Just so we’re clear. I have never played a Yakuza game before this one. And I also don’t usually like turn-based JRPGs. But Yakuza like a Dragon both made me a new fan of the Yakuza series, but also made me sit my butt down and got me hardcore invested in a good JRPG. And personally I think that makes this game pretty darn good. So if you’re someone who is usually indifferent to JRPGs in general, and want to get into one. This game might be exactly what you’re looking for. Below I’ve put my pros and cons of what I liked about this one, and the small parts I didn’t like about it.

+Battles are hilarious and I love them
The battles in Like a Dragon are… bum bum bum turn based. Now for a lot of people, myself included, this is a dealbreaker. Because most times turn based combat can be pretty boring and slow paced, or take a while to get interesting. However, Like a Dragon does a lot of things differently from other “traditional RPGs”. Basically the game is like Dragon Quest’s themes combined with a silly contemporary setting. All of the character's use classic RPG tropes but through the filter of a modern urban timeframe. So instead of fighting slimes and zombies. You fight the homeless, and gangsters. Your wizards and spellcasters are bums who breathe fire by doing whiskey belches, host and hostess who pop the cork on freezing wine and smash people with birthday cake. Instead of monks you have hitmen who are strapped with that thang on them. Instead of a sword wielding hero, you have a bat welding Yakuza. And all of your skills and abilities reflect this modern setting. Want to do huge amounts of damage, try the ultimate BDSM move (yes that’s real). Want to take out a large amount of enemies? Use the postmates app that’s like a final fantasy summon. But you summon a mentally insane knife man, instead of a dragon or whatever is in final fantasy. This makes battles very, very funny to watch. There’s something very cathartic about fighting a high ranking member of the Chinese Mafia using stuff like CD’s tossed like ninja stars, buckets of ice, and the move that literally just has your party member unload into an enemy with a glock. But it isn’t just you with these goofy ah attacks, your enemies are just as ridiculous. From the “Turncoat Titillator” to “Subjugation-kun”, and the “Twitchy Streamer”, oh, who could forget my personal favorite “Druggler”. This game has a sense of humor that makes the turn based combat really entertaining. And helps mitigate my issues with RPG combat.

+Character Building is really addicting
To add onto that, the way you build your characters is something I found especially good. Each party member who joins you has upsides and downsides. Some have high HP but low MP, others have bad magic stats, but great agility. But you can build your party members to be better than how they start out using the job system. Basically each character has their own “starting job” which is usually their best job. It’s the one that fits their role the best. However you can change a character’s starting job to one of many different jobs. Now changing to a new Job usually means losing temporary stat bonuses, however there’s an upside to this. Because every job has their own permanent stat bonuses that they award to the character using that job, as well as giving permanent abilities that transfer from Job to Job. This means you can train a character up in a certain job and shore up their stats in places they might be lacking in, as well as giving opportunities to change up a party member’s playstyle if you’re getting bored of it. I’m probably not doing the system justice but when I first discovered how it worked, I literally felt like an ocean of possibilities had just opened up in my playthrough. And I think that the variety and options it provides, not only makes the turn based combat all the more enjoyable, but it also gives the player something to always be working for. I genuinely wish more RPGs did this sort of thing.

+Great side content and sidequests
Now, I’ve never played a Yakuza game before this one. But I am familiar with how one normally goes. And in typical Yakuza fashion (i think) there’s a lot of side content. And personally I loved what I played of it. The sidequests are funny, and wholesome at times. I’ll leave finding those up to you, because they’re better when you don’t know what to expect. And the minigames are silly yet very addicting to get into. Like I didn’t think it'd get hooked on the Batting Cage for like 2 hours but… here we are. There’s a mini game where you do trivia in a vocational school and the math quiz took me like 9 tries because I’m an idiot. And the Go-Karting… OH MAN THE GO-KARTING. Is it better than mario kart? No, is it silly? You bet your sweet bippy it’s silly. There’s Karaoke, Golf, and Darts that you can play with your party members. It’s all great stuff. I think the way the game gives you the option to take a break from the dramatic story to just… play darts is… very unique. And something I like a lot. Heck, doing the business management minigame probably contributed to like a quarter of my playtime, so that should tell you how good the side content is… Because Good lord there’s no reason the bezos simulator should be that fun.

+/-The story has a slow start, but I found myself really invested in it
But this game can’t escape all of the classic RPG tropes, because the story has a very slow start. As someone who finished the whole game, I can say that getting through the first chunk of the story was worth it. But… I can definitely see how someone wouldn’t enjoy that as much. I mean quite literally my first 5 hours of gameplay was just doing the introduction segment with opening cutscenes and basic tutorial battles. And I thought that was a little excessive. But I think it’s worth sticking through because the story after that is, in my opinion, really solid. It’s got elements of crime/family drama. Silly anime battles that contain buff men ripping off their shirts to show how serious they are. And it has some genuinely touching moments of drama. I liked the story overall, and think that it’s worth getting through the slow beginning. To get invested in the payoff later on.

-The late game has a bit too much grinding…
Now my biggest issue with the game was the grinding. Now it isn’t a prevalent issue throughout the whole game, but you’ll definitely need to grind at least once or twice to beat some of the fights in this one. And good lord, you’ll definitely need to grind for the last few fights of the game. The rest of the game is well balanced but there’s this one fight at the end of the 12th chapter that’s just absurd! There is a huge difficulty spike around that point, and that unfortunately means grinding. I think throughout my whole playthrough I needed to grind like 3 different times. Now thankfully, it isn’t obnoxious to grind during these cases. Since there’s literally an enemy that drops a ton of experience and isn’t too hard to find. But grinding is still grinding, no matter what way you slice it. And regardless I think the absurd-ness of the latter fights could’ve been turned down a bit to avoid the grinding. Oh- and then there’s other grinding too besides just levels. There’s grinding for ultimate weapons, and job level grinding, and grinding for good healing items. And yeah… there’s a good chunk of grinding. Now I think it’s all manageable, if not a little annoying at times. But if you’re someone who just cannot do grinding in any sense. Then maybe skip this one. It’d be a sad reason to, since the game is really good other than that. But I wouldn’t blame you if that turned you off from the experience.

Overall like a dragon is a really solid JRPG, with some of the trimmings. But I would be wrong if I said I didn’t love it. I think that if you can tolerate RPGs then you’ll really like this one, like I did. But if you’re someone who hates these kinds of games, you might want to try the other Yakuza games.

Personally I loved it, an easy 4.5/5

An adorable remake of the absolute classic from the SNES. This one is honestly one of my favorite Mario RPGs that Nintendo has released. And this remake does wonders at not only retelling the original's story, but in some ways surpassing the original in quality and gameplay changes.

+The Battle System has been improved for the better
The way you fight feels just as fluent as the original. The Mario RPGs have always been the “anti-button mashing” RPG and Mario RPG is a perfect example of that. Every attack, every dodge, every input in battle is player involved, and I think that’s one of the things that makes this game stand out, even today. The action commands are simple, yet always challenging to master. Making it so you’re spending most of your time in battles learning how to best optimize your timing, rather than just “getting through another battle”. But that’s just stuff that the original did, because the remake packs in a bunch of new battle features. The ability to switch party members on the fly was incredibly nice! It made battles more dynamic and added new levels of planning. That new mechanic in combination with the “action command meter” that would fill up as you gained a combo of action commands really made efficient battling rewarding. That in further combination with the ally super moves that changed depending on your party layout was just… The new system of battling far surpassed the original in terms of quality.

+The graphics look stellar and give the game a fresh new look
When I first saw the new art style in trailers I wasn’t quite sure if it was going to work or not. But after playing through the whole game. I can definitively say that the new style is a boon for the game. Rather than a curse. Everything, from the adorable cutscenes to the remake sprite animations to that cute little level up dance is just… GAH ADORABLE! It’s all ADORABLE and I love the style for this game!

+The remade soundtrack is very high quality
I wouldn’t say that it suprasses the soundtrack for the original. But it definitely served as a moderate replacement for the most part. The remade tracks all had good instrument choices and it didn’t sound “weaker” than the original. It all landed really well in my opinion.

+Geno
Geno. 12 year old me who was obsessed with Geno being in Smash Bros would be very happy to know that Geno got acknowledgement in 2023. I still love Geno and it was very cool to see him alive and acknowledged.

-Frame drops and performance issues
For some reason there were quite a few frame drops that I experienced. Which was a little surprising considering that this game was made for the nintendo switch… Areas like Marrymore, The Sunken Ship, and a few others had small lagging issues. And I experienced lag a few times in battles as well. It wasn’t awful or anything, just a small issue in the grand scheme of things.

-Can’t Dodge Makes my blood boil
I guess this is an issue with the endgame mostly. Basically certain attacks instead of giving you a chance to dodge they’re basically undodgeable. And just display the text Can’t Dodge and give you guaranteed damage. Throughout most of the game this isn’t too bad of an issue. It’s used sparingly and the attacks never deal too much damage. But once you get to the last few areas of the game the bosses start having multiple of these “Can’t Dodge” attacks at one time. And instead of doing moderate to small damage like before. These attacks that you can’t see coming or predict, nor can you dodge. Start doing like 150 damage at a time. And idk man, when attacks that you can’t predict or try to see coming start dealing that much damage it starts feeling unfair in some ways.

I did have some small issues but overall I liked the Super Mario RPG remake. And I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a new, simple RPG to try. Or to anyone who wants to relive the classic in a brand new way.

4.5/5 A wonderful game, just not perfect.

I recommend Risk of Rain Returns. You should play it. It is one of the most satisfying roguelikes I’ve ever played. It’s fantastic.

But good lord does it have a learning curve. Like one of the steepest learning curves in any roguelike I’ve ever played. I’ve introduced 2 friends to this game and their very first piece of feedback is always. “This game is hard!”. And I’m not mocking them in any way, because that was my first reaction to this game as well. Compared to ROR2 or really any roguelike I’ve ever played before. This game demands attentiveness to enemy attack animations, avoiding groups of enemies, and constant movement to avoid projectiles. And if you don’t meet the game’s demands? Then you will die. Lots, and lots of times. But a steep learning curve can also mean a satisfying learning experience. And ROR-R delivers on a very satisfying “get good” experience. Throughout my almost 30 hours of gameplay I sat there dying, learning, and improving at this game. (and also getting carried many times by my friend who’s way better than I am at this game). I finally got my very first solo victory. And you know what? It was satisfying! I felt very accomplished, and I got to that point because I learned, adapted the way I played, and overcame. So if that’s something you enjoy. You should give Risk of Rain Returns a try.

Compared to ROR2 the road from the beginning of a run, to the end boss. Is way more fun in ROR-R compared to the sequel. The final boss proves to be a great ending challenge for all of the skills you’ve practiced during your run. And plus, Province is just way cooler than Mithrix. Speaking of which, ROR-R does a lot of things that I prefer over ROR2. For example, the way you unlock most survivor alternate abilities is through the “province trials”. Which are little challenges that serve as mini tutorials for the new abilities that you’re about to unlock. Cool idea, and it’s sometimes well executed. But there are also a good few challenges that just… aren’t fun. Like all my homies hate highway robbery. But overall I enjoyed the trials because they were a more streamlined way of unlocking abilities. Rather than ROR2’s system that I’m personally not a huge fan of. On the subject of things I dislike from ROR2 that ROR-R does better. The teleporter events are like 100x better in this game than they are in the sequel. The teleporter events in Risk of Rain Returns feel more like “big boss spawn with opportunities to loot” instead of Risk of Rain 2’s teleporter event which is “Stand in this box and punch this big guy for a while and get 1 item”. I think Risk of Rain Returns does a much better job making the teleporter event feel like something I look forward to, rather than something I just have to do to move onto the next stage.

And finally, the soundtrack is great. Like they got Chris Christodoulou on this, it’s going to be fire. What else were you expecting? The visuals are also very pretty too. The pixel art is genuinely beautifully done, every single sprite and background is bursting with color. And they included these animated cutscenes that I am personally a huge fan of.

I mean I could keep promoting this game to you but… You should just buy it. It’s super fun, super hard, and super hostile towards your organs. And I mean that last part in the best way possible… I think? This game is exactly what Risk of Rain should be. And as gearbox moves forward with the series, I believe they should take notes from this one, as well as risk of rain 2.

A very confident 4.5/5