LeahPlease
2018
This review contains spoilers
Came from 0, through Kiwami 1 and 2 so I was ready for a bit of a drop in fidelity. And sure there was one. After about half an hour, I described the look to my partner by saying that if Kiwami 1 took Kabukicho and put it in a video game, Yakuza 3 looks like if someone from Kiwami's Kamurocho put THAT into a video game.
I hope that description doesn't sound meanspirited because it's really not! Once I got accustomed to the difference in how Kiryu moves, all the other differences melted away too and I was just playing a Yakuza game. I was exploring Okinawa, walking around Kamurocho feeling like a local, meeting new characters and it was good! Yakuza!
I even really like the long breaks Kiryu takes to take care of the kids at his orphanage. He's helping his kids with their homework, teaching them to stand up for themselves against bullies at school, mediating when they get in fights with each other, he cares about these kids and now so do I!
It's Yakuza! If you're looking at Yakuza 3, you probably know Yakuza already! If that's what you want (and it should be!) here's more of it!
I hope that description doesn't sound meanspirited because it's really not! Once I got accustomed to the difference in how Kiryu moves, all the other differences melted away too and I was just playing a Yakuza game. I was exploring Okinawa, walking around Kamurocho feeling like a local, meeting new characters and it was good! Yakuza!
I even really like the long breaks Kiryu takes to take care of the kids at his orphanage. He's helping his kids with their homework, teaching them to stand up for themselves against bullies at school, mediating when they get in fights with each other, he cares about these kids and now so do I!
It's Yakuza! If you're looking at Yakuza 3, you probably know Yakuza already! If that's what you want (and it should be!) here's more of it!
This game kind of owns actually. I was ready for jank (and there was some here and there, this is a pretty early PS2 game after all), but not nearly as much as I'd expected.
We're so used to the right stick controlling the camera in third person games like this now, but I honestly think Lament of Innocence makes a solid argument for letting it do other things sometimes. The directed camera did a perfectly good job 99% of the time and using the stick to navigate items and equipment mid combat instead added some fun friction to an otherwise fairly repetitive (though still enjoyable) combat system. Exploration is fun and will be familiar to players who have seen Castlevania map screens before, but can suffer at times from a slow movement speed with little to speed up traversal through larger sections.
The plot is mostly pretty silly, but had at least a couple of interesting twists and turns, and honestly a series taking inspiration from classic monster movies like Castlevania does can stand to be a bit silly, so it's a welcome vibe. The bigger problem is the larger twist at the end that seemed to come almost completely out of nowhere, and since this twist has massive consequences for the entirety of the series, it's disappointing how little weight it carries for the player in the moment with how little was done to set it up.
Overall though, this game shines as an early example of 3D combat that games like Devil May Cry would go on to refine and has plenty going for it as a transition into 3D exploration as well.
We're so used to the right stick controlling the camera in third person games like this now, but I honestly think Lament of Innocence makes a solid argument for letting it do other things sometimes. The directed camera did a perfectly good job 99% of the time and using the stick to navigate items and equipment mid combat instead added some fun friction to an otherwise fairly repetitive (though still enjoyable) combat system. Exploration is fun and will be familiar to players who have seen Castlevania map screens before, but can suffer at times from a slow movement speed with little to speed up traversal through larger sections.
The plot is mostly pretty silly, but had at least a couple of interesting twists and turns, and honestly a series taking inspiration from classic monster movies like Castlevania does can stand to be a bit silly, so it's a welcome vibe. The bigger problem is the larger twist at the end that seemed to come almost completely out of nowhere, and since this twist has massive consequences for the entirety of the series, it's disappointing how little weight it carries for the player in the moment with how little was done to set it up.
Overall though, this game shines as an early example of 3D combat that games like Devil May Cry would go on to refine and has plenty going for it as a transition into 3D exploration as well.
The filler island OVA of video games