I ended up doing three runs in one sitting, reaching the end of the time limit twice. The combat loop gets really repetitive, really quickly, and the characters don't really seem to have strong arcs like they did in The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa — things just sort of happen in response to the player's actions, where the world and characters feel kind of static and as though they lack agency compared to the world-shaping power of the player. In simpler terms, it feels like a combat/monopoly simulator with consequences, and less like a coherent story with characters — case in point, on one of my runs, I did not focus on attacking specific factions and basically no story ended up occuring, despite Seiji spending every day fighting and capturing districts.

Overall, this has Yeo's usual stylistics, good pixel art, and expanded and improved combat system, etc... but it doesn't really leave an impact on me like their first work.

Much better the second time around. I was originally quite disappointed in Fading Afternoon compared to its predecessor (Stone Buddha not withstanding) The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa. I felt it leaned too much into the combat at the expense of what I most liked about Ringo, namely the character interactions between deeply human shitheads, the true roleplaying in the roleplaying game, the great soundtrack and existential angst. Those were still in the game but I felt as if they were drowned out by the endless button mashing combat.

I guess I should mention Spoilers from here on out

On a second run through, I liked the game quite a bit more. Now, I've never really subscribed to the notion of "playing a game wrong" but I think I was approaching Fading Afternoon with a somewhat unhelpful mindset, though I think it was somewhat of the game's doing that set me in that path. You see, in Fading Afternoon you play as Seiji Maruyama, a Yakuza enforcer recently released from prison (for what I assume was decades) who is also suffering from a terminal illness. Hence, given the mechanics of taking over territory from other Yakuza families through combat being an excellent way to make money (and necessary to advance the game's storyline) and my interpretation of Seiji's character I decided to fight the other families to leave Azuma a decent territory from what pitiful remains he has left.

Seiji and by extension the player's time is limited, as his illness is simulated through a decreasing max health stat constantly ticking down day (or week rather) after day. And given how much the game seemingly punishes dilly dallying (first time I did the first story mission I got slapped by Azuma cause I went to a place at the wrong time and couldnt go back the same day) well, It wasn't the best mindset to enjoy the game.

On a second time around however, I can see the perspective better. Whilst having to constantly go around defending/attacking places is still a thing, time seems to move when you transition from area to area rather than necessarily just time spent. And after discovering I could hire more thugs to defend my territories I started to enjoy seeing more of what the game had to offer whenever I went to an area with some kind of activity to do. I hit a stride much faster knowing what to do, buying a car, getting enough money to buy a house so I wouldnt have to pay the hotel every week, delegating the detective work to Seiji's protege Kato (and incidentally my favourite character in the game). I found some memorable interactions I wasn't aware of, like getting drunk and punching a dude at a bar and then flirting with his girlfriend, helping out a gambler at a casino and then having to pay off the loan sharks, sucking ass at baseball etc.

In the end though, my playthrough followed a similar path to last time, except now I didn't slap Kato, which led to me having to kill him. Thankfully I put enough cash to buy the house from the real estate office and then some into a bag and gave it to Kodama: Seiji's friend and reincarnation wizard. I then dispatched Ando, a Yakuza boss on behalf of Tanaka, another boss who had Seiji's Boss hostage and then I was forced to flee to what looked like Walter White's cabin from Breaking Bad. In character I decided Seiji would have taken up alcoholism, and went to the town bar to get drunk. Seiji must have overdone it though, because after stumbling drunk through the town he collapsed in the snow (incidentally I'm starting to think that the game's trigger to kill Seiji if he's knocked out is the snowfall) and unceremoniously died.

It's a deliberate anticlimax certainly, although I wonder if that was "the intended ending" or if I held out long enough Azuma would have called me to go bowling after that but as usual its hard to tell. Of course now its a bit more clear that pursuing each of the families will yield different endings and presumably also going after all of them, as well as deciding to slap Kato or not amongst other key choices. I do now know, that Seiji is trapped in the cycle of reincarnation described in Buddhism and will receive as much money as he put in the previous loop when Kodama hands him his bag. I also discovered you can kill yourself in this game pretty much at any point. That plus the yakuza loan sharks loaning up to 14m yen at a time gives me an idea for a funny exploit by just constantly looping and getting rich enough to just buy the Yakuza world outright.

The highlight of this playthrough was Kato, for good and for ill, given his ultimate fate. I enjoy the thematic and mechanical convergence of Seiji and his' relationship. Seiji is a yakuza legend slowly dying, so in combat he is an absolute beast but his illness makes him quite fragile, with the whole depleting max health thing, whereas Kato is a young hothead, his combat style is ungraceful and energetic, he levels up fast if you use him in combat. Seiji is sometimes referred as "Gozuki", a demon general from Buddhism who prevents sinners from escaping their penance. Early on, when Seiji is roughing up the streets Azuma mentions new youngsters are being inspired by his actions, including Kato most likely. I didn't reach the climax of that storyline but seemingly in one of them Kato was being set up to share Seiji's exact fate, being forced to spend most of his youth and life in prison in service to a band of thugs. Its not hard to see the parallels. You wonder then if thats the alusion to Gozuki, Seiji being a keeper of doomed souls to be trapped into a life of crime and violence. Though as we see in both the mechanics of the game and Seiji's own circumstances, he might be the one that's truly trapped here.

This is kind of where Fading Afternoon's weakness comes into play for me. I still think FA compared to Ringo punishes first time players beyond the usual obtuseness of Yeo's design simply by nature of the game's multiple endings and seeming ease with which Seiji meets an untimely end. I think I'll enjoy my third playthrough even more, but that first playthrough was rough, not only that but I find it hard to judge the story on a thematic level when so much of it I simply haven't seen. Thats on top of the fact that I still don't like Seiji much. Ringo was just, a lot more sympathetic and resonated with me more. Ultimately though, Yeo's games always give me something to talk about, I love em AND hate em but they're always kind of interesting.

I'd also like to apologize again to @Zoda, I was way out of line in that original exchange.

Also if anyone has played through all the endings, where the hell is Chiba? I picked him up from prison but by the time I found out where his bar was I could never find him. Do you have to just hang out with him inmediately before anything else? Does he just go there at specific times or what?