Like A Dragon/Yakuza: Kyodais Rock

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Like A Dragon/Yakuza: Kyodais Rock

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

tap my mountain posted:

I think it's supposed to be this is what video games look like to adults. For the kids it's all innocent fun but dad is like "why is it just big titty ladies fighting each other

That's a lot of mental gymastics to explain why there are scantily clad women in a game that literally includes gravure videos.

Unrelated to that holy gently caress I can't believe they didn't change the rail shooter segment from the PS2 version to include, I dunno, checkpoints, the ability to use healing items, or anything like that. In general it seems like the changes they made uniformly improve gameplay, but holy poo poo is that sequence just plain old oldschool bullshit.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2017 02:28

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 13:23

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

cubicle gangster posted:

Did anyone else beat the game barely seeing majima?

I finished at 32% completion, used a guide to find some substories and ran around a bunch but i only fought him 3 times in the entire game. I don't have any messages about him hiding somewhere or anything either. It's kind of weird to have heard so many people complain about the feature but then I pretty much completely forgot it even existed.

I don't know how many times I fought him since the last cheevo is for 50 times or something like that, but I ended up discovering that the skill point/experience/whatever the gently caress counter only goes up to 9999 because I'd already purchased all the upgrades and was still having to fight him to finish the Dragon skill tree.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2017 00:14

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Josuke Higashikata posted:

beating majima/anything except amon because i didn't fight him pro strats

1. purposely whiff a light punch to trigger his A.I. to attack
2. tiger drop him immediately
3. repeat

It can't be overstated how this is not only a viable strategy for about 90% of the fights in the game (once you get the tiger drop timing down), it's the optimal strategy because tiger drop is so loving strong.

And most of the things you can't do this on (or can't consistently get the timing right---there's one Breaker Majima combo I could never get the timing right on) you can just block to build heat and then back-dodge to spam sumo slap or whatever it's called.

None of this works on Amon of course, but gently caress Amon.

Not that any of this is an argument against anyone saying that the Majima stuff gets tedious. It absolutely does. After I'd unlocked all the poo poo in the different styles I was running around without healing---at that point you can breeze through random encounters without taking any damage, and if you run into Majima you can just let him hit you twice or whatever. It isn't game over, there are no negative consequences (and at that point there are no positive consequences for winning either), and the game's nice enough to give you enough health that you're not limping.

precision posted:

IIRC is really easy if you just look it up

At least on hard the timing of the manzai is incredibly loving fiddly even if you know exactly which responses to use.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2017 22:06

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Sakurazuka posted:

Any tips for Mr. Shakedown with Majima? I can usually hit n run quick enough with Kiryu but all of Majima's moves seem to take ages and rely on him tanking through hits or keeping the enemy stunned, which is fine normally but not against them.

Buy about a half inventory full of something that does a HEAT recharge, use a baseball bat's HEAT move (which you can execute any time an enemy is in range), repeat.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 20:49

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Captain Walker posted:

The couple that stomps face together, stays together

My girlfriend has been playing through the Yakuza games, starting from the first one on PS2. I don't think I've ever seen her as mad as when she hosed up the QTE after the boss fights at the end of 2.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 06:06

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

univbee posted:

Yes you're correct. The movie I'm thinking of is a different film and much more recent than Stray Dog (I saw it at a film festival in Montreal when the movie was fairly recent).

I remember the "three bullets" part distinctly because the police officer's superior was chewing him out for it and basically treating the loss as "welp three people are dead because of you, they just don't know it yet", I think even taking it to an extreme and saying a trained assassin could have done Deadpool-style 360 noscoping and killed six people with three bullets.

Are you thinking of Johnnie To's PTU (2003)?

# ¿ Mar 13, 2019 15:48

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

univbee posted:

lol that it's such a common trope, because I don't think so. The movie I'm thinking of the police officer lost his weapon because he got poo poo-faced at a party and one of the people who helped him in the car (taxi?) driving him home swiped his gun. It takes place in a rural part of China, too. Would have been out around that time or maybe a few years earlier, though.

That's definitely not PTU, then.

And I don't think that it's a popular subject in general so much as Johnnie To is a big director and PTU was super popular (and spawned a whole series of sequels), so it would be astonishing if there weren't a bunch of films made around the same time with a very similar premise. That's like 90% of the Hong Kong film industry.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2019 16:09

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Vikar Jerome posted:

hes great in 2 and 3, barely around in 4, a more human side to him in 5 and then it was pretty much 0 that did it.

I think the inflection point between Majima the straight-up psychopath and Majima the wacky sidekick is actually Dead Souls, which came between 4 and 5. It seems like the RGG guys just decided they liked the version from the spinoff joke game and poof it's canon.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2019 22:57

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

And Tyler Too! posted:

Judgmentchat: I only now realized Hug Bomb drinks give SP and I just happened to unlock the bottomless stomach upgrade. After a few rounds of Dice & Cube and a trip to Poppo all my skills are maxed and I have the master drone blueprints. This was even easier to cheese than Kiwami 2.

You can down the Hug Bomb drinks even when you're full without bottomless stomach. Or at least all the ones I've seen. But I guess I haven't unlocked as them as far as you have, because the biggest Hug Bomb drink I've got is the one that gives 100 SP for 30k, which is no fuckin' way viable as a way of filling out the skill tree.

And holy poo poo is my game glitched or did I gently caress something up by spending too long in an early chapter or some poo poo? Now every time there's a gang invasion I've got to hope I'm standing close to one of the leaders because if I'm not then I'll end up in an encounter with some random mooks and then I'm just stuck in a loop where as soon as I finish off one encounter another immediately starts until the threat gauge hits zero. And I don't mean I get an encounter every couple steps, I mean literally there's no pause between them---as it's going through the end of combat animation there's another couple of gang guys walking up to me who immediately aggro when the animation ends. I'm now on the third or fourth time where I've been at like 75% on the invasion gauge or whatever the gently caress it is, I'll get into a random encounter, and then it'll just keep on respawning poo poo until the gauge hits zero and I get the SMS from the guy at the yakiniku place.

It just started doing this after I hit chapter 7? 8? Whatever it is when the third leader starts showing up during the invasions.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2019 11:38

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

And Tyler Too! posted:

I made friends with Ryo in Judgment and he straight up copies some of Majima's moves. It's nice to have a NPC ally that can actually accomplish something. Mr. Try-and-hit-me just stands there and gets his rear end whooped every single time, in fact he sucks rear end at not being hit.

As near as I can tell all the combat buddies in Judgement are just there to draw fire from the guys with guns that start showing up in random encounters in the last couple chapters, so you don't have to spend half of your time running over to the guy under Children's Park to heal mortal wounds.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2019 23:13

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Sakurazuka posted:

My biggest annoyance with 5 was the first three Amon guys being relatively easy but the last one an utter fucker I could never beat so I wasted like 30 minutes getting to him.

Is that the one where he suddenly starts flying around in lotus position making GBS threads sparkles and shooting heat-seeking missiles (umbrellas?)? I just finished the remaster of 4 and had mis-remembered that Amon fight being in 4 instead of 5. And got really confused when I steamrolled them all.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2020 21:59

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

mastershakeman posted:

Who has bowling tips for y4 I cannot get this fuckkk

The pin closest to you is the one pin. The two right behind it are #2 and 3. The gap between #1 and #2, and between #1 and #3 are called pockets. Pick a pocket. Move the ball off-center toward the side of the pocket you want to hit. Aim, use high force, use spin to correct your hosed up aim.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2020 21:40

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

mastershakeman posted:

*9 pins fall over, forever *

The bowling minigame in 4 is definitely not as easy as the later ones where you get to select a ball. But I was still hitting strikes most of the time once I figured out a spot. The flow is you pick a spot in the lane to release from, then it does the metronome thing to pick the angle, then there's the power thing, and the spin thing. For whatever reason, I always found it easier to time the metronome part after picking a spot on the righthand side of the lane.

Usually what I was trying for was to pick a spot I think two or three clicks to the right, then try to pick an angle so that the ball was hitting the pocket on the right (hitting the #1 pin first, then the #3), throwing with high power, and only using as much spin as needed to correct for any aiming fuckups. After getting the timing of the metronome thing down I was hitting strikes probably a little more than half the time, from the amount of practice I was getting from finishing all the hostesses. Took a few more games after that to get the turkey trophy (for three strikes in a row), so I ended up with like a half dozen of the free bowling balls.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2020 20:07

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Kojiro posted:

Even in the remaster he definitely still tells one lady to go work in a "massage" parlour then says she mustn't have wanted the money enough when she says no. I like him anyway but he's very far from an angel.

I like the Yakuza games, but they're all predicated on the bullshit Just World nonsense that says that the only reason why anyone fails is because they just didn't want it bad enough. Akiyama's creepy moneylender gimmick is just harder to pass off as video game/action franchise/whatever background noise because (in this case) it's more decoupled from the gameplay mechanics than most of the character's creepy poo poo. Like in the real world if you had a guy who couldn't walk to the corner store without absolutely brutalising dozens of people everyone would recognise the guy as a fuckin' monster, but in gameplay terms we just sorta accept that yeah, they had it coming, give me a gold plate and some xp for doing it.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2020 09:08

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Mister No posted:

also, is the Omi Alliance a completely separate entity from the Tojo Clan? i'm assuming it is, but just wanted to make sure.

Yeah. The Omi-rengo is loosely based on the real-world Yamaguchi-gumi. They're the largest yakuza organisation in Japan and are based in the Kansai region (although in Kobe instead of Osaka).

The Tojo-kai is loosely based on the Sumiyoshi-kai, which is the second-largest yakuza organisation. Like the Tojo, they're based in Tokyo, and operate in Kabukicho (the district in Shinjuku which Kamurocho is a thinly-veiled version of).

Both real-world groups are tiny compared to their RGG counterparts--in the games Omi and Tojo have more than 20k members each, while the Yamaguichi-gumi and Sumiyoshi-kai probably have less than 15k members between them.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2020 00:42

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

fancy stats posted:

Alternatively, get really into mahjong and start playing the 5 million game for quick-ish money. And then stop playing the actual game and just play mahjong full-time, instead.

I'd like RGG mahjong if the higher-skilled players weren't higher skilled mostly by virtue of being fantastically lucky. First time I tried the Royal tournament one of the guys called riichi on the second or third draw and then got ippatsu...with a hand where they were looking to inside fill a chi (like they had the bamboo three and five and were drawing to get the four)...and then did the same thing for three hands in a row, ending up with like 75k points.

Same thing seems to happen with the higher-level koi-koi opponents.

Which I guess isn't that surprising, as in the RGG games where there are cheat items for gambling, that's pretty much how they work.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2020 12:48

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

univbee posted:

I don't think it's possible to do any real damage with a single-hitting attack against an invested vagabond.

The Dealer skill Jackpot Chip consistently one shots them.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2021 03:48

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

univbee posted:

They are notoriously hard to find. Arrow Video released a super-rare Blu-ray set that literally sells for like a thousand dollars now, and even comes up largely empty.

The boxed set is out of print and expensive, but the individual films are still in print and you can buy them any day of the week for :20bux:

a pop. In fact Arrow is currently having an Easter sale, so you can currently pick them up for �8.00 each straight from Arrow.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2021 15:37

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Ytlaya posted:

Ignoring trying to get more points, what situations are better suited to Snake than Tiger? Like obviously you can use Snake to disarm people, but once that's done (and you've gotten the buff from parrying I guess) what's the advantage?

The body slam triangle move that Snake gets is good for blowing through random encounters once random mooks start learning how to block.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2021 12:17

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

goblin week posted:

Yagami can�t skate on sidewalk??? What a loving boomer

And he's really conscientious about it. Skating in a parking lot is fine, skating in the road is fine, but holy hell if you want to cross the three feet of sidewalk going from a parking lot to a road you better dismount and walk it, mister.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2021 21:41

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

A Bystander posted:

To give him some sort of slack, Sugiura tells him not to skate on the sidewalk when you get it and I guess Yagami took that seriously

Sugiura should've mentioned not skating straight into oncoming traffic while drunk.

Speaking of which, holy poo poo Yagami it's like two shots. If I got that drunk from a couple shots I'd end up dead on any random night in the kitchen making dinner for gently caress's sake.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2021 23:50

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Captain Walker posted:

Not if you ollie over those three feet

Does that actually work? Because I've tried and if that's how it's supposed to work I've never worked out the timing.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2021 08:58

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

A Bystander posted:

If it's over a non-obvious bit of sidewalk, you kinda have to take a guess on it, but when you do it enough times, you can do it pretty easily.

Huh, yeah. I think the problem was that the first several times I tried were on an entrance to Hamakita Park that I think you can't clear. Like there's a little bit between the road and where the park proper begins and it seems to count as sidewalk, and as near as I can tell you can't clear it even with a fully charged ollie. The eastern most entrance, over where the gardening spots were in the first game, yeah it turns out that one's no problem.

It also turns out that this was the trickiest skateboarding challenge in the game for me. The skate park missions, I don't think there are any where I didn't get twice as many points needed to complete it. The races, I think there's only one (the last one) that I had to repeat (because holy poo poo Yagami really wants to dismount on the second corkscrew inside the park at the end of the course). But crossing the sidewalks, man apparently I needed fuckin' spoilers for that poo poo.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2021 12:40

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Is it just me, or are the low-level mahjong opponents in Lost Judgment a lot more "lucky" than usual? Just spent like an hour trying to get 3x1st place at the "normal" table in Ijincho and those motherfuckers are constantly doing poo poo like calling richi and then getting tsumo/ippatsu where they have literally one tile left they're drawing for (like they need the bamboo three or whatever and three of them are already on the table). And like a lot of last tile tsumos. And holy poo poo they got ron off me like literally three or four times where my discard was the tile that the player who called richi discarded the turn before they called it.

Like normally I expect to see this kind of "luck" on the higher-level tables because I assume the "skill level" works for them pretty much the same way the cheat items work for you. And maybe it's just a run of bad luck or whatever. But holy hell it feels like some bullshit.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2021 12:28

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

corn on the cop posted:

i'm glad i'm not the only one who felt like this, because i've never seen more second and third turn riichis in my life

So I just spent around another hour trying to rack up three wins on one table and I've gotten one. Every other time the AI has beaten me in an amazing come-from-behind victory in literally the final hand of the round. Sometimes with literally the last tile draw. Like seriously the last two games I played were: going into the final hand I'm up like 10k, third turn player to my left calls riichi, I discard the dots eight--which was the same as my last discard, and one was a dora tile, so that's three of the four of them--and the AI gets tsumo/ippatsu on a fully concealed all pairs hand, boom lose; game before that I was up like 7k or something going into the last hand and one of the AI players gets last tile tsumo worth like 10 han or some poo poo--identical sequences, no points, I don't even remember what all--boom lose.

I seriously got caught again three or four times where the AI got ron off of me when I discarded a tile that had been discarded immediately before they called riichi, on top of the three or four times that already happened my last play session.

I've now spent more time trying to put together three wins to qualify for one of the tables than I did completing all the tournaments in previous games. It's nuts.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2021 06:53

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

SubG posted:

I've now spent more time trying to put together three wins to qualify for one of the tables than I did completing all the tournaments in previous games. It's nuts.

Mahjong update: after several hours of banging away at the "normal" table, finally got my three wins to qualify for the highest difficulty table. Which I won by 20k first try. Which qualified me for the tournament. Which I won by over 80k first try.

Went back to the normal table. Thought maybe there was a hidden "lucky/unlucky day" mechanic like there was in some earlier games. Nope. Once again start out fine, I get ahead, then last hand boom AI gets a lucky draw worth like twelve fuckin han.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2021 12:22

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

ChaosArgate posted:

As far as mandatory stealth sections in not-stealth video games go, LJ's are fine, I'd say. They feel more like basic puzzle-based palette cleansers to break up the usual flow and they're more engaging than the glut of tailing sequences and half-baked detective-y minigames (I am so loving glad that picking game is gone) from the first game. It'd be kinda neat if they were little HITMAN� levels where your means of approaching the solution are super open ended, but as-is, they're relatively inoffensive.

I think the biggest complaint I had about the stealth poo poo was that RGG in general seems to be bad at figuring out where to restart from when you're plowing through minigames. One of the photography club missions has a stealth segment in it, and if you fail, you restart from the cutscene before the start of the stealth mission, which is literally what no player ever has wanted, instead of at the start of the stealth mission itself.

Same with the motorcycle races. When I win a race, I want to go to the garage menu, not to get dumped back to standing around Ijincho mode.

And while we're at it, I do not want to have to skip a little cutscene every loving time I reasearch a robot part in a minigame where I'm constantly researching robot parts and whenever I'm researching one I'm almost certainly researching three.

It's not like any of this is rarrr rage quit or anything, but RGG Studios could really use someone who understands UI/UX design better.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2021 00:07

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

A True Jar Jar Fan posted:

I wish there had been more photo missions and fewer robotics and motorcycle missions

Yeah. I didn't hate any of the minigames, but RGG games in general seem to have this problem where they kinda halfass the minigames and then expect you to complete approximately twelve million missions in them. Like the motorcycle racing looks like it could have a decent minigame in there somewhere, but it would need a lot more work--more moves, more parts, better tracks, and so on. But as it is the first time you complete a race you've already seen like 90% of what the minigame has to offer, and now you've got to re-do the same poo poo like a dozen more times. Same with the boxing minigame. Like I'd be 100% down with a modern remake of 4D Boxing as a playable minigame. But as it is it's like two dozen fights that all play out more or less exactly the same with slightly different short cutscenes in the middle and a big dramatic long cutscene at the end.

Occasionally the minigames knock it out of the park--like the Y0 version of the club management minigame--but most of the time--the gang battles, bug catfights, chicken racing, the walk-slowly-around-the-club-every-mission princess maker club management game--are just a slog through endless minute variations on the same lackluster thing over and over.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 23:52

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

So did I miss something, or does Lost Judgment give you the point of no return warning...after the point of no return? As in it warns you that when you change towns it'll trigger poo poo...but that means that at that point you're effectively locked out of the other town if you don't want to trigger the endgame poo poo.

Seems...bullshitty.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2021 04:40

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Gort posted:

I spent all my XP exclusively on the skill that gives you more XP for battles, until it was maxed out.

I recommend that you don't do that. It'll mean any tough enemy can one-shot you, fairly early into the game.

Does the XP bonus poo poo just apply to the bonus XP you get for doing special poo poo during the fight, or the base experience of the mobs as well? Either way, the first tier, maybe second of the XP bonus skill might pay for themselves eventually, but I'd be loving astonished if I got 80K bonus xp after buying the last tier of it.

That all said, I'd recommend just concentrating on the skills that unlock EX moves, skills in the fighting style you like/use the most, and then whatever else seems worthwhile based on what you're doing at the moment (extra HP if you're getting beat up a lot, extra damage if you want to burn through random encounters faster, and that kind of thing).

Because of the way unlocks work I spent a lot of time carrying around large hunks of XP that I couldn't spend on anything either because the next skill was one of the 80k guys and I was doing sidequest poo poo (so only picking up ~1-2k per random encounter or whatever) or because I had to find a skillbook or whatever to get more skills. The game definitely throws a shitload of experience at you relative to the amount you need to unlock all the skills, so I wouldn't sweat it too much anyway.

The other thing worth mentioning with respect to XP is that there's a merchant that accepts XP instead of cash, and there are a few skill unlocks and that kind of thing you're going to want to have a few thousand points for eventually.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2021 11:24

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Advice aside, I finished the main game (of Lost Judgment) and I think I've done all the side poo poo I'm going to bother with. Mild gameplay/non-plot spoilers in my thoughts:

Yakuza 2/K2 is probably my favourite title from the RGG guys, but one thing I wish they hadn't added to Lost Judgement from it is fuckin' QTEs in the boss fights. None of them were a major problem for me, but I think I failed most of them the first time around because while I can breeze through most QTEs that just use X/circle/triangle/square, none of the other <-L or whatever poo poo is instinctive enough that I can button mash through it without thinking. The boss fights in general weren't tough enough that having to redo the last health bar a second time because I hosed up a QTE was an issue, so whatever. But difficulty or whatever aside they just felt kinda...out of place or something. Like, I've just spent a couple minutes winning this boss fight, it's kinda irritating to have to not watch the cool cutscene because I'm watching for the QTE prompts instead. But whatever.

The obligatory optional Amon fight...there ought to be a term of art for "not difficult, just bullshit". Because he really didn't feel particularly dangerous at any point, the only problem was the huge number of ways he has of healing himself, often by entire health bars. I mean I was playing on hard and beat him second try (restarting once to get better equipment, specifically the upper and lower armour that reduce status effects and the accessories that boost EX gain/duration), so definitely not a particularly hard fight by Amon fight standards. And they're always full of gimmicky poo poo. But this one just felt more like a slog instead of either a skill test or a character build/equipment puzzle like most of them are.

And if calling an Amon fight bullshit wasn't enough stating the obvious for one post, here's some more: a lot of the completion stuff felt...excessive. Specifically in weirdly uneven ways. Like holy poo poo how many loving robot battles would you need to complete in order to build all the parts? I mean by the end of the game the major roadblock for researching parts was cash, and you get the same 30k every three battles regardless of whether you're fighting a top-ranked team or you're just steamrolling the Algorythms in 20 seconds for the 50th time. So it's doable, and it's not even difficult. Just tedious. And weirdly excessive compared to, say, the ridiculously easy completion requirements for the e-sports team, or the darts requirements for the girl's bar completion.

Anyway, overall I enjoyed Lost Judgment but it felt weirdly...flat or something. Like I've just rattled off some of my complaints, but a lot of them look similar to complaints that could be made about entries in the series that I liked a lot more. So I'm not sure if I can articulate a list of specific reasons, but LJ just never felt like it clicked with me.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2021 11:58

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

PhoenixFlaccus posted:

Death Race is bullshit. I thought y�all were being dramatic after finishing the first 2 gangs. Yeah it feels crappy but didn�t think it would get so hard. On the first race of the last gang I saved all my boost til the end and still didn�t win, getting passed at the end while boosting.

Yeah, the first several races are just tedious but in the last couple the rubberbanding is so over-the-top it looks almost like a parody.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2021 06:17

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

History Comes Inside! posted:

Why did they do the sequel first

There's kinda sorta already a translation of it out there. If I recall correctly, it's playable but only the main story stuff is translated. So it's not great, but it exists.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2022 12:55

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

History Comes Inside! posted:

Uh I think you�ll find the Official Thread Position is nobody knows why Majima is the way he is from 1 onwards and it�s a totally jarring mystery that can never be solved, ever.

Rubber psychosis.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2022 21:11

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

ZiegeDame posted:

The thing about Majima is he started the series as just the silly knife guy, and then eventually they started to drip-feed some character development into him after 4-5 games. It's just that the game where they finally decided to give him a proper character arc was also the prequel game designed as an on-ramp for new players. The way Majima's story is presented makes a lot more sense if you look at 5 before 0.

In the original PS2 version of Yakuza Majima isn't the silly knife guy as much as he's a dangerously unhinged, sickeningly violent psychopath. Like the first time he meets Kiryu he more or less threatens to rape Yumi, and if there's a running joke involving Majima in the game it's that he likes beating his underlings to death.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2022 04:57

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

ZiegeDame posted:

That's the joke, such as it is. Yakuza 1 hadn't really figured out the humor side of the franchise yet.

No, it's really more that the original is a conventional yakuza drama and it's played more or less completely straight. Majima does go way the gently caress out of his way to fight Kiryu, but it's not because he's the lol wackyrandom sidekick he'll eventually morph into, it's because he's a dangerously unstable criminal trying to assert his dominance. We're supposed to think he'd beat an underling to death for not showing proper respect. He's willing to take hostages and threaten to kill them to get what he wants. It's not a joke, he's supposed to be a bad guy.

Tonally, Kiwami is a bit of a mess because they interleave that Majima with the wacky Majima Everywhere Majima and they're really not the same character.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2022 09:49

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

ZiegeDame posted:

Yeah, Majima drives a truck into a building and threatens to kill a bunch of women until Kiryu agrees to fight him. After Kiryu beats him he stops all that poo poo and gives Kiryu what he wants. That's how the crazy violent psychopath turns out to actually be the most honorable of all the antagonists. I suppose you could interpret that as him ceding dominance to the stronger man, but "he actually only cares about the fighting for it's own sake" fits just as well in the context of the first game, and fits much better with the context of the rest of the series.

...which is not the "silly knife guy" character he eventually becomes.

I mean I think you're still mostly reading the character in the original Yakuza in terms of everything you know about him from later games. When it first came out on PS2, the original game read exactly like a straightforward, on-the-level yakuza story, strongly influenced by jitsuroku eiga films in general and Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity series in particular. And the original version of Majima reads very much like a stock character in that context, the unstable and violent thug there to contrast with the I-wish-this-was-a-ninkyo-eiga-film stoic and straightlaced Kiryu.

The silly knife guy Majima becomes...and for that matter the basically-honest-guy-adopting-the-mad-dog-persona that's the second layer of retcon...isn't really compatible with holding a knife to a woman's throat, telling her she looks "delicious" and asking her "How about it? Why don't you be my bitch?" The silly knife guy doesn't randomly beat people to death. And the silly knife guy, Kiryu's lolrandom BFF, absolutely loving doesn't kidnap Haruka. Like in the sequel, kidnapping Haruka is presented as so beyond the pale to the "honerable" yakuza that the mid-level antagonist who does it gets killed by the top-level antagonist for playing too dirty.

Silly knife guy Majima is weird and you might not want to invite him to your next bbq, but he's fundamentally harmless. Original PS2 Yakuza Majima is absolutely not intended to be harmless, he's absolutely presented as a credible antagonist, somebody that we're actually supposed to worry might snap at any moment and seriously injure or kill somebody because that's the way we consistently see him behave.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2022 22:43

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

ZiegeDame posted:

I don't disagree with what you're saying about Majima's portrayal as an unstable psychopath. I'm saying that his actions at Shangri-la were meant to be a twist on his character that re-contextualizes his actions leading up to that point.

There's nothing in the original game itself that suggests a re-contextualisation. He holds a knife to a random woman's throat, tells her she looks delicious and asks her to be his bitch. When he subsequently lets her go because (he says) she's honest, that doesn't make him honorable. It makes him erratic. Which is absolutely part of the twitchy yakuza thug stereotype, and it's a pretty typical story beat for that kind of character. It's more or less directly a parody of the sort of thing actually-presented-as-honorable characters from older ninkyo eiga were always depicted as wrestling with: the tension between a commitment to duty and one's personal feelings. Except that kind of character, cut from the same cloth as Kiryu is, never finds himself in a conflict where one side of the issue is decapitating a random civilian or kidnapping a schoolgirl.

Like if you didn't already come into it expecting Majima to be a wacky sidekick there's absolutely no reason why you'd be trying to interpret his actions in a sympathetic light. And if a character that's actually supposed to be "honorable" did this sort of thing it would come off as wildly loving out of character. Can you imagine Kiryu doing anything like that? Or even, say, Goda?

And, I mean, it's pretty obvious that the writers feel the same way, which is why as soon as Majima starts being wacky knife guy Majima he stops doing poo poo like kidnapping schoolgirls, holding knives to random women's throats, and beating underlings to death.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2022 01:04

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Randallteal posted:

So what are the odds on the English language title? Are we getting Yakuza 8, Yakuza: Like a Dragon 2, or a brand new subtitle because western marketing hates numbers?

Yakuza VIII: Journey of the Cursed (Like a) Dragon

# ¿ Jul 19, 2022 22:24

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 13:23

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Kojiro posted:

He wasn't the worst possible Kiryu, I liked his interactions with Haruka. He doesn't fit the role physically though, it was really fucken weird at the start when he is shorter than Date.

The film's promotional materials make it clear that canonically Kiryu, Majima, and Haruka are all exactly the same height:

Anyway, it's a Miike joint. I personally would've preferred an adaptation by completely-off-the-rails Miike, but for some reason his video game adaptations tend to stay pretty close to the source material. His Phoenix Wright film is an absolutely by-the-numbers adaptation of the material. You'd never guess it was by the same guy that did, like the Dead or Alive films (which are increasingly delirious yak flicks and have nothing to do with the punching game franchise) or like Gozu (2003) or Visitor Q (2001).

# ¿ Aug 13, 2022 11:14

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Like A Dragon/Yakuza: Kyodais Rock

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