Uhhh, no. Sorry. I just can't do this one anymore.
I can usually tell a game is losing me when I stop to take breaks every 10-15 minutes and it was a really bad sign that I was taking them every 5 minutes playing this one as early as late Chapter 1.
I said in my Yakuza 6 review that I'd had a really specific desire for that game going into it, and that I'd soured on that concept as my fondness for Yakuza 6 grew. Yeah, well, Gaiden is that concept executed to a T and it's just not good.
Gaiden is comprised of 3 entirely different and tonally different games, which means playing the actual end result can feel like attending a work meeting on the same night you're going to a rave.
The first of Gaiden's three games is just... Good. It's a story about Kiryu living in a world that's not only left him behind, but relegated him to the existential equivalent of a dog bed. Forced to strut around the territory of his former greatest foes as a lap dog, not so much a legendary Yakuza but an Assassin's Creed protagonist surrounded by markers. His time in the sun is over, and only fools clinging to ancient tradition recognize him. Despite people attesting otherwise, he's a nobody.
Opposing him is Shishido, also a man left behind by the times. While Kiryu was left behind and accepted redundancy willingly, Shishido gives himself over to impotent rage as he slowly realizes the world he wants to live in ended in the 90s, and that the status he covets became extinct when the police cracked down on Yakuza. Their conflict ends in a reprise of Yakuza 5's finale, only this time it actually means something rather than being the end result of a Kudzu plot.
And man, Kiryu's writing in this game is excellent. He's much more bitter, and given to snark. He reacts with annoyance to Shishido trauma dumping on him and his attitude towards most of the villains is to groan and complain that they're getting in his way. He's very much a tired old man who just doesn't care anymore.
There's also some excellent writing given to Masaru Watase, already one of Yakuza's better NPCs, that excellently compounds the whole feeling of "This is how the Yakuza died", though it's tucked in at the end rather abruptly.
This is a good game, I really enjoyed all 45 minutes of screentime it got.
The second game is this game's initial form: A Yakuza 7 DLC. This game's core 'purpose' is to help fit a certain plot twist from that game into the franchise's timeline better, and it really shows because despite any pretense this is just 6 hours of buildup to an 'explanation' that nobody really wanted or needed, and there's about five minutes at the end that sum up why Kiryu is in the next game.
This 'game' tends to manifest as what I can only describe as the developers stretching out a side story for 6 hours. 7's whackiness is haphazardly injected into a Kiryu-format game and the results are gauche at best. Kiryu gets a new style called Agent because the developers really want him to feel like Yagami, and with Agent comes four cool spy gadgets he can use alongside the style. Dragon style returns as Yakuza style.
And... Look, I've only tasted a few hours of the Lost Judgment fruit, but that game makes me feel like I'm playing Devil May Cry. THIS game makes me feel like I'm misremembering Devil May Cry after a concussion. I already don't like Kiryu's Dragon Engine combat, and Gaiden doubles down on it in extremely unfortunate ways. That Agent's attacks are all two-hits for one button press is profoundly annoying too.
The last game, and the one that sponges up 99% of the screentime is... Every other Yakuza game!
That's right folks, the guys at SEGA have decided to send off their posterboy by plonking him in a terminally unserious and deeply masturbatory videogame. Every five minutes, maybe less, this game references something from Kiryu's past, and it does so in extremely hamfisted and wince-inducing ways. I'd argue it's even childish. Hey, you remember the castle from Yakuza 2? What about tigers? You like Pocket Circuit, right? Do you remember Nishitani from 0? What about Yakuza 5's final boss? The finale of Yakuza 1 was cool, right? There's some boys from Judgment too!
On and on and on and on and ON. It just never stops. I'd argue the three big Tojo boys walking into the sunset near the end is the least egregious example.
It betrays a total disregard for the narrative confidence that Yakuza 6 had. Whether they were unsure what to do or afraid of focusing on Game #1 again, the developers opted for the most self-indulgent game possible. It's very... Hm. Hmm. It feels like this game was written with the Western fanbase in, so deeply unserious and jokey is it. Sure there are serious bits, but Gaiden defies the law most RGG games have lived by wherein the comedic silly stuff is reserved for side content or one-off gags and the main story is deathly serious.
It bleeds into the narrative, too. The big bads threaten Kiryu's orphans so often it starts feeling like a really annoying Arrested Development joke. The first time was impactful, second alarming, third boring, fourth annoying... It kept going.
I also just... Ugh. God.
I fucking hate Nishitani III.
I wanted to give RGG Studios the benefit of the doubt and that they'd give him nuance later on, but no. Nishitani III is an openly bisexual big bad and they've went way too hard on every single bad stereotype for queer villains. He's openly a sadistic rapist (implicitly or explicitly depends on the dialogue), shows off how bad he is using dialogue laden with kink analogues and innuendos, is easily the most effeminate Yakuza big bad, and in general just has a veneer of homophobic sleaze to him that rubbed me the wrong way.
He's gross in ways I would've expected from 90s-very early 2010s media, and he behaves like a character the devs would've apologized for if that was true, but this game came out this year. For a franchise that's gotten better about depicting everything over time, it's an alarming step back.
Also, as a much pettier and minor gripe: The music in this one isn't that great. Deadly Struggle, Psycho's Anthem, Un Altro Appassionato and Cold Fire are excellent. The rest aren't very impactful. My love language for games is adding the OST to my iTunes regardless of whether or not I go back and listen to them, and even the Yakuza games I dislike (Judgment, 2) still ended up there. Gaiden didn't.
Lastly... Eesh. That dub work huh.
In truth, it's mostly decent. Not cataclysmically bad as a lot of doomposters and Twitter engagement farmers will have you think.
But the two most important dub voices, Kiryu and Shishido, are BAD. YongYea is incapable of delivering the right amounts of snark, bitterness and introspectiveness that define Kiryu, which is especially bad in a game where Takaya Kuroda is giving some of his best and most impactful work. He flubs a lot of the minor dialogue, and most of the finale, and while Kiryu is bored for most of the game, even in his vulnerable/supportive moments he just sounds like he wants to be home eating KFC gravy out of a cereal bowl. There's an incredibly heartfelt, crushing scene near the end which is amazing both for its place in Kiryu's arc and for justifying why people need to play Yakuza 3 and 6 to completion, and... Yeah, YongYea fucks it up. Sorry. That's why you don't hire GamerGaters to VA!
Likewise, Matt Bushell's depiction of Shishido feels alarmingly juvenile. It has the same energy of someone reading edgy manga lines into their mic, which is actually more offensive to me than YongYea's work. Yasukaze Motomiya brings an incredible depth to Shishido, allowing his bitterness and self-loathing to appear through the holes in his ironclad facade at all the right moments. His feral roars, heartbroken declarations and tired defeat in the finale are some of the franchise's best work, and... Matt Bushell just sounds bored. There's no sauce, no nuance, no passion to his work.
Other characters are fine like Holly Chou's depiction of Akame or James Burns' fantastic work as Watase, but they mean nothing when the two most prominent characters are so poorly voiced.
All in all, I'm just mad at this game for making me look like a fool. I've been saying "The worst RGG title is a 7/10 at worst" for years, and with this game being a 4/10 I now look like a clown.
4/10 I wish Akame was r- Oh, right. She is.
I can usually tell a game is losing me when I stop to take breaks every 10-15 minutes and it was a really bad sign that I was taking them every 5 minutes playing this one as early as late Chapter 1.
I said in my Yakuza 6 review that I'd had a really specific desire for that game going into it, and that I'd soured on that concept as my fondness for Yakuza 6 grew. Yeah, well, Gaiden is that concept executed to a T and it's just not good.
Gaiden is comprised of 3 entirely different and tonally different games, which means playing the actual end result can feel like attending a work meeting on the same night you're going to a rave.
The first of Gaiden's three games is just... Good. It's a story about Kiryu living in a world that's not only left him behind, but relegated him to the existential equivalent of a dog bed. Forced to strut around the territory of his former greatest foes as a lap dog, not so much a legendary Yakuza but an Assassin's Creed protagonist surrounded by markers. His time in the sun is over, and only fools clinging to ancient tradition recognize him. Despite people attesting otherwise, he's a nobody.
Opposing him is Shishido, also a man left behind by the times. While Kiryu was left behind and accepted redundancy willingly, Shishido gives himself over to impotent rage as he slowly realizes the world he wants to live in ended in the 90s, and that the status he covets became extinct when the police cracked down on Yakuza. Their conflict ends in a reprise of Yakuza 5's finale, only this time it actually means something rather than being the end result of a Kudzu plot.
And man, Kiryu's writing in this game is excellent. He's much more bitter, and given to snark. He reacts with annoyance to Shishido trauma dumping on him and his attitude towards most of the villains is to groan and complain that they're getting in his way. He's very much a tired old man who just doesn't care anymore.
There's also some excellent writing given to Masaru Watase, already one of Yakuza's better NPCs, that excellently compounds the whole feeling of "This is how the Yakuza died", though it's tucked in at the end rather abruptly.
This is a good game, I really enjoyed all 45 minutes of screentime it got.
The second game is this game's initial form: A Yakuza 7 DLC. This game's core 'purpose' is to help fit a certain plot twist from that game into the franchise's timeline better, and it really shows because despite any pretense this is just 6 hours of buildup to an 'explanation' that nobody really wanted or needed, and there's about five minutes at the end that sum up why Kiryu is in the next game.
This 'game' tends to manifest as what I can only describe as the developers stretching out a side story for 6 hours. 7's whackiness is haphazardly injected into a Kiryu-format game and the results are gauche at best. Kiryu gets a new style called Agent because the developers really want him to feel like Yagami, and with Agent comes four cool spy gadgets he can use alongside the style. Dragon style returns as Yakuza style.
And... Look, I've only tasted a few hours of the Lost Judgment fruit, but that game makes me feel like I'm playing Devil May Cry. THIS game makes me feel like I'm misremembering Devil May Cry after a concussion. I already don't like Kiryu's Dragon Engine combat, and Gaiden doubles down on it in extremely unfortunate ways. That Agent's attacks are all two-hits for one button press is profoundly annoying too.
The last game, and the one that sponges up 99% of the screentime is... Every other Yakuza game!
That's right folks, the guys at SEGA have decided to send off their posterboy by plonking him in a terminally unserious and deeply masturbatory videogame. Every five minutes, maybe less, this game references something from Kiryu's past, and it does so in extremely hamfisted and wince-inducing ways. I'd argue it's even childish. Hey, you remember the castle from Yakuza 2? What about tigers? You like Pocket Circuit, right? Do you remember Nishitani from 0? What about Yakuza 5's final boss? The finale of Yakuza 1 was cool, right? There's some boys from Judgment too!
On and on and on and on and ON. It just never stops. I'd argue the three big Tojo boys walking into the sunset near the end is the least egregious example.
It betrays a total disregard for the narrative confidence that Yakuza 6 had. Whether they were unsure what to do or afraid of focusing on Game #1 again, the developers opted for the most self-indulgent game possible. It's very... Hm. Hmm. It feels like this game was written with the Western fanbase in, so deeply unserious and jokey is it. Sure there are serious bits, but Gaiden defies the law most RGG games have lived by wherein the comedic silly stuff is reserved for side content or one-off gags and the main story is deathly serious.
It bleeds into the narrative, too. The big bads threaten Kiryu's orphans so often it starts feeling like a really annoying Arrested Development joke. The first time was impactful, second alarming, third boring, fourth annoying... It kept going.
I also just... Ugh. God.
I fucking hate Nishitani III.
I wanted to give RGG Studios the benefit of the doubt and that they'd give him nuance later on, but no. Nishitani III is an openly bisexual big bad and they've went way too hard on every single bad stereotype for queer villains. He's openly a sadistic rapist (implicitly or explicitly depends on the dialogue), shows off how bad he is using dialogue laden with kink analogues and innuendos, is easily the most effeminate Yakuza big bad, and in general just has a veneer of homophobic sleaze to him that rubbed me the wrong way.
He's gross in ways I would've expected from 90s-very early 2010s media, and he behaves like a character the devs would've apologized for if that was true, but this game came out this year. For a franchise that's gotten better about depicting everything over time, it's an alarming step back.
Also, as a much pettier and minor gripe: The music in this one isn't that great. Deadly Struggle, Psycho's Anthem, Un Altro Appassionato and Cold Fire are excellent. The rest aren't very impactful. My love language for games is adding the OST to my iTunes regardless of whether or not I go back and listen to them, and even the Yakuza games I dislike (Judgment, 2) still ended up there. Gaiden didn't.
Lastly... Eesh. That dub work huh.
In truth, it's mostly decent. Not cataclysmically bad as a lot of doomposters and Twitter engagement farmers will have you think.
But the two most important dub voices, Kiryu and Shishido, are BAD. YongYea is incapable of delivering the right amounts of snark, bitterness and introspectiveness that define Kiryu, which is especially bad in a game where Takaya Kuroda is giving some of his best and most impactful work. He flubs a lot of the minor dialogue, and most of the finale, and while Kiryu is bored for most of the game, even in his vulnerable/supportive moments he just sounds like he wants to be home eating KFC gravy out of a cereal bowl. There's an incredibly heartfelt, crushing scene near the end which is amazing both for its place in Kiryu's arc and for justifying why people need to play Yakuza 3 and 6 to completion, and... Yeah, YongYea fucks it up. Sorry. That's why you don't hire GamerGaters to VA!
Likewise, Matt Bushell's depiction of Shishido feels alarmingly juvenile. It has the same energy of someone reading edgy manga lines into their mic, which is actually more offensive to me than YongYea's work. Yasukaze Motomiya brings an incredible depth to Shishido, allowing his bitterness and self-loathing to appear through the holes in his ironclad facade at all the right moments. His feral roars, heartbroken declarations and tired defeat in the finale are some of the franchise's best work, and... Matt Bushell just sounds bored. There's no sauce, no nuance, no passion to his work.
Other characters are fine like Holly Chou's depiction of Akame or James Burns' fantastic work as Watase, but they mean nothing when the two most prominent characters are so poorly voiced.
All in all, I'm just mad at this game for making me look like a fool. I've been saying "The worst RGG title is a 7/10 at worst" for years, and with this game being a 4/10 I now look like a clown.
4/10 I wish Akame was r- Oh, right. She is.
3 Comments
this is one of my frequent big ace moments where I stop and have to say like "wait Nishitani was supposed to be sexual?" Whereas Kiryu having the world's biggest crush on Ryuji Goda is just obvious.
Fucking Yong Yea voicing Kiryu is a bizzare chud trivia answer I never thought I'd get
MiraMiraOTW
4 months ago
There's a bit too much marker spam on the map. People rag on Ubisoft games for bloating their experience, but this game made me WISH I was playing AC Unity or something. At least there the markers weren't some guy going "oooohohhohohoh I need an egg".