|
So I started Yakuza 0 back shortly after it came out in the US, playing a friend's copy via Steam sharing before eventually buying it myself. I would then off and on play it in small chunks for the next 2 years after I would finish or put down other games and then specifically force myself to go back to Yakuza and make some amount of progress, which I've come to realize is because I'm really, really bad at finding the motivation to play super long story heavy games on PC. About a month and a half ago I finally mustered the willpower to get back to it again (I had gotten to about chapter 7 by that point) with the intent to beat it before the end of the year and in the span of about 2 weeks I finished the main campaign in addition to the entirety of the Real Estate and Cabaret Club storylines, which I hadn't really touched beforehand. My overall take is that Yakuza 0 is extremely loving good and I'm glad I eventually got to the end because I can with confidence say it's one of my favorite games of all time. I'd bought a PS4 copy of Kiwami back in like September or so and to my surprise I started it up the next day and haven't put it down yet, despite not being NEARLY as good as 0, and me normally being the type of person who can't play stuff in the same series back to back like that. So I don't know, I guess I finally just broke the dam and now the Yakuza flood has been unleashed in my heart. Nearing the end of Kiwami and my take on it, keeping in mind what it added to the original, is that this story introduces and tosses out plot threads at such a rapid pace that it's making me feel like I'm losing my mind. There are details and character motivations that are completely glossed over, things that I feel like 0 would have taken the time to explain or expand upon, and it's incredibly frustrating how so much of the main progression has loving nothing to do with the main crux of the plot, the Tojo Clan's missing 10 billion yen. I can absolutely feel the PS2-ness and the DNA of Shenmue in this game. I don't hate the game by any means, but boy am I glad there's a lot of funny cutscenes with Majima to keep me entertained, regardless of how inappropriate it is that he's there. TriffTshngo fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Dec 28, 2019 |
#
¿
Dec 28, 2019 13:16
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:20 |
|
|
Ok so I just finished Kiwami 2 and I don't actually have that much to say about it other than: 1) I miss Rush style 2) That was a very cool story with lots of twists and turns and the eleventh hour antagonist reveal(s) didn't piss me off like in the first one (seriously jingu sucks so bad) 3) Felt like the Jingweon Mafia storyline took up maybe slightly too much of the game's runtime, I'd have liked a bit more focus on the Omi guys, but they like, disappear from the second act of the game entirely. 4) The game softlocked on me as I was finishing a Clan Battle (and had just spent the last hour and a half doing nothing but that minigame) so I promptly said "cool gently caress this I'm going to see how this storyline wraps up on youtube I guess" because it was not fun the first time and I sure as gently caress am not gonna do all those missions a second time. Which is a shame, because I was excited to fight the old wrestlers. I'd even spent several hours doing the Cabaret Club storyline to get the money to blow on the Clan gacha to recruit all the modern New Japan guys like Okada and Naito. Oh well. I don't have the Remastered Collection yet but once it hits my arbitrary "now it's cheap enough" price threshold I'll pick it up.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2020 17:56
|
|
|
If it were a Kiryu-focused game I absolutely wouldn't be able to play it in English but doing the shift to a new protagonist is enough of a break for me that I'm down for it.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2020 00:53
|
|
|
Last Celebration posted:Aw jeez, I’m doing the substories I never knew existed in 0 since I have the Trouble Finder now and (Kiwami 1 spoilers) gently caress man. I never even knew Shinji was in 0. That poo poo hits real loving hard I knew very little about later Yakuzas when I played 0 and I naturally happened upon that substory, so I was actually really pleasantly surprised when I booted up Kiwami and Shinji was in the first cutscene, I was like "oh poo poo I didn't expect him to pop up again! That's really awesome!" Obviously if you played 1 before 0 the implied tone of that substory is a lot more grim than it actually is in-game There's also the pants thief substory but even I knew who that kid was right away.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2020 07:25
|
|
|
I just wrapped up Yakuza 3. I pretty much ignored all side content and blazed through the main story on Easy, so apologies if I missed some good substories that would've made me like the game more. Overall the story was pretty good, not on the level of 2 but definitely still way better than 1. Couple aspects of the plot rang hollow at points, like they were going for something way more interesting than they were actually capable of executing on, but in general it's totally fine. Not sure why they did what they did right at the end but, whatever. The villains were probably the weakest in the series so far aside from Jingu but Mine doing a Dragon Suplex to Richardson off the top of a hospital kicked him quite a few notches up on my ranking right at the end.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2020 12:31
|
|
|
BitBasher posted:Thanks everyone. I stopped just after the cut scene with Real Estate guy in his office at the start of chapter 2. I'll look for the stores when I get home from work, I was missing that entirely Kiryu would never inflict upon someone else anything he couldn't survive himself.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2020 20:15
|
|
|
The funny cutscenes of Majima Everywhere injected some life into a story I really did not enjoy so I'll always appreciate it for that, regardless of how repetitive actually fighting Majima was (which I was surprisingly ok with for most of the game, because he's one of the only fun bosses in Kiwami, assuming he's not in Breaker). I don't have much trouble compartmentalizing aspects of media if need be, so it being completely incongruous and ill-fitting with the actual story and what Majima's character was in Yakuza 1 didn't bother me in the slightest. I just regarded it separately from the plot.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2020 02:00
|
|
|
I'm on Part 4 of Yakuza 4 at the moment and I think Saito is the most unfun boss in this series so far.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2021 00:44
|
|
|
I'm glad it's not just me. The Saejima version of the fight was a real bad combination of me not gelling well with Saejima's fighting style, him getting knocked down and stunned way easier than I felt he should be, and Saito himself just being an absolute nightmare pain in the rear end. He wasn't much less frustrating with Kiryu, turns out.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2021 06:40
|
|
|
Yakuza 3 is a rough game all around. I don't regret playing it on easy and actively avoiding all side content. The story was decent but everything else.... I'll just say I'm glad I saved that energy for 4, which I'm enjoying a lot more in all aspects.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2021 05:56
|
|
|
I just finished Yakuza 4. The finale was pretty good, though I found it a bit lacking in the "big dramatic Yakuza twists" department compared to other games, probably because they'd already burned through most of them in the endings of Part 3 and 4. My current ranking of the series: Gameplay 0/K2 > 4 >>> K1 >>>>>>>> 3 Story 0 > 4 > 2 > 3 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 1
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 04:52
|
|
|
Last Celebration posted:drat, that’s harsh, 1 retroactively has about as much good story through 0 elevating the otherwise flat characters as 3 does IMO. I really really do not like the story of Yakuza 1. It's made better with the context of 0 and the addition of the Nishiki scenes in Kiwami (which I WAS aware weren't in the original as I was playing) but taken as a story on its own merits I'm sorry but I just think it loving sucks. The entire midgame section with Date and the Florist's kid problems is infuriating. It's not like I wasn't expecting some cheesy character drama in these games but it just felt so completely irrelevant to the main plot and it goes on for SO MUCH OF THE GAME that by the time I finally got back to dealing with the Tojo's missing 10 billion we'd already started the march to the endgame. And Kyohei Jingu is loving awful. Every part of his inclusion in the story sucks, and his boss fight was the second worst in the series until Saito popped up and pushed him down to #3 (former worst and now 2nd worst is Shindo). Honestly my biggest takeaway from the characters in 1 that had been built up in 0 like Kazama, Reina, Nishiki, and Sera, is that they all got done a massive disservice by how the story of 1 ends up treating them. I realize that's a pretty extreme stance but honestly it's the lone black mark of a series I've greatly enjoyed every other part of.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 18:30
|
|
|
I like 2 and 4 quite a lot! 3 is good too, it's just kinda slow and I didn't super love the Okinawa cast. But yeah none of them have touched 0.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 18:56
|
|
|
Like I said in my earlier post I rate 0 and K2 about the same in terms of gameplay. Dragon Engine combat is slick as gently caress but I still just can't help but miss the styles from 0 and all the fun poo poo you could do with Rush and Beast, and Slugger and Mad Dog with Majima.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 19:41
|
|
|
I have 0 on steam but K1-6 for PS4 (+ the ps5 version of Judgment) and I won't say it hasn't crossed my mind multiple times to buy a ps4 copy of 0 just so it can sit on the shelf. Though admittedly if I were going to go back to any of them for a replay 0 would probably be the one.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 22:12
|
|
|
After skipping them all in 3 I did what I feel was a healthy number of substories in 4 and they ranged from ok to pretty good. Nothing outstanding, though I did really enjoy Fighter Maker and plowed through that all at once (not in a single sitting though).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2021 18:02
|
|
|
Real Estate in 0 was great because it was literally just passively making fuckloads of money every 10 minutes once it got going. It was just kinda tedious going back to the office every time.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2021 17:03
|
|
|
People talked up how bad the Akiyama/Lily stuff was but idk she's asking for 100 million yen and his "creepy test" is to see if she can sweet talk some lonely dudes at a club (that he owns, and presumably is plenty capable of doing his own security for, if need be) into paying way too much money for drinks for a couple of days. Maybe I'm dumb but it always seemed like there was a lot of subtext (or just flat out text, in some cases) in Yakuza that says host/hostess clubs will sometimes lead to a host/hostess getting into bed with the client, but that's never even hinted at with her. There's way worse poo poo in this series imo. That said I didn't do many of his loan shark substories so I never saw the one about the abused wife. Sounds bad!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2021 00:31
|
|
|
evilmiera posted:Just started playing LAD after burning out on 0 (trying to do everything when a lot of the content is just filler or lackluster dropped my interest in 0), and oh man is LAD so much better in almost every way. Speaking as someone going through the whole story (recently finished 4) I think trying to "do everything" in any of these games is an easy way to kill your enthusiasm. I love the absolute gently caress out of 0, it's still the best of the five I've played, but even then I only ended it at maybe 40% completion. I don't think I even hit double digits in 3. If you're not feeling the side content there's no reason not to mainline the story. That said I think your read on Kiryu and Majima is a bit reductive and surface level. They're definitely deeper characters than that. Though not that much deeper, in Kiryu's case.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 00:36
|
|
|
I remember hearing several stories on the Giant Bombcast about how incredibly distrustful Square Enix was of the internet for basically the entirety of the 2000s, and how completely draconian they, as well as Nintendo, always were when doing press stuff for internet outlets vs magazines and TV. Those policies come off as downright radically progressive compared to this bullshit.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2021 03:33
|
|
|
I'm not gonna lie that rubber bullet poo poo completely washed past me, like I barely even noticed. When I play these games I'm less "suspending my disbelief" and more "tying, gagging, and cramming my disbelief into the trunk of a car."
|
|
#
¿
Jul 28, 2021 01:19
|
|
|
Randallteal posted:The weirdest rival setup has to be the end of 0 (which I love). Shibusawa's "I'm the real Dragon of Dojima" thing completely baffled me. I remember seeing him rant about it on the boat and thinking "this guy? Did I miss a chapter?" Ainsley McTree posted:The dragon stuff didn't make that much sense I agree, but whatever honestly, it's all kayfabe I believe this is a quote from Pat of the former Best Friends Play but I believe when referring to Shibusawa he says (paraphrased): "the reason you don't see him rip off his shirt until the end of the game is because if you saw his tattoo it would spoil who the final boss is" Basically the point is he's supposed to be the unsuspecting businessman type who you don't think much of compared to Kuze and Awano when you first meet the three of them but oh poo poo he was a mastermind biding his time. Not so much that he was pulling all the strings the whole time, but he was pulling just enough of them that nobody noticed until he stepped into the forefront of the plot at the end that he was the biggest problem of the three.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 28, 2021 21:29
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:I will say (4th character's individual section), Akiyama and Tanimura realizing that they're fighting a loving monster in Kiryu, their best moves getting powered out of by this one bizarre unstoppable dude in a 20-year-old out-of-date suit who tells them they're good guys after beating their asses was pretty loving great. When this sequence started I was like "Oh man are they gonna do the cool thing?!" and when it started I was like "YES! THEY DID THE COOL THING!! gently caress YEAH"
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2021 07:25
|
|
|
I never got Tiger Drop in 0-3 but picked it up in 4 around halfway through Part 4 and was not prepared. It's basically impossible to time against the final bosses but I managed to get 2 or 3 lucky ones in.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2021 22:43
|
|
|
Popputan posted:I know this is contentious and has probably been argued a thousand times already n' all, buuuut... I set the difficulty to Easy and mainlined the story so my opinion on 3 is mostly favorable. I didn't really like Okinawa as a map and it takes quite awhile for the story to go anywhere, and when it finally DOES go somewhere it's kind of... standard? Like there's some craziness but it's so much tamer than the other games that I can't really rate it super high when I rank them all, even though I did like it. Like, I think the plot is the "second worst" of the 5 I've played (0-4) but it's still like a 7/10 minimum. It's just that 0, 2, and 4 are all more exciting and/or interesting, at least to me. But yeah the combat is trash. I set it to easy and skipped all the side content just to minimize the fighting i was required to do, and because I knew there were a lot of underwhelming/boring substories and I didn't want to look up a "which ones are worth doing?" guide.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2021 20:00
|
|
|
Dr. Arbitrary posted:I just finished Yakuza 2 Kiwami and am working my way through 3 Remastered and it feels like a big jump backwards. Nostalgia4Butts posted:nope im doing the same thing, on 5 now and yeah play em all. Same here. Just wrapped up Saejima's personal side story (in a single sitting (for the second game in a row, with him specifically)) a few days ago and while I can definitely feel I haven't gotten to the real "meat" of the plot yet I'm interested in what's happening so far. I liked 4's story, dumb as it is, because it's just so needlessly convoluted and ridiculous. I was hooting and hollering at some of the big revelations in the last 30% of that game. As a couple people mentioned when you're doing the new player route and going with the most modern available versions of all these games, K2 to 3 is the biggest difference you're going to run into and you absolutely feel the 2008 all over that thing. The plot is good if a bit unspectacular, but the combat is definitely the roughest. I knew all that would be the case going in so I just set it to Easy, lowered my expectations, and just mainlined through the main story, and I had a good enough time with it.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2022 02:26
|
|
|
mutantIke posted:Just beat Chapter 11 of Yakuza 0. Nishitani may be the character with the highest coolness:screen time ratio in the entire franchise. Carlosologist posted:In my current 0 playthrough I’m up to Kiryu and Kuze’s last fight and man did the realization just hit that Kiryu bases his whole look off Kuze’s as a way to honor him In any other context I would say a prequel where the two main characters meet some dudes you've never heard of who each wind up inspiring the way the both main characters present themselves for the entire rest of the series is some eye-roll worthy, hamfisted bullshit, but not with those two. It's honestly so impressive how well everything came together with Y0, both in the game and in the real world.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2022 02:07
|
|
|
gently caress saito
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2022 04:59
|
|
|
Finished Yakuza 5. Not sure I have a ton to say on it, despite how huge it is. I was having trouble keeping up with the story for a lot of it because it felt so disjointed. It took until very close to the end for them to actually tie things together in a mostly satisfactory way, but the final boss kind of lost me again. It felt like a twist for the sake of a twist and I'm still kind of puzzled about it. I liked the game, generally. Kiryu and Saejima's parts were fine but it very obviously felt with both of them like it was just building up to something else. The plot did finally start to feel like it was moving in full gear once Akiyama showed up but then right after that we cut to what basically amounts to a gaiden chapter. I did like Shinada's story quite a bit, fwiw, it felt like a first stab at a Judgment-esque story, and it wrapped up pretty nicely I felt. I'm of two minds really. They've clearly grown a lot as storytellers over the course of the series, and knowing the next game after this is 0, I can certainly feel it in this game. The parts where it works, it works very well. But also I think they got a bit too ambitious with it, and it hurt, in terms of having a cohesive narrative. I don't like when a story makes me ask "Why is this significant to that other stuff? Why is any of this happening???" for 20-40 hours before getting around to telling me.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 9, 2022 10:14
|
|
|
The only break of any significance I took was early enough on that I might as well not even count it, I don't think anything Yakuza-related had even happened in the Kiryu chapter yet aside from the taxi ride with Daigo. I certainly didn't play it every day but I more or less plowed all the way through over the course of a month or so (I think, I'm always terrible at estimating that metric, could've been closer to 2)
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2022 01:28
|
|
|
As somebody who has <25% completion in every Yakuza game from 0 to 5, let me tell you how it feels to not have to play Mahjong: wonderful
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2022 01:18
|
|
|
Y3 is at the bottom of the list of "Yakuza plots I liked" but the only game that isn't on that list is 1, so.... 4's stupid stuff was very endearing to me. I still don't get the disdain for it, frankly. 3 was just... kind of boring. I liked the ridiculous "Here's What The Plot Is" cutscene with the politician and some of the stuff with the 3rd Nishikiyama family leader whose name I forget but Mine made for a pretty bog-standard/underwhelming antagonist and I definitely think the CIA/Joji stuff is dumber than like 99% of the rubber bullet nonsense from 4, personally.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2022 12:49
|
|
|
The only ones I played in direct sequence were 0 and K1 and that was mostly due to K1 being short and the momentum of 0's finale carrying me through it. I was tempted to start up 6 as soon as 5 ended but spacing them out has absolutely helped them not get tiresome so I stuck to it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2022 12:26
|
|
|
man nurse posted:I mean Kiryu is basically the Goku of the series. No one is really equal to him. I'm not caught up on the recent stuff yet but from what I've seen I think Saejima, if he ever manages to get in top form, probably beats Kiryu. They basically fight to a standstill in 4 until Saejima like, passes out or whatever from the injuries he gets escaping prison.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2022 03:16
|
|
|
Sudden Javelin posted:I don't think I'd have ever gotten hooked on the series if I'd started with kiwami I'm on record as loving despising the story of Y1, while 0 is still easily my favorite as of finishing 5 a few weeks ago, so yeah same.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2022 19:03
|
|
|
people want to hear the hits
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2022 17:10
|
|
|
Nostalgia4Butts posted:i think 4 and 5 are my personal favorites from the series after playing 0-6 0's pacing was immaculate how dare you
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2022 23:18
|
|
|
3 was a slog to actually play because the combat was so old and jank and the pacing of the early game is practically glacial but I'll take Kiryu's dumb kids and the Ryudo Family dorks over Date and the Florist's dad drama and literally anything to do with Kyohei Jingu in a loving heartbeat.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2022 14:52
|
|
|
RareAcumen posted:She takes after her old man. He was packing gameplay bullets in a cutscene so they were less effective.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2022 00:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:20 |
|
|
Omi no Kami posted:Which is a bummer, because I honestly think that if Shinada's story was stretched from 5 hours of Y5 to 15-20 hours of a standalone game, and someone ctrl+fed and replaced "baseball" with another random noun half of the time, I would've honestly loved hanging out with him for a slow, small-scale story of weird sex industry poo poo. But since he came in the very end, and his stuff was so tangential, I feel the poor man kinda got kneecapped by me constantly going "Oh my god I don't care, can we please go back to Tokyo and/or Osaka?" For me Y5 was a game where I had no idea what was going on until literally the final chapter of the endgame, but I went into the Shinada chapter fully open minded, aware that he basically didn't have anything to do with the larger plot, and he wound up as my favorite part. It felt like them testing out the waters on the idea of breaking away from Kiryu and internal Tojo leadership drama that would eventually become Judgment, and it does a fantastic job of it. But that said, yes, 5 has a real bad case of "Okay and what does this have to do with the rest of that stuff we've been talking about so far?" and going from the end of Part 3 to Some New Guy We've Never Heard Of Before seems like it would be loving brutal if you weren't prepared for it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2022 02:43
|
|