Magic is real. If you didn't know that yet, I'm sure it just rocked your world. This previously fictitious concept of a bottle-able, anti-reality force that opposes our predefined sense of nature is actually tangible. Inch toward grappling with this new reality until you can make peace with it, understand how things have changed, and tackle it head on. Magic, to you, was once intuitive. Santa was able to deliver gifts to all the children of the world in just one night. Magicians could bend spoons, vanish rabbits, or walk on water. There was a profit to be made from knocking all your teeth out on purpose and banking with the Tooth Fairy. I understand if you need to sit down for a second. While you're sitting, you might wanna do something to relax. It might help you parse the shattering information you just learned. Everyone has different techniques to relax, so go ahead and choose your favorite. Maybe you indulge in a favorite snack, or just lay your head to rest.

I, personally, play video games- no matter the mood.

Corn Kidz 64 knows magic is real. It transforms the reality of magic into a confident display utilizing a true, relatable, childlike wonder; indulgence with an edge. The emo goat-duo that the game follows speak with a bit-tongue's amount of Lulz. It's just the right amount of a personality anyone playing this game is definitely familiar with: it never gets grating or "cringey." It's obvious the game's solo-dev holds this kind of early internet culture close to his heart, as the game lacks any kind of deathly serious motive or secret agenda. The playable character wants Nachos, and Nachos are a funny food, so we run with it. It's all an excuse for cute interactions between characters, which is as noble of a goal as any. It harkens back to any adult's deviantart childhood in a non-punishing way. This reflective purity is also displayed through the game's obviously 5th generation iterative visual style, something also close to home to the dev, evident through its perfect execution. The vast, supernaturally colored skyboxes, misty textures, and oddly specific architecture offers a unique impression through a familiar lens, it's fantastic and needs no discussion past this.

The game's visuals and writing is a match made in heaven, as it isn't baiting the player along its path. Corn Kidz is more than the memory of a trident controller, as it brings the sharp, cutthroat "edgy"ness of teenaged creation with it, and it's completely welcome. The goats complain about being "developmentally crippled mutants", there's cartoonish gore, and gothic theming all over Wolloh's Hollow. Allusions to religious satire and ethically dubious acts tie the game's presentation in a nice, torn up, black bow. I wanted to say early it's a match made in hell, but that would've sounded like an insult lacking context. The whole package is so relatable to me. It isn't just this "fantastical" sense of childhood or Wonder, it's the unexpected intensity. The slapstick fluid animation that binds it, the seemingly inappropriate theming, I am into this stuff.

But above it all, Corn Kidz is aware of magic's rules.

It's secrets lie within conviction- the power to do things because you know you can. Belief in "corn powers" and the supernatural.
If you don't think you can make a jump and chicken out, you're lacking the faith that fuels the magic. This game has mastered what I call the "skin-of-your-teeth" jump like I haven't seen since Mario 64. Every jump will have you sucking air through your teeth until you exhale. Some jumps seem impossible without the fated "upgrade" or "different ability" you'll never get. It's all a matter of analyzing your seemingly unintuitive surroundings, thinking about your approach, and executing. It's very satisfying. "Unintuitive" is really the name of the game here, especially when it comes to puzzle solving, as every solution has a very cryptic, yet retroactively obvious, solution. It encourages the player to study every option in the toybox they roam and leads them to the discovery that no room, no object, is unneccessary. If something seems menial or strictly humorous, the odds are its an incredibly important piece to a multi-step puzzle. This would usually bother me, but since Seve is so fun to control, it doesn't matter. Just as jumps are tailored, Seve's turn radius, speed, and limited moves leave so much room in their simplicity and effectiveness for wonderful player-interaction with the world. While his wall jumps, sidling, and homing attacks are simple on paper, there are iterations on them that further encourage a unique thought directive in the player. For example, you jump higher on walls when you push against them, so "impossible" distances actually just require some prior proximity. Seve's air-boost homing attack magnetizes to distant objects, but blasting off of them isn't attached to your control stick or inherent to your previously chosen direction. This impressed me; It's actually initiated through an extra button input after colliding with an object, which gives you slack time to continually boost wherever you want again while airborne. I play a lot of Sonic games, and the "answer" to flow-stopping homing attacks has always alluded me, and this serves as a more than functional alternative. It's COOL. There's room for experimentation within Seve's base movement too, there are faster ways of travel other than walking if you're willing to take the time to try; but frankly, the game doesn't need it. Everything is so close together and you unlock so many shortcuts around the areas that travel is never obnoxious. The hands off camera functionality works wonders for the game's flow, and additives to it like a "look directly down" button and distant option make it even better. Old 3d platformers have gotten a lot of flack for their cameras, but I've always been a proponent of the camera being a mechanic just as much as a moveset or obstacle is. It's something you need to tackle and understand, and often times, trust for the best experience. Corn Kidz 64 is no different if you're willing to sit down and shut up.

Magic lies in confidence and confidence is as real as you're willing to display. If you didn't know that yet, I'm sure it just rocked your world.

No plot twist, death, or shocking betrayal in this game can compare to the reveal that Kiryu types with two fingers. That’s just such a perfect encapsulation of what I love about the character and this series, and I’ve been thinking about it for actual weeks. I saw that and just yelled out “Oh, of course he does!”

They came up with a silly minigame where Kiryu types stuff to scantily-clad webcam women in a chat room (fine enough idea). We immediately see him hunting and pecking through the whole ordeal, which reveals just a little bit more about how an older man who spent the prime of his life fighting or in prison interacts with the changing world around him (good idea). Then we see how Kiryu interacts with the women and men in the chat room. The rest of the chat is unsurprisingly horny and fully fluent in the memes of the era. Kiryu, on the other hand, is mostly kind and encouraging to the women, slowly but steadily typing in proper grammar (genuinely incredible idea). Then, occasionally, he types something like “BOOOOOBS” because he still knows what this is. As an actual game, it’s pretty shallow. But I actually learned something, had my fun, and moved on to the next thing. You really can’t ask for more.

I skipped the second through fifth games to play this, because that’s just how the subscription service grift crumbles sometimes (I’ll come back to them someday). Playing through this one, I constantly felt like this is the game where the series reached its full potential. Like, RGG Studio has done god-only-knows-how-many of these games, and they clearly resolved to refine absolutely every aspect for the swan song of their beloved protagonist and the series as we knew it.

Sidequests have been polished to a sheen, for example. There are a few stinkers. It comes with the territory, but there’s way fewer than I’d come to expect. There seemed to be fewer sidequests total, which probably increases the hit rate and decreases the feeling that you’re getting pulled away from gameplay once every few steps. A lot of them go right up to the line of weirdness where this series thrives, but doesn’t ever cross it. A few are fun continuations of older sidequests. In a few, Kiryu gets to wear a funny costume and say multiple catchphrases. Kiryu gets scammed a fair amount, which is a longstanding tradition of the series, and one that can get a little tiresome. But having the option to temporarily fall for the scam, for no other reason than seeing the funny dialog choices, gives it a little more life than in past entries. Scam sidequests and other sidequests often concern advances in technology (prepaid cards, cell phone impostors, etc.) and show Kiryu’s age, which I’ve already discussed above and feels like a minor theme of the game. Bonds, especially familial bonds, are a major theme of the game, and Kiryu imparting a lesson to some punk or wayward parent, then waxing philosophic as the camera pans toward the sky makes way more sense now. That’s a total dad move.

Even really small things, like the restaurants, feel fully thought-out and made into integral mechanics of the game. Previously (and in later games, too), food offers healing and not much else. In Yakuza 6, they’ve been integrated into the new experience point system, offering healing and progression at the same time. Each food item offers different amounts of recovery and different amounts and kinds of experience points. Different foods eaten together give bonuses. They added a not-insignificant amount of depth to eating a burger. That’s beautiful. Restaurants have always been littered randomly around the game world, and they finally feel like a necessary part of that world. Because of all that, the player feels like a more active participant in that world. You start noticing your health and hunger gauges, and might even think “hey, I know a place around the corner where I could eat!”, just like when you’re getting the lay of the land of a new city in real life. And, as always, each restaurant’s atmosphere feels unique and goes a long way to adding flavor (pun) and charm to the world.

One of the more noticeable changes is the new engine. I don’t super… “understand” what an engine “is”, but the look and feel of this game has changed for the better in just about every way. The seamless transitions in and out of fights, into and out of buildings (even during fights), and the ability to run from optional fights after they start goes a long way to quiet some of the criticisms this series has received about its pacing. Heat actions and pre/mid-fight cutscenes are either brutal or cinematic and straight out of an action movie. On the whole, the presentation is clearly better.

But better doesn’t always mean “better”, you know? The new engine brought (or maybe just coincided with) one innovation that turned out to be much more trouble than it was worth. At first, the idea of full voice acting for every piece of dialog sounds really great. That is, until you do a sidequest. I’m going to rip off several other, better stuff-reviews, and note that Alfred Hitchcock once likened boring movies to “photographs of people talking”. The conversations in these sidequests are lifeless and way too long, because reading is much faster than going through the actual cadences of a conversation. The characters’ mouths move, but their faces don’t. They don’t gesture. They barely blink. After a while I felt like I was watching that old Clutch Cargo bit that Conan used to do. On a few special occasions, you might even lose camera control mid-sidequest and be treated to a view of the back of Kiryu’s head for the remainder.

I saved the best part for last, though. NPCs are still walking around, and the developers obviously didn’t want them walking into the shot. Apparently the solution is to have them turn around and walk in the other direction before they get in anyone’s way. They don’t turn around before they enter the shot, though, so nearly every cutscene that takes place outdoors is just a conga line of people that seem to have just remembered they left their oven on. This should be a minor distraction. But, remember, there is nothing else interesting happening onscreen. The moment I first noticed it, it was all over for me. It’s all you’ll notice. This stuff is mostly skippable. Main story cutscenes are still meticulously directed, so it’s not a major problem, but it does raise the question why you’d spend so much time and energy on something so skippable. Especially for a studio that’s famously smart about where it expends it resources. This must have been hours of voice acting, at least, and I’d rather just read the text.

Other aspects of the presentation, like the story, were full upgrades though. The main story felt more compact, like it wasn’t just killing time until it was allowed to resolve. Supporting characters feel rounded and interesting. I get why Kiryu likes someone like Nagumo. I do not care about Date in the slightest. Or the guys from the host bar. I will never learn their names. They can’t make me. This game might not have the best villains, but it probably has the most underhanded, despicable villains I’ve seen so far. After so many games of this, I can’t seriously entertain the idea of a villain beating Kiryu at his own game. But a few of the bad guys felt like actual threats because they were both smarter and more cowardly (a great combo for a villain).

A lot of the criticism I’ve seen of this game went after the side content. While I can see where that’s coming from, it didn’t bother me a whole lot. As a big fan of the batting center, combining the batting minigame with a baseball management sim was a nice twist on an old classic. You only play offense, and you only actually play a few relevant at-bats, so games never drag. As much as I wanted it expanded, it’s probably as long as it should be. Maybe someday we’ll get a better version, because I’d love to have expanded stats (I must know Kiryu’s BABIP) and actual customization of player skills. You can make players better, but it would have been cool to choose a playstyle for your team. I desperately wanted to develop my players into speedy, contact hitters to make the most annoying squad imaginable (why, yes, I am a fan of the Cleveland Guardians, why do you ask?) There’s spear fishing rail shooter that is fun while it lasts. The batting center is still there, and works just fine. There’s a questline for darts that I didn’t make it all the way through. There’s a bar where you compete to be the best at hanging out at a bar. There’s my favorite karaoke song to date. There’s a cat cafe. It’s… there.

If you ask me, there’s enough distractions that you won’t run out before you finish the main story. But to be fair, there’s probably less than in previous games. But I didn’t even mention the biggest piece of side content: the clan creator. There’s a reason for that.

Kiryu witnesses a gang beatdown and rescues a man tragically born without a personality, named Joe for some reason. Joe needs to create his own gang to overtake his old gang, which kind of just became evil one day and happens to be led by six guys whose names and likenesses are borrowed from New Japan Pro Wrestling performers of varying levels of renown.

I’m not sure which I’d be more embarrassed to explain to my family: that I recognized one porn star that appears in the series, or that I recognized every professional wrestler in this game. That was the only novelty to be had in the minigame, however. I saw a digitized version of a cool wrestling guy get all his stuff in. I can’t even imagine what that experience is like if you’re not a fan. “Like, am I supposed to know who this is?”, I imagine 80% of non-Japanese players asking constantly. These characters just appear out of nowhere as catchphrase and gesture machines. That has to be infuriating; a series of long-term inside jokes that the player isn’t in on. Kiryu refuses to fight with the gang, but promises to be the team’s strategist. (???). The game itself is supposed to be some kind of real time strategy, but the strategies you’ll utilize range from “have lots of guys” to “have lots of strong guys”. The difficulty ranges from “laughable” to “requires some occasional input”. The story isn’t interesting, even if you do know why that one guy keeps saying “tranquilo” all the time. The main story arc of this minigame ends with a solid laugh line, but that just kind of makes this minigame the longest, most disappointing setup to a joke in history.

Speaking of likenesses in this game, shout out to Vic Romano himself, Takeshi Kitano, who I think gave depth to an interesting major character. As a guy that was right in the middle of MXC’s target demo from 2003 to 2007, I found him to be a very welcome addition.

This beat-em-up also features combat at times. One person’s “streamlined” is another person’s “dumbed down”. And combat was streamlined, for sure. Everything got pared down to one fighting style. Well, two, kind of. If you REALLY want to make excuses for this game, extreme heat mode is basically the old beast style. While this might not have been for the best, I didn’t mind too much. The experience point system allows you to introduce new abilities throughout, which keeps it somewhat fresh. It’s definitely easier than combat in other Yakuza games. If you’re here for challenging combat, I feel for you, but I am not. I’ve been known to get frustrated with having to deal with multiple enemies in these games. They fixed this issue by making individual enemies in large groups weaker than before, but often throwing way more into the mix. A throw, which gives Kiryu partial armor, is built to handle these large groups. It’s powerful, trivial to perform, and becomes routine pretty quick. But in its defense, it is also hilarious. I genuinely never got sick of seeing dudes go down like bowling pins. The frustrating fights were saved for optional boss fights near the end. Do yourself a favor and steer clear. No good will come of them.

The game smartly kept to two environments: old standby Kamurocho, and the small, coastal, actual city of Onomichi. One of them was really enjoyable, and it’s probably not the one you’re expecting. It feels like very little effort went into updating Kamurocho. Several large swathes of the familiar map are tarped off so conspicuously that it can feel like a Miami Marlins home game. Even though Onomichi can feel barren at times, it contains just about all the of side content that effort went into. And the small-town coastal vibes are a great change of pace for the series. Sometimes it’s nice to just turn on first person view and walk along the water (first person was cool, even if I barely used it).

No game in this series is a serious contender for my favorite game of all time, but this is my favorite series of all time by a wide margin, and this is the game that made me realize that. I know these games are liked pretty well as a fun novelty by most and then forgotten. I get that, but something about them really speaks to me. I guess that’s obvious. I mean... look at this thing. And everything comes together in this entry. This game had to have been a real predicament for RGG. Right after the series gains a foothold outside of Japan, they have to flash forward decades later in the story, go all in with the then-current generation of consoles, introduce a new engine, polish it up real good, tell another gripping story, so they could say goodbye to the hero they’ve been building for years. And they accomplished those things, with style.

Except that last one.

I'm probably gonna get some form of shit over this but I really don't hate this game, granted it's not great. The writing is not great, a lot of it feels embarrassing; with most of it feeling like 40-year-olds trying to write for 20somethings, the new character are ok; I can't say I like them more than the original cast but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy their company.
The way the story is told is honestly all over the place, when I was at the halfway point of the story I didn't even know it until a character kills off one of the gang leaders in a cutscene. This brings up another topic I didn't like was the new gangs. They all have neat ideas to them and fun potential; but none of them have the time to be fleshed out since the game barely shows them besides 1. it reminds me a lot of SR3's gangs only there at least KillBane and Matt Miller had their own cutscenes showing their empires crumble along with them having a character. I can't tell you anything about the head of Los Panteros because he only shows up like 2 or 3 times, The Idols don't have leaders rather it's just a group of faceless anarchists. Only Marcal get's some screen time but even then I can't say much about the head of Marcal because he's just an angry CEO obsessed with money and power, that's it. The fact that SR3 did a better job with its villains is staggering and embarrassing.
the only other problem I have with the game is most of the side content feels very tedious compared to other SR games, making this SR one of the most unsatisfying 100% SR games. (well I can't say that since SR3 is standing right there but my point still stands)
Also yes this game is buggy as hell, is it as buggy as Cyberpunk and the GTA DE; hell no, is it still a buggy mess that can sometimes get in the way of enjoyment; yeah sometimes.

Now shockingly I enjoyed something from this game.
I felt like the new gameplay controls work a lot better, it felt like a good mix of the very loose feeling of SR2, and the more grounded third-person gameplay of SR3 and 4.
The customization in this game is outstanding, the character customizer may not be as good as SR2 still but it's much MUCH better than 3 and 4, vehicle and gun customization is the best this series has ever had and it's so impressive the number of options it can give you.
The map is also really well made and at times really beautiful, yeah yeah I know it looks like a PS3 game at times but I'm not as bothered by it as some other people are, I just think the level of detail and world-building they put into the city is just really impressive and it's a large improvement over SR3 and 4's Steelport, granted it feels very lifeless most of the time and there is a lack of a lot of interior locations, but just like the graphics I'm not as bothered by it.

for all of this game's faults, I still had a pretty fun time with the game. This game reminds me a lot of the first SR game, where it's a janky buggy mess with a pretty ok story and likable character, but more importantly it stands the groundwork for what SR2 did and it went hard.
If this game gets a sequel (which it probably won't) I could see an SR2 reboot that could be on the same level of quality as SR2. Granted I could just be crazy. but then again seeing people calling this the death of the SR games is overplayed, they said the same things about SR3,4, Gat out of Hell, and AOM. It's like a wojack meme at this point and just like Wojack memes it's not funny.