Like a Dragon Gaiden: The curse of being a Yakuza

Gaiden has to be one of the best games in this series by far. Some people may be skeptical seeing me give this game the perfect 5/5, but the reason I gave this game the 5/5 isn't because of it's sheer replayability or huge amounts of content; it's because it does what it does for the series in the most perfect way.

Despite being only a 20 hour playthrough for a platinum trophy and lacking a lot of the side content we would see in other games like 5, 0, and IW, that lack of content is heavily outweighed by a masterpiece of a story that fits perfectly as the bridge of what happened in Kiryu's life from the events of 6 to 7.

There will be spoilers, and they'll be at the bottom when I talk about the story itself (they will also be marked!).

If you're thinking about buying this game, please play all the other games first, as this game jumps into the story assuming you know the events of pretty much every single game that has released prior. Before I dive into the details for the others that have played the game as well, I highly recommend buying Gaiden, especially if you catch it on sale.

Before we talk about story, let's talk about this game's combat:

The Agent Style is a brand new style that was added in for this game, somewhat bringing back the "stance switching" present in Kiwami and 0, though on a much smaller scale.

The Agent Style is pretty decent and the addition of gadgets is really fun. However, I still found myself reverting back to the original Dragon Style for most of the game, because the heat actions for this stance do a whopping amount of damage.

In addition, the stance switching isn't as intuitive or as smooth as Kiwami was. Instead of combo'ing and weaving different stances to maximize damage, you were mostly just sticking with a stance depending on what enemy you were facing.

What I also don't like about the gameplay is the modification to Quicksteps. They made it so quicksteps were locked behind R1, or the lock-on fighting stance, this made it awkward when dodging multiple enemies at once, as Kiryu would always be facing a certain direction. When Kiryu is locked on and fighting someone, the issue is that instead of getting the full sudden change of direction, Kiryu dodges AROUND the person that he is locking onto, which makes quickstepping very awkward and hard to use effectively. This meant most times against multiple enemies you had to over compensate by spamming multiple quicksteps, or by using the flying boots gadget in the Agent Style. This feels terrible because you're wasting time creating distance that you could be using to fight multiple enemies.

Despite the gameplay being lowkey gimmicky and lackluster, it was still enjoyable. It was still a Yakuza game, and even if you had some kind of gripe with the gameplay, the story more than makes up for it.

Story SPOILERS:

Oh boy oh boy where do I even begin. This is emotionally one of the best Like a Dragon games ever, dare I say, THE best. This game has us following the journey Kiry--sorry, Joryu and his antics in Osaka as an agent of the Daidoji faction, an alliance that has chosen to take Kiryu under their wing as one of their elite agents in favor of helping Kiryu fake his death in order to protect the kids at the Orphanage.

Every single time, Joryu has to put his life on the line for the Daidoji Faction, because if he doesn't the orphanage gets the kaboom, and Joryu can't bear to see his only family go kaboom like that.

I feel like this game has sort of become the pinnacle of what I like to call "The curse of being a Yakuza", because even when you finally decide to leave the Yakuza behind, the Yakuza will never leave you (in a threatening, binding kind of way).

However, what really makes this game great is the ending. Never in this entire series do we see this grown man shed ugly tears. This man shedding ugly tears almost made me want to shed ugly tears.

In order to truly understand the perfection of this scene, we need to look into what has happened to Kiryu in the past games.

Throughout the past 20-30 years, Kiryu has always been alone. Everybody that tried to accompany him has died trying. Shinji, Nishiki, Rikiya, each of these people have died as sworn brothers to Kiryu, with the only exception being the Hiroshima yakuza group from 6, since Kiryu essentially sacrificed his life for them to live. In fact, if you could ask Kiryu, he would probably say that Shinji, Nishiki, and Rikiya's deaths were all his fault.

Each game, Kiryu has always done things by himself, the only way he knows how to solve problems is with himself and his own fists, without the help of anyone else. This is a theme that is further exemplified and talked about in Infinite Wealth, where the Ichiban and the gang always talk about how Kiryu always tries to do things alone, and criticize Kiryu for not depending on his friends more.

Kiryu carries an unbelievable burden that stems from his kindness and compassion as a human, and it is this exact compassion that has led him to bite off more than he could chew. Kiryu wants to take on the entire world, when in reality, he can't.

Since Yakuza 3, Kiryu's purpose for existing was to live a normal life, with his normal daughter, in a normal orphanage. However, the curse of being a Yakuza always comes back to him, with Yakuza constantly threatening to attack the orphanage in order to get Kiryu to do what they want in exchange for safety.

In Gaiden, he's doing the exact same thing, but the difference is that he doesn't know if he really is protecting the orphanage by assisting the Daidoji faction for almost 3 years, since the Daidoji faction doesn't allow him to interact with anyone who may recognize him after his death.

So when Kiryu finally gets to learn about how his orphanage is doing after his disappearance and how they are still going strong, it makes perfect sense for Kiryu to break down in ugly tears.

Kiryu's unwavering compassion makes him susceptible to being helpless, but the truth is, you can't help everyone. He wasn't able to save Rikiya or Yumi, and he isn't even sure if the work he puts in by himself with the Daidoji clan is helping his orphanage stay afloat.

However, Kiryu is finally rewarded for all his hard work with a video of Taichi and Ayako, where Kiryu finally realizes his hard work--not just in the past 3 years-- has finally paid off.

The kids of Sunflower Orphanage are finally growing up well without him, and Haruto (despite having zero recollection of Kiryu as a person because he only interacted with him as a baby) is finally taking his first steps!

Imagine being Kiryu, all of your life, you worked hard to protect other people, failing countless of times again and again, with the people you wanted to protect dying in front of you, with nobody to blame but yourself. But after every single trial & tribulation, there has finally been a time where your compassion and obligation to protect the ones closest to you finally pays off, as you see the ones you obliged to protect finally grow up to become the version of you that you always wanted them to be.

Shit's just beautiful, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Conclusion:


This game is perfect for what it is. It serves its purpose in the series perfectly, and it shows us a side of Kiryu that we really needed.

The perfect part about this game is that Kiryu isn't perfect, and that's alright, because life isn't either. However, if we stick to our convictions to the day we die, we're sure to be blessed with something amazing very soon.

I love Like a Dragon, and I love Kiryu Kazuma.

5/5

(20 Hours played)

Persona 3 Reload: An amazing remake plagued by modern monetization practices and horrible balance.

This review comes from a perspective of someone who played FES up until May and has experience in all mainline modern persona games, so my experience as a Persona player and experiencing the world of 3 essentially for the first time plays heavily into my review.

Before I get into the story (spoilers ahead), let me answer a question for people wanting to play this game:

It's a great game that I highly recommend you buy. The story is great, the QoL changes they add into the gameplay is a breath of fresh air and is one of the main reasons why I couldn't really finish FES (and also the really really slow pace of the game at the start). However, It's a game that doesn't really provide any incentive to replay in NG+ other than finishing up some trophies you missed on your first playthrough. The content after finishing your first playthrough is non-existent, and if I were to buy this game, I would wait for a sale, because it definitely is not worth $70.

Now let's move onto the better part of this game, the story (spoilers ahead, you've been warned):

I love the underlying themes of this game, they're so good and well-written, alongside each of the characters. Unlike the other themes like in 5 that talked about fate and rebellion, 3 talked about death and your convictions. Tackling the theme of Death in a video game can be difficult, but ATLUS does it perfectly, and the eerie and dark color scheme that comes with Tatarus, the Dark Hour and the overall atmosphere of the game in general complements the events that transpire throughout the game.

Everything is written beautifully. Each event that happens in the main story doesn't feel like a cliché, it felt like every event happened for a reason and had a purpose in the plot.

Each of the main characters (the party members) get their own time in the spotlight of the game. The developments I enjoyed most were Junpei's and Aigis', I felt like their character breakthroughs were much stronger in their convictions and in the development/build-up to the climax of their character arc. However, Aigis' development as a character is kind of unfair because she gets like 5 months of screentime dedicated throughout the game to develop as a character.

Again, the theme of Death was explored amazingly. If it eventually happens, why don't we just give in to being zombies and forget everything? It's the same question Takaya and Nyx were repeating for the entirety of at least the end of the game. If you ever wondered why we live our lives on this chaotic planet called Earth, I think P3 has the answer (haha, get it?).

Okay, now with the story out of the way, let's talk about gameplay:

Gameplay differs from FES (which I will be talking about mostly because I never touched portable) in the sense that they have removed fusion spells for special attacks known as Theurgy's. Theurgy's are special moves you charge up over time, and these moves range from powerful damaging attacks to overpowered support skills.

Theurgy's are absolutely broken and in a bad way. They are a trump card to many of the game's bosses, and you can usually cop out of hard situations by using these skills. The reason for this is because Theurgy's are scaled based on the persona that is equipped. This means the damage scales on the Persona's St and Ma stats, and also accounting for any Amp/Boost skills along the way (and for some reason Charge/Concentrate!). This makes most attacks do way more damage than they are supposed to, and the fact that they ignore resistances makes it even more encouraging to spam it on any enemy you see.

The balance in this game is horrendous. Who on god's green Earth thought it was a good idea to add Crit Rate Boost/Amp into the skill pool? These skills combined with a high crit skill like Brave Blade/Heaven's Blade and Apt Pupil means you are NEVER missing a crit, and since a crit is essentially the same as hitting a weakness, you will be doing nothing but farming one more's and all out attacks once you learn about making a phys skill persona with crit rate boost/amp.

However, I have to give credit where credit is due. ATLUS tried to lessen the grind in this game by adding the Great Clock, which in my mind is an absolute godsend. The Great Clock allows you to select up to 2 party members to level up until the MC's current level (with a maximum of 13 levels per clock). This helps your party members that you have been perma benching in a Tartarus run not slack behind, and when you need that party member for an important boss fight, you don't need to spend another 1-2 hours leveling them up just to progress in the game's main content. However, the pacing of levelling in this game I think is spot on. If you prioritized EXP cards in Shuffle-Time throughout the entirety of your run, you shouldn't need to spend extra time grinding because you're underlevelled for a boss. Some may argue that grinding to match the level of a boss should be a staple of a JRPG, but in my opinion, it's just an unnecessary waste of time that the devs can fix by tweaking some numbers.

QoL is also a huge plus with Reload. However, most of it is a given considering the QoL we got in P5R, with the addition of the Town Map showing every available Social Link, but alongside some new additions, like the Shared Computer in the Iwatodai Dorm (I think? I don't recall using it in FES).

Overall, the experience I had with this game was positive, and I would definitely recommend it to a friend wanting to dive into Persona or the JRPG Genre. However, I don't think it's the coveted masterpiece of a remake I think some fans are making it out to be. The story is definitely one of the strongest out of the Persona games, but the balancing and lack of endgame/NG+ content does not justify purchasing this game at its full price tag of $70. The fact that The Answer is coming to Reload as DLC rather than as a complimentary side-story on release is also a slap in the face and another occurence of the shitty DLC practices ATLUS have been using for years. If you want to play The Answer, just emulate FES on PCSX2.

(80 Hours Played)

4/5

EDIT: I wanted to give quick insight into the Music/Art Direction of Reload. The music has produced some of the best vocal tracks I have ever listened to. It's Going Down Now and Color Your Night are some of my favorite tracks. They're both catchy, and they fit the atmosphere and environment that the player is in when the song is played. The Art Direction I believe is kind of mixed. I've heard from people that played FES and Portable that the Art Direction sucks and steers away from the magic and mood present in past iterations, but I wanted to give my own objective opinion on the Art Direction of Reload as someone that didn't play/finish FES: The character sprites look amazing and are a huge upgrade from 5's character sprites. The character's faces look more like their 2D Portraits, more effort and care is given to the animation of characters for in-game cutscenes (with the dialogue boxes, not the full renders). However, I think I noticed that the overall atmosphere of the Dark Hour outside of Tartarus felt more washed out in color and more dull than it was in FES. I'm not an artistic guy so I don't really know how to explain it, but it felt like something was off. In addition, I definitely noticed the lack of anime cutscenes throughout the game. Until I know where these anime cutscenes were, I can't really say if I have a preference for one or the other, but the one I do know about is the MC's awakening, and by far the FES awakening that used anime instead of an in-game render (Reload) conveyed much better tension and felt more emotionally powerful than Reload was. Anyways, that's my take on the music and art direction or Reload.

Despite having such a dramatic ending, I honestly think this game is an afterthought. It's great; don't get me wrong, but it's just not my cup of tea.

To summarize, I think the game itself is decent. For the first game on a new engine, there are bound to be some flaws (WHERE IS MY ESSENCE OF FINISHING???), but other than that, the story/characters are good enough that this is a respectable entry in my opinion.

I'm mostly going to be talking about my experience with the plat because why not (lol)

The platinum for Yakuza 6 is widely considered one of the easiest in the entire series, and this is mostly because it's one of the only games that don't require you to do 100% of a completion list.

The most tedious trophies you'll find are maxing out all of Kiryu's stats, doing 100 clan battles, and maxing out a clan leader. These can all easily be done in about 5-10 hours, depending on how efficient you are. You'll also find yourself in a lack of technique xp, so just eat at sushi gin (south of new serena at the end near the taxi).

Other than that, easy plat, and pretty decent game.

4/5