In the first half or so of the game, I got the feeling that this is where the series' classic concept of "reuse" was catching up to it. Aside from the main story and maybe Akame as a character, nothing here felt super original or fresh. The side content offerings were pretty much the standard Yakuza fare (and Pocket Circuit, which refuses to retire), and while I enjoy fanservice and referencing past games, they felt a little over relied on at times. (There's a weirdly heavy amount of referencing 2 in particular.) The Castle, which was spotlit as the cool new area to explore, is really just a shinier Purgatory, which just feels like a tired concept by now. I will say that the Coliseum is definitely one of the better ones in the series and had some fun fights and gimmicks (Hell Team Rumble was a solid new mode) without overstaying its welcome. Special shoutout to that final Platinum fight.
You can sort of let Gaiden off the hook for all of this though, as it was never meant to be a huge new game with totally original side content. So it's not unexpected that this is a short new story with whatever side content was laying around thrown in + some extras, but that doesn't really make it the most interesting Yakuza game to engage with.
On to combat. This is definitely the Dragon (sorry, "Yakuza") style's best showing in the Dragon Engine, though that's not saying much. After Judgment and especially Lost Judgment, I was hoping they would take more of the lessons learned when returning to Kiryu. But the main borrowed concept there seems to be Mortal Reversals, which are pretty fun, so that's nice at least. DE Dragon was still just solid overall, nothing amazing. I did not click with Agent for a long time, using probably 90% Yakuza for over half the game. Eventually I warmed up to it some more, but its basic combos just felt out of place for Kiryu, especially in Extreme Heat. The gadgets were fun enough gimmicks, especially once I realized that a fully upgraded Spider would just annihilate small enemies while you also zoom around with Serpent, which was super goofy. Overall, the combat was pretty good by Yakuza standards, but a bit disappointing after Lost Judgment, especially if this may be the last brawler Yakuza for a while (and possibly last Kiryu brawler ever).
The main story took a little bit to capture me, but I appreciated the condensed scope overall. Without getting into spoilers, as someone who really liked the ending of 6 and really disliked the extremely quick backtracking of it in 7, I'm still conflicted about the path Kiryu takes here. Maybe Infinite Wealth will help settle this, but it feels like it's slowly tossing out the end of 6 as a silly idea and rendered the hardest hitting scenes in the series to me pretty much moot. On a more positive note, I like how this story gave them more opportunity to explore the implications around 7's huge plot development for the yakuza world as well; in hindsight this would have felt too swept under the rug without what Gaiden showed. (It's also neat to see this perspective of "before/during the storm" after seeing some of the fallout in LJ.)
The core group of new characters were all fairly interesting, though none really felt like amazing ones who'll stick with me forever. I like how pretty much no one was ever completely in the right or wrong at any given point, as the series sometimes falls prey to shallower portrayals of power hungry people who are clearly just evil by most standards. As many have already observed, [light vague spoiler warning] the final boss definitely felt like a more fleshed out version of another in the series, which is funny if you compare the lengths of those respective games. And of course, I'm a sucker for the kind of scenes that the very end of the game had, so those hit almost as hard as 6's ending to me.
Maybe I just wasn't totally in the Yakuza mood when I started, but it took a surprisingly long time for me to warm up to this game as a whole. Despite being the shortest main story in the franchise (outside of the Kaito Files), I ended up with around 25 hours spent since I did all substories, requests, coliseum fights, Amon, etc. (I passed on the Platinum just because I really don't care for Cabaret, and am also lukewarm on Pocket Circuit. Still got every Mahjong activity log item though.) The reuse of content and concepts wore down on me for a while, and the sparse new ideas didn't fully click at first, but eventually I came around. The side content took a weirdly long time to fully open up, but once it did, I cleared pretty much everything I could before moving on to each story beat. A good late game completionist session followed by a strong finale section gave this experience a sweet ending that makes me look back on it much more fondly than I felt halfway in, where I was pretty sure I would've given it a 3/5. Overall, a good little pocket of Yakuza content, even if much of it is well worn.
You can sort of let Gaiden off the hook for all of this though, as it was never meant to be a huge new game with totally original side content. So it's not unexpected that this is a short new story with whatever side content was laying around thrown in + some extras, but that doesn't really make it the most interesting Yakuza game to engage with.
On to combat. This is definitely the Dragon (sorry, "Yakuza") style's best showing in the Dragon Engine, though that's not saying much. After Judgment and especially Lost Judgment, I was hoping they would take more of the lessons learned when returning to Kiryu. But the main borrowed concept there seems to be Mortal Reversals, which are pretty fun, so that's nice at least. DE Dragon was still just solid overall, nothing amazing. I did not click with Agent for a long time, using probably 90% Yakuza for over half the game. Eventually I warmed up to it some more, but its basic combos just felt out of place for Kiryu, especially in Extreme Heat. The gadgets were fun enough gimmicks, especially once I realized that a fully upgraded Spider would just annihilate small enemies while you also zoom around with Serpent, which was super goofy. Overall, the combat was pretty good by Yakuza standards, but a bit disappointing after Lost Judgment, especially if this may be the last brawler Yakuza for a while (and possibly last Kiryu brawler ever).
The main story took a little bit to capture me, but I appreciated the condensed scope overall. Without getting into spoilers, as someone who really liked the ending of 6 and really disliked the extremely quick backtracking of it in 7, I'm still conflicted about the path Kiryu takes here. Maybe Infinite Wealth will help settle this, but it feels like it's slowly tossing out the end of 6 as a silly idea and rendered the hardest hitting scenes in the series to me pretty much moot. On a more positive note, I like how this story gave them more opportunity to explore the implications around 7's huge plot development for the yakuza world as well; in hindsight this would have felt too swept under the rug without what Gaiden showed. (It's also neat to see this perspective of "before/during the storm" after seeing some of the fallout in LJ.)
The core group of new characters were all fairly interesting, though none really felt like amazing ones who'll stick with me forever. I like how pretty much no one was ever completely in the right or wrong at any given point, as the series sometimes falls prey to shallower portrayals of power hungry people who are clearly just evil by most standards. As many have already observed, [light vague spoiler warning] the final boss definitely felt like a more fleshed out version of another in the series, which is funny if you compare the lengths of those respective games. And of course, I'm a sucker for the kind of scenes that the very end of the game had, so those hit almost as hard as 6's ending to me.
Maybe I just wasn't totally in the Yakuza mood when I started, but it took a surprisingly long time for me to warm up to this game as a whole. Despite being the shortest main story in the franchise (outside of the Kaito Files), I ended up with around 25 hours spent since I did all substories, requests, coliseum fights, Amon, etc. (I passed on the Platinum just because I really don't care for Cabaret, and am also lukewarm on Pocket Circuit. Still got every Mahjong activity log item though.) The reuse of content and concepts wore down on me for a while, and the sparse new ideas didn't fully click at first, but eventually I came around. The side content took a weirdly long time to fully open up, but once it did, I cleared pretty much everything I could before moving on to each story beat. A good late game completionist session followed by a strong finale section gave this experience a sweet ending that makes me look back on it much more fondly than I felt halfway in, where I was pretty sure I would've given it a 3/5. Overall, a good little pocket of Yakuza content, even if much of it is well worn.
Wollom
4 months ago