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.

Amazing pixel art, a perfect atmosphere, and a groovy soundtrack kept me coming back again and again. The combat is gorgeously animated, and almost fun. I'm not a fan of how damage is calculated (green guy throwing a bottle = 36 damage, red guy throwing a bottle = 82 damage?), and some of the enemy types got on my nerves. There's no challenge in getting hit with a projectile from an offscreen enemy, just rote inconvenience. I do admire how the story is married to the gameplay, decreasing health and etc. Time is the ultimate currency here.

I've been following yeo for a while now, and while this is the first game of his I've enjoyed playing, I am a big fan of the influences he takes from. Immediately after dropping Ringo Ishikawa I watched The Friends of Eddie Coyle and had a blast, and after playing Stone Buddha I saw Le Samourai and had a similar experience. His games emulate the soul-crushing emptiness of these great films, maybe too well for my tastes. Fading Afternoon is a bloody yakuza affair a la Takeshi Kitano's Outrage, and understands that action can be visceral AND tragic too. The stories presented here are short but touching, and there are quite a few of them. The money bag system incentivizes playthroughs well enough, and the endings I got were certainly entertaining. The writing really shines through here, the characters feel fully formed with their own histories and experiences (shoutout to Chiba).

The major downside here is that yeo's disdain for user experience shines through as usual. You get a cursory combat tutorial - "punch a guy 10 times" "throw a guy 10 times", and then you're thrown to the dogs. Some people might like the idea of playing a game for four - five hours before understanding the basics of its setting, but I'm not one of them. Despite the usual ugliness of this design, getting over the hurdle resulted in some memorable playthroughs and a generally good time.

Fading Afternoon feels like the most coherent yeo project yet, with genuinely outstanding presentation and flair. The gameplay does drag it a bit, but depth is very much present in every department. I'm still playing it now, trying to figure out how best to spend what little time Maruyama has left.

Ultimately, I just feel deflated after finishing (or well, getting an ending at any rate) Fading Afternoon, and not in a way that feels intended, more in a "this game has defeated me" sort of way. I really liked The Friends Of Ringo Ishikawa when I played it, it had a rough warming up period and I still would have liked it if it was a tiny bit less obtuse about what you can do but seemingly Yeo would burst into flames if anything in his games was known to you from the outset. That being said I ended up falling in love with its existential life sim mixed with a River City Ransom esque beat em up.

I think the main issue for me is that Ringo was a life sim with beat em up elements, whereas Fading Afternoon is a beat em up with life sim elements. After restarting once or twice because I had completely cocked up my playthrough by not knowing stuff (like that getting a car asap, always paying your hotel stay forward, reinforcing your territories and starting the gang war asap so you can start making money) I started to get into the groove of things. The groove of combat, combat and more combat. After what steam tells me were 5.5 hours I genuinely think I did like 2 side activities tops. All I could focus on, given the nature of the timeslots and gang war mechanics was on beating people up and finding the next Shatei to cap.

I guess I'll drop a spoiler warning here although given my playthrough there isnt all that much to spoil. The premise is, newly released Seiji Maruyama is slowly dying of cancer, he has limited time to figure out what to do before he checks out. My interpretation was that he wanted to leave the cowed Azuma a stronger clan with territory and the game seemingly leads you in this direction so I started a gang war with Tanaka whilst doing whatever other secondary bullshit Azuma told me to do. Soon I met Kato, a young hothead that Seiji takes under his wing. Now, I do like how the slowly depleting max health and limited timeslots reinforce the narrative and even the frustratingly obtuse flow of time kind of aids in this also, but again, for me it just led to me doing nothing but fighting and more fighting.

More to the point, I just don't like Seiji as a character. Maybe its cause a shithead teenager like Ringo is much more relatable to me than an old dying murderer but he just bores me, honestly. The mix which worked for me about ringo was that combination of the combat yes, but importantly the characters, the dialogue and atmosphere. There definitely is an atmosphere in FA, but that atmosphere is 90% fuckers throwing bottles at your head : which you can avoid by either a) timing a backstep b) already being in guard mode or c) being in a different z axis but most streets are narrow so this is unreliable.

I'm pretty bad at this combat, I think its only now after 5 hours I somewhat have a handle on things. Its like they made the counter be absolutely busted and able to destroy 90% of the ground goons so then they had to throw in Mr Bottle thrower, commander katana prick and admiral gunman "I hope you can pull off the gun stealing technique here or you are fucked" to pose a challenge. I only now sort of know how to somewhat consistently defeat the bottle throwers.

Again, comparing the critical path to Ringo, this is way more obtuse than ringo ever was. I know Yeo handwaves most criticism of this aspect by saying something like "I make my games so you have to pay attention and read the dialogue carefully" and fair enough, but also sometimes I straight up wrote all the dialogue down for future reference and still it was unclear what I was supposed to do. Which, maybe Im stupid but after asking on the steam forums I have to share an absolute bullshit bit of the storyline : Azuma asked us to incriminate someone by seducing a hostess, I went there with Kato (one of the few characters I gave a shit about) and we had a conversation about killing and blah blah anyways at the end Kato says "when are the girls coming" and then Im outside the hostess club. Huh?! What the fuck? What just happened? Okay, apparently I was supposed to realize that the dude we were supposed to incriminate (who Im pretty sure we were never shown a photo of so how was I meant to intuit that exactly?) was there with a blonde woman, therefore that was the woman that Azuma mentioned was sleeping with the guy, therefore I was supposed to come back another day and try to seduce the blonde lady (after two tries cause the first she just wasnt available). AVGN VOICE "HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT"

So anyways, after a dull, repetitive, demoralising routine of punching people, shooting shateis Azuma got a meeting with the Oyabun and was made to give them back some territory and call a truce. At which point I just didnt know what to do. I had spent so much time on it that I just let out a big long sigh. I thought about restarting the war but that would probably make azuma mad so I didnt. I started another one with Harada. I will say, for all my complaining I still played 6 hours of this game, which is way more than I give to most games that bring this level of anger and demoralisation to me, so on some level I was semi enjoying it. Big old spoilers now, eventually Azuma tells me to kill some TV presenter and have Kato take the heat for it. I go to the promenade but hes not there. I go to some territory that was under fire and I get sent to the hospital, where Seiji finally succumbs to his illness.

I remember a lot of people complaining that Ringo had only one ending, that none of your choices really changed the final outcome but I thought that was the point! And what an ending it was, love it or hate it, its memorable. I guess its my fault for fucking up but what a way to let the air out of me. Regarding the combat I also remember reading that Yeo once ran a poll a few years/months ago which asked what people most liked about his game, which people voted mostly for the atmosphere and gameplay almost least. He then had kind of a meltdown over it. So whilst I havent played Stone Buddha I think this is his response, lets laser focus on making the combat the key element and everything else is secondary. The billiard minigame still sucks btw. I'm sure this is probably a selling point to the beat em up heads out there, and maybe I'm just not the audience Yeo wants anymore, personally Ive played three beat em ups ever and those include FA and Ringo, so idk.

I have heard that this game has some kind of looping component, and that you can give the bag with a bunch of money to the food stand guy to get in the next playthrough, but I am so done with this game. Everything about it seems focused on making first time players suffer in favour of people who will grind 8 runs on the game but I just cannot imagine doing another run, I feel miserable now. Feel free to comment "filtered!" if you read this far though

After doing all of the major possible endings you can get, every achievement, and countless hours in rumble mode I think I can finally put this one down for a few until another inevitable replay happens in the very close future.
Fading Afternoon somehow managed to capture both Friends of Ringo Ishikawa, and Arrest of a Stone Buddha’s best quality’s, build upon them, and create a completely different structure while still sharing aspects of both’s atmosphere. It’s hard to say what the best part about this game is honestly. The plethora of varied and incredibly detailed backgrounds sprawled across a vast explorable area by Artem Belov made it next to impossible to get sick of the scenery no matter how many replays I did. The insanely vast and unique character sprites & animation made by Ueda M brought the area even more to life. I love every single battle, idle, weather, and interactive animation you can do or see in this game. There is so many it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a couple players might never see in their playthroughs. Don’t think I’ve ever played a game that had such polished replay 4 of them isn’t anywhere close to being able to find all the secrets and possibilities naturally. There’s been a hefty amount of updates between bug fixes, content, and qol since launch and I’m very thankful for how involved yeo is in the community despite working on this game for 3 years. Incredible experience and if you enjoy beat ‘em ups, insanely immersive gameplay, deep and engaging mechanics, relaxing and atmospheric music, and incredible art you gotta at least give fading afternoon a chance, because if it clicks you’re in for a hell of an experience.

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?

I did only one ending so far and played about 10 hours. I normally wouldn't talk about unless I did two endings for a short game like this (only two hours) but I think I know enough of the game so far to talk.

In The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa Yeo put us in a simple town in a simple world but with complex characters and difficult situations occurring. Is a small town and because how small it is everything that happens have more punch. In Fadding Afternoon we have a adult world, everything is more complex, walking in the street, sleeping, fighting, relationships, doing anything is more difficult and bigger. You are not a teenager that just happens to fight a lot, you are a legendary yakuza and a slowing dying one. There is no time now and there is no reason, you are just free to do anything to spend the rest of your days. Want to start a war to compensate the clan helping you? Fine. Want to become the top dog in the yakuza? Fine. Want to kill yourself? Fine too. Fading Afternoon let you 100% free to do what you want and at the same time this can be a bit harsh for someone who just want to beat the game it also can be awesome.

If The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is nihilistic, Fading Afternoon is absurdist. You don't have a reason to do anything but why not? What better option you have? What you can achieve in a short time? Is not that the game is more optimistic, Maruyama just don't show much of his feelings and can't think anything to do if not fight. Even his dreams are about him fighting a army by himself for all eternity. Is a complex game about a complex world where the only thing you can do is stop forever or move forward until you die.

Peak