My fourth Like A Dragon game in my journey to catch up. I heard a lot of mixed things about 3 so I really wasn't sure what to think going in I have a lot of thoughts about this game so I'm going to split it up into sections and try to be as spoiler free as possible.
Story: I hear some people really don't dig the story in this one but I honestly loved it? It's more emotional to me than the other entries I've played, its nice Kiryu shows some emotion other than constipated or angry, and the supporting cast is wonderful. Very attached to the Okinawa characters in general!
Substories: A lot of really good and interesting ones this time, but also a lot of really terrible ones with bizarre requirements (theres three that require kinda annoying minigame prerequisites) and barely any story. The good outweighs the bad but there is a bit of a quantity over quality one this time which I didn't feel with the others, this also has some PS3 era shenanigans with a lot of missables there are things in here that would be extremely easy to miss without a guide even on replays. The kinda famous substory about a transwoman and Kiryu is particularly lovely.
Minigames: No. Honestly actually terrible? I try not to be too harsh on this game because it is currently the oldest game in the modern version of the series but my god, especially on PC a lot of these minigames just do not work properly without fixes and even then they have bizarre controls and extremely unfun AI. I normally enjoy the minigames but it was just a slog this time, only one I kinda enjoyed was Golf once I got used to it. I will say that I had to even tweak a few settings to get some minigames to work and I found a solution to fishing in particular (set fps to 30, point stick towards the ocean and hold the reel button while barely moving the stick up and left/right whenever the fish changes direction)
Combat: Oh boy ok let me start by saying I don't think the combat is as bad as people say but its pretty terrible. Yes the enemies block constantly. Yes there are ways around this like quickstepping, grabs, and certain heat actions. But the enemies also have bizarre robot like tracking and hyper armor that just feels really bad to play against. Almost 60 hours of this combat was enough to grate away at me and I rarely am bothered by a little jank, its just not fun and I found myself sighing whenever I got into a street fight. Strangely, Amon is extremely easy in this one but that is probably for the better.
I won't speak on the games graphics much, its a remaster, the main characters look great but side characters look really bad, its distracting at first but you get used to it, I will say the game is kinda poorly optimized, it runs well enough but even with lots of tinkering a solid 60 was hard to get, it was 60 like 90% of the time but in kamurocho it would dip seemingly randomly.
In the end though, I don't regret playing it, one of my favorite stories in this series so far paired with some of the worst actual gameplay makes it a flawed gem of a game.
Story: I hear some people really don't dig the story in this one but I honestly loved it? It's more emotional to me than the other entries I've played, its nice Kiryu shows some emotion other than constipated or angry, and the supporting cast is wonderful. Very attached to the Okinawa characters in general!
Substories: A lot of really good and interesting ones this time, but also a lot of really terrible ones with bizarre requirements (theres three that require kinda annoying minigame prerequisites) and barely any story. The good outweighs the bad but there is a bit of a quantity over quality one this time which I didn't feel with the others, this also has some PS3 era shenanigans with a lot of missables there are things in here that would be extremely easy to miss without a guide even on replays. The kinda famous substory about a transwoman and Kiryu is particularly lovely.
Minigames: No. Honestly actually terrible? I try not to be too harsh on this game because it is currently the oldest game in the modern version of the series but my god, especially on PC a lot of these minigames just do not work properly without fixes and even then they have bizarre controls and extremely unfun AI. I normally enjoy the minigames but it was just a slog this time, only one I kinda enjoyed was Golf once I got used to it. I will say that I had to even tweak a few settings to get some minigames to work and I found a solution to fishing in particular (set fps to 30, point stick towards the ocean and hold the reel button while barely moving the stick up and left/right whenever the fish changes direction)
Combat: Oh boy ok let me start by saying I don't think the combat is as bad as people say but its pretty terrible. Yes the enemies block constantly. Yes there are ways around this like quickstepping, grabs, and certain heat actions. But the enemies also have bizarre robot like tracking and hyper armor that just feels really bad to play against. Almost 60 hours of this combat was enough to grate away at me and I rarely am bothered by a little jank, its just not fun and I found myself sighing whenever I got into a street fight. Strangely, Amon is extremely easy in this one but that is probably for the better.
I won't speak on the games graphics much, its a remaster, the main characters look great but side characters look really bad, its distracting at first but you get used to it, I will say the game is kinda poorly optimized, it runs well enough but even with lots of tinkering a solid 60 was hard to get, it was 60 like 90% of the time but in kamurocho it would dip seemingly randomly.
In the end though, I don't regret playing it, one of my favorite stories in this series so far paired with some of the worst actual gameplay makes it a flawed gem of a game.