Gaiden offers a heart wrenching return to the life of Kiryu, and while the intent for the series to pass the torch to a new protagonist, its experiences like these that feel bittersweet when theres so many directions you can take the franchise's legendary dragon. However that return to familiarity, both in protagonist and brawling gameplay, is short lived due to the consequences of development. Gaiden's evolution from an interlude in the upcoming Yakuza 8, to a standalone experience, kneecaps a lot of the deeper themes and meta-text. There is so much the story wants to say, and its consistency in how strong its writing is executed, feels undercut when 4 chapters in you find out its ready to end. I can only hope that 8 will deliver.

The conversion to a standalone game was also something done in an extremely short time, with only 6 months of development. While it's story manages to be top quality, the gameplay awkwardly drags it down a touch. Which is an unfortunate constant, Dragon Engine is never kind to kiryu, and all 3 of his games have had combat that ends up feeling sloppy, and undercooked. While Gaiden has taken improvements from the Judgment series, it's brisk time in the oven becomes very clear, as with tweaks the fighting could be stellar, in its current form I feel it's lacked playtesting.

THERE'S A HOLE IN A BUCKET i mean what

Known by the community as "Yakuza: Black Panther", Kurohyou is a game that I rarely see show up in discussion of the Yakuza games. It's somewhat understandable; aside from taking place in Kamurocho, this spinoff is in no way connected to the series as a whole. Team 4KL finally released an english translation for the first game (why did they do they second one first), and I've been on a PSP kick lately, so screw it! Let's hit the streets.

In this story, we follow Ukyo Tatsuya, a delinquent who's known nothing but fighting to survive as his way of life. However, after pretending to be part of the Tojo Clan, he finds himself in hot water with the REAL Tojo Clan. Trapped in Kamurocho, his only choice is to fight his way through 10 rounds in an underground fighting ring. On top of that, many of his opponents seem to share some connection to his troubled past. He's gonna have to learn what fighting truly means to him if he wants to make it out alive.

This game's overworld presentation takes a page out of Yakuza 1/2's book. Fixed camera angles across the city of Kamurocho, this time in pre-rendered form. For PSP standards, I think it looks excellent. The manga cutscenes have some cool character art in them, but it's a lot of looking at stills while listening to dialogue. It looks great in the few instances where there's genuine animation, but it's really unengaging otherwise. The music in this game is insane. It ranges from angsty electric guitar rock to EDM. I looked up the composers in my free time, and whoops, Hideki Naganuma jumpscare. The funk always shows itself where I least expect it... Also, I just want to say that I'm glad that RGG had some restraint with this spinoff. Kazuma Kiryu is nowhere to be seen in this game, not even a single mention of his name. You may have a chance encounter with a certain character from Yakuza 4, but this game is really all about its own characters, and I appreciate that.

The minigames you may know Yakuza for are pretty lackluster on the PSP. Bowling and batting are scaled down to be 2D and janky. The karaoke and massage parlor have been downgraded to a game where you literally mash a button until it's over, the latter of which is done while JPEGs of a sexy woman scroll by. I can't make this shit up. Feels like one of the Meet-n'-Fuck flash games, and that's not a compliment. It's not all bad though. Beating up thugs doesn't exactly pay the bills, and so Tatsuya has to make an honest living via part-time jobs, contextualized as the good minigames. Stack that ice cream! Serve those burgers! Beat down the overly-horny people at the strip club! Fun and profitable times for the whole family! I wish they had stuff like this in the mainline Yakuza games I've played.

Once you get into a fight, the game really begins. People frequently compare this gameplay to something like Def Jam (the developers' previous titles), but the perspective makes me more keen on drawing comparisons to 3D fighting games; Tekken, Dead or Alive, or Virtua Fighter. There's almost no HUD in battle, most information is conveyed through Tatsuya himself. If he's low on stamina, his attacks come out slower, his stance is visually weaker, and his breath becomes visible. Aside from his standard health meter, Tatsuya can get injured in four different areas: the head, chest, arms, and legs. The more damage is done to each of these, the more handicapped and vulnerable you'll be while in a fight. You can't heal injuries with standard healing items either. Sometimes you'll get gut-checked in a fight and just have to tough it out. Tatsuya's brawler fighting style is pretty basic, but he gradually becomes a jack of all trades AND a master of all, if you commit to grinding a bit. You learn new styles as you progress through the game, each with their own completely different stat boosts and movesets. There's kung-fu, pro wrestling, boxing, and more. It's energetic and fun, but it's not perfect.

First problem I have with the game are the frequent QTEs that demand you hammer the X button. I'm not even sure that mashing it does anything to help you recover faster. At some point, I just gave up when enemies grabbed me and saved my thumb from any potential cramps. Speaking of grabs, that's the second issue I have. Grabbing enemies is a surefire way to deal some safe damage with no risk of counterattack. I almost wish this game adopted Dead or Alive's "triangle system", where each type of attack can be countered by a different type. It's fun to play to each fighting style's strengths, but nothing is safer than the good ol' grabby hands. Thirdly, I wish there was a combo list you could view for each fighting style. As it is, you'll probably be mashing random buttons until you find what order makes your "NEW PUNCH ATTACK" actually come out.

I'm kinda blown away by what Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio pulled off here. It truly is the experience of a console Yakuza game, just condensed down into a PSP title while still maintaining its own identity. It kinda shocks me that these titles never got any sort of remakes or ports. I'd say "oh it's a shame Tatsuya never came back", but that's only half true. This game did well enough to get a sequel, so I'm off to treat Kamurocho as my own personal stomping grounds yet again.

The story in this game feels more centered around Tatsuya's new friends at the new Dragon Heat, reborn after Tatsuya was absent from Kamurocho for a year. Whenever I get a long cutscene centered around some of the new guys, I recieve a harsh reminder of how much I don't care about them. There's five of them, and they all feel underdeveloped and shoehorned into the plot. To compare it to something like Yakuza 4, that game juggles four characters by dedicating entire chapters to them and only them, building up to the point where all their plots cross over and make a stronger whole. The first game was all about Tatsuya's struggles as he discovers his reason to fight. Now main character Tatsuya's presence somehow feels like an afterthought here. Our conflict this time is that a powerful gang called Ashura is threatening to take over Dragon Heat, and Tatsuya (plus his new friends) step up to defend it, via a new series of eight matches. It kinda feels like a waste to follow the exact same format of the previous game, but not to worry! Every single chapter is filled to the brim with unrelated shenanigans up until it's time for the fight. It all feels so disconnected from itself.

With a new adventure comes more stuff, and as Yakuza 1 is to Yakuza 2, we now have Sotenbori available to explore alongside Kamurocho. That means more substories, more minigames, and a lot more ground to cover on foot. This game managed to implement the taxi system from the console Yakuza titles, and it can still feel like a slog getting to certain points on each map. The gang war substory was cute in the first game, but more than overstays its welcome here. You've got one war in Kamurocho, another in Sotenbori, and several conflicts that arise between the two areas, which means traveling between these areas several times. The quality of most side activities has been increased across the board, at least. Existing minigames all got upgrades; karaoke is actually a rhythm game now, the massage minigame is more akin to the console games' quality, and there's even a cute "Castle of the Dead" arcade shooter.

Combat has received a few overhauls since Kurohyou 1. Grabbing is no longer such a dominant strategy, you really gotta find an opening to grab someone, otherwise they almost instantly shake you off. They introduced a lot more contextual actions you can do in the arenas. You can "shove" enemies when grabbing them, which can result in a variety of effects, depending on what you shove them towards. Random passerby now come to spectate these street fights, just like the console Yakuza titles. Unlike those games, the audience is a rowdy bunch, occasionally throwing items into the ring, and even grabbing people who get too close. This sequel has an emphasis on tag-team fights, you can call up literal "friends with benefits" on your cell phone. They provide certain effects on the overworld, and join you during most scuffles. The fights have friendly fire, which makes logical sense, but can be annoying when you just wanna hit your target. Sometimes you'll get beaten over the head by your partner, sometimes you'll unintentionally beat them down. Most fights become trivial with a friend. Strength in numbers and all that shit.

Levelling up your styles in this game brings a new benefit to the table in the form of skills. Every style has a few slots available for them. You can use them to cover a style's weaknesses, or empower its strengths. Levelling up has been reworked in general; each level gives you points that you can invest into specific stats, as opposed to literally investing money into your stats in Kurohyou 1. The one change I can't stand is how you need to buy new combos at a dojo as you level up a style. Just give me the new move as a reward for continued style usage! Don't make me trek to the center of the map every time I want to add one extra punch to my moveset!

This game has worse performance than Kurohyou 1. It's most noticeable during battles, as the framerate can be anywhere between 60 and 20 FPS. While not all of it, a large portion of this slowdown is caused by Team K4L's translation patch. Sometimes my entire screen even went black for a few seconds before coming back as if nothing ever happened. I know this probably isn't my PSP dying because this doesn't happen in any other games I play, but it sure makes me afraid of continuing to play this one! Listen, not all translation projects are perfect, and it's no easy task for a handful of fans working on a passion project. I just don't want to condone the actions of Team K4L. The least they could do is add a list of what's not translated to their professional website, instead of acting like this is a finished project. Heck, they claim they're working on translating all the hostess text, but they went ahead and did a translation for Kurohyou 1 instead? Maybe this game runs better in an emulator, but I've been on an official hardware kick lately, and I don't believe that emulation should be a requirement for a translation patch (unless absolutely necessary).

Man, I wish I liked Kurohyou 2 more than I did. It's entirely possible that I wasn't in a good mood when playing this game, or maybe it was because I just came off of Kurohyou 1. I feel like my experience wouldn't be very different if I played the game untranslated. I'd still be mashing through the uninteresting text regardless, at least it would probably run better. Wouldn't change the fact that this game tried to follow its predecessor's story formula to a fault. As a game, it's fine, but in Kurohyou 1's case, maybe less was more all along.

Tatsuya Ukyo: my blorbo my plinko my poor little meow meow meow and also my glup shitto. Having had been a distrusting 17yo shithead myself, I know full well how much of a mind poison the worldview of total unbelief is. Hence, watching an edgy teenager turning this mindset around is just soothingly comforting — which is a hysterical quality to assign to what's maybe the most brooding and morose RGG game out there. A real gem in the series, and a really easy recommendation if you seek the grungy vibe of PS2 Yakuzas

A hyped localisation and remake of a much requested game.. that personally I feel ended up being pretty terrible.

Ishin's story felt rushed, and a lot of emotional story beats failed to really feel like they had impact due to how little i got to see of the characters involved. It's plot, while having a cool setting and setup, leaned too hard into making crazy twists... in the same vein as yakuza 4's infamous plot twists. It's historical setting is cool to see, and I liked a lot of RGG's warped versions of past events to fit with their original plot.

The gameplay side doesn't fare much better either. Out of the 4 combat styles, only Wild Dancer felt like it had any practical use and appropriate speed, while the others felt sluggish and stiff. I'd guess that the game wasn't designed around the speed and fluidity of this style, as the bosses tended to have 1 or 2 simple repetitive attacks you can avoid with ease, making this pretty easy on it's hardest difficulty. The boss design being so basic, I think its the worst in the series.

And while a servicable remake, I was disappointed in the choice to change character identities from their previous likenesses to characters from 0 and 7, the two most popular and mainstream games, sure, but it's sad to hear about characters I like getting cut due to that. I would have loved to see a bigger variety from the series as a whole. With these new faces, associated themes come back from their respective games, albeit in a cheap and disappointing form, a copy paste without remixes. The familiar tracks that do get remixes tho are excellent.

I wish this was better than it turned out to be, because I could see with work the game be a lot more enjoyable and engaging, but as of now it ranks among my least favorite RGG games.

I knew out-of-print, obscure and/or unlocalized games tended to get hyped up beyond what they deserve and it always leads to disappointment once people actually get their hands on it. I took the things people said about it with a grain of salt and fully expected it to be good, but not the masterpiece people said it was, and even if I did end up liking it a lot, I didn't want to get carried away and end up continuing the cycle of overhype.

It didn't work. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is my new favorite 2D-era Ace Attorney game.

The first Investigations was the weakest one I've played so far so I didn't really have high expectations for the sequel, but 2 does literally everything better. The addition of Logic Chess adds more variety to the gameplay and helps the game feel more distinct from the mainline series. There's a much greater exploration of who Edgeworth actually is as a character and the path he chooses to walk, and not only are the new characters a lot better, the returning characters from I1 get fleshed out in a great way as well. The cases are a lot stronger overall, they're actually connected to each other in a meaningful and interesting way and build to a much more satisfying climax, and while they're quite long (The Grand Turnabout can easily take an entire day to finish) they use their length much, much better than the first game's attempt at a long, epic case. It feels like what Investigations 1 should have been to begin with. My only real major complaint was with the amount of fanservice- it's not as bad as the first game, since the cases are built around the returning characters a lot better than "oh look! here's the funny character from the original trilogy! laugh!", but it still feels a bit excessive? I know it was released around the 10th anniversary of the original game but especially considering the context of a controversial new cast four years before this game's release it kind of feels desperate.

Either way, this is again my favorite AA game so far- Apollo Justice comes really close, but Turnabout Corner drags it down. There's not a single bad or even mediocre case in this game, and while sad dad Phoenix is still the most interesting character the character stuff in this game is really good as well. It's a real shame this didn't get localized officially- the fan translation is really good and fits in very well with the official team's work, and if there's ever an official localization I hope Capcom is willing to use it as a base, but it's less accessible and less polished than an official release would be.

On the surface, Kurohyou seems like a simple Yakuza spinoff channeling energy from its developers, responsible for Def Jam. However, a few chapters in and the story and gameplay really clicked together with me, and I say together, because thats where the true genius lies. There is a beautiful mingling of gameplay and storytelling, with one of the themes of the story being personal growth through fighting, and moving past childish violence. Every boss you meet will test Tatsuya, our troubled teen punk who believes in nothing but his own strength, and test you the player, so you both can develop. During one of the matches I was fighting someone with very strong grabs, needing to store meter of "heat" and not use it to break from these grabs. The game didnt call this out to me, its something I naturally fell into once I understood the situation I was in. Aftewards Tatsuya states he had to stay calm to deal with is opponent... which is exactly what I did. I was shocked at how kurohyou had conditioned me into playing correctly, but also reflect it in the story. Each of the major bosses and their personality goes to decide how they act in combat, and how you should approach the fight. I don't think I've seen anything so intelligently put together to deliver this beautiful blend.

The characters here are excellent, which each ally and opponent really pushing tatsuya as a character, and his development is done really well.

However, where Kurohyou struggles is with the rest of its main content. in between fights most of the time you will be running being npcs on the map gathering information, or just running around in general. Its a little tiring, and the onslaught of random encounters can slow the pace down. This isn't enough to really harm it, as its s a small dent in an experience I loved.