Finished 5. Speedran the last act because the nonstop back to back to back dramatic twists got old, especially when I forgot who X character was from 20 in game hours and 3 irl weeks ago was. I may have mentioned this in a prior review of one of these games but the fact that Yakuza characters never die lowers any and all emotional stakes. Yeah Majima dies unceremoniously offscreen, suuuuuure Rya Ga Gotoku Studios, I definitely believe you this time. It's a lot of bloated storytelling that does not respect my time. It both expects me to have an autistic savant memory as to every character's allegiance but also thinks I don't have the memory that they keep unleashing the same tired clichéd twists.

The absolute worst part of this stage in the series, starting with 4, is that switching between a handful of characters is not fun. Juggling inventories and money, upgrading the same base skills multiple times, redoing the same boring side quests with the same NPCs (the food critic in particular in 5) are all expressly not fun. In a game world where I finished the game with about a 22% "Completion Rate" and tried out almost everything while doing a fair amount of side content, it paints a bleak picture as to how much pure anti-fun filler pumps the middle aged Yakuza games up.

Shinada's chapters were the best string of chapters since Yakuza 2 and he was the best new character in forever. I quite enjoyed the relationship with his loan shark. No idea how he intertwined into the whole Kiryu plot as I probably skipped an hours worth of late game exposition, but I'm sure I didn't miss out on much.

Next single player game: Dark Souls, a mere 13 years after initial release

Part 3, Haruka/Akiyama chapters review: I enjoyed the Haruka parts but why oh why were there only like 3 songs that had to be repeated ad nauseam. There wasn't even a second of challenge in the dance minigames. I'm also fairly certain that Haruka's heat actions were broken, I would unlock new heat actions and then it would only ever let me use the first (healing) action, not that they any of them were ever needed to win due to the non-existent difficulty. My other gripe is that finding the locker keys was fun, HOWEVER I found 80% of them while playing as Haruka but all of the rewards for opening the lockers are combat/crafting/gambling oriented which she can't use. And I couldn't transfer the items or keys to Akiyama, so what was the point? Gee, I hope someone got fired for that blunder.

On Part 4 of the story starring Baseball McNightlifeman. A new character and an interesting sleazy story and all surrounding the batting minigame? I'm so in. The pessimist in me predicts I will begin to hate the batting game and skip past most of it quite soon though.

Thanks for this motivation Cirus. I tapped out of the hunting missions pretty quickly after they gave me the option to go to the city. I applaud them for putting in new locations and new non-city locations(!) but the hunting grounds were less detailed and thought out than a child's first Roblox map.

Now I'm in Hokkaido and they've got me doing some more exquisite filler until something actually happens.

Oh god I have started the hunting minigame. They made guns unfun, THEY MADE GUNS UNFUN. Thank christ you get the walk speed booster fairly early on. I'm gonna have to resort to some podcasts depending on how much of this is mandatory.

We discuss Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and other things of WINNER nature. What do YOU do, stranger?

Thanks for this, I get all my news from Yourewinner.com!

goatkcd

Started 5. Completed part 1 with Kiryu at 10 hours. SO MANY RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. The first city area is so small and boring. The side missions are mostly rehashes of old ones with old characters. Like why bother making some of these when they're less challenging fights than the 4 random encounters it took to get to the side mission marker. I did do all the taxi missions despite them being pretty repetitive and boring. I thought there would be a good reward (wrong). The races in particular, ughh. They've got nothing on Big Rigs.

This game is bloated ah. Back to back 15 minute cutscenes that say nothing and say nothing slowly. And when that happens the production value changeups between the cutscenes are really jarring. From nice looking, fully voiced in-game cinematics, to badly compressed prerendered scenes to text-only dialogue talking head parts, it's all so tiring. I will attempt to speedrun thru the rest of the game. Kinda looking forward to the Haruka part if only for it being something different and hopefully a breath of fresh air.

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Mom says it's my turn on the computer, pickleface!

Didn't read the thread but RIGCOIN. I GOT RIGHANDS

2024 Big Rigs still running strong. Stellar Stone bless us all.

When is Rigcon '24 set for?

Got arrested by HWSNBN for displaying my WINNER pride in public. I'm back now and ready to wish Big Rigs a happy birthday!

You guys we're pretty cool, don't go to this thread tomorrow