Aside from ruining the graphics and music, you mean. (I’m joking. I know not everyone is as attached to the NES look and sound as I am.)
7 Likes
You can buy the Master Vacation after the fact. Its just like 20$ Ill pay down the line
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I did it. I beat Renegade. The final mission fucking stunk.
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Ive played over 40 hours of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth since it came out. Here are some scattered thoughts:
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth manages to be both a good sequel, a good standalone game, and a good send-off. Dont listen to the fools; You can and probaly should start with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. A lot of people say you should begin with Kiwami but if you really want to play the series roots I am adamant that PS2 is the way to go. I have seen some people on-line saying that if you dont play Gaiden you won’t understand what’s going on. Laughable. These people must have the media literacy of grapefruit.
Starting in Chapter 8, when Kiryu separates from Kasuga, there are memory points referencing the series history. Obviously this is really nice for someone who’s been playing since day one. But, I think they work just as well if youve played any amount of Yakuza/Like A Dragon games. I never played Kenzan and I found a memory referencing that and I didnt lose my shit about not being completionist.
I think the last two main series entries are the most complete, compelling games in the franchise. If youre interested in the games, I implore you to start with Y:LAD and Infinite Wealth. Dont be a mark.
The turn-based RPG games are so much more thoughtfully designed, too. The old games are rarely difficult, and when they are tough they are not thoughtful, just annoying. I love this series and I think theyre fun games for many people, but you should start with the soft-reboot they did with Y:LAD and just go back to the older games if you really like the games and want more. Actually, even better, play Y:LAD and LAD:IW and if you crave more go for the Judgment games.
This is my recommendation for normal people.
People worry cos its the 8th main title in a longrunning franchise but Infinite Wealth, just like every other game in the entire series, is very careful to remind you of anything that happened in previous games and contextualize everything. It is honestly laborious to sit thru a lot of the time but it ensures that no matter how long its been or whatever order you play the games in, you always know whats going on and are kept up to speed.
I started back in 2009 or so and went something like1, 2, Dead Souls, 4, 7, 5, 6, Judgment, Lost Judgment, Ishin, 3, Gaiden and now Im playing Infinite Wealth over the course of over a decade. I might have the order wrong, too, haha. It gets kind of fuzzy in the middle there. Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a perfect entry point for new players, and I say this from experience. Gaiden is completely superfluous and only necessary for completionists or the supremely bored. A true side story if there ever was one.
With that being said, Infinite Wealth is an incredible capstone game. Not even being finished with it, Ive finished 8 chapters of presumably 14, I can say that it manages to be a vast game with many threads that somehow feels focused. It works as a direct sequel to Yakuza Like A Dragon but it also serves as a celebration and remembrance of the Kiryu saga. It does feel very good to see all the nods to past games, and as a Yakuza Lifer it truly sings. These allusions and references to the past wont have the same impact for a player who starts with Y:LAD but theyre given enough context and the player spends enough time with Kiryu that they will care regardless, and probaly be interested in his history.
12 Likes
did they ever give the women less insulting jobs than “Idol” and “Hostess”
1 Like
legal clerk going undercover AS hostess was such a brainlord move in Judgement
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I still really love all her internal monologuing during it. “If we’re gonna do something this dumb, at least we’ll make it well written.”
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it’s true, it is relatively graceful
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there was just something gross about making the women in your party in 7 wear a stupid costume and exist primarily to heal the men but i’m always hating and complaining and whatnot
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Because of the skill inheritance system you can build a much more diverse team and don’t need a dedicated healer.
I have Saeko trained up in Idol because her magic is so strong but she’s mostly rockin her exclusive class of barmaid for that sweet water damage.
1 Like
I played this for a while last night. I don’t have much to add to what scross said about it. A lot more content than I was expecting, but with more content come more annoyances.
While I expected to complete it in one sitting, I found myself repeating a particularly annoying chase sequence too many times and decided I’d had enough for the night and maybe forever. It’s as if they took a lesson from Bloober Team, deciding that their walking simulator needed some challenge and that it should be the least enjoyable type of challenge they could come up with.
I uncovered what I assume is the big revelation, so I’m probably close to the end. I guess it’s no surprise that this could have been better with less talking and more subtlety, but that’s too much to hope for in modern video games.
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Finished up Spider-Man 2 (it is very much a modern open-world superhero game in the Arkham/Spidey mold, for good and for ill) and decided to split time between two shortish 2d precision-type games.
Jetscout: Mystery of the Valunians is one of those jetpack games where you have to manage thrust and orientation in order to get through a space without bumping into the walls or… well anything really. I am always awful at these but always end up trying others of them as I remain eternally hopeful that one will click with me and this one thankfully has a few things to make it more manageable to a klutz like me. One is that each somewhat lengthy mission has a good number of checkpoints within it so that usually one only has to get through a handful of things to get to the next one, every so often I yell at a slightly longer sequence where I get annoyed at doing the early part over and over but for the most part they are reasonably frequent. The other one is the divine mercy of having it take two hits to kill you on normal difficulty. Letting me have a single mistake per sequence takes such a significant amount of stress off my shoulders, maybe that is what all these games have always needed. Giving me a ton of jetpack fuel so that I rarely am low also helps.
The game itself is about your space guy having to investigate various planets in a solar system to determine why there was a massive explosion within it a couple years back, you meet some aliens that are blindingly telegraphed to not be on the level, it moves things along and acts as an excuse to give the various levels different alien-esque theming. You also get various things making your travels harder, things that grow out of the walls reaching for you, sudden air bursts, fish that leap out of the water, etc. There’s also a few coins in each area for you to perhaps go out of your way to grab in order to unlock space suits with different attributes, each area has either low/medium/high gravity to mix things up further, basically a good amount of effort has seemingly gone into it. I’m not in love, but it is good to play one of these that isn’t quickly more than I could ever pray to handle.
Necrosphere is a borderline Metrovania where you only have two buttons: one that makes you go left and one right (they can’t be mapped to the d-pad as you eventually need to press them simultaneously). I say borderline as while it takes place on a giant interconnected map and gaining new abilities lets you get to new places it does what it can to eliminate most of the potential backtracking, i.e. when you reach the end of an area it warps you back to the start.
Most of the focus is on various traversal puzzles built around your limited movement options with a checkpoint every room or so (except for what I hope is the late game). I saw someone compare it to VVVVVV and while that’s not quite right I can see where they are coming from. You eventually get a dash that lets you cross some gaps as well as a few other powers that open things up a little bit, eventually you gain the ability to hold down both buttons to basically have a jetpack (what a coincidence!) shoot you up in the air until a meter quickly depletes and the game absolutely loses its mind.
I’ve played platformers that are rather difficult but rarely have I played one that just decides to go masocore at the drop of a hat like this one does. I’m at a point where I have to go down four paths to hit a switch at the end of each one to open up a significant looking door (hence why I assume this might be late game) and I think these individual short stretches may take me as long as entire earlier regions. I’m having to do a series of rapid moves that all blend together due to there only being two buttons (dash is pressing one button twice rapidly, floating is both at the same time and I am being asked to alternate between the two rapidly) through a stretch of tightly timed obstacles with no safe spot to stop and catch one’s breath, sometimes with a floating fireball chasing closely behind you through areas you can’t really see until you get to them. Gone are the regular checkpoints, now you have longish sequences you must hit in a single go whose timing and input asks are almost an order of magnitude beyond what the game was asking of you the section before. I’d have rather the prior section been made markedly hard to sort of get me ready for this.
Fortunately it is short enough and saves so much of my progress that I think I can get through it, but I swear I almost got whiplash from how quick things shifted.
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I finally stopped putting it off and dipped my toes into Tears of the Kingdom.
Hm. I dunno.
Uncategorized thoughts:
- Voice acting is reallllllly killing my vibe. Zelda is awful.
- Having Link run around shirtless with his hair down kinda reminds me of Finn from Adventure Time somehow.
- Weapon durability and all these crafting materials and what I assume will be a lot of time in the inventory screen is a turnoff.
- Magical construction is interesting I guess.
- I can’t believe I am making a Gamer Comment but yeah it’s a shame it’s on underpowered hardware. Probably looks amazing emulated.
- Link is too sticky/eager to start climbing surfaces although I guess the alternative could be worse given the game’s verticality. Which is one of the more interesting things thus far!
I could be wrong but I have a feeling I will sour on this and it’ll turn out I’m a Zelda traditionalist or something
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that’s why you wanna play emulated in russian pre-patch so you can use the item duplicate cheat
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I told you people
play Breath and Tears in German
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Oh I forgot one thing you start with 30 HEART CONTAINERS before Link is depowered because Video Game Sequel.
God damn man that’s too many hearts
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more hearts than you can accrue during either of the switch zeldas!
(ok unless you don’t max out your stamina but c’mon)
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Been too sick to focus on a proper game, so I’ve been playing “Remedium Sentinels,” which sounds like a 40K summer school game but is pretty much “Vampire Survivors with Steampunk mechs and a Nightmare Creatures PSOne aesthetic.”
It’s…pretty much just that.
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Oh. I might be wrong! I’m kind of enjoying the traversal. And I saw some baddies fighting each other which always improves my impression of a game. It’s taking me some effort to adjust to all the simultaneous inputs it’s asking for. Switching weapons in the middle of combat still trips me up.
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yeah the controls are probably the worst part. there are so many things you can do and contexts you can be in. still absolutely fucking insane to me that they only give you rotation on two axes. yes, technically enough to do any arbitrary 3D rotation if you’re a math major i guess.
6 Likes