good:
- all of the new combat additions are awesome. placement and movement in fights mattering, combo attacks, back attacks, proximity meters etc. love that
- the way kiryu's combat was implemented in turn-based is honestly perfect... both his styles and elements of real time action. chefs kiss
- sooo much content... between main story, substories, dondoko island, walk&talk, party talk, table talk, new additions like tram talks i feel kinda overwhelmed with the amount of stuff there's to do
- hawaii is a fun and huge map and i love that we can swim there now
- remembrance mechanic and the way kiryu's bonds work are soooo emotionally charged wah
- some of the story battles and small mechanics like support characters are v fun
- substories are good as always and i feel like there was even more care put into the animations and cutscenes
the bad:
- laser level. why
- ngl the story is so middling... so little happens for such a long time
- i also feel like the way some organizations are introduced and the way they actually behave is at odds with itself. incompetent mfs everywhere /s
- my favorite character only joins in chapter 10. unforgiveable /s
- dungeons are still drab and boring and repetitive. did we not have enough of the boring sewer / abandoned building look last time... i don't even mind the corridors just can we add some color and justify it by ichiban vision??
- tying into the previous issue there's no true moneymaker minigame similar to business one in y7 and you have to go to the dungeons for mats and moolah. and the dungeons suck so!
- back attack hitbox can be flimsy if its not directly behind
- fishing minigame really sucks in that you need to ask the guy for his rod, pay $1, rinse repeat with redoing that dialogue everytime
- i also had weird performance issues with FPS dips even though normally the game runs flawlessly. it did get better after the new patch so maybe they fixed smth idk
edit upon completion: it had no chance to live up to y7 and its interwoven familial vs political conflict and i'm not sure if what they did here are good paralells or like. floundering attempts to recapture that magic... i guess i'm glad ichiban got to do a do-over successfully this time and he is the best boy of all time forever but. idk. not feeling it. on kiryu's side i feel like the sense of new bonds forming and new friends just didn't quite land... i felt weird seeing oomfs see that helicopter off but eh
i also feel very disappointed with the direction they took with saeko. it's not that ichi/sae is bad per se but they didn't even bother developing their romance. in fact they spend the entire game not talking to each other after ichiban's initial flub. and in the end they turn it into a joke about how over the top ichi is and saeko not liking it again bc funnie and just... i don't know man. we could have believable romance between two friends but ofc we have to devolve it into jokes. it's really sad to me considering saeko was the only (not counting the non-canon celebrity cameo) female companion for ichiban and her story was explicitly abt finding friends w the ichi gang and now she's just love interest #3498 again. i guess they added more women to the gang to balance it out now but. meh. very meh.
anyway at least it's not as bad as the worst entries in the series and there's no weird shit like mirror face so it's a 6/10 story and 11/10 gameplay yippie
edit2: ok why did they keep the shitty rape jokes for "romance" substories it wasnt funny the first 10 times and its not funny still. give it the fuck up
- all of the new combat additions are awesome. placement and movement in fights mattering, combo attacks, back attacks, proximity meters etc. love that
- the way kiryu's combat was implemented in turn-based is honestly perfect... both his styles and elements of real time action. chefs kiss
- sooo much content... between main story, substories, dondoko island, walk&talk, party talk, table talk, new additions like tram talks i feel kinda overwhelmed with the amount of stuff there's to do
- hawaii is a fun and huge map and i love that we can swim there now
- remembrance mechanic and the way kiryu's bonds work are soooo emotionally charged wah
- some of the story battles and small mechanics like support characters are v fun
- substories are good as always and i feel like there was even more care put into the animations and cutscenes
the bad:
- laser level. why
- ngl the story is so middling... so little happens for such a long time
- i also feel like the way some organizations are introduced and the way they actually behave is at odds with itself. incompetent mfs everywhere /s
- my favorite character only joins in chapter 10. unforgiveable /s
- dungeons are still drab and boring and repetitive. did we not have enough of the boring sewer / abandoned building look last time... i don't even mind the corridors just can we add some color and justify it by ichiban vision??
- tying into the previous issue there's no true moneymaker minigame similar to business one in y7 and you have to go to the dungeons for mats and moolah. and the dungeons suck so!
- back attack hitbox can be flimsy if its not directly behind
- fishing minigame really sucks in that you need to ask the guy for his rod, pay $1, rinse repeat with redoing that dialogue everytime
- i also had weird performance issues with FPS dips even though normally the game runs flawlessly. it did get better after the new patch so maybe they fixed smth idk
edit upon completion: it had no chance to live up to y7 and its interwoven familial vs political conflict and i'm not sure if what they did here are good paralells or like. floundering attempts to recapture that magic... i guess i'm glad ichiban got to do a do-over successfully this time and he is the best boy of all time forever but. idk. not feeling it. on kiryu's side i feel like the sense of new bonds forming and new friends just didn't quite land... i felt weird seeing oomfs see that helicopter off but eh
i also feel very disappointed with the direction they took with saeko. it's not that ichi/sae is bad per se but they didn't even bother developing their romance. in fact they spend the entire game not talking to each other after ichiban's initial flub. and in the end they turn it into a joke about how over the top ichi is and saeko not liking it again bc funnie and just... i don't know man. we could have believable romance between two friends but ofc we have to devolve it into jokes. it's really sad to me considering saeko was the only (not counting the non-canon celebrity cameo) female companion for ichiban and her story was explicitly abt finding friends w the ichi gang and now she's just love interest #3498 again. i guess they added more women to the gang to balance it out now but. meh. very meh.
anyway at least it's not as bad as the worst entries in the series and there's no weird shit like mirror face so it's a 6/10 story and 11/10 gameplay yippie
edit2: ok why did they keep the shitty rape jokes for "romance" substories it wasnt funny the first 10 times and its not funny still. give it the fuck up