I’m playing as a gangster then I finish off the story by beating a horde of 100 Yakuza for honor. I switch to another gangster and now I’m in the mountains hunting bears and selling animal pelts. This is and the zombie one are probably the everything and the kitchen sink Yakuza games. Coming to an end on old hardware so lets just make an episodic adventure that usually ends with one super character battling over 100 generic other characters and then a deep cutscene about honor and who’s betraying whom. I highly recommend it, I doubt I’ll ever finish it.
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I’m just going to dump out my bad observations. Only played up to around the middle of Saejima’s part. I’m so bad at VF2 that I can’t even pass easy arcade mode. Sega should have squeezed the Model 2 into a console instead of the Saturn but I guess the military-contractor-designed GPU would have made it way too expensive.
I was way too excited about the UFO catcher toys and didn’t want to look at the prices of the real-world equivalent figures.
I didn’t understand Gunrhein but felt like I was having fun. It looks like it takes place in the same liquid-metal dimension as Boxcelios, except instead of controlling a single ship that shoots a straight laser at a constantly moving enemy, you are supposed to be placing turrets in a way that the enemy group gets killed off immediately without losing any of your placement area…except if you don’t know where the enemies will spawn at you will keep dying at the same point unless you memorize the levels or watch a Youtube video or something. At least the Boxcelioses weren’t dependent on already knowing the levels.
I feel like the prison section was drawn out way too long…but I also spent more time than I should have on the hunting. I felt like I was playing D2 again. You could get rich early just by selling off pelts.
I liked that taxi driving missions were lenient enough to let you get by with a reduced fare rather than totally failing you, unless you missed too many turn signals. They should have just used the Crazy Taxi engine and reskinned it.
The taxi missions are fun. I wish this game had a chapter select kind of feature. I take it at the end the gang all ends up together. Prison did go on too long and now I feel that the hunting loop has got me suckered in. I don’t want to put a transmitter on a super bear I want to leave the forest and visit hostess clubs. Karoke is crazy tough. I suck at the UFO catchers.
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Certainly the worst Like A Dragon game Ive played. Its the dream that never ends!
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Y5 is my favorite but only for the weeb-itch scratching recreation of 5 japanese cities, strong side content and imo, substories (I loved gunrhein, the boxcelios-themed tower defense game, and they even had the gall to make you deliver ramen over an icy sidewalk with monkey ball physics), if in a pinch I would skip through cutscenes and dialogue as there isn’t enough to make you care about what the plot is doing (well, Shinada is my favorite wasted potential loser i guess), but to me to everything else is the peak of what they did in the ps3 era of the series
It’s really a game made for those freaks who couldn’t get enough RGG as there’s way too much of it, but I love it because of that excess/indulgence.
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5 is generally Too Much for me too, but the mood of that first chapter is unparalleled and saejima on the mountain ain’t bad either
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Yakuza 5 does have my favourite comedic substory I’ve seen in the series, where Saejima delivers ramen on an icy street and people drift along the ice towards you.
I think Yakuza 4 delivers better side-content as a whole and features superior structure and pacing.
The one added gimmick for each character where they turn red is fine, I enjoyed launching dudes with Akiyama or using an enemy as a weapon with Saejima. I found the enemy behaviour in 5 so boring that I would equip an item to make enemies more aggressive, but I did play on Normal mode (been playing each game on Hard since then).
I also prefer one highly detailed city over 5 mixed/middling locations.
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Yakuza 5 killed my momentum playing through the series. I haven’t gone on to Y0 or any of the new games because I’ve attempted Y5 twice, and fell off because the structure of mini narrative arcs reaching climax and then starting off from the beginning on new ones with new characters and no upgrades to spice up the boring ass late era Yakuza style combat… it’s entertaining as a story but awful to play imo.
I just have to move on to Y0 or something.
Edit: but I also feel like I gotta finish it!!!
Man I would be stoked if Akiyama comes back for Like a Dragon 2
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Dont even bother, seriously. Like, if I had known it would be so dreadful I wouldnt have played it… Believe it or not, I initially skipped it for 6 but the introduction made it seem like they were deeply connected. IN TRUTH, there is nothing but the final moments in 5 that matter. Everything you need to know is provided to you.
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It was nice to them to follow up 5 with 0, the best instalment of the series and then finish off kiryus story with 6, the worst instalment of the series!
yakuza 6 hive rise up
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I appreciate 6 for its new engine tech demo quality and that how every single line of dialogue being voiced, the weighty chaotic rag doll/furniture breaking physics and the absence of loading screens going from city exteriors to interiors made it feel to me like they were trying to go for a shenmue-like realism/tactility. The whole cat cafe thing is just staring at and feeding hyperrealistic cat models, it’s great. Also more of a dad game than 3 was, dads everywhere
The RTS mini game was a really good time and i get to pretend i’m playing an unreleased The Ocean Hunter 2 we’ll never get when fishing. They had to pare down content i guess because of the new engine but what’s there is super polished and held my attention
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yakuza 6 hive sit down
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I really dug 6! Admittedly it is a dad game in extremis
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Currently doing the End-game for Yakuza 4. Collecting certain gear and leveling my characters to 20. Akiyama, Tanimura and Kiryu are all at lvl 19 meanwhile Saejima is at 13!?! I can explain… He doesnt have access to the hostesses to grind EXP from and he’s without a gimmick to encourage town exploration like Akiyama’s Allies, Tanimura’s Police Scanner tasks and Kiryu’s Gang Encounters. In fact, the police presence discourages town exploration with Saejima and asks the player to study alternate paths and shortcuts using the rooftops and sewer systems of Kamurocho. During Saejima’s chapters there is a lot of railroading so I just didnt get a chance to do as much as I did with the other characters…
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