unrealistic; no one’s calling for ammo and the field ops aren’t saying they just used their charge on an airstrike that teamkilled half the team
3 Likes
Like A Dragon Gaiden continues to suck ass… man, one of the worst games I ever. Its, like, mid incarnate. Whatever, Im looking forward to the Infinite Wealth demo at the end of the rainbow.
12 Likes
It also has a really beautifully and subtly told story that doesn’t get talked about enough. Like it would be a good videogame with standard early aughts crap filler writing. It’s so much better than it had to be
3 Likes
That mechner touch
3 Likes
i have yakked, i am done yakking. astonished by craggy hardlived lieutenants ripping their jackets off to reveal they are jacked and cut like my protagonists at least 2 decades their junior (did braintree tech vampire play this game or something)
now i need to decide whether i kiwami or i jud-ji-ment, i am open to guidance if it is forthcoming
8 Likes
Which Yak did you yakk? If it was Zero, then Kiwami is the next logical step storywise, but it’s a bit disappointing in comparison content-wise.
Judgment is good if you want to just jump into the Dragon engine games without any story baggage.
2 Likes
i wonder a lot about if its a good practice to tell people to start with 0 or if they should start with kiwami and play 0 after 5 or 6 or something
3 Likes
I’ll report that 0 was pretty hard for me to get into having only played yak 1 before but I think the series might not be for me to enjoy beyond seeing out of context screenshots of kiryu looking at porn
8 Likes
i hate kiwami so much cause they filled it with wistful nostalgia for the 80’s (and yakuza 0 specifically) in ways that seem to imply it’s so much worse now (and it is, kiwami is so fucking bad) so instead of nostalgia you feel like you should just boot yak0 and do sidestuff you never got around to
probably better to play the ps2 game or judgement
8 Likes
Kiwami feels as much like a sequel to Zero as it is a remake of the first game, so it kinda feels like you should start with Zero, but then you miss some of the nods to the later games… The series has become this weird kind of ouroboros
I started with Zero though and didn’t really care too much that I was missing some context for some sidequests and Majima’s situation
4 Likes
to me it feels like 0, 2, and 7 are the ones you shouldn’t miss and everything else is just there if you for some reason still want more
4 Likes
the last third or so of 7’s story is so, so fucking bad
4 Likes
True sickos started with PS2 Yak1.
Don’t do that.
8 Likes
I genuinely think ps2 yak 1 has some of the most remarkable ps2 graphics. Like damn they rly put kabukicho on a dvd, resplendent with bloom and 5 second audio loops. Im sad they have looked more regular since 3. I dont even think its so bad to play, just look at a guide when you feel like it.
I also think 3 is cool cause it’s short and chill. But idk they’re all good. Just start anywhere!
8 Likes
oh cmon you cant pitch something as for “true sickos” and then tell me not to do it that way dangit
5 Likes
i played a bunch of PAL N64 games to test today
F1 Racing Championship - this game fucking rules. performance is surprisingly good for N64. the handling is incredible. i bet if you play it on Project64 it runs at 50 FPS consistently (framerate is unlocked) but I haven’t tried that out myself just yet
Holy Magic Century - gosh this game is so janked but also so endearing. the hero is called “Ayron” instead of “Brian” as in Quest 64. the music track that plays in the first area is gorgeous. video game music with patient rubato <3
Hot Wheels: Turbo Racing - great game. you get similar airtime as the Rush games, but you actually have air control
Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls - the PAL version feels sluggish and the input latency worse than it should, but this has got to be one of the most underrated N64 games. pretty difficult to boot. the twisting nature of the courses is fascinating. playing casually feels like speedrunning (which is great). notably, the PAL version has the same pretty off-putting character designs as the USA version (the Japanese version has reworked art and somewhat less grotesque designs). shoutout to ella guro for the recommendation
Knife Edge: Nose Gunner - this game was supposed to launch with a light gun for the N64, but the gun never came out. the game did, though, and it kinda sucks? it’s not unplayable, and the whole ridiculous number of paths through each level idea is interesting for replayability, but things simply move too fast and the analog stick control is insufficient to get the job done. the bosses can also be interminable bullet sponges. dodging using the C buttons is unreliable at best. almost interesting, but ultimately just kind of shit
Mario Party 1-3 - still great. just don’t use your palm on the shy guy minigame or whatever lol. all 3 of these have some really great design and some fantastic music. the minigame preview music from 2 is sublime
MRC: Multi Racing Championship - i’ve played a fair amount of this game over the years but i still have no idea how to make sharp turns without eating shit lmao. utterly inscrutable handling
The New Tetris - tetris effect before tetris effect. game rules
Off Road Challenge - how have i never played this before? yet another midway-published N64 banger. roughly on par quality-wise with the Cruis’n series
Operation Winback - a thing of beauty. haters simply fail to comprehend this game’s genius
Paperboy - i realized a few months ago that papergirl was first playable in paperboy 2 for arcade, but still. this game is legit. perhaps the actual best paperboy game just on account of being significantly less fiddly in 3D
PGA European Tour - game is forgettable, but the intro music is divine. like, holy shit
Rampage: World Tour - possibly the best possible rampage game that can be made (universal tour is a mechanical downgrade imo). good enough that it exposes that the rampage game design fundamentally kinda sucks. still, they polished that turd pretty good
Robotron 64 - immaculate. you can use two controllers for dual analog
Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers - intriguing from the small bit i’ve played. pretty unique little game for the platform
14 Likes
Yakuza PS2 is shorter than Kiwami and better for it. I played it at release using HDLoader and had a grand time. Should you play it today? Maybe not but I’d recommend it over Kiwami, at least it looks and feels different from the 30 other games in the series and has an interesting dub. Did not care for 2, did not care for Kiwami 2, enjoyed all the dad sim parts in 3 and was bored shitless by everything else but it was worth suffering through all that CIA conspiracy shit for that climax. 4 is an absolute waste of time, there is no reason to play that game, it took me like 2 years to play through it and I only managed that cuz I’d started loading up the cutscenes on youtube and playing them at 8x speed. It does feature the stupidest twist in maybe all of fiction but you can learn what that is without losing 30+ hours of your life okay.
My playthrough of 5 is probably going to take me 3 years to complete but I’m fine with that, that seems like the ideal way to play it. It’s huge and has lots of dad content right off the bat, being a cab driver and a prison inmate and an aspiring pop idol is much more enjoyable than most of the crime shit the earlier games forced upon me. This may be the first one where the side stuff is actually worth doing, it’s fucking dog shit in 1 & 2 & 4. Can’t remember any side quests from 3 so maybe that’s a bad sign.
0 is one of my favorite games and is by far the best in this series.
6 is good, it has lots of melodrama and the only crime drama shit I remember and the side stuff is pretty grand (baseball, fishing, Cheers) though I only unlocked a bunch of it right before the end, which was unfortunate but also my fault. New engine doesn’t feel as good but you don’t gotta fight as much and to me that is a huge, huge plus, when it comes to combat 0 got it right and nearly every other game got it wrong, that’s my current verdict on Yakuza combat.
For a good long while 7 is the best JRPG ever made and then there’s a twist and the game completely falls apart narratively and thematically and mechanically. Maybe the greatest media disappointment of the last decade or so of my life. I thought my heart had hardened and I’d never let myself get hurt by entertainment ever again but then this game came along and proved I could love and hurt again. Would love to read a ‘shoot’ interview about this one, the way it attempts to cram like 4 seemingly unrelated scripts together at the end is remarkable.
aggie is right about Gaiden, I’m not too far into it but it’s so fuckin’ budget, when I left off earlier they were going to fake Kiryu’s death for a second time?? It seems like they’re doing the CIA shit again?? So far there are no hints at non-violent dad times?? Fuck this.
Isshin seemed alright, I liked when you had to keep the famous author whose name escapes me right now from succumbing to dark thoughts.
Anyway you should only play 0, 6, and the first disc of 7, that’s it, that’s my Yakuza opinion, hasn’t changed since the last time I posted it!!
25 Likes
1 (ps2), 2 (ps2), DS, 4, 6, LJ, and 7 are the ones I like. Everything else my disdain threshold is too high to ever want to revisit. Fwiw I fucking adore the fourth game. I think 0 is a mess of a game but also I played so much Ishin, leveling my character up past 99 and completing pretty much everything I could possibly complete and that game shares a lot with 0.
My least favourite thing about Gaiden is that it takes my favourite part of these games (the coliseum) and my least favourite part (the obligatory management minigame) and mashes them together. Pain.
3 Likes
I started with Yak 3 and never felt lost. This series has a tendency to prosuce amnesia about plot specifics after playing each one so any time there are callbacks I only vaguely get the reference. Like others have said I think you can pretty much go anywhere.
I liked Kiwami 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, Isshin. The others I found kinda too long and sloggy though they all have their moments. Dead Souls was godawful I couldn’t play more than two hours.
I don’t mind Gaiden so far but I feel like the game could just be a linear series of levels with no side stuff given that the entire plot seems to be justifying how Kiryu gets out of the ridiculous jam he puts himself in 6. It could just be a flashback in 8 at this point.
3 Likes
I’ve played the first half of 4, and all of 7 and I liked both very much. I find Kiryu unappealing as a player character, dunno why.
3 Likes