In 2012, I accepted DD1 as an unfinished game with incredible potential to be developed upon in the future. I don't know if I have the heart to accept that DD2 to be in the exact same state. The combat so good but everything else is not done or just bad. I don't think waiting for potential patches or DLC is going to fix the game.

I like different, brutally difficult things. I just don't get enough out of this one to be up for the punishment. Is it incredible at times? Yes absolutely. Is it worth putting up with the bugs and balancing WORSE than the first game? No.

I think I need all the DLC to be out, subtle cheats, and some mods to get the most out of this game. It is a huge bummer to even feel like I got duped into waiting for another unfinished, unfocused, unpolished game because the ingredients are here to make one of the finest games to ever exist. It was just cooked wrong.

people talk about this game like it's some groundbreaking, breathtaking, wonderful pinnacle of video games and i really wish i understood that. this game feels really nice to move around in, its visuals are really appealing and its score is pretty cute. but there's not much of a real narrative (or writing at all), no memorable characters, no cool side-quests, no dungeons, a pitiful lack of enemy variety + almost no bosses, and nothing that made exploring feel worthwhile. most of it feels like filler check-list fluff (towers, shrines, koroks). the world is well-designed but there's not much substance inside of it beyond its sandbox elements. i genuinely feel like, insane for not liking this the way people talk about it but i just do not see it personally. it's just okay!

What a colossal disappointment.

Ok it's not that bad. Everything with Kiryu is great especially chapter 8 (except the end that shit is ass, his final boss is good but feels like Ichiban should've fought him). New party members are cool and I like the gameplay improvements (still not a fan of having to go to a specific location to change jobs but there are more of them and money isn't as tight as in 7). Hitting dudes richocheting into other dudes never gets old. Same as having a physical character comboing into a mage to get them back some mp (there's even risk into it since enemies target the closest guy to them which would be said mage if it's their next turn).

The game feels like it was made back when length was a factor in game reviews. There were some cutscenes where I checked my phone or zoned out which never happened before in any other yakuza game. I don't know if it's due to the dialogue itself or just the length of the cutscenes but it really feels longer than it should. But somehow the ending feels rushed with a lot of stuff either forgotten about or that feels like we should've known more (Eiji becoming public enemy n°1 for example, did Ebina expose him because he wasn't useful anymore ? Was it Chitose ? Somebody asked who was running the Tatara channel and she said it was him ?)

Antagonists are also a big wrong in this game. One is Aoki but worse in every way and one is a generic cult leader. I guess there's a 3rd big one but him not appearing in the final chapter but instead in the ending cutscene where Ichiban talks no jutsu him (happens a lot btw, even for him) and he says sorry and it's fine apparently.

There's a lot if weird inconsistencies (Chitose casually using the Tatara channel despite Eiji having control of it and using another voice actor, the Geomijul unable to find a famous streamer but hijacking a government satellite, Nele Island running out of the space for the waste being a twist despite the thing being visibly half full in 2 months once you enter the cave)

The Daidoji are also not beating the shittiest group in the series accusations. What a wet fart of a character Hanawa is I can't believe Yokoyama said he was important what a fucking liar.

Translator’s note: “wealth” means “padding.”

It can’t be stressed enough how much Infinite Wealth’s core gameplay tweaks salvage it. This marks an all-time high for the Dragon Engine games’ responsiveness in terms of just fundamentally moving around, both Ichiban and Kiryu turning and 180ing with an unprecedented level of fluidity, but the real star’s the combat’s new emphasis on positioning. The movement circle’s so impactful for such a seemingly minor addition; lining up back attacks, proximity bonuses and the directions enemies get knocked in is an endlessly engaging triptych with suitably punchy feedback, as well as the best justification of the engine’s ragdoll physics outside of Lost Judgment’s big enemies, and only improves as you fiddle with party members’ equipment, jobs or builds. Kiryu’s fighting styles are arguably better differentiated here than in the game they’re from, which is emblematic of the extent to which all these pre-existing assets and gameplay concepts get freshened up by the genre switch. Despite retaining some of 7’s issues which’re less understandable in a game that already has a foundation to work off of, like a poor battle camera regularly obscuring enemies’ attacks and allies sometimes just not performing chain attacks when they trigger, it’s overall legitimately at the point where I can picture this being someone’s favourite turn-based RPG based on its mechanics rather than solely for how conceptually unique it is.

Playing so well’s an absolute lifeline given its relentlessly sluggish pacing. There’s an early segment in which Ichiban needs $30 to pay an information broker, and if you already have at least $30 he actually comments on how it’s already sorted, but instead of letting you just pay the broker at that point (as you weirdly can when this exact scenario resurfaces much later), you instead have to get roped into a substory which isn’t even really a substory since it’s bloating the main story to play a minigame to make the money you already have first, then travel back and only then pay him. The fatigue a situation like this brings on’s initially lessened by said minigame being great, but its introduction would’ve been a more unambiguous highlight if you’d been permitted to find it on your own and is quickly exacerbated by how often this happens; sizeable portions of the next three or four chapters are comprised of mandatory, agonisingly slow tutorials for shallow knock-offs of games Yokoyama was pretending this series is too cool for fewer than a couple of years prior. He talked big pre-release about how much longer Infinite Wealth is than the others, and although he wasn’t lying, it would’ve been good to mention that this is only because the typewriter monkeys under his dominion are masters of stretching out what could be single button presses into entire hours.

Some kind of stride’s finally hit with Kiryu’s segments – the core theme of recognising his mortality and appreciating the time he has left’s particularly resonant, as someone whose family’s seen one stage 4 cancer diagnosis and other health scares in recent years – but it’s also got the side effect of making the rest of the narrative that much thinner comparatively. In the same game partially revolving around the terminal illness of a character whom a decent amount of players will have essentially grown up alongside, I just can’t get invested in nuclear waste disposal, the unintentional humour brought about by a Vtuber interviewing yakuza figureheads or Ichiban’s efforts to assure child-gassing Dick Dastardly that they’re still nakamas to the extent that the amount of time dedicated to these seemingly expects you to, especially not with the lifeless substory-esque presentation the cutscenes for these plot threads often have or villains so tepid and hard to believe. Never mind that the Geomijul can hack government satellites but can’t doxx a famous streamer, whose decision was it to make the most American-as-interpreted-by-the-Japanese looking centenarian you’ve ever seen speak English like he’s fresh off the boat from the Tokugawa shogunate? I don’t know if it’s more or less dire than how Ichiban’s either unable to speak English or fluent in it depending on what the given scene demands. The camerawork’s presenting Bryce like he’s on the brink of attaining godhood or something and I’m giggling every time he speaks. The mismatch between voice and character’s sillier than all the plot twists people meme about combined.

His home turf’s enjoyable to explore at first thanks to an impressive amount of detail relative to its size, but the scale ultimately detracts more than it adds. Bigger in-game worlds wouldn’t feel so misguided for these games if Lost Judgment hadn’t already solved the issue of boring traversal; compared to its skateboard, the segway’s much slower to whip out, put away or move around on, more expensive, vulnerable to enemy encounters, prevents you from picking up valuable materials, doesn’t even require player input and has no tricks to perform or any means of interacting with the environment at all. Taken together with still being able to immediately fast travel to any taxi from the map, plus the fact that doing so’s cheap as chips, it becomes redundant not long after it’s introduced and with it goes most reasons to actually engage with this huge, meticulously crafted city. The likes of Kamurocho and Sotenbori stand out from the worlds of most vaguely comparable games for being small enough that you’ll naturally come to know them street by street and getting from A to B’s never arduous. Conversely, Hawaii and (this and 7’s version of) Yokohama are pretty much the definition of what Hideaki Itsuno was talking about here.

Regressions like these are only so frustrating because the occasional flashes of greatness shine so bright, though even those are weighed down by a disproportionate amount of them being relegated to a protagonist who’s supposed to have passed the torch roughly four times as of Infinite Wealth, which seems especially egregious when you consider how often its core cast reflect on the importance of moving on. The route 7 decided to go down was a much needed one that I’m still on board with in theory, and Ichiban remains a pot of potential narrative gold (which I don't think either 7 or IW fully capitalise on outside of Aoki's final scenes in the former), but it’s increasingly difficult to be confident in his ability to carry a franchise on his back when his own creators don’t seem to be themselves. His last scene ending on a punchline at his expense is so uncharacteristically insincere for these games, like an exclamation mark punctuating my confusion at this being their biggest break commercially and critically. If I wasn’t a big proponent of trusting people to know what they like instead of rationalising silly reasons why they might feel differently from you, I’d assume that the Daidoji are both real and responsible for the inherent RGG bonus that factors into Backloggd’s average score calculations.

The net gameplay improvements here are too substantial to suggest that Infinite Wealth isn’t worth playing, but at the same time, I reckon it’d be made largely redundant by its own predecessor if you could somehow surgically remove them and retrofit them into it. Eagerly anticipating this series’ sense of direction appearing as a bartender in the next one.

Now that I’ve had a day to sit on my thoughts of the game I will make an actual non-shitpost review.

This game is a mess. I wasn’t kidding when I said this is the MGS4 of the series. An extremely ambitious, earnest, heartfelt celebration of the series that has extremely high highs but also constantly falls on its face with extremely stupid writing.

The pacing is some of the worst we’ve seen from RGG. For a game that can easily be 100+ hours long it is both too long but also too short in areas. It constantly pulls you away from the main story to do very involved mini game/sub system tutorials but then has no time in the final hours to wrap up most of the story. At least 4 of the main characters this game is about don’t show up in the final cutscene. You just have to be told about what they are doing from a mouth piece so we can wrap shit up. Kiryu is just kinda left in this weird limbo as they don’t explain what the fuck got them to this point with an achievement titles “man who reclaimed his name”. It genuinely feels like there is either an entire chapter or at least a huge segment of one missing from the end. One of the main villains just stops showing up for 10+ hours only to be seen again in a cut away and is completely unrecognizable for at least another few hours. They then try to do the coin locker scene again with them and it feels completely unearned because they haven’t done anything. The two main villains you do fight are extremely forgettable and underwhelming. One is given what you’d imagine to be a super important connection to Ichiban but it never comes up. The two share a single cutscene at the start of the game and that’s it. Why was it even a plot point to begin with then???? So many plot threads just go no where or are left extremely unsatisfying as they hand wave them away so it can’t be viewed as “a plot hole”. I seriously think how they structure their stories needs to change because I don’t think the Yakuza writing formula they’ve had for 2 decades translates to a 100 hour JRPG. Imo the best way to enjoy the main story of these games is when you can just progress the plot freely and not be bogged down by side content or busy work. I usually save that stuff for premium adventure so the story isn’t so “start and stop”. But you can’t do that in these games because of the rpg leveling and just how the story constantly blocks you to do other shit I am currently not interested in. No RGG I don’t give a fuck about your Pokémon clone and it’s 30 minute+ forced tutorial I just want to get on with chapter 4 please.

Most of the cast has nothing to do in this game which would be fine if they didn’t force them to have boring ass drink links you need to do to make them objectively better in gameplay.

The gameplay needs massive changes going forward because Jesus Christ was I sick of the multiple grinds it imposes. The long battles they do in this game are terrible. In previous entries you’d have a long gauntlet where you’d have to fight to a location and they do this here but they constantly make you take the most out of the way route and block off better ones with excuses like “there are dudes over there!” Only to send you down an alley with 7 fights. If 9 does the same formula 8 repeated from 7 I might just drop the series. I do not want to go back to scrounging for money and being locked out of jobs till chapter 5 again. I do not want to have to do massive material grinds for good gear. I do not want to have 80% of the moves you get to be fucking useless because they aren’t an AOE and don’t deal elemental damage.

Highlights of this game is everything they do with Kiryu outside of the final chapter. Life links are overall goated outside of some implications of how no one reacting to Kiryu being alive despite you are only able to see them after Kiryu is broadcasted on national news to be alive.

There is honestly too much to talk about with this game So I’m just gonna end it by saying this: I’ll look back on the good in this game as some of the best but I never want to replay this game ever again. Also this game only makes Gaiden look even dumber and further cements it at as a $50 scam. Yokoyama fucking lied Hanawa is not important and he fucking knew that.

Mark my words that this game while currently being hailed as the best game in the series, that its perfect and other things like that will be looked back on a lot more negatively once the honeymoon phase is over, once hypebeasts move onto the next thing, once people won't freakout if you have anything negative to say about it. It won't be a hot take or "being contrarian" to think that the game is mid, super front loaded and falls apart in the end. It's fine if you do think its perfect and its your favorite game or whatever but the amount of people who lose their shit when you have anything negative to say about this game or gaiden is seriously annoying.

This game also made me get into a car accident so fuck it lol