to travel; it’s a big desert with ruins and rocks and very little else. I don’t mind the desert aesthetic itself (it’s core to Fist of the North Star itself; the series is very much inspired by Mad Max), but it gets boring to travel through quick. You can use save points scattered in it as warp points, but that’s a band-aid fix; the world itself is just uninteresting to travel through.

Enough complaining for now, though. Let’s get to the good stuff this game does, starting with the combat.

Kenshiro’s Hokuto Shinken is probably the most fun fighting style in the series in my opinion. It’s fast, brutal, and has a lot of mechanics that fit well and help it stand out. Instead of a heat bar like in the Yakuza series, Kenshiro fills up an enemy’s meter by hitting them. By pressing circle at the end of a combo, Kenshiro strikes a channeling point, putting the enemy in Meridian Shock (whichever specific channeling point depends on what combo was being performed beforehand), and by then pressing circle again, you use a Hokuto Shinken technique. It’s incredibly fun, and there’s a lot of variety with the secret techniques. Alternatively, you can use Perfect Channeling by pressing circle again at a precise moment while putting an enemy in Meridian Shock — this instantly kills them.

Furthermore, Kenshiro has a Ki Burst mechanic, which creates an (often insta-killing) explosion around him and just buffs the hell out of him, unlocking exclusive techniques to this state, and it’s very cool to use too! Overall, as easy as it is to kill with Kenshiro’s techniques (aside from bosses, every enemy dies instantly to a secret technique), there’s a lot of depth and stuff to learn here — I’d call this the most mechanically rich Yakuza combat system, and this is where the game really shines. Aside from the inability to fully upgrade it during your first playthrough, I’d call the combat flawless.

The other thing this game excels at is with its boss fights. No reused movesets from other games, all of them present a good challenge, and nearly all of them have either a dynamic intro, slick as hell QTE/action sequence, or both. Some can be incredibly difficult at first, but I like that; it forced me to learn new strategies, and it felt incredibly rewarding when they paid off. No complaints at all in this front! Also, the music is great as always, as is the standard for RGG Studio.

As for side content… another mixed bag. The hostess minigame from Yakuza 0 is back (although much harder), and I have no desire to ever replay it after grinding the hell out of it in that game. There’s a new bartending trio of minigames, which ranges from alright to infuriating (really, I thought “Mario Party Palms” stayed in the 90s), a racing minigame (which is nowhere near as exciting as Yakuza: Like a Dragon’s Dragon Kart or the taxi races from Yakuza 5), Death Batting (baseball but the balls are outlaw bikers; by far the funniest minigame in this series), and an arcade selection — you need to unlock the arcade games by grinding random drops in the wasteland. Annoying as hell, and that’s all I’ll say.

Like Yakuza, there’s a bunch of substories Kenshiro can engage in. Considering both franchises have a similar relationship with humor, they fit like a glove, and take advantage of Kenshiro’s personality when he’s shoved into weird situations to a great extent. Not a fan of how some of them take you way far off into the wasteland, but hey — it works pretty well.

In conclusion, Lost Paradise’s base is extremely sound, but is bogged down by atrocious padding and grinding. I really do want this game to get a sequel, and I’d much rather them make an arcade-styled game where you go from level to level beating up enemies with a boss at the end, plus a far more streamlined upgrade system. I know it’d be far more of a traditional beat ‘em up at that point (and would probably make it much harder for the Yakuza series’ signature side content to be present), but I very much believe a more arcade-y, linear format would fix nearly every problem with pacing and grinding this game suffers from.

Part of me wants to be more generous, as I did have a lot of fun with the combat and bosses — plus, this game was developed by a team comprised of mostly newcomers to RGG Studio — but I cannot ignore the grinding and terrible pacing and padding. I simply can’t.

I give this game a 6.5/10.

I went into this game knowing absolutely nothing about Fist of The North Star. The only reason I even knew about this game was because people on the Yakuza subreddit kept including Kenshiro in protagonist tierlists, which caught my interest. I'm a decent fan of the Yakuza games, so I figured I'd try this one out. I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it, but it's far from perfect.

The gameplay is pretty mixed. On one hand, I can't even begin to explain how satisfying it is to take on a horde of twenty to thirty enemies and wipe them all out and watch them explode into chunks of gore and viscera in under a minute. I had no idea who Kenshiro was or what he did, but after playing as him for a few hours, I grew to adore him. I felt like an overpowered superhero in this game and I absolutely loved it.
Unfortunately, the game feels a bit conflicted with itself. It wants to be a Fist of The North Star game where you're a one hit killing machine, but it also wants to be a Yakuza game, and that ends up hurting it. It felt frustrating and disorienting to go from slaughtering hundreds of dudes in a matter of seconds, to suddenly having trouble dealing with one random dude in the colosseum or some dude with a flamethrower. Why does this one dude in the fifth level of the prison take so much longer to kill compared to the bosses? Why does Kenshiro roll around on the floor in pain and lose half his health when a blast from a flamethrower even touches him? The game is having a constant struggle, trying to decide if the protagonist if Kenshiro or Kiryu, and it really brings down the whole experience as a whole.

Since this is basically a Yakuza game, there had to be an overwhelming plethora of side content, which this game has in spades. I ended up giving up on most of the side content by the end of the game, but I really enjoyed the bounty hunter missions, the stupid music doctor game, and bartending (though I have no idea how they expect you to be able to complete those three star drinks in that minigame and still be a human). I barely bothered with the casino or the cabaret club, if I wanted to experience a better version of those I'd just play Yakuza 0.
Where this game starts to get frustrating is with resource collecting. The game expects you to collect so many items out in the wasteland to upgrade your talismans, upgrade your car, and help Lin with her weird little shop. It gets overwhelming pretty quickly, and you'll probably just stop bothering with it after a few chapters. It's a neat little mechanic, and it could have worked well, if it didn't make the game feel so bloated.

And finally, the story. Overall, it's decently fun, but it is a game made by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios, so of course, the pacing is bad. The first five chapters are actually very strong, they did a great job establishing the characters and the world of both Eden City and the wasteland. For those five chapters, I was super into the story.
Then, during chapter 6, the game came to a crawl as it introduced almost every side activity in a single chapter, one after another. It was nice to finally have more freedom, but it was introduced so awkwardly, even more awkwardly than any of the other Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios games I've played.
Then, chapters seven, eight, and nine really threw me off. Literally, every chapter her can be summarized as: "Some dude shows up at the beginning, then Kenshiro beats them up and they leave/die." I'm positive all three of these characters are in the manga and would have probably had a bigger impression on me if I already knew who they were. But honestly, even then, these would have worked better as really well done side missions instead of the main plot.
The story finally gets back on track by chapter ten, but that's literally the second to last chapter, so it's a little too late to get back into the swing of things now. Though those last two missions were awesome, and I really enjoyed the ending, so I can't be too upset with it. I just wish the narrative was paced a little better and a little more focused.

Overall though, this was a fun little game that sets out to be nothing more than a Yakuza game in the Fist of The NorthStar universe, and it accomplishes that. I enjoyed my time with it and that's all that really matters. The best thing about this game is that it got me interested in Fist of The North Star, and I might look into reading the manga soon. I wanna see Kenshiro tell more people that they're "Already Dead". Thanks Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios!

Triple-A shine on an okay game. Takes so long for the combat and story to hit their speed and even then neither were mind-blowing to me.

My biggest problem was the pacing, both narratively and moment-to-moment. Constant little battles pop up to impede your way with very little variety in between them. The originally trilogy had massive puzzles and set pieces that would break up the flow of combat but this barely has anything like that. Very minor sections begin to tease in those directions but it's not often and not until near the end.

Narratively, this kept doing one of my biggest pet peeves over and over again: moving the goal posts. The game gives you a goal: get to the top of the mountain. Oh but actually there's some black fog in the way so now you need to go on a fetch quest to get a macguffin to get rid of it. Oh this actually isn't the right mountain, you need to find another mountain. Oh actually this door is broken, go find a macguffin to fix it. Oh the door broke now you need to find another door. That door actually needs a crystal, go find... Over and over again, the story stops you one step short of feeling like you accomplished something and then throws you on a fetch quest to go find some object that will let you continue the main story.

I feel like one of the main problems with this game is how it's plagued with some uninspired trend that plagues AAA games. And many of them are not well executed. For starters, you have a skill tree but most of the skills are not very good at all and certainly not better than just pressing R1 or R2 and that happens because the combat is so simple that you do not need skills to succeed. Another problem with the fights is that most of the mobs you will find are so similar to the point that you'll defeat the same troll 10 times with just different colors while doing the same kill animation and getting like uh why everything looks the same.
But not everything is bad about it, i think the voices are pretty good. Kratos as character is still interesting and the game is stupidly beautiful.
A little far a from perfect game, but still an enjoyable experience nonetheless.

Umbrella would've gotten away with it if Himbo Cop Leon S. Kennedy didn't show up to work late in the middle of a zombie outbreak, and was too pure of heart and simple of mind for Ada to be able to kill without feeling immense guilt. It's been a while since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I swear they actually made him dumber here, which is really just one of many excellent choices on Capcom's part that help REmake 2 excel over the original.

This game is great. On paper it's essentially a fusion of Resident Evil 4's more combat-focused control scheme and the original trilogy's puzzle-heavy progression. Obviously tank controls are out the window, but Capcom smartly redesigns the RPD building to be full of obstructed, narrow hallways that keep the tension high. Movement is sluggish both when attempting to evade or aim at zombies, which move around with an unnatural rhythm that further complicates shooting them in critical areas. You're given just the right amount of control that none of this feels annoying, while maintaining a sense of anxiety in every encounter.

Similar to REmake, many of Resident Evil 2's puzzles have some connection to the original, though how they progress and interconnect has been completely overhauled. This provides a similar sense of satisfaction when you route your way through the game that REmake does, and the manner in which locations slowly open up to you feels natural and well paced. It's just a very smooth experience all around. I also enjoy how much REmake 2 plays around with the player's expectations, introducing Mr.X far earlier than he would appear in the first game.

Likewise, jumping to your second run of the game immediately after the first (as intended) doesn't feel stale given how different the two campaigns are. While you'll solve many of the same puzzles, the route through the RPD and other locations are so radically altered that you can't rely upon the same sequence for an easier run. That said, the 2nd run can get kind of annoying as enemies seem to be placed in blind spots more frequently, which at times feels like a cheap substitute for difficulty.

There's some additional side modes if you want even more RE2, but I found most of them to be kinda just so-so. I think I prefer REmake's approach to focusing solely on the core game mode and introducing variables to augment future runs. I'm sure someone out there loves No Time to Mourn. Like, that's the one mode they've come to play, getting through the campaign is just a formality. Freak behavior. Personally, I'm fine playing through the two campaigns and calling it.

Things were real rough for the Resident Evil franchise for a while, but I'm glad Capcom is back in the business of making good games. It's impressive that they could release a remake of Resident Evil 2, a game that was critically acclaimed for the Playstation and remains one of the finer pieces of software in its library, and have it outshine the original at nearly every turn.