Quote from: Classic Meepington on 11-10-2022, 09:04:17 AM

Started Like a Dragon.

Already feeling the extreme padding and fastforwarding more and more conversations. And the difficulty is really really easy with no option to set the game beyond normal mode on an initial playthrough? I'm attempting to play it strategically but I end up playing it how I played Pokémon Red when I was 8 yrs old: use coolest strongest attack, rinse, repeat, battle over.

Once again, they've really nailed the atmosphere of glorious Nippon. I enjoy walking around the streets in first person, although the frequent random encounters are now getting on my nerves.

That being said, still enjoying this video juego.

There's a massive difficulty spike eventually but until then it's braindead easy

So I'm pretty latestage in the game, finished the  management sim, completing out most of the substories and I'm like there's no way Cirus is right about that difficulty spike. I just use the attack from beating the management sim and wipe out 5 enemies in 1 move. AND THEN...

Sotenbori does suck, it's a missed opportunity but overall I don't think it detracts much

Final thoughts and some spoilers for Yakuza: Like a Dragon, if you can keep track of the encyclopedic, winding plotlines in this series.

Finished the game. I don't really know how to rank it as of now. I had lots of fun mid-game just vibing out on substories and minigames, taking in the city in first person. The whole pacing of the late game felt really off though.

I coasted through the first 2/3 of the game with really powerful crafted weapons with no need of upgrading, while gaining character levels at a steady pace. Late game finally got me to slightly upgrade weapons but then just levels up my party by like 20-30 levels in quick and ridiculously easy succession at the battle arena.

The character personality traits are both wonky and useless, I could have reached level 20 Passion if I it allowed but was hardstuck at level 9 Charisma so I couldn't get the max character traits trophy for my trophywhoring needs. And aside from a handful of level checks when interacting with characters there was almost no reason for these stats. I'm aware there were a few battle abilities that made use of them but they were for useless moves that I never used. Like seriously what was the point of the stealing from enemies mechanic when I was swimming in money and items all of the time.

I couldn't figure out how to finish the Dragon Kart quests? One of the rival challenger quests just never showed up and it was such a boring, easy karting game that I didn't bother to look up whether it was a glitch or if I needed a specific time of day to activate that rival encounter.

The management mini-game was mid. Fun for a couple hours but then just turned into mindlessly having max levels and unlimited funds. Was good to grind out for the 3 million yen bonuses but even that just took a long time holding fast forward.

Dungeons sucked, ESPECIALLY the few forced story dungeons which really dragged. Some enemies just have huge health bars and no weaknesses even if they were low level so I'd spend 10 minutes chipping away on one stubborn enemy.

In the story I was skipping through or skimming a lot of late game stuff. I spent about 20 hours doing dumb substories and I'm then supposed to remember the multiple identical looking villains with confusing motivations and backstabs when I get back into advancing the main story, fat chance.

Overall, I still had fun and I really respect the idea to completely change up the genre, that was pretty bold. I'll look forward to the next game in the series but I am all out of Yakuza patience for the next 6 months at least. Despite changing the style of gameplay THEY STILL CANNOT LET GO OF THE FIRST GAME. IT ALWAYS HAS TO END IN MILLENNIUM TOWER AND INCLUDE KAZUMA KIRYU et al. Like, I respect paying homage but it felt so fanservicey and shoehorned. Have the confidence to completely go your own way and tell a new, detached story. Maybe that is just a me problem, after all my favourite Halloween movies are the original and Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Next to play: Horizon: Zero Dong, Bloodborne, Death Stranding

Meep out.

FYI, if you ever want to play the Judgment games there's no reference to RGG mainline characters

Thanks, maybe I'll try the first of those after I go through some different stuff.

Still need to play Yakuza 5 and 6. I heard 5 is loooooooong even for the hardcore series buffs.

Yakuza 5 is large and does a lot of weird things with the several playable characters. I enjoyed it a lot, although some of the side stuff was tedious (had to complete anyway). Here are my hours:




I'm not done with Lost Judgment yet, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the first to hit 100 hours. I'm calling it the best game RGG has done.

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.

I Really enjoyed yazuka 0

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.

Bad news, Saejima's hunting minigame is even worse

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.

Enough to be frustrating. If you are dumb enough to finish all the side content, like I am, it's not until the very end that it becomes almost unbearable

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.

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.