This is an excellent Yakuza game. The pacing is a mess and the main story is so convoluted that only a great ending could save it. But the ending is… not much better than the rest of the main story. I would still say that it’s one of the best games that I’ve played all year. Why? Because this is one of the finest short story compilations ever put into game form. Just about every playable character has a side gig, each with its own mechanics, from street racing to bear hunting to an idol career. These deepen the characters and the game and, to quote one of Haruka Sawamura’s songs, give it “So Much More.” So what if the overarching narrative doesn’t hold together? It’s more of a framing device, anyway. There are so many stories in this game, and many of them so good (Saejima’s story in Sapporo in particular), that this game was absolutely worth the 65 hours I put into completing nearly every side mission and substory.

I've spent the last decade scrawling the trenches of Steam and Itch for a JRPG like this: the true gem in the rough, the solo indie project from someone who "gets it" on every level. Visually it looks like ass and there's minimal story or dialogue. The mechanics, though, are perfectly tuned and the world design is rich, expansive, and clever.

The combat feels strategic and fair because the numbers and outcomes are transparent, including the enemy's skills and upcoming action. It takes some time to learn its rules for timing and execution, but it's all deterministic and allows you to plan several moves ahead. The job system has the best parts of FFT, distilled down to unique skillsets with fascinating synergies and equipment-based builds. There are incentives to keep you experimenting, with gimmick bosses and enemies that will push you to review your builds. I spent most of the game feeling challenged, with many bosses demanding 3 or 4 attempts to defeat, yet rarely feeling impossible at my current gear or character level. Impressive, given the non-linear open world.

The world is huge and dense, leveraging voxels for verticality and depth in every zone. It even has some clever technical tricks up its sleeve in how it manages camera angles and cutaways when you're underground. The forced camera perspective takes some getting used to, but once I saw how many secrets and puzzles leverage this perspective, I began to appreciate it. This world simply wouldn't work if you could rotate the camera. There are secrets hidden everywhere you go, which speaks to another fundamental of good JRPGs: hunting for treasure. There are so many chests to find, and the rewards are worth the effort.

The constant platforming is easily the most controversial design choice. There are tight platforming segments packed throughout the game and many of them are not optional. Personally, I love jumping puzzles, but this may be more punishing than it needs to be. The placement of water and spikes is a concession to the need for a reset mechanism, but it feels silly. I found myself intentionally diving into spikes in order to respawn at my launch point. Still, I love the sweaty palms anxiety of these puzzles.

Otherwise, it's a world of subtle design, full of clever paths and shortcuts and sequence breaks to discover everywhere you go. As soon you've developed an understanding for what's possible, you'll get a new tool that causes you to reconsider everywhere you've been. But you rarely find yourself looking at an arbitrarily blocked path thinking "oh, I'll need a new item for that".

The artwork, music and aesthetics vary between acceptable and unpleasant because it's largely stock / CC / marketplace work. The choices are at least consistent, and there's an emphasis on simplicity (e.g. many animations are simple squash and stretch). My only technical complaint would be that, given the amount of 3D platforming, I wish the main character weren't a 2D sprite or there were more cues for depth.

The UI is better than it has any right to be. An under-appreciated fact of JRPGs is that half of the game is spent in menus, reviewing stats and equipment. Most indie games fall flat in this regard, but it's clear the author understood the importance of fluid, fast navigation through the interface. The biggest nuisance has to be switching between movement modes, but this is mostly an endgame frustration. I strongly recommend going into the assist menu and enabling the enhanced home point!

This is an incredible achievement. I'm grateful for the experience and I feel like I can finally leave this genre behind, knowing that someone finally did it right.

While it was not exactly 100% what I expected the game to be, I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Its a good tale about finding yourself while managing or breaking away of expectations set on you, and learning to live your life for you and not for everybody else.

It also helps that is has a really good soundtrack and a very quirky sense of humor that I loved.