Starting my commitment to experiencing more FE with one of it's more challenging entries did a lot to help me appreciate the games more, as well as giving me fodder for why it needed to tone it down a couple hundred notches. This game will beat you into remembering it's systems. Every wrong move it's catastrophic, since party members are fragile and die for good. This is a playstyle I never even considered in new entries. The idea of losing out on the social element felt like ripping out a chunk of the game itself. That isn't how this game works, and it's honestly a great challenge and feels incredibly rewarding. That is when it isn't yanked away from you over and over again.

I know there are old FE heads who would like for the series to go back to it's brutal roots, but I just ain't one of them. Besides the aesthetics of the GBA, I felt absolutely fatigued from a lot of how this game manages itself. Hit rates are abysmal and just waste so much time. Having every single board sucker punch you with an ambush at the eleventh hour lost all effectiveness when it wouldn't have even been a problem had I not failed to hit the boss 3 TURNS in a row. Pair all that with the enemy incredibly effectively dogpiling a single unit like a school of piranha, and you just feel robbed over and over. Having to restart chapters that take well over an hour to get through, I just couldn't be bothered.


I've been saying this about a lot of series lately, but playing newer entries makes it real hard to go back. This game helped me internalize a lot of good habits with these games going forward, while giving a strong apprehension in going back.

Combat feels a bit off. Switching styles could be more instantaneous to help it flow better. You can do this by activating your EX mode but it barely lasts and using it up removes your ability to use special moves, so I barely got a chance to use special moves which sucks the enjoyment out of encounters. There also felt like less variety in your special takedowns. Even after scouring Kamurocho for the QR codes necessary to get vital combat abilities, opportunities rarely presented themselves to really showcase the cool moves I earned. The hyper-specificity of how to get them to proc led to me just kicking fools while they were down 4 out of 5 times. I really wish I didn’t find every RGG games combat so shallow because it’s genuinely the only thing that keeps these games from entering my personal upper echelon. No Yakuza game ever clicked with me 100% on a gameplay level so it might just be me. The tailing minigame put me to sleep, and they use it exponentially more than in other RGG games. They drag on so long I genuinely think it’s the thing that’s keeping this game from a higher score for me.

Thankfully this game has the best narrative of any Yakuza game so far. I'd never describe a Yakuza game's story as "gripping". They're schlocky but more than serviceable, but this time around I was fully invested. It helps that it shows a lot more restraint with the twists, even with it being a detective story. Excellent cast of characters. Yagami is cool and likable. The crew you end up assembling are also great, and some of the antagonists are my favorite in the series, Hamura was excellent in particular. The dub is really strong. I could easily recommend it.

I didn’t really care for the side quest structure at all, in that some of them need you to make friends with unknown individuals to progress them, and without, after all these years, decently functional quest marking, makes some of them impossible to complete without a guide. I ended up just befriending everyone I could before doing any side case, which aren’t nearly as fleshed out and way more tedious. The side cases themselves are an absolute joy of course. Multiple multipart stories feel way more intimate this time around, which admittedly does lend some justification to the friendship system.

It’s such a brief moment but I can’t not mention the woman harassment simulator that I honestly can't tell if it was supposed to make the characters in question uncomfortable or uplift them in some cumbrains idea of empowerment.

The diegetic UI is still amazing. There is a weight to the combat that feels perfect. The excellent sound design keeps the atmosphere constantly tense. I wish they did anything at all to make the story less predictable, even for those new to the experience. The game also looks unreal, mostly due to the fantastic lighting. I played the original Dead Space on a Toshiba laptop in 2009 that was falling apart so I can confirm the upgrade is fairly tangible.

P.S. no game should ever cost more than 60 dollars no exception.