Zerorocks
Story was pretty interesting and much better than FF1 and 2. Cecil is a great character and Golbez was a decent villain. There are some really sad moments in the story which previous games were lacking (haven't played FF3 yet so only basing it off of 1 and 2). The areas are generally very interesting to explore and the endgame area is incredibly cool. The overall plot isn't anywhere as strong as titles that came after it though.
Gameplay was good but not that much deeper than before.
Incredible OST as expected of a Final Fantasy title. Theme of Love, Troian Beauty, Into the Darkness, Overworld theme to name a few.
Gameplay was good but not that much deeper than before.
Incredible OST as expected of a Final Fantasy title. Theme of Love, Troian Beauty, Into the Darkness, Overworld theme to name a few.
This game was so much better than FF1 in almost every way. You can see the first attempts at a narrative and story telling in this one that isn't "Save princess from evil dude". Wish the backstories of your three main party characters were explored, but the rest was interesting enough. The Emperor was weak as a villain though and I preferred the final boss of FF1 to this.
The mechanics get hated on for no reason. It's actually very fun to level up in this game. Putting a shield on all my characters to level up their evasion had such a great payoff for the harder parts of the game. I never attacked myself to gain HP the ENTIRE game. I don't know why you would do that and complain that you have to do that when you don't. You also get access to a location on the map to super grind if you wish to overlevel your stats and it's right next to a castle with a pub (FF1 also had this magic pixel area with harder enemies to farm but the pub was pretty far away).
The key word mechanic was also pretty cool. Didn't have issues with it personally.
Decent game but very far from the best of what FF has to offer.
The mechanics get hated on for no reason. It's actually very fun to level up in this game. Putting a shield on all my characters to level up their evasion had such a great payoff for the harder parts of the game. I never attacked myself to gain HP the ENTIRE game. I don't know why you would do that and complain that you have to do that when you don't. You also get access to a location on the map to super grind if you wish to overlevel your stats and it's right next to a castle with a pub (FF1 also had this magic pixel area with harder enemies to farm but the pub was pretty far away).
The key word mechanic was also pretty cool. Didn't have issues with it personally.
Decent game but very far from the best of what FF has to offer.
This is only for ARR as that's all I've played so far.
I had a lot of fun playing with my friend and getting to learn the mechanics of the game. When this game is good, it's really good.
The primal fights and other dungeons were all really fun and engaging for me. The combat mechanics are simple enough to pick up but also have a lot of depth for you to get better. New dungeons and bosses steadily push you to get better.
I started playing for the story, so I was a bit disappointed with how slow it is in ARR. Having said that, I was pretty focused on the story and paying attention to all the dialogue. The political intrigues up until the last third of the game (for my playtime anyway) were interesting, but nothing special. The "beast men go apeshit and bring back primal and we barely miss the timing to stop them so here's a primal fight" story loop got pretty stale. But thankfully it really picks up near the end. The last MSQs really sold me on the story going forward. It was the kind of thing I'd been waiting for the entire time. Also want to mention how great the voice acting was (I play with Japanese voices). The script in English is sometimes offensively different, but then again, they're using different scripts. Not really a problem but it makes it really distracting sometimes to digest two different scripts at the same time.
I can completely understand if you'd wanna drop the game before the 50-60 hour mark if you didn't start the game with the intent of making it to Endwalker like I did, given the pacing. I think the pacing might have been a lot better if I had access to a mount way way earlier and had access to flight around the same time I got a mount. There's a lot of time wasting going from A to B, which flight almost completely alleviates.
I have high hopes for Heavensward and I'm really looking forward to how FFXIV improves.
I had a lot of fun playing with my friend and getting to learn the mechanics of the game. When this game is good, it's really good.
The primal fights and other dungeons were all really fun and engaging for me. The combat mechanics are simple enough to pick up but also have a lot of depth for you to get better. New dungeons and bosses steadily push you to get better.
I started playing for the story, so I was a bit disappointed with how slow it is in ARR. Having said that, I was pretty focused on the story and paying attention to all the dialogue. The political intrigues up until the last third of the game (for my playtime anyway) were interesting, but nothing special. The "beast men go apeshit and bring back primal and we barely miss the timing to stop them so here's a primal fight" story loop got pretty stale. But thankfully it really picks up near the end. The last MSQs really sold me on the story going forward. It was the kind of thing I'd been waiting for the entire time. Also want to mention how great the voice acting was (I play with Japanese voices). The script in English is sometimes offensively different, but then again, they're using different scripts. Not really a problem but it makes it really distracting sometimes to digest two different scripts at the same time.
I can completely understand if you'd wanna drop the game before the 50-60 hour mark if you didn't start the game with the intent of making it to Endwalker like I did, given the pacing. I think the pacing might have been a lot better if I had access to a mount way way earlier and had access to flight around the same time I got a mount. There's a lot of time wasting going from A to B, which flight almost completely alleviates.
I have high hopes for Heavensward and I'm really looking forward to how FFXIV improves.
It's a good game that suffers from always being compared to the other games. I think playing this as a kid was a lot more fun back in the day cause of how the internet areas were so entangled. It felt like I was always experiencing it for the first time and coming across a way forward was a big reward in itself. It was also lots of fun to get on Gamefaqs and find maps or guides on what to do next (it was that era of gaming).
It is hard to go back to after BN2 since it has a lot of flaws that are addressed later on including the chips not dimming when making a selection in the custom screen. I replayed it on the legacy collection recently and it only took 12 hours from start to finish and doing a tiny bit of side content too. Not really worth skipping if you find the combat interesting and want to play the rest of the series.
It is hard to go back to after BN2 since it has a lot of flaws that are addressed later on including the chips not dimming when making a selection in the custom screen. I replayed it on the legacy collection recently and it only took 12 hours from start to finish and doing a tiny bit of side content too. Not really worth skipping if you find the combat interesting and want to play the rest of the series.
It was pretty fun, all things considered. It would have made it a lot more enjoyable if I knew anything about the Bakumatsu period that it's referencing, but I still somewhat enjoyed the story.
As cool as it was having the Yakuza actors be in this one in different roles, it made all the plot twists extremely obvious. Wow you're telling me the good guys from the previous games are good here? You're telling me the big bads are bad here? I don't think they should've necessarily switched it up, because then it wouldn't feel right either, but I suppose this problem is inherent to what this game was trying to do. On the one hand, it made me greatly appreciate what the more complex antagonists could have been in the main series, and how the protagonists would interact with each other in this new timeline.
The story has a really eerie Japanese ultranationalist position. It shows this especially hard in the ending. Considering the horrors that were committed by them in the next period following Sakamoto Ryouma's assassination, it's really tough to just stand there and watch Ryouma talking about the bright future of Japan and how great a country it is etc. when RGG seems to be doing the thing that's popular there: pretending the 1900s didn't happen.
The combat was... ok? I think I initially tried to play it like the mainline games and it felt really wrong. Brawler is basically useless. Only when I got to the barracks missions did I finally realize that it feels much more like Nioh than Yakuza. After putting myself in that mentality, I really started enjoying the combat.
This game probably hurt the most in terms of not having infinite sprinting like the newer games. My god does it suck to constantly run out of breath until you can afford enough virtue to sprint for longer.
OST had some cool callbacks to older games which I really appreciated. Substories were pretty decent. Platinum grind was very very painful.
Alright game if you're looking for some more Yakuza gameplay.
As cool as it was having the Yakuza actors be in this one in different roles, it made all the plot twists extremely obvious. Wow you're telling me the good guys from the previous games are good here? You're telling me the big bads are bad here? I don't think they should've necessarily switched it up, because then it wouldn't feel right either, but I suppose this problem is inherent to what this game was trying to do. On the one hand, it made me greatly appreciate what the more complex antagonists could have been in the main series, and how the protagonists would interact with each other in this new timeline.
The story has a really eerie Japanese ultranationalist position. It shows this especially hard in the ending. Considering the horrors that were committed by them in the next period following Sakamoto Ryouma's assassination, it's really tough to just stand there and watch Ryouma talking about the bright future of Japan and how great a country it is etc. when RGG seems to be doing the thing that's popular there: pretending the 1900s didn't happen.
The combat was... ok? I think I initially tried to play it like the mainline games and it felt really wrong. Brawler is basically useless. Only when I got to the barracks missions did I finally realize that it feels much more like Nioh than Yakuza. After putting myself in that mentality, I really started enjoying the combat.
This game probably hurt the most in terms of not having infinite sprinting like the newer games. My god does it suck to constantly run out of breath until you can afford enough virtue to sprint for longer.
OST had some cool callbacks to older games which I really appreciated. Substories were pretty decent. Platinum grind was very very painful.
Alright game if you're looking for some more Yakuza gameplay.
2021
A gigantic improvement to Judgment in terms of combat. A few steps back in terms of story. It has some really great moments but when the plot goes into its grand narrative, it becomes insufferable.
The way RGG tries to comment on morality and politics is so unbelievably childish that it rivals Persona 5's representation of politics, which is basically just dumb teenagers saying "adults bad, adults lie, teenagers good". Infinite Wealth's antagonists suffer the same problem as Lost Judgment's, and it's partly because of how they tried to take a lot of themes and ideas from this game for their central plot.
Yagami has practically no character development in this game because his biggest emotional hurdles have already been overcome. He's dull and boring in this game and the way the game tries to make him not be this way is to force the player into pretending like a certain character was a central part of his life when he's barely even seen this person. He also has an equally childish response to the antagonist's childish political views which makes the scenes where they try to preach morality to each other extra excruciating.
But when the plot is just about the mystery which slowly unravels, it's almost as good as the first Judgment.
The combat is so good that it cancels out all all the shortcomings of the story. This is the 3rd best combat for me right behind #1: Y5 and #2: K1. Three styles with an extra boxer style with DLC was so fun to play around with. Crane was buffed really hard this time. It's still not as good as tiger, but the game rewards you really hard for constantly switching styles. You can get some insanely cool air juggles with boxer style.
The side content was insane. School stories were mostly really good. I wish they weren't as long though. There are definitely some that should've just been removed like the gambling club. My favourite was the robotics club once I figured out all I had to do was make a beeline to the enemy base.
Great OST. Unwavering Belief, Final Destination, K.O.G., Blue Stompin', Green Vibes, In The Groove, Mutual Justice to name some of my favourites.
Don't play this game before Y7 if you don't wanna get a big plot point spoiled like I did.
The way RGG tries to comment on morality and politics is so unbelievably childish that it rivals Persona 5's representation of politics, which is basically just dumb teenagers saying "adults bad, adults lie, teenagers good". Infinite Wealth's antagonists suffer the same problem as Lost Judgment's, and it's partly because of how they tried to take a lot of themes and ideas from this game for their central plot.
Yagami has practically no character development in this game because his biggest emotional hurdles have already been overcome. He's dull and boring in this game and the way the game tries to make him not be this way is to force the player into pretending like a certain character was a central part of his life when he's barely even seen this person. He also has an equally childish response to the antagonist's childish political views which makes the scenes where they try to preach morality to each other extra excruciating.
But when the plot is just about the mystery which slowly unravels, it's almost as good as the first Judgment.
The combat is so good that it cancels out all all the shortcomings of the story. This is the 3rd best combat for me right behind #1: Y5 and #2: K1. Three styles with an extra boxer style with DLC was so fun to play around with. Crane was buffed really hard this time. It's still not as good as tiger, but the game rewards you really hard for constantly switching styles. You can get some insanely cool air juggles with boxer style.
The side content was insane. School stories were mostly really good. I wish they weren't as long though. There are definitely some that should've just been removed like the gambling club. My favourite was the robotics club once I figured out all I had to do was make a beeline to the enemy base.
Great OST. Unwavering Belief, Final Destination, K.O.G., Blue Stompin', Green Vibes, In The Groove, Mutual Justice to name some of my favourites.
Don't play this game before Y7 if you don't wanna get a big plot point spoiled like I did.
2018
This was the first RGG game I finished. I bought Y5 back when it came out on PS3 cause I thought it was cool and I played it until part 4 but I didn't get the story so I never finished it until I worked my way back from Y0 many years later. The reason I did go back and play everything was because of this game, not Y0.
The thing that really drew me to this game before I knew much of anything about RGG was the fact that Kimura Takuya was playing the lead and I loved the HERO jdrama series. He actually plays a goofy prosecutor (instead of a lawyer) that acts like he's in his teenage years in that one too, which almost made me think the game used that show as a blueprint.
Chapter 1 of this game is insanely good in terms of the story hook that it presents. The plot of this game was amazing and it never let me down. The antagonist and the reveal were so good. The combat was pretty decent although I didn't have other RGG games back then to compare it with.
The biggest issues it has is the non-combat stuff and some minor combat gripes.
The non-combat stuff:
-Kim's text messages and the goddamn Keihin gang. The amount of times I would afk for a second only to get swarmed by enemies and come back to a retry screen cause Kim sent a text message...
-Tailing sequences. While they do distinguish Judgment as a series from Yakuza, I just don't like them. They were a pain in all Assassin's Creed games and they're still a pain here. Just remove them.
-Chase sequences are way worse than the older games. It's just pressing button prompts with nothing interesting to do. It was fun as hell in Y5 since you could actually go in wrong directions, kick the dudes, had some control over your own movement. Or the sequences went through interesting pathways like Akiyama's in 4. Here, they're just trash.
-The friendship system is awful. Hated it in 0 and hate it here too. Locking certain substories behind the friendship meter made things a lot more annoying than it had to be.
-As a 35 year old man, Yagami is allergic to women that are anywhere older than 20. The most sus romances I've seen in RGG games only matched by Infinite Wealth's.
The combat stuff:
-Crane is really bad compared to tiger.
-Mortal wounds would have been good if the cost to get them fixed wasn't astronomical compared to what you could normally earn and the place is so out of the way that you almost never wanna go there.
OST was great.
Good game with the added benefit of not needing to play any of the Yakuza games to fully enjoy it since it's very detached from everything else.
The thing that really drew me to this game before I knew much of anything about RGG was the fact that Kimura Takuya was playing the lead and I loved the HERO jdrama series. He actually plays a goofy prosecutor (instead of a lawyer) that acts like he's in his teenage years in that one too, which almost made me think the game used that show as a blueprint.
Chapter 1 of this game is insanely good in terms of the story hook that it presents. The plot of this game was amazing and it never let me down. The antagonist and the reveal were so good. The combat was pretty decent although I didn't have other RGG games back then to compare it with.
The biggest issues it has is the non-combat stuff and some minor combat gripes.
The non-combat stuff:
-Kim's text messages and the goddamn Keihin gang. The amount of times I would afk for a second only to get swarmed by enemies and come back to a retry screen cause Kim sent a text message...
-Tailing sequences. While they do distinguish Judgment as a series from Yakuza, I just don't like them. They were a pain in all Assassin's Creed games and they're still a pain here. Just remove them.
-Chase sequences are way worse than the older games. It's just pressing button prompts with nothing interesting to do. It was fun as hell in Y5 since you could actually go in wrong directions, kick the dudes, had some control over your own movement. Or the sequences went through interesting pathways like Akiyama's in 4. Here, they're just trash.
-The friendship system is awful. Hated it in 0 and hate it here too. Locking certain substories behind the friendship meter made things a lot more annoying than it had to be.
-As a 35 year old man, Yagami is allergic to women that are anywhere older than 20. The most sus romances I've seen in RGG games only matched by Infinite Wealth's.
The combat stuff:
-Crane is really bad compared to tiger.
-Mortal wounds would have been good if the cost to get them fixed wasn't astronomical compared to what you could normally earn and the place is so out of the way that you almost never wanna go there.
OST was great.
Good game with the added benefit of not needing to play any of the Yakuza games to fully enjoy it since it's very detached from everything else.
Probably the most overrated Yakuza game of all time. I took some time to think about the game after I finished to see if I'd like it more when thinking about it, but no it just keeps getting worse the more time I give it. I won't even mention the DLC nonsense they did with this.
I'll give it credit where it's due though: the combat is miles ahead of 7. Although they took out shortcuts from 7 and level-scaling is much much worse in this game, the overall casual experience in terms of difficulty felt much better. Removing the big level and money walls that 7 had is a great change and the fact that they give you a recommended level and equipment quality before you start a sequence is a change in the right direction. It also has some incredibly good boss fights. It genuinely has one of the best boss fights RGG has ever designed. The last boss felt appropriately "final" as well with a top notch theme to boot.
Dragon of Dojima style actually made the turn-based combat interesting to me for the first time (and it's also the only job that is tonally consistent with a Yakuza game). The game starts throwing you a lot of money after a certain chapter so making the best weapon isn't as much of an agony-inducing quest as it was in 7. So many quality of life improvements for navigating the map like being able to call taxis from the map and looking at the menu of restaurants and shop items on the map (although you can't view all the selection so this could be improved).
Now what are the problems with this game? I don't know about other players, but I play these games primarily for the story. And... it has one of the worst stories in the entire series. It's a mish-mash of a bunch of themes from previous games, but done 10 times worse in each case. Incredibly tonally inconsistent like Y7. I already disliked Kasuga's character in 7 (I've explained why in my review), and this game actually managed to make him a worse character than he already was. Incredibly boring villains with only one new non-party character that was genuinely well written. The ending was probably the worst Yakuza ending I've experienced considering its position in the story and the relevance that its ending has to the franchise. If Kiryu wasn't in this game and if we didn't have the Kiryu content, this would probably be at the bottom of my list, just barely above Gaiden, but the Kiryu content was good enough to elevate it quite a bit.
It'd be excusable if the story was bad with a good pacing, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. It has the absolute worst pacing in the series. Why did we have to replay Y7 for the first couple chapters and constantly repeat every plot point that happened in that game? It took me 10 hours of in-game time before the Y7 recap started to die down. There were so many times the game forced me into trash side-content I never wanted to engage with, while I was invested in the story and just wanted to move on. Why did I get dragged into dondoko island and forced to engage with it for so long before they let me go back? Why did I get dragged into sujimon battles when I was just trying to move on to the next story sequence? Why did I get dragged into a delivery game? Why are the poundmate tutorial fillers always this annoying and intrusive to the main plot? Imagine that one filler part you have to do with Saejima in Y5 but it's literally the entire game now. Even the substories have poor pacing. They are so unnecessarily long with very little interesting content. I think Y7 had way better substories. The only genuinely great substory in this one was the Let It Snow and the others were either too long or not interesting enough to engage with.
I felt the OST was much better in this one compared to Y7 and some of the boss themes are amazing. The final boss fight theme is one of my top Yakuza tracks of all time.
It is a genuinely good game, but it has so much bloat weighing it down and the story doesn't do it any service. If they at least stuck the landing with the ending, the 60 hours of painful slog I had to get through would have been worth it, but it wasn't. It's kind of weird that when rating this, I had to keep telling myself that I probably liked it more than Kiwami 1 and 2 to justify my rating, but I'm not even sure if that's true.
I'll give it credit where it's due though: the combat is miles ahead of 7. Although they took out shortcuts from 7 and level-scaling is much much worse in this game, the overall casual experience in terms of difficulty felt much better. Removing the big level and money walls that 7 had is a great change and the fact that they give you a recommended level and equipment quality before you start a sequence is a change in the right direction. It also has some incredibly good boss fights. It genuinely has one of the best boss fights RGG has ever designed. The last boss felt appropriately "final" as well with a top notch theme to boot.
Dragon of Dojima style actually made the turn-based combat interesting to me for the first time (and it's also the only job that is tonally consistent with a Yakuza game). The game starts throwing you a lot of money after a certain chapter so making the best weapon isn't as much of an agony-inducing quest as it was in 7. So many quality of life improvements for navigating the map like being able to call taxis from the map and looking at the menu of restaurants and shop items on the map (although you can't view all the selection so this could be improved).
Now what are the problems with this game? I don't know about other players, but I play these games primarily for the story. And... it has one of the worst stories in the entire series. It's a mish-mash of a bunch of themes from previous games, but done 10 times worse in each case. Incredibly tonally inconsistent like Y7. I already disliked Kasuga's character in 7 (I've explained why in my review), and this game actually managed to make him a worse character than he already was. Incredibly boring villains with only one new non-party character that was genuinely well written. The ending was probably the worst Yakuza ending I've experienced considering its position in the story and the relevance that its ending has to the franchise. If Kiryu wasn't in this game and if we didn't have the Kiryu content, this would probably be at the bottom of my list, just barely above Gaiden, but the Kiryu content was good enough to elevate it quite a bit.
It'd be excusable if the story was bad with a good pacing, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. It has the absolute worst pacing in the series. Why did we have to replay Y7 for the first couple chapters and constantly repeat every plot point that happened in that game? It took me 10 hours of in-game time before the Y7 recap started to die down. There were so many times the game forced me into trash side-content I never wanted to engage with, while I was invested in the story and just wanted to move on. Why did I get dragged into dondoko island and forced to engage with it for so long before they let me go back? Why did I get dragged into sujimon battles when I was just trying to move on to the next story sequence? Why did I get dragged into a delivery game? Why are the poundmate tutorial fillers always this annoying and intrusive to the main plot? Imagine that one filler part you have to do with Saejima in Y5 but it's literally the entire game now. Even the substories have poor pacing. They are so unnecessarily long with very little interesting content. I think Y7 had way better substories. The only genuinely great substory in this one was the Let It Snow and the others were either too long or not interesting enough to engage with.
I felt the OST was much better in this one compared to Y7 and some of the boss themes are amazing. The final boss fight theme is one of my top Yakuza tracks of all time.
It is a genuinely good game, but it has so much bloat weighing it down and the story doesn't do it any service. If they at least stuck the landing with the ending, the 60 hours of painful slog I had to get through would have been worth it, but it wasn't. It's kind of weird that when rating this, I had to keep telling myself that I probably liked it more than Kiwami 1 and 2 to justify my rating, but I'm not even sure if that's true.
It's hard to rate this as a full game when it's really just a large DLC. As a DLC, it's alright. As a full game, this is pretty low on the tier list.
This game has two big problems:
1) It's almost entirely filler and fluff until literally the last chapter where there's finally relevant story content and the game actually gets good. Since it's basically a DLC, there's really not much in this game and feels very bare-bones compared to a full Yakuza game. That means there isn't a big interesting plot that's unfolding. A large part of the interesting chunk of the game is just a rehash of another game but from a different POV.
2) There's a lot of nonsense convenient stuff and retconned stuff regarding the Daidoji and it really damages the ending of Yakuza 6.
The gameplay is pretty decent. Agent style is kinda meh and a bit too over the top with how silly it can be. Yakuza style is kind of just the dragon engine Kiryu style but made a bit better and it feels like Judgment. There are some cool juggling combos you can do here but it didn't feel as fun as Lost Judgment and not as refined and 1v1 focused as something like Y5 and Kiwami. The coliseum was fun but not as fun as it was in 3, 4, 5. The last coliseum fight was really cool though and I hope they do something like this again in later non-turn based Yakuza games. The ending holds the record for how hard it made me cry and I think a lot of the positive reviews are because of that. But judging a 20 hour game based on how hard the ending hit without looking at the overall story isn't fair to the game.
The OST didn't really hit this time around. The final boss fight track and the track that plays while we all cried our eyes out were good, but the rest were unremarkable.
Overall decent enough game but the second worst Yakuza game as a full package of story/content length and quality/side content.
This game has two big problems:
1) It's almost entirely filler and fluff until literally the last chapter where there's finally relevant story content and the game actually gets good. Since it's basically a DLC, there's really not much in this game and feels very bare-bones compared to a full Yakuza game. That means there isn't a big interesting plot that's unfolding. A large part of the interesting chunk of the game is just a rehash of another game but from a different POV.
2) There's a lot of nonsense convenient stuff and retconned stuff regarding the Daidoji and it really damages the ending of Yakuza 6.
The gameplay is pretty decent. Agent style is kinda meh and a bit too over the top with how silly it can be. Yakuza style is kind of just the dragon engine Kiryu style but made a bit better and it feels like Judgment. There are some cool juggling combos you can do here but it didn't feel as fun as Lost Judgment and not as refined and 1v1 focused as something like Y5 and Kiwami. The coliseum was fun but not as fun as it was in 3, 4, 5. The last coliseum fight was really cool though and I hope they do something like this again in later non-turn based Yakuza games. The ending holds the record for how hard it made me cry and I think a lot of the positive reviews are because of that. But judging a 20 hour game based on how hard the ending hit without looking at the overall story isn't fair to the game.
The OST didn't really hit this time around. The final boss fight track and the track that plays while we all cried our eyes out were good, but the rest were unremarkable.
Overall decent enough game but the second worst Yakuza game as a full package of story/content length and quality/side content.
This review contains spoilers
This is where mainline Yakuza took a downward spiral for me. This game has so many glaring problems and I sometimes feel like I've played a different game than what others have been playing when I see such positive reviews for it. I was actually reminded of a lot of these problems when I was playing Infinite Wealth so I took a mental note of them again for a review of this. In a way, I think a lot of these overly positive reviews stem from what I like to call the "Persona 5 effect". It's no secret that this is an entry point for a lot of players new to the franchise who had no prior experience with the other games. And it's also no secret that this being turn-based attracted a new group of players that wouldn't have been interested in the brawler combat of the previous game. So when you have these players come in and see that there are social links, a job system, goofy enemies to grind in dungeons and funny side quests, all without the high school and god-killing tropes, they're bound to think this is a 10/10. As for those who played all the other games and then this one and still thought this was one of the top games, I can't comprehend their reasoning.
So what are the actual problems of this game? It comes down to both gameplay and story and how the two interact with each other. So I'll take it one at a time.
Combat: The decision to go with turn-based combat in this game was a really bad one. This isn't because turn-based combat is bad, but because the game isn't suitable for it. The moment I started the game, I could tell the combat was going to cause severe pacing issues with the story and I ended up being right. One of the worst pacing issues that's combat related happens in chapter 12 with the Majima and Saejima fights and then with the Kiryu fight after that. The game actually hints that you should just sit there in Sotenbori and grind before you progress in the story. This happens as the story has finally picked up and the player would be dying to see what would happen next, only to wall them and kill their interest with at least an hour of repetitive mandatory grinding. Previous entries never forced me to grind to overcome challenges in the story. I could always get good enough with the combat to win without having some skill unlocked. As someone who plays Yakuza games primarily for the stories, this was a huge issue for me.
The turn-based combat also creates severe tonal inconsistencies. The one rule all games in the franchise had followed so far was that the main story is always grounded and the "ridiculous" is reserved for the side content. They're now forced to destroy this beautifully constructed balance they had from before. Because turn-based combat in a way necessitates variety, we now have normal people on the street turning into human trash bags, gigantic pirates, men who do nuru massage on you, etc. to mimic other turn based games having monster variety like Pokemon, SMT, and the like. And then you have the job system where you start the fight against the man who killed your father and the next moment your teammate transforms into a dominatrix and hits the boss with wax play before Ichiban uses essence of Orbital Laser. The tonal whiplash is to the degree of being almost offensive. It also makes boss fights incredibly anti-climactic. Compare any of the boss fights in Y5 to anything in Y7.
But disregarding all this, the turn-based system isn't good enough to justify the change either. You have no control over your positioning and at some point it just becomes "use Essence skill to AOE all the mobs over and over". 99% of the other skills don't even matter and regular attacks in the late-game are just a waste of a turn. Buffs and debuffs matter so very little compared to a game like SMT4 where stacking the correct buffs and debuffs and team weakness composition is essential to not instantly dying to bosses. Bosses and even regular enemies become gigantic damage sponges that just serve to prolong the game for no good reason other than to stop you from moving forward in the story.
Story: It's one of the weakest stories for me. I really disliked Ichiban. I don't think he's a good protagonist and I think by now, I've seen enough class-clown-with-a-heart-of-gold-that-forgives-everyone archetypes in anime and JRPGs that I've had enough. Snow from FF13 is a much better character if I wanted this trope again. Nanba is really boring in the beginning, gets a bit more interesting and then does something so comically stupid, it makes him unlikable again. And I'm almost sure Nanba had his whole episode with Bleach Japan just as a device to push the whole Ichiban forgives anyone and trusts anyone trope. Adachi is alright. Saeko is alright. Eri is boring as hell. They brought Han Joon-gi as fanservice and made-up reasons for him to exist (they also set the horrible trend of bringing back characters we saw die on-screen and putting them in random substory roles). Zhao was a great character and probably increased my rating of the game by himself.
The story starts off with a decently interesting start. Arakawa has a good introduction and seems to be the Kazama equivalent for Ichiban. Then we have the time skip and Ichiban's release from prison. And then suddenly the story comes to a screeching halt after Ichiban is shot by Arakawa and the whole homeless saga begins with chapter 4. It's one of the chapters I hate most in any Yakuza games. It's so boring that it makes Yakuza 3's chapter 4 seem well paced in comparison. And then there's a whole stretch of some of the worst writing I've seen with the soapland and Nonomiya. This is probably one of the things that made me dislike Ichiban more with the way he responded to his teammates when they expressed their disgust at the idea of working for an exploiting scum like Nonomiya. I get that part of it is supposed to show how he's indebted to the man that acted as his father when he was growing up in the soapland, but the way the game itself outside of Ichiban's emotional perspective tries to exonerate Nonomiya after he's killed is just disgusting.
The whole story about the great wall of Ijincho wasn't interesting. I didn't find any of the gangs themselves interesting besides the 3 top dogs of each i.e. Seonhee, Hoshino, Zhao. Then we slowly got to the Great Dissolution stuff which felt like empty fanservice to have an excuse to show Majima, Saejima, Daigo, Watase, Kiryu. All we get is two boss fights with almost non-existent character development or any interesting changes in their personality ever since they've gone into hiding. No meaningful conversations between Ichiban and these characters. Kiryu randomly challenges us later after he shows up in the middle of the street to stop us from hitting some guy and then runs off to the wilderness immediately after the fight we have with him. Mirror face is probably the stupidest plot device Yakuza has used so far and it actually detracted from the story because in a way it also solidifies the idea that even the main plot in this game isn't grounded. Tendo showed so much promise to be an interesting final fight and the final fight is surprisingly very good with the best OST in Y7, but we got no conversation after the fight with him and nothing to peek into his character more. He had so much potential, but he was discarded the moment the fight result screen came up. How did mirror face suddenly teleport there and how can mirror face just instantly copy Tendo for this elaborate setup to trick Aoki Ryo? Who knows. It's not grounded anyway.
Which gets us to Aoki Ryo. A bland character with even more bland motivations. I think I was supposed to hate his guts but I just wanted him to get off the screen whenever he showed up. The theme of this game is the Whereabouts of Light and Darkness, which basically represents Ichiban as the light and Aoki Ryo as the darkness. Two pseudo-siblings, one brought up in the metaphorical darkness which ends up being the light himself, Ichiban, and one brought up in the light, inside the comfort of being an affluent child of a Yakuza boss, turning into darkness. If only Aoki Ryo was actually interesting though. Such a shame. I felt nothing when he died and the fact that Kume just randomly finds him out of nowhere actually made me laugh. The only saving grace of that scene is Ichiban's heartfelt plea to Aoki to live and Kazuhiro Nakaya's outstanding voice performance. But even then, I couldn't really go along with Ichiban's emotions because I find them genuinely disturbed and problematic. The game again tries to force me to think these problematic feelings he has are normal and good and wholesome, but I can't accept that. Ichiban was never Aoki Ryo's brother. He was treated like trash and he was a servant. The twisting of this abusive, dominating relationship into one of love is understandable from the point of view of the victim, but not when the game tries to rehabilitate such relationships for the player. Kiryu had one of these bad scenes in Y4 and it soured my experience of that game.
So after all this, do I hate this game? No. I think by itself without the Yakuza title, it's a good game. I wouldn't have platinumed this game if I wasn't having any fun. Even as the worst Yakuza game for me, this is still miles ahead of a lot of other titles. But I think it tries to be way too funny and plays into wanting to be shown as a meme on twitter to the detriment of its story. If they had excluded all previous Yakuza characters while keeping some minor references in the way the Judgment games did, I think it would have been much better off.
So what are the actual problems of this game? It comes down to both gameplay and story and how the two interact with each other. So I'll take it one at a time.
Combat: The decision to go with turn-based combat in this game was a really bad one. This isn't because turn-based combat is bad, but because the game isn't suitable for it. The moment I started the game, I could tell the combat was going to cause severe pacing issues with the story and I ended up being right. One of the worst pacing issues that's combat related happens in chapter 12 with the Majima and Saejima fights and then with the Kiryu fight after that. The game actually hints that you should just sit there in Sotenbori and grind before you progress in the story. This happens as the story has finally picked up and the player would be dying to see what would happen next, only to wall them and kill their interest with at least an hour of repetitive mandatory grinding. Previous entries never forced me to grind to overcome challenges in the story. I could always get good enough with the combat to win without having some skill unlocked. As someone who plays Yakuza games primarily for the stories, this was a huge issue for me.
The turn-based combat also creates severe tonal inconsistencies. The one rule all games in the franchise had followed so far was that the main story is always grounded and the "ridiculous" is reserved for the side content. They're now forced to destroy this beautifully constructed balance they had from before. Because turn-based combat in a way necessitates variety, we now have normal people on the street turning into human trash bags, gigantic pirates, men who do nuru massage on you, etc. to mimic other turn based games having monster variety like Pokemon, SMT, and the like. And then you have the job system where you start the fight against the man who killed your father and the next moment your teammate transforms into a dominatrix and hits the boss with wax play before Ichiban uses essence of Orbital Laser. The tonal whiplash is to the degree of being almost offensive. It also makes boss fights incredibly anti-climactic. Compare any of the boss fights in Y5 to anything in Y7.
But disregarding all this, the turn-based system isn't good enough to justify the change either. You have no control over your positioning and at some point it just becomes "use Essence skill to AOE all the mobs over and over". 99% of the other skills don't even matter and regular attacks in the late-game are just a waste of a turn. Buffs and debuffs matter so very little compared to a game like SMT4 where stacking the correct buffs and debuffs and team weakness composition is essential to not instantly dying to bosses. Bosses and even regular enemies become gigantic damage sponges that just serve to prolong the game for no good reason other than to stop you from moving forward in the story.
Story: It's one of the weakest stories for me. I really disliked Ichiban. I don't think he's a good protagonist and I think by now, I've seen enough class-clown-with-a-heart-of-gold-that-forgives-everyone archetypes in anime and JRPGs that I've had enough. Snow from FF13 is a much better character if I wanted this trope again. Nanba is really boring in the beginning, gets a bit more interesting and then does something so comically stupid, it makes him unlikable again. And I'm almost sure Nanba had his whole episode with Bleach Japan just as a device to push the whole Ichiban forgives anyone and trusts anyone trope. Adachi is alright. Saeko is alright. Eri is boring as hell. They brought Han Joon-gi as fanservice and made-up reasons for him to exist (they also set the horrible trend of bringing back characters we saw die on-screen and putting them in random substory roles). Zhao was a great character and probably increased my rating of the game by himself.
The story starts off with a decently interesting start. Arakawa has a good introduction and seems to be the Kazama equivalent for Ichiban. Then we have the time skip and Ichiban's release from prison. And then suddenly the story comes to a screeching halt after Ichiban is shot by Arakawa and the whole homeless saga begins with chapter 4. It's one of the chapters I hate most in any Yakuza games. It's so boring that it makes Yakuza 3's chapter 4 seem well paced in comparison. And then there's a whole stretch of some of the worst writing I've seen with the soapland and Nonomiya. This is probably one of the things that made me dislike Ichiban more with the way he responded to his teammates when they expressed their disgust at the idea of working for an exploiting scum like Nonomiya. I get that part of it is supposed to show how he's indebted to the man that acted as his father when he was growing up in the soapland, but the way the game itself outside of Ichiban's emotional perspective tries to exonerate Nonomiya after he's killed is just disgusting.
The whole story about the great wall of Ijincho wasn't interesting. I didn't find any of the gangs themselves interesting besides the 3 top dogs of each i.e. Seonhee, Hoshino, Zhao. Then we slowly got to the Great Dissolution stuff which felt like empty fanservice to have an excuse to show Majima, Saejima, Daigo, Watase, Kiryu. All we get is two boss fights with almost non-existent character development or any interesting changes in their personality ever since they've gone into hiding. No meaningful conversations between Ichiban and these characters. Kiryu randomly challenges us later after he shows up in the middle of the street to stop us from hitting some guy and then runs off to the wilderness immediately after the fight we have with him. Mirror face is probably the stupidest plot device Yakuza has used so far and it actually detracted from the story because in a way it also solidifies the idea that even the main plot in this game isn't grounded. Tendo showed so much promise to be an interesting final fight and the final fight is surprisingly very good with the best OST in Y7, but we got no conversation after the fight with him and nothing to peek into his character more. He had so much potential, but he was discarded the moment the fight result screen came up. How did mirror face suddenly teleport there and how can mirror face just instantly copy Tendo for this elaborate setup to trick Aoki Ryo? Who knows. It's not grounded anyway.
Which gets us to Aoki Ryo. A bland character with even more bland motivations. I think I was supposed to hate his guts but I just wanted him to get off the screen whenever he showed up. The theme of this game is the Whereabouts of Light and Darkness, which basically represents Ichiban as the light and Aoki Ryo as the darkness. Two pseudo-siblings, one brought up in the metaphorical darkness which ends up being the light himself, Ichiban, and one brought up in the light, inside the comfort of being an affluent child of a Yakuza boss, turning into darkness. If only Aoki Ryo was actually interesting though. Such a shame. I felt nothing when he died and the fact that Kume just randomly finds him out of nowhere actually made me laugh. The only saving grace of that scene is Ichiban's heartfelt plea to Aoki to live and Kazuhiro Nakaya's outstanding voice performance. But even then, I couldn't really go along with Ichiban's emotions because I find them genuinely disturbed and problematic. The game again tries to force me to think these problematic feelings he has are normal and good and wholesome, but I can't accept that. Ichiban was never Aoki Ryo's brother. He was treated like trash and he was a servant. The twisting of this abusive, dominating relationship into one of love is understandable from the point of view of the victim, but not when the game tries to rehabilitate such relationships for the player. Kiryu had one of these bad scenes in Y4 and it soured my experience of that game.
So after all this, do I hate this game? No. I think by itself without the Yakuza title, it's a good game. I wouldn't have platinumed this game if I wasn't having any fun. Even as the worst Yakuza game for me, this is still miles ahead of a lot of other titles. But I think it tries to be way too funny and plays into wanting to be shown as a meme on twitter to the detriment of its story. If they had excluded all previous Yakuza characters while keeping some minor references in the way the Judgment games did, I think it would have been much better off.
Recently replayed this after probably 15 years. It's as fun as I remember it being, but also slightly less magical. There's something about Kanto that always feels emotionally distant to me. I usually go with Charmander even knowing the rough start fire types have in this game, but I used Squirtle this time and it felt so much easier than I remember it being. I used the Universal patch this time for the ability to evolve Pokemon through levelling up that normally require trading etc. It was a much better experience.
Caught a lot of Pokemon, beat Elite Four, caught Mewtwo. I'm satisfied for now. Maybe in another 10 years I'll give it another go.
Caught a lot of Pokemon, beat Elite Four, caught Mewtwo. I'm satisfied for now. Maybe in another 10 years I'll give it another go.
The third best game in the series. They significantly scaled back the length of this game compared to Y5 and as a result, the game feels more like a personal journey for Kiryu. And boy was it a great experience. Onomichi is such a great setting for this game and there are some exceptionally good characters introduced here.
The story starts with one of the strongest hooks in the series and keeps a mystery going which stays engaging and interesting throughout. Because of the smaller scope of the game, it's a much cleaner, well organized story that pretty much addresses everything that it sets up. Some minor gripes about the puny screen time and attention to some of my favourites from the previous games, but ultimately, it's excusable here because of the focus of this game on Kiryu. The ending was incredibly satisfying and bitter at the same time (Gaiden sort of ruins this but more on that in the Gaiden review).
Best substories in the series too. Every single line of substory is voiced in this game and none of them feel like cheap fetch quests or scam-related filler that always exist to some degree in every game. I still remember a lot of the substories of this game and I can't say the same thing about the other games. The bar chat minigame was surprisingly fun and it didn't drag on for an eternity. The baseball minigame was mediocre. The Kiryu clan tower defense stuff was reaaaaaally boring though just like the Kiwami 2 tower defense minigame. Overall, one of the most fun and relaxing platinum trophies.
This is where I complain about how bad the dragon engine is. Eating food for specific exp sucks. The levelling system is awful and the combat is very wonky. You can't grab and throw enemies near walls cause Kiryu just hits the wall and recoils. Speaking of recoils, enemies blocking makes you recoil and it completely ruins the flow of combat. Yakuza 3 has an infinitely better combat system. Y6 is bottom 3 combat for me. This is the only reason I'm giving a score lower than 5 and 0.
The OST was good but aside from 2 tracks, nothing stood out to me. I don't have any Y6 songs on my playlist to listen to regularly and that should say something.
Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from here in terms of mainline Yakuza games. But this was a great peak to end it on.
The story starts with one of the strongest hooks in the series and keeps a mystery going which stays engaging and interesting throughout. Because of the smaller scope of the game, it's a much cleaner, well organized story that pretty much addresses everything that it sets up. Some minor gripes about the puny screen time and attention to some of my favourites from the previous games, but ultimately, it's excusable here because of the focus of this game on Kiryu. The ending was incredibly satisfying and bitter at the same time (Gaiden sort of ruins this but more on that in the Gaiden review).
Best substories in the series too. Every single line of substory is voiced in this game and none of them feel like cheap fetch quests or scam-related filler that always exist to some degree in every game. I still remember a lot of the substories of this game and I can't say the same thing about the other games. The bar chat minigame was surprisingly fun and it didn't drag on for an eternity. The baseball minigame was mediocre. The Kiryu clan tower defense stuff was reaaaaaally boring though just like the Kiwami 2 tower defense minigame. Overall, one of the most fun and relaxing platinum trophies.
This is where I complain about how bad the dragon engine is. Eating food for specific exp sucks. The levelling system is awful and the combat is very wonky. You can't grab and throw enemies near walls cause Kiryu just hits the wall and recoils. Speaking of recoils, enemies blocking makes you recoil and it completely ruins the flow of combat. Yakuza 3 has an infinitely better combat system. Y6 is bottom 3 combat for me. This is the only reason I'm giving a score lower than 5 and 0.
The OST was good but aside from 2 tracks, nothing stood out to me. I don't have any Y6 songs on my playlist to listen to regularly and that should say something.
Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from here in terms of mainline Yakuza games. But this was a great peak to end it on.
2020
I normally wouldn't play a game like this, but I was gifted it and decided to give it a go. I'd played Divinity 2 before so I had some idea of what to expect this time and I enjoyed my time a lot more than I had with Divinity.
This was a pretty good game and I felt like it gave me all the options I wanted and that would have fit my own personality (up till the last choice in end-game where I didn't feel like any of the options were for me). I was really invested in Shadowheart, Astarion and Laezel's stories and I managed to get really satisfying endings for them. In terms of story and character writing, the rest of the cast is a lot weaker though which makes it a bit jarring. There was a certain event that happens at some point which nullified a lot of the effort I put into the character customization which I'm still mad about. Other than that, I should mention that the voice-acting is PHENOMENAL in this game.
Lots of really interesting areas in this game to explore. I felt compelled to do every quest because everything mattered and everything was connected. I started getting a bit fatigued in act 3 due to the sheer volume of quests that you can do at the same time. The game does get overwhelming at some points so it took me 6 months to finish it.
BG3 is reeeeeeeealllyyyyy buggy especially if you started playing at launch. And not just bugs that are minor, but actually game breaking things which would kill quest lines (thankfully I quick save a lot so I saved myself some frustration). The framerate in act 3 is horrendous and none of the patches have really fixed the performance issues.
The OST is decent but nothing special aside from 2-3 notable tracks that play only during special one-time fights.
Anyway, good game.
This was a pretty good game and I felt like it gave me all the options I wanted and that would have fit my own personality (up till the last choice in end-game where I didn't feel like any of the options were for me). I was really invested in Shadowheart, Astarion and Laezel's stories and I managed to get really satisfying endings for them. In terms of story and character writing, the rest of the cast is a lot weaker though which makes it a bit jarring. There was a certain event that happens at some point which nullified a lot of the effort I put into the character customization which I'm still mad about. Other than that, I should mention that the voice-acting is PHENOMENAL in this game.
Lots of really interesting areas in this game to explore. I felt compelled to do every quest because everything mattered and everything was connected. I started getting a bit fatigued in act 3 due to the sheer volume of quests that you can do at the same time. The game does get overwhelming at some points so it took me 6 months to finish it.
BG3 is reeeeeeeealllyyyyy buggy especially if you started playing at launch. And not just bugs that are minor, but actually game breaking things which would kill quest lines (thankfully I quick save a lot so I saved myself some frustration). The framerate in act 3 is horrendous and none of the patches have really fixed the performance issues.
The OST is decent but nothing special aside from 2-3 notable tracks that play only during special one-time fights.
Anyway, good game.
2019
This is my favourite game in the series. None of the other games reach the heights and peaks that this one reaches. I originally had 0 and 5 together as my favourites, but I slowly realized how much more I liked 5.
The initial hook for the plot is incredibly strong and kept me wanting to plow through the whole thing in one sitting, despite being the longest Yakuza game to date (minus Infinite Wealth). Some parts are definitely stronger than others but overall the quality of each part was really high. Due to its length and the scope and ambition of RGG here, there are some story point that don't quite mesh together or either seem to be dropped or left very ambiguous to the player, but it's nothing out of the ordinary for the Yakuza series in general to warrant me docking heavy marks. This is the most thematically and tonally consistent Yakuza game to the point where people who don't like this game have made this theme into a meme. There's a lot I could write about these themes and the finale specifically, but I'm gonna keep it spoiler-free. The final segment of this game is the best piece of Yakuza I've ever experienced and probably ever will. The final boss fight is the best Yakuza boss fight and will most likely never be topped now with the unfortunate change to turn-based combat and I don't see the further Judgment games (if they make any) topping it either. It's actually one of my favourite boss fights in any game in recent memory (FF16 is up there with one of its boss segments).
This game introduces the strongest cast of characters, including one of my favourite Yakuza characters of all time, Shinada the legend himself. Yakuza 0 comes very close but falls short in terms of quantity. I'd name them all but anyone who's finished this game knows exactly who they are.
Yakuza 5 also has my favourite combat system in the series. The selection of different fighting styles here is the best and a lot of improvements have been made from Y4 to make this the best combat in the series (one style was nerfed from Y4 though but they get a cool looking air combo instead so it wasn't that bad). Kiryu combat is at its peak here along with 0 and K1.
In terms of OST, this one had the highest quality and quantity of bangers. The Battle for the Dream, Affected Fight, What a FUNKTASTIC hit, Extermination, The place where I used to be, I believe in you, Dynamic & Magnificent, The Mutual Fists,
Collisions of Our Souls, The Battle for the Dream, Each of their dreams, to name a few.
If you're at all interested in the series, you really need to experience this one.
The initial hook for the plot is incredibly strong and kept me wanting to plow through the whole thing in one sitting, despite being the longest Yakuza game to date (minus Infinite Wealth). Some parts are definitely stronger than others but overall the quality of each part was really high. Due to its length and the scope and ambition of RGG here, there are some story point that don't quite mesh together or either seem to be dropped or left very ambiguous to the player, but it's nothing out of the ordinary for the Yakuza series in general to warrant me docking heavy marks. This is the most thematically and tonally consistent Yakuza game to the point where people who don't like this game have made this theme into a meme. There's a lot I could write about these themes and the finale specifically, but I'm gonna keep it spoiler-free. The final segment of this game is the best piece of Yakuza I've ever experienced and probably ever will. The final boss fight is the best Yakuza boss fight and will most likely never be topped now with the unfortunate change to turn-based combat and I don't see the further Judgment games (if they make any) topping it either. It's actually one of my favourite boss fights in any game in recent memory (FF16 is up there with one of its boss segments).
This game introduces the strongest cast of characters, including one of my favourite Yakuza characters of all time, Shinada the legend himself. Yakuza 0 comes very close but falls short in terms of quantity. I'd name them all but anyone who's finished this game knows exactly who they are.
Yakuza 5 also has my favourite combat system in the series. The selection of different fighting styles here is the best and a lot of improvements have been made from Y4 to make this the best combat in the series (one style was nerfed from Y4 though but they get a cool looking air combo instead so it wasn't that bad). Kiryu combat is at its peak here along with 0 and K1.
In terms of OST, this one had the highest quality and quantity of bangers. The Battle for the Dream, Affected Fight, What a FUNKTASTIC hit, Extermination, The place where I used to be, I believe in you, Dynamic & Magnificent, The Mutual Fists,
Collisions of Our Souls, The Battle for the Dream, Each of their dreams, to name a few.
If you're at all interested in the series, you really need to experience this one.
I tried the GBA version of I + II a couple of times but dropped it cause I wanted to do other things, but recently came back to play a bunch of the old Final Fantasy games I've always wanted to play. Decided to go with the PSP version this time and I ended up having a lot of fun. FF1 is really fun as a short experience with all the classic but cliche JRPG tropes. It doesn't have much substance in its story and the gameplay isn't special but it does a really good job at being that simple experience that I finished in 6 hours.