Oh, man... so the streak of pretty much well-crafted stories/games end with Yakuza 4 and there's so many reasons I want to delve into and digest but first want to make clear that I did enjoy this game for the most part in any case just as a disclaimer and I will get into that after, but I need to get this off of my chest...
This game had some great and not so great boss fights, there were few that I really loved but not enough to outweigh the ones that I did not enjoy. We've ditched the bosses blocking for long boss fights with health bars that take longer than they should to deplete and then some with just some absolutely horrible design, one in specific at the very end being the poorly designed boss fight to end all poorly designed boss fights. I can't believe how awful it was to be honest, I never thought I'd have such an agonising experience with a boss fight in this series since Jingu but they just took that and multiplied it by 100x which makes me wonder why they even included the same boss design in a literal remake.
This is definitely an absurd game, which comes with the terrioty, Yakuza suffers from no shortage of absurdity. But this one in particular takes it to another level that honestly makes the others feel more grounded than ever. The plot is all over the place, of course, but this wasn't really something I was bothered with mostly. I enjoyed Akiyama, Saejima, Tanimura and Kiryu's segments of the story pretty thoroughly for the most part, Akiyama and Kiryu being the best bits... but jesus christ is the plot too elusive for it's own good. It starts off pretty simple, but there's WAY too many twists, so many I've forgotten half and actually struggled to wrap my head around what the fuck was actually going on. I don't even understand the motives of some of the game's antagonists because there was just so many parties involved that it made it nigh impossible to pin down the ringleader to the whole mess and, uh... yeah, don't even get me started on the infamous rubber bullets nonsense. I didn't find that twist too bad when it was first revealed but then it kept coming up as a way to switch and bait the viewer, it got old pretty quick and it just made the entire thing at the end pretty fucking silly in comparison to the other stories Yakuza had to tell before.
Also... here's a small segment for me to express my concern about THAT scene between Saejima and Haruka then Kiryu rubbing it off like it was nothing. What the fuck was that? lmfaoo
I hate being all doom and gloom, because as aforemetioned, I did enjoy aspects of this game. I loved pretty much every protagonist and a lot of the characters excludng Katsuragi, the Deputy Chief and uh... who was the other one? Shibata? In short, the antagonists are piss poor but... speaking positively, pretty much every "good" character is really well done and I enjoyed them. There were some pretty sick story moments regardless of the issues, with how long this was there were a lot of moments for that classic great Yakuza story telling to still shine through the cracks of elusive mediocrity, but that honestly leaves me more disappointed than satisified... why wasn't the whole game moments like these?
God, I loved the combat, not quite up to the standards of 0-Kiwami yet, but the best thing next to it. A refined version of 3's combat, it's a lot smoother and the styles added from the other protagonists are very welcome which gives the game little room for repetitiveness with the one style per protag. Great Yakuza brawler/bash em up experience. The awaited introduction of Machine Gun Kiss too and a much more varied Karaoke selection. Didn't really bother with substories or minigames this time around, didn't really feel like it given the multiple protagonists I couldn't really commit myself to anything like that given the story structure (which made this a lot easier to push through.)
Divisive as hell entry to the series, definitely not among the best but I feel it's just a very, tinsey, tiny bit overhated? In any case, do better, RGG, I know that you can... betting all my cards for Yakuza 5 to remedy this disappointment.
This game had some great and not so great boss fights, there were few that I really loved but not enough to outweigh the ones that I did not enjoy. We've ditched the bosses blocking for long boss fights with health bars that take longer than they should to deplete and then some with just some absolutely horrible design, one in specific at the very end being the poorly designed boss fight to end all poorly designed boss fights. I can't believe how awful it was to be honest, I never thought I'd have such an agonising experience with a boss fight in this series since Jingu but they just took that and multiplied it by 100x which makes me wonder why they even included the same boss design in a literal remake.
This is definitely an absurd game, which comes with the terrioty, Yakuza suffers from no shortage of absurdity. But this one in particular takes it to another level that honestly makes the others feel more grounded than ever. The plot is all over the place, of course, but this wasn't really something I was bothered with mostly. I enjoyed Akiyama, Saejima, Tanimura and Kiryu's segments of the story pretty thoroughly for the most part, Akiyama and Kiryu being the best bits... but jesus christ is the plot too elusive for it's own good. It starts off pretty simple, but there's WAY too many twists, so many I've forgotten half and actually struggled to wrap my head around what the fuck was actually going on. I don't even understand the motives of some of the game's antagonists because there was just so many parties involved that it made it nigh impossible to pin down the ringleader to the whole mess and, uh... yeah, don't even get me started on the infamous rubber bullets nonsense. I didn't find that twist too bad when it was first revealed but then it kept coming up as a way to switch and bait the viewer, it got old pretty quick and it just made the entire thing at the end pretty fucking silly in comparison to the other stories Yakuza had to tell before.
Also... here's a small segment for me to express my concern about THAT scene between Saejima and Haruka then Kiryu rubbing it off like it was nothing. What the fuck was that? lmfaoo
I hate being all doom and gloom, because as aforemetioned, I did enjoy aspects of this game. I loved pretty much every protagonist and a lot of the characters excludng Katsuragi, the Deputy Chief and uh... who was the other one? Shibata? In short, the antagonists are piss poor but... speaking positively, pretty much every "good" character is really well done and I enjoyed them. There were some pretty sick story moments regardless of the issues, with how long this was there were a lot of moments for that classic great Yakuza story telling to still shine through the cracks of elusive mediocrity, but that honestly leaves me more disappointed than satisified... why wasn't the whole game moments like these?
God, I loved the combat, not quite up to the standards of 0-Kiwami yet, but the best thing next to it. A refined version of 3's combat, it's a lot smoother and the styles added from the other protagonists are very welcome which gives the game little room for repetitiveness with the one style per protag. Great Yakuza brawler/bash em up experience. The awaited introduction of Machine Gun Kiss too and a much more varied Karaoke selection. Didn't really bother with substories or minigames this time around, didn't really feel like it given the multiple protagonists I couldn't really commit myself to anything like that given the story structure (which made this a lot easier to push through.)
Divisive as hell entry to the series, definitely not among the best but I feel it's just a very, tinsey, tiny bit overhated? In any case, do better, RGG, I know that you can... betting all my cards for Yakuza 5 to remedy this disappointment.