The story is the best so far but the gameplay was slightly better before.
I didn't play the original GameCube or PS2 versions of the first two games so I expected going into this system was going to be different for me, but other than some quality of life changes, I found that this game carries over a lot more elements than I thought.
There's no sprint but honestly it's not that bad, he does a brisk jog most of the time. You can't save whenever but there are relatively frequent places as long as you're not engaged in something. You can't pause cutscenes but you can enable to skip them in the menu. You can't just change difficulty for some reason. Which is especially weird because if you fail an amount of times, it asks you if you want to lower it "temporarily" (if you're on normal). In fact, I'll just tell you what part I used it for.
There's a part where the police chase you and it tells you to tap X if you get caught but tapping it doesn't do anything, I let it go and it had the exact same results. That's the thing, it doesn't matter how many times you press a prompt, sometimes you'll just fail anyway and I think that's stupid especially when it's a boss holding you in a chokehold or something. Same with quick time events, sometimes the timing is crazy fast, it's not fatal if you miss it but really annoying when you're trying to do a combo.
Chasing in general isn't done as actively or relentlessly. In Kiwami, you could see them on the map but here they just kind of pop up and surprise you which isn't all that bad most of the time but it can get annoying if you just did one and then another comes straight after.
As far as the actual remaster aspects, Heat mode is activated by rapidly tapping R2 but R2 isn't an easily tappable button, it's a trigger. It loads before the menu and then loads again afterwards (not a load screen, the save data) then when you go to save it always saves twice, no matter what button you push, it saves and then saves again. Those aren't necessarily that bad but minor inconveniences.
Holding R1 in a fight lets you play it more like a fighting game by having the camera swivel. Combat is really very similar, almost where we left off so you don't have to worry too much about downgrading. You still have to upgrade individual aspects but you don't have to do the skill tree of abilities, they're luckily just unlocked through level, it feels a lot more organized that way to me.
As for story, it starts out with a flash forward revealing the catalyst of this game, the thing is, it backtracks. It doesn't need to have that flash forward, it could just be told linearly and probably have a greater effect. You don't even reach the same part from the beginning until you're already hours in. It's not like an out of context, only able to be understood at the ending thing and it's not even playable, it's just there.
But after that we get some of the stuff I was waiting for. Now some people will be turned off by this but just wait and see. Kiryu moves to Okinawa to take care of an orphanage and you actually interact with these kids and help solve their problems. Sometimes it's the little slice of life stuff like that, that makes this series special for me.
And because of that, I feel like we have some good characters. I've felt most of the Yakuza characters have just been mid in the last 2 games but this game has a good amount of good characters and I actually came to care about these kids. I think Nagoshi was finally out of the practice stage and the series fully started to blossom here. 🌸 There're problems that carry over from the past games but I'm not going to bother reiterating.
It definitely has some of the best moments so far but there's a butcher scene...he may be a bad guy but I'm still not a fan of it and the graphics really didn't age well for the scene in particular, everything else isn't too much of a downgrade in my opinion though.
You can use your phone camera for certain quick time events to capture little memes to put on your blog, I ended up doing those the most because I wasn't all that impressed by the side missions. I believe that's where certain special attacks come from.
There isn't a funeral chase sequence, luckily, but there are returning things like the Colosseum, which I personally don't care to see keep returning over and over. I've more or less accepted that Kamurocho is going to be a main stay but this series rhymes a little too much. I'd like to see something actually done with the Purgatory because you get there and what? Walk a hallway with all these buildings you can't interact with to get to one set location? When you have the potential for all these side quests? When I first saw it, I thought of Wall Market from FF7 and it has the potential to be like that but it just isn't.
Sometimes there will be a big heavy duty guy holding a chair or something in your way and unless you have a weapon or special move handy, you're pretty much screwed and even then, you drop the weapon if he hits you and it takes more time to pick it up than it does for him to hit you again so it can get stuck at his feet so you're limited to just little punches here and there and more or less tanking his hits.
I found Kiwami 2 to be the longest but this one was on par with my Kiwami 1 length, clocking in at 17 hours. There's also "premium adventure" which unlocks after you finish the game, adding more minigames, modes and costumes. A good game for sure, probably a 7 or 7.5/10, if it wasn't for some gameplay aspects, I'd say this was the best one so far.
I didn't play the original GameCube or PS2 versions of the first two games so I expected going into this system was going to be different for me, but other than some quality of life changes, I found that this game carries over a lot more elements than I thought.
There's no sprint but honestly it's not that bad, he does a brisk jog most of the time. You can't save whenever but there are relatively frequent places as long as you're not engaged in something. You can't pause cutscenes but you can enable to skip them in the menu. You can't just change difficulty for some reason. Which is especially weird because if you fail an amount of times, it asks you if you want to lower it "temporarily" (if you're on normal). In fact, I'll just tell you what part I used it for.
There's a part where the police chase you and it tells you to tap X if you get caught but tapping it doesn't do anything, I let it go and it had the exact same results. That's the thing, it doesn't matter how many times you press a prompt, sometimes you'll just fail anyway and I think that's stupid especially when it's a boss holding you in a chokehold or something. Same with quick time events, sometimes the timing is crazy fast, it's not fatal if you miss it but really annoying when you're trying to do a combo.
Chasing in general isn't done as actively or relentlessly. In Kiwami, you could see them on the map but here they just kind of pop up and surprise you which isn't all that bad most of the time but it can get annoying if you just did one and then another comes straight after.
As far as the actual remaster aspects, Heat mode is activated by rapidly tapping R2 but R2 isn't an easily tappable button, it's a trigger. It loads before the menu and then loads again afterwards (not a load screen, the save data) then when you go to save it always saves twice, no matter what button you push, it saves and then saves again. Those aren't necessarily that bad but minor inconveniences.
Holding R1 in a fight lets you play it more like a fighting game by having the camera swivel. Combat is really very similar, almost where we left off so you don't have to worry too much about downgrading. You still have to upgrade individual aspects but you don't have to do the skill tree of abilities, they're luckily just unlocked through level, it feels a lot more organized that way to me.
As for story, it starts out with a flash forward revealing the catalyst of this game, the thing is, it backtracks. It doesn't need to have that flash forward, it could just be told linearly and probably have a greater effect. You don't even reach the same part from the beginning until you're already hours in. It's not like an out of context, only able to be understood at the ending thing and it's not even playable, it's just there.
But after that we get some of the stuff I was waiting for. Now some people will be turned off by this but just wait and see. Kiryu moves to Okinawa to take care of an orphanage and you actually interact with these kids and help solve their problems. Sometimes it's the little slice of life stuff like that, that makes this series special for me.
And because of that, I feel like we have some good characters. I've felt most of the Yakuza characters have just been mid in the last 2 games but this game has a good amount of good characters and I actually came to care about these kids. I think Nagoshi was finally out of the practice stage and the series fully started to blossom here. 🌸 There're problems that carry over from the past games but I'm not going to bother reiterating.
It definitely has some of the best moments so far but there's a butcher scene...he may be a bad guy but I'm still not a fan of it and the graphics really didn't age well for the scene in particular, everything else isn't too much of a downgrade in my opinion though.
You can use your phone camera for certain quick time events to capture little memes to put on your blog, I ended up doing those the most because I wasn't all that impressed by the side missions. I believe that's where certain special attacks come from.
There isn't a funeral chase sequence, luckily, but there are returning things like the Colosseum, which I personally don't care to see keep returning over and over. I've more or less accepted that Kamurocho is going to be a main stay but this series rhymes a little too much. I'd like to see something actually done with the Purgatory because you get there and what? Walk a hallway with all these buildings you can't interact with to get to one set location? When you have the potential for all these side quests? When I first saw it, I thought of Wall Market from FF7 and it has the potential to be like that but it just isn't.
Sometimes there will be a big heavy duty guy holding a chair or something in your way and unless you have a weapon or special move handy, you're pretty much screwed and even then, you drop the weapon if he hits you and it takes more time to pick it up than it does for him to hit you again so it can get stuck at his feet so you're limited to just little punches here and there and more or less tanking his hits.
I found Kiwami 2 to be the longest but this one was on par with my Kiwami 1 length, clocking in at 17 hours. There's also "premium adventure" which unlocks after you finish the game, adding more minigames, modes and costumes. A good game for sure, probably a 7 or 7.5/10, if it wasn't for some gameplay aspects, I'd say this was the best one so far.