Yakuza Games Catch All

Not gonna lie, I'm getting hyped.

I am excited. I have always wanted to get into a Yakuaza game but I have never been able to get past the lack of English dubs. I know I am shallow.

Loved that one.

For me, the Japanese voice acting is a big part of the experience but I’m happy for people to have other options.

farley3k wrote:

I am excited. I have always wanted to get into a Yakuaza game but I have never been able to get past the lack of English dubs beat-em up combat. I know I am shallow a snob.

FTFM

I put the games on Easy since the combat’s yet to click with me in 0 or Kiwami. The switch to turn-based combat in 7 has me excited, though.

It's rough combat, to be honest, and I feel like it wasn't until Kiwami 2 that I realized you should just use weapons against bosses. Particularly when they Heat Out themselves.

Apparantly it'll be available free for a couple of days, and then disappear from steam forever.

This one is turn-based combat, though, not beat-em-up, right? I might try it, given that...

Robear wrote:

This one is turn-based combat, though, not beat-em-up, right? I might try it, given that...

Yes. It's played-out from the perspective of the protagonist's love for Dragon Quest games when he was growing up. Hence the strange/hilarious names over enemies, and such. Apparently he even references enemies as "monsters" to his companions at times, who apparently just shrug it off and go with it.

Famitsu gave it a 38/40 when it released in Japan earlier this year on PS4, and now we're getting full English voice work (a la Judgment), so it'll be nice for those of us that prefer it over the classic Japanese-only games.

So I loved playing 0 and the remastered 1 and 2 on my laptop.

Was really hoping for 3 to come out as well but it looks like I'm waiting in vain.

I guess I'll have to blow the dust off of my second hand PS3 and play it old school sat in the front room.

Anybody else pick this up yet? Put about 4 hours in today after it (finally) unlocked on Steam and I am loving it. As I hoped the RPG combat makes it a much more chill experience, and I find the story and characters more engaging, compared to when I bounced off Zero. At this point I'm only champing at the bit to add more options to battles once I level up and add more characters to my party.

I've picked it up, but unfortunately it didn't finish downloading until after midnight. Once work's done today, I'll be diving in headfirst.

I got to play some yesterday. Didn't get to finish chapter two but I'm liking Ichiban as a new protagonist. He's a big ol' dork. Some of his delivery and voice acting reminds me of Majima's performer, but overall he's a very different sort of personality that I think works well to differentiate from Kiryu.

Haven't gotten far into the combat. Getting the timing right for perfect blocks is trickier than I expected.

I made it a bit into chapter 3 tonight. Verdict: it's rad. Ichiban is a great new lead, and I'm intrigued to see where the story's going. The combat works surprisingly well, although it's very easy so far.

The most interesting thing about the combat this early on is the perfect guard. I turned V-Sync off, which helped a lot in regards to the timing, though some of these attacks are really tough to get the timing down on. Once you got a second party member in Chapter Two, though, I found myself surprisingly engaged just by trying to make decisions as quickly as possible in hopes of hitting a guy before he got back up off the ground.

It's very clearly inspired by Super Mario RPG (or at least inspired by games that were inspired by Mario RPG), and some of the enemy attacks, behaviors, and then reports remind me of EarthBound. I know Dragon Quest is the big influence for our buddy Ichiban, and Dragon Quest would have served as inspiration to EarthBound, but it's the connection I make.

I'm definitely looking forward to buying & getting started with Yakuza LAD. I'm not quite ready, due to other commitments, but this is probably going to be the first of the holiday 2020 season of games that I get into (on PC).

Alien Love Gardener wrote:

I made it a bit into chapter 3 tonight. Verdict: it's rad. Ichiban is a great new lead, and I'm intrigued to see where the story's going. The combat works surprisingly well, although it's very easy so far.

I'm in Chapter 4 myself and I can easily say this is my favorite Yakuza game by a long shot already. The combat may be easy so far, but I feel like that's been the case for each one of these games. The vast majority of fights have always been relatively easy until you get to a boss or some other special character. I just love that they seem to be leaning even more heavy into the ridiculous/zany side of Yakuza. I know that there's a serious story arc behind all of it, but watching Kasuga's little band of misfit toys doing silly things (like the bat in the sidewalk thing) has been great.

Also, I can't explain why, but switching from an action beat 'em up to JRPG combat is exactly what the series needed. It feels like a great change of pace even though you're basically doing the same thing as always for the most part--just attacking any enemies until you win. With it being a JRPG though, it kind of streamlines the whole process because the enemies aren't just blocking the whole time. It makes it easier for me to recommend to people who may have tried something like 0 or Kiwami and got put off by the combat.

Additionally, it seems way easier to avoid confrontations with hooligans on the street based on what I played. Even if they notice you, you can still walk outside their range and avoid a fight rather than having to sprint across town hoping to lose 'em (and then aggro another group around the corner). This might change later in the game, but it was at least a nice change of pace in the early chapters.

There’s some free DLC for the pachinko machines. No idea why it’s 9GB though.

I made it to chapter 10 over the weekend. It feels *good* to be back in that world. Yakuza games just make me so happy.

I caved and bought Yak LAD. During my initial 2.5 hours with the game, I fought in 5 or 6 battles, for a total of mayyybe 10 minutes. The rest of the time was all watching cutscenes play out. It was perfect.

I'm about 5 hours in now, in Chapter 3 I believe, and I really like the characters and the funny little bits of stories and everything--that intro story is very striking and unexpected, I'm curious to see to what extent we learn any more about that--but the pacing is kind of killing me. Last night I had 60-90 minutes free to play some games, so I booted Yakuza up. But of the hour or so I "played", I was touching the controller for maybe 10 minutes of it. I played through and loved Yakuza 0, so I knew what to expect getting into this game, but still it feels pretty extreme at this point. I would really like to get over the hump to a place where things open up a little more.

Aaand I've finished it. Actually, I finished the main story a couple of days ago but I'm done with the post-game open world puttering around too. I did bail on doing the final, final post-game dungeon - leveling to 99 to be able to take it on was a little too rich for my blood, but this is my game of the year so far.

I do think the "dungeons" lose propulsion and spectacle in the switch to turn based battles, but the open world battles are breezier, and having your crew with you bantering back and forth while you're exploring more than makes up for it, so I'd be happy to see them continuing in this direction with the series.

Icchi is a better video game hero than he has a right to be.

Kotaku agrees.

Oh good, they patched in the weakness indicator in the English version. I think other languages showed up.

I don't know if Chapter 5 is long or if it's just taking me a long time since I'm doing a bunch of side quests. I am not 100% on whether certain skills transfer or not with job changing, either. Nanba seems to have kept some of his abilities while others are absent, for example.

Regardless, game is still a blast. Almost 17 hours in though and still only Chapter Five. This one's going to take me some time.