Yeah, yeah, this one's everyone's favorite. I know. It's the game that got most people into the series, it's the game that gets memed the most, etc.
Here's the thing; I don't care. I love this game for what makes it special to me.
When I played it back when it first released on Steam in 2018-19 after a friend recommended it to me, I wasn't in a very good spot. As contrived as it sounds, this game genuinely changed my life forever. The story - mainly the themes of setting your own standards, to live your own way and not becoming complacent with how the world is, to keep fighting and adapting no matter what - hit me in a spot where I was struggling with the exact feeling. I probably wouldn't be the same person without this game. I really can't help but love it because it was part of a process that helped me figure out... well, me. It isn't the only one of it's kind, but it was the first of many. I am absolutely biased.
And while I love the humor these games have, it is right up my alley a grand majority of the time, it isn't the selling point for me. These stories, these characters, this world is what I come here for. Other people can word it much better than I can, but the balance of the melodrama, the absurd, and the mundane all blend together to make an important feeling - that being, life.
Yakuza as a whole feels like it understands this to an insane degree, and throughout the series I can't say that it has ever faded. The slower moments, the funny moments, the emotional moments, all of them are treated with equal importance because just like our own lives, they all reflect back on us and form who we are. It's so deeply human from top-to-bottom, because it understands the importance of everything... and says to keep fighting for it. You must live, even through the boring, even through the crazy, even through the painful - because you can change so much around you for the better. Care, conviction, bonds. All of it will help you. To live is to not run away.
This game is everything is just everything I love about Yakuza as a series. An Essence, if you will. Maybe I'm just too much of a meathead, maybe I worded this like shit, maybe I'm stupid. I don't know, but art like this resonates with me like no other - genuinely the only other games I can think of like this are mostly other Yakuza games (namely 1, 5 and 7), with only a few other games like TWEWY and Undertale sewn into that list.
I don't care about some irony-poisoned dorks who played the game for an hour, dropped it, watched a youtuber play the substories and then parrot "it's the best game ever made because it's so wacky!", this isn't my favorite game in the series because of that chicken screenshot that circled the internet (I didn't use social media like that and still dont) , it's my favorite game in the series, and of all time, because of how much it personally means to me.
Here's the thing; I don't care. I love this game for what makes it special to me.
When I played it back when it first released on Steam in 2018-19 after a friend recommended it to me, I wasn't in a very good spot. As contrived as it sounds, this game genuinely changed my life forever. The story - mainly the themes of setting your own standards, to live your own way and not becoming complacent with how the world is, to keep fighting and adapting no matter what - hit me in a spot where I was struggling with the exact feeling. I probably wouldn't be the same person without this game. I really can't help but love it because it was part of a process that helped me figure out... well, me. It isn't the only one of it's kind, but it was the first of many. I am absolutely biased.
And while I love the humor these games have, it is right up my alley a grand majority of the time, it isn't the selling point for me. These stories, these characters, this world is what I come here for. Other people can word it much better than I can, but the balance of the melodrama, the absurd, and the mundane all blend together to make an important feeling - that being, life.
Yakuza as a whole feels like it understands this to an insane degree, and throughout the series I can't say that it has ever faded. The slower moments, the funny moments, the emotional moments, all of them are treated with equal importance because just like our own lives, they all reflect back on us and form who we are. It's so deeply human from top-to-bottom, because it understands the importance of everything... and says to keep fighting for it. You must live, even through the boring, even through the crazy, even through the painful - because you can change so much around you for the better. Care, conviction, bonds. All of it will help you. To live is to not run away.
This game is everything is just everything I love about Yakuza as a series. An Essence, if you will. Maybe I'm just too much of a meathead, maybe I worded this like shit, maybe I'm stupid. I don't know, but art like this resonates with me like no other - genuinely the only other games I can think of like this are mostly other Yakuza games (namely 1, 5 and 7), with only a few other games like TWEWY and Undertale sewn into that list.
I don't care about some irony-poisoned dorks who played the game for an hour, dropped it, watched a youtuber play the substories and then parrot "it's the best game ever made because it's so wacky!", this isn't my favorite game in the series because of that chicken screenshot that circled the internet (I didn't use social media like that and still dont) , it's my favorite game in the series, and of all time, because of how much it personally means to me.