rookdorf
This review contains spoilers
A huge, densely packed, amazingly presented game. There's so much in here that even if not everything is quite someone's taste, they're sure to have a blast with the rest.
The world takes the forefront here. Taking 20 minute pitstops from the original game and turning them into huge, fleshed out, beautiful zones is a wonder and doesn't feel like padding or filler in any way. Tasteful changes with the context of the rest of the Compilation's existence, like Cissnei showing up in Gongaga, or the addition of Roche to really drive home degradation, are really cool to see as well. On the side activities: there was a moment where I found something that looked cool, but had nothing happening there yet. I was initially a little disappointed, since it felt like it wasn't possible to really explore and make cool discoveries on your own. But when I said that made the game world feel not super open, a friend made the comment that it's more like a checklist that you can optionally go through as you take in the zone, and that actually shifted my view a bit. I did enjoy all of the individual activities at least enough to full clear every zone as soon as it was allowed, and only by the very end was I getting a little tired of them (climbing feels pretty bad though). I think these open world sections could have been spread out a little better too, but it wasn't a huge deal. One other note is that the party interactions are some of the best parts of the game, and while you get plenty during the main story, exploration is pretty silent in comparison. I wish the party had more to say as you wandered around on came across certain locations.
Other side content, like minigames, is of course an enormous part of the game too. This is one of the biggest impressions I have from the original game, and I thought Remake was already following up well here, so this was really cool to see maintained as a huge part of exploring this world. Not all of them quite hit (Aerith Cactuars was a bit painful), or maybe they had slightly too high goals for just how many minigames there are (especially with Round 2 of many of them dumped all at once in chapter 12), but I enjoyed clearing all of them. Cactuar racing was probably my favorite, that's a whole Mario Kart with a bunch of course variety and music as a little side mode in this already massive game. Queen's Blood was also a pretty fun game that earned its "premiere sidegame" status for the most part, those the visuals could have had a little more flair. Quests are also a significant step up, none felt super plain or phoned in and it's cool to see each sort of spotlight a party member as a companion.
The combat is just great overall. Remake was already great here, and synergy abilities are a fun way to encourage controlling different characters even more. Every character is fun to play to the point where I like getting forced into certain parties for sections with characters I was underusing. There's a lot of systems, but nothing (pre-postgame sims) is so demanding that it requires mastering every system simultaneously; you can sort of pick and choose what to ignore. There's a ton of room for player expression too. I watched a friend play briefly and it was super cool to see that he chose basically none of the same actions as me and played with a completely different style that also totally worked.
The follow up to Remake's ending was sort of what I was most looking forward to all game. Most of the time though, the game seems content to let it lie under the surface and just straightforwardly play out the plot of the original game. This recreation was executed beautifully and was a joy to play, but it did leave me wanting more than the handful of 3 minute long Zack crumbs we got sprinkled throughout + hints at deeper happenings like the Tifa Weapon scene. Of course, this all comes to a head in the contentious final 2 hours of the game. I'm not as sour on this as others seem to be, but I also don't really feel like it left me satisfied as a big fan of Remake's changes (and I'm sure it wouldn't leave Remake haters satisfied either). I guess we'll see in 2028 or whenever, but since Rebirth didn't quite follow up Remake-specific points in the best way, I don't totally trust part 3 to do more than have us go to Northern Crater, collect Huge Materia, have some very odd modified Mideel/Lifestream sequence where Cloud re-figures out who Zack is despite fighting alongside him briefly already, and then have the entire party fight Sephiroth at the edge of creation again. Regardless of all this, I like that there's still open endings and things to speculate, but I wish it had been spread out better throughout the game and told more clearly. Being lukewarm on this section doesn't really spoil the other 98 hours I spent on my main playthrough.
On characters, I just want to say that Cait Sith had the biggest glow up by far (though they're cowards for pronouncing it that way), and Yuffie was a little too one note for how prominent she was, which was a bit of a let down after how great she was in Intermission. Also, what was the point of Reno being gone for almost the whole game?
And finally, the music has to be commented on. There's some amazing stuff here, with plenty of variety. The straightforward recreations of originals (Cosmo Canyon) are beautiful. FF7-themed mixes of classics (Battle on the Big Bridge) are great. Totally original compositions (Tseng & Elena fight, which continues the cool idea of each Turk having a musical "character") are amazing. Is every single song a 10/10? Probably not, but there's very little to complain about (slightly too many chocobo remixes), and this is one I'm sure to pore over and enjoy even more after the game. The one negative comment I have here is about how frequent musical changes happen as you go around the world in a normal exploring cadence. Maybe you get on a chocobo, maybe you walk by the moogle hut or Chadley, maybe you enter or exit a town or fast travel or get in the buggy, but all of these can disrupt what you're hearing, and it makes it a little difficult to fully immerse in the world. In Gongaga I would sometimes slowly walk around just to keep the atmosphere going, which was great when I gave it room to breathe. Cosmo Canyon (the town) was large enough that this was also maintained (aside from near Chadley), and this worked super well.
Overall, while not the most perfect game in existence, this is an amazing game that I was glad to have 110+ hours melt away in. I went for full completion in almost everything (have not finished postgame Chadley sims or Hard mode on most chapters, but pretty much everything else) and am excited to see where this trilogy takes us for its conclusion.
The world takes the forefront here. Taking 20 minute pitstops from the original game and turning them into huge, fleshed out, beautiful zones is a wonder and doesn't feel like padding or filler in any way. Tasteful changes with the context of the rest of the Compilation's existence, like Cissnei showing up in Gongaga, or the addition of Roche to really drive home degradation, are really cool to see as well. On the side activities: there was a moment where I found something that looked cool, but had nothing happening there yet. I was initially a little disappointed, since it felt like it wasn't possible to really explore and make cool discoveries on your own. But when I said that made the game world feel not super open, a friend made the comment that it's more like a checklist that you can optionally go through as you take in the zone, and that actually shifted my view a bit. I did enjoy all of the individual activities at least enough to full clear every zone as soon as it was allowed, and only by the very end was I getting a little tired of them (climbing feels pretty bad though). I think these open world sections could have been spread out a little better too, but it wasn't a huge deal. One other note is that the party interactions are some of the best parts of the game, and while you get plenty during the main story, exploration is pretty silent in comparison. I wish the party had more to say as you wandered around on came across certain locations.
Other side content, like minigames, is of course an enormous part of the game too. This is one of the biggest impressions I have from the original game, and I thought Remake was already following up well here, so this was really cool to see maintained as a huge part of exploring this world. Not all of them quite hit (Aerith Cactuars was a bit painful), or maybe they had slightly too high goals for just how many minigames there are (especially with Round 2 of many of them dumped all at once in chapter 12), but I enjoyed clearing all of them. Cactuar racing was probably my favorite, that's a whole Mario Kart with a bunch of course variety and music as a little side mode in this already massive game. Queen's Blood was also a pretty fun game that earned its "premiere sidegame" status for the most part, those the visuals could have had a little more flair. Quests are also a significant step up, none felt super plain or phoned in and it's cool to see each sort of spotlight a party member as a companion.
The combat is just great overall. Remake was already great here, and synergy abilities are a fun way to encourage controlling different characters even more. Every character is fun to play to the point where I like getting forced into certain parties for sections with characters I was underusing. There's a lot of systems, but nothing (pre-postgame sims) is so demanding that it requires mastering every system simultaneously; you can sort of pick and choose what to ignore. There's a ton of room for player expression too. I watched a friend play briefly and it was super cool to see that he chose basically none of the same actions as me and played with a completely different style that also totally worked.
The follow up to Remake's ending was sort of what I was most looking forward to all game. Most of the time though, the game seems content to let it lie under the surface and just straightforwardly play out the plot of the original game. This recreation was executed beautifully and was a joy to play, but it did leave me wanting more than the handful of 3 minute long Zack crumbs we got sprinkled throughout + hints at deeper happenings like the Tifa Weapon scene. Of course, this all comes to a head in the contentious final 2 hours of the game. I'm not as sour on this as others seem to be, but I also don't really feel like it left me satisfied as a big fan of Remake's changes (and I'm sure it wouldn't leave Remake haters satisfied either). I guess we'll see in 2028 or whenever, but since Rebirth didn't quite follow up Remake-specific points in the best way, I don't totally trust part 3 to do more than have us go to Northern Crater, collect Huge Materia, have some very odd modified Mideel/Lifestream sequence where Cloud re-figures out who Zack is despite fighting alongside him briefly already, and then have the entire party fight Sephiroth at the edge of creation again. Regardless of all this, I like that there's still open endings and things to speculate, but I wish it had been spread out better throughout the game and told more clearly. Being lukewarm on this section doesn't really spoil the other 98 hours I spent on my main playthrough.
On characters, I just want to say that Cait Sith had the biggest glow up by far (though they're cowards for pronouncing it that way), and Yuffie was a little too one note for how prominent she was, which was a bit of a let down after how great she was in Intermission. Also, what was the point of Reno being gone for almost the whole game?
And finally, the music has to be commented on. There's some amazing stuff here, with plenty of variety. The straightforward recreations of originals (Cosmo Canyon) are beautiful. FF7-themed mixes of classics (Battle on the Big Bridge) are great. Totally original compositions (Tseng & Elena fight, which continues the cool idea of each Turk having a musical "character") are amazing. Is every single song a 10/10? Probably not, but there's very little to complain about (slightly too many chocobo remixes), and this is one I'm sure to pore over and enjoy even more after the game. The one negative comment I have here is about how frequent musical changes happen as you go around the world in a normal exploring cadence. Maybe you get on a chocobo, maybe you walk by the moogle hut or Chadley, maybe you enter or exit a town or fast travel or get in the buggy, but all of these can disrupt what you're hearing, and it makes it a little difficult to fully immerse in the world. In Gongaga I would sometimes slowly walk around just to keep the atmosphere going, which was great when I gave it room to breathe. Cosmo Canyon (the town) was large enough that this was also maintained (aside from near Chadley), and this worked super well.
Overall, while not the most perfect game in existence, this is an amazing game that I was glad to have 110+ hours melt away in. I went for full completion in almost everything (have not finished postgame Chadley sims or Hard mode on most chapters, but pretty much everything else) and am excited to see where this trilogy takes us for its conclusion.
Starting with the positives: combat is a significant step up from 7. Leaning into positional requirements is a cool angle, and while manual movement is a great change, there's still a bit of frustration that can come from allies and enemies shifting around just enough to screw up what you were trying to do. Basic attacks being a powerful and viable option with combo attacks, back attacks, follow up, and SP regain is also fun to play with. Even though your strategies don't change a massive amount of the time (in late game, most fights had large packs, which meant I would use whatever strong skill hit as many enemies as possible, then clean up the rest), there's usually just barely enough going on to mix you up, like an enemy guarding and requiring a grapple break. If every job was as cool and in depth as Dragon of Dojima, this would be a pretty incredible game, because that's by far the most interesting and engaging one here. You can tell in the back of the RGG's heads that they still know that a brawler is just the right fit for these stories a lot of the time though, especially in that one moment in a certain boss fight. Also, a lot of the side content was pretty good, and Honolulu, while not my favorite RGG city, was a fun new environment to explore.
On a more critical note though, the story is easily one of the weaker ones in the franchise. For a lot of the runtime, it remained either frustrating or uninteresting to me. The first goal of the main plot remains the main goal for like 85% of the game (despite being achieved briefly in the middle) without really giving you quite enough of a reason to care as much as the characters seem to. This is especially true on the Hawaii side, which I was definitely into at the start, but failed to progress in a way that kept me super invested. The one big twist there was super poorly executed, especially after playing Gaiden, and the way it set back the characters' goals just kept me so checked out or annoyed. The Japan side is a little better, though honestly that's completely to do with Kiryu and almost none to do with the actual plot going on there, which has its own share of frustrating turns. Maybe I just don't like Ichiban enough for him to carry a plot in the same way Kiryu can; ironically, this game eroded my confidence in him as a protagonist who can stand on his own going forward.
A trend that I've picked up on that stands out as bizarre to me is the last few games completely lacking confidence or respect for what just happened in the previous game, walking back decisions and saying "actually that thing they did was stupid and doesn't work." Consequences and fallout that change the game's world are cool to see in general, but Lost Judgment handled a post-7 world in a much better way than 8 to me. This is especially frustrating as someone who really liked and respected 6, which it does not feel like RGG themselves do (which they already showed with 7). In some ways, this feels like a reactionary apology for some of the complaints that people had about 6, but pulled off in a way that just reinforces to me that they were correct to have 6 play out how it did. (Some vague spoilers ahead) Pulling in key characters from Kiryu's past only to have them not really do much other than get 1 more fight and then get a 5 minute spotlight feels like a "there, sorry we didn't do that before, are you happy now?" kind of gesture without much relevance or substance to me. And I get that part of the theme is letting Kiryu not have to be a stubborn solo hero, and having him push forward, but a more focused solo journey works a lot better as a sendoff to me. The Life Links and Memories of a Dragon were sort of in the same camp. Sure, it was nice to see a lot of characters and places from throughout the series acknowledged one more time and hear some brief thoughts from Kiryu on each, but the execution makes them feel all like a bit of a tease and not super vital to Kiryu's story. All of the Daidoji stuff is also done in such a weird way that sometimes feels in line with 6/some of Gaiden, sometimes feels totally irrelevant, sometimes bafflingly ignores other happenings in the story, and then eventually decides to recognize those developments without a word about doing so. It cheapens 6 and what came earlier in 8 itself in a very unsatisfying and frustrating way. I think there's a story in here, if you combine most of Gaiden and bits and pieces of 8, that would be a truly worthy follow up and sendoff for Kiryu, but it's buried under a load of other plots, fallout from 7's decisions, and incohesive twists. Where it eventually ends is a solid enough spot, but it got there in such a way that didn't deliver on almost any of its potential and has extremely little narrative or emotional payoff.
And a couple nitpicks that didn't fit elsewhere: this game made me realize how much I dislike Ichiban's suit (and most of the 7 cast's Japan outfits overall). Going to Hawaii was an instant improvement after the brief PTSD endured from (Chapter 1 spoilers) infiltrating the Seiryu base again, in the same outfits, with the same jobs, with the same underground dungeon and the same theme as in 7. I groaned when eventually the suit returned. Also, it feels like there is no good language to play this game in if you speak English. I played in Japanese, which was good overall, but major American characters speaking completely incomprehensible English really took me out of it, and one character in particular really suffered from it. This game also contained one of the best substories in the franchise (Let It Snow), perfectly showcasing their unique balance of goofy and emotional, but also a slew of just awful "romance" (literally just assault) substories. And finally, there were 1-2 standout new characters to me that I did generally enjoy overall and are probably what I'll remember fondly from this game as it ages (name spoilers): Yamai and maybe Tomizawa.
On a more critical note though, the story is easily one of the weaker ones in the franchise. For a lot of the runtime, it remained either frustrating or uninteresting to me. The first goal of the main plot remains the main goal for like 85% of the game (despite being achieved briefly in the middle) without really giving you quite enough of a reason to care as much as the characters seem to. This is especially true on the Hawaii side, which I was definitely into at the start, but failed to progress in a way that kept me super invested. The one big twist there was super poorly executed, especially after playing Gaiden, and the way it set back the characters' goals just kept me so checked out or annoyed. The Japan side is a little better, though honestly that's completely to do with Kiryu and almost none to do with the actual plot going on there, which has its own share of frustrating turns. Maybe I just don't like Ichiban enough for him to carry a plot in the same way Kiryu can; ironically, this game eroded my confidence in him as a protagonist who can stand on his own going forward.
A trend that I've picked up on that stands out as bizarre to me is the last few games completely lacking confidence or respect for what just happened in the previous game, walking back decisions and saying "actually that thing they did was stupid and doesn't work." Consequences and fallout that change the game's world are cool to see in general, but Lost Judgment handled a post-7 world in a much better way than 8 to me. This is especially frustrating as someone who really liked and respected 6, which it does not feel like RGG themselves do (which they already showed with 7). In some ways, this feels like a reactionary apology for some of the complaints that people had about 6, but pulled off in a way that just reinforces to me that they were correct to have 6 play out how it did. (Some vague spoilers ahead) Pulling in key characters from Kiryu's past only to have them not really do much other than get 1 more fight and then get a 5 minute spotlight feels like a "there, sorry we didn't do that before, are you happy now?" kind of gesture without much relevance or substance to me. And I get that part of the theme is letting Kiryu not have to be a stubborn solo hero, and having him push forward, but a more focused solo journey works a lot better as a sendoff to me. The Life Links and Memories of a Dragon were sort of in the same camp. Sure, it was nice to see a lot of characters and places from throughout the series acknowledged one more time and hear some brief thoughts from Kiryu on each, but the execution makes them feel all like a bit of a tease and not super vital to Kiryu's story. All of the Daidoji stuff is also done in such a weird way that sometimes feels in line with 6/some of Gaiden, sometimes feels totally irrelevant, sometimes bafflingly ignores other happenings in the story, and then eventually decides to recognize those developments without a word about doing so. It cheapens 6 and what came earlier in 8 itself in a very unsatisfying and frustrating way. I think there's a story in here, if you combine most of Gaiden and bits and pieces of 8, that would be a truly worthy follow up and sendoff for Kiryu, but it's buried under a load of other plots, fallout from 7's decisions, and incohesive twists. Where it eventually ends is a solid enough spot, but it got there in such a way that didn't deliver on almost any of its potential and has extremely little narrative or emotional payoff.
And a couple nitpicks that didn't fit elsewhere: this game made me realize how much I dislike Ichiban's suit (and most of the 7 cast's Japan outfits overall). Going to Hawaii was an instant improvement after the brief PTSD endured from (Chapter 1 spoilers) infiltrating the Seiryu base again, in the same outfits, with the same jobs, with the same underground dungeon and the same theme as in 7. I groaned when eventually the suit returned. Also, it feels like there is no good language to play this game in if you speak English. I played in Japanese, which was good overall, but major American characters speaking completely incomprehensible English really took me out of it, and one character in particular really suffered from it. This game also contained one of the best substories in the franchise (Let It Snow), perfectly showcasing their unique balance of goofy and emotional, but also a slew of just awful "romance" (literally just assault) substories. And finally, there were 1-2 standout new characters to me that I did generally enjoy overall and are probably what I'll remember fondly from this game as it ages (name spoilers): Yamai and maybe Tomizawa.
2023
This is a fairly fun journey with some bumps in the road.
The pacing throughout felt pretty off. This is a fairly short game overall, but it somehow felt both too extended at times and too rushed in others. The first kingdom being much longer than others, the final one being more of a gauntlet, the first couple being really a slow intro compared to the rapid plot development after, etc.
The T in P5T really does stand for Toshiro. I liked the main story and its two central characters quite a bit, and it makes me wish they did something a little riskier and made this a more separate Persona side game focusing on just them + maybe one other character (could be a P5 cast member as a bridge, could be something original). I liked the generally more restrained plot focus though; it fit the size of the game. The Phantom Thieves are really pretty irrelevant to the plot aside from the main theme of rebellion. They mostly feel like they're there for brand recognition, some fun banter between them, saying "damn that's crazy" during plot moments, and occasionally "this reminds me of my character arc from the hit game Persona 5". Even during the big plot dump sections where pretty much all questions are answered, and you even get to ask some more yourself, there was never even an excuse given for why they got wrapped up in this.
The elephant in the room to me is the artstyle. Regardless of whether you personally like the aesthetics or not, I really feel like it just doesn't serve the game any favors or enhance it in any way. It doesn't match the tone of the story being told (aside from a lot of Yusuke's dialog being food jokes for whatever reason) and makes it more difficult to connect with the serious beats and character moments. Personally, I don't mind chibi looks at all, but I much prefer PQ's style to this (especially when any limbs are bent, eugh), and it never felt like I fully adjusted to the artstyle here and it kept me just a little out of the game all the time. As an extension of this, the citizens of the kingdoms were just impossible to take seriously. They're in situations that have them attempting to discuss topics like oppression, but when they sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks and look like hats with eyes, it just doesn't work.
On a more positive note, while I'm not much of an SRPG guy, I think the combat was pretty creative overall. There were tons of mechanics constantly being introduced, but it never felt too overwhelming. I didn't always have the cleanest solutions to every map, but when I did, it really did feel cool to put it all together. There was plenty going on to keep me engaged and interested throughout. I also like the return to the P1/2/honestly mostly PQish style of personas being assignable to the full party. I'm a big fusion fan, and while this was simplified overall, that felt fitting for the size of the game and I still had a couple cool powerhouses I fused along the way. It wasn't quite enough for me to want to do giant fusion sessions like I'd do in P5R or SMT V though, and I will say that the personas just being screenshots in a menu instead of visually represented in battle was kind of lame.
Overall, I enjoyed most of my time with P5T. There's definitely a lot of room for improvement here, and it never hit the highs of its cooler older brother, P5S (and neither did its music), but it was a fun experience with some neat twists throughout.
Also what was up with the audio mixing on voices
The pacing throughout felt pretty off. This is a fairly short game overall, but it somehow felt both too extended at times and too rushed in others. The first kingdom being much longer than others, the final one being more of a gauntlet, the first couple being really a slow intro compared to the rapid plot development after, etc.
The T in P5T really does stand for Toshiro. I liked the main story and its two central characters quite a bit, and it makes me wish they did something a little riskier and made this a more separate Persona side game focusing on just them + maybe one other character (could be a P5 cast member as a bridge, could be something original). I liked the generally more restrained plot focus though; it fit the size of the game. The Phantom Thieves are really pretty irrelevant to the plot aside from the main theme of rebellion. They mostly feel like they're there for brand recognition, some fun banter between them, saying "damn that's crazy" during plot moments, and occasionally "this reminds me of my character arc from the hit game Persona 5". Even during the big plot dump sections where pretty much all questions are answered, and you even get to ask some more yourself, there was never even an excuse given for why they got wrapped up in this.
The elephant in the room to me is the artstyle. Regardless of whether you personally like the aesthetics or not, I really feel like it just doesn't serve the game any favors or enhance it in any way. It doesn't match the tone of the story being told (aside from a lot of Yusuke's dialog being food jokes for whatever reason) and makes it more difficult to connect with the serious beats and character moments. Personally, I don't mind chibi looks at all, but I much prefer PQ's style to this (especially when any limbs are bent, eugh), and it never felt like I fully adjusted to the artstyle here and it kept me just a little out of the game all the time. As an extension of this, the citizens of the kingdoms were just impossible to take seriously. They're in situations that have them attempting to discuss topics like oppression, but when they sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks and look like hats with eyes, it just doesn't work.
On a more positive note, while I'm not much of an SRPG guy, I think the combat was pretty creative overall. There were tons of mechanics constantly being introduced, but it never felt too overwhelming. I didn't always have the cleanest solutions to every map, but when I did, it really did feel cool to put it all together. There was plenty going on to keep me engaged and interested throughout. I also like the return to the P1/2/honestly mostly PQish style of personas being assignable to the full party. I'm a big fusion fan, and while this was simplified overall, that felt fitting for the size of the game and I still had a couple cool powerhouses I fused along the way. It wasn't quite enough for me to want to do giant fusion sessions like I'd do in P5R or SMT V though, and I will say that the personas just being screenshots in a menu instead of visually represented in battle was kind of lame.
Overall, I enjoyed most of my time with P5T. There's definitely a lot of room for improvement here, and it never hit the highs of its cooler older brother, P5S (and neither did its music), but it was a fun experience with some neat twists throughout.
Also what was up with the audio mixing on voices
In the first half or so of the game, I got the feeling that this is where the series' classic concept of "reuse" was catching up to it. Aside from the main story and maybe Akame as a character, nothing here felt super original or fresh. The side content offerings were pretty much the standard Yakuza fare (and Pocket Circuit, which refuses to retire), and while I enjoy fanservice and referencing past games, they felt a little over relied on at times. (There's a weirdly heavy amount of referencing 2 in particular.) The Castle, which was spotlit as the cool new area to explore, is really just a shinier Purgatory, which just feels like a tired concept by now. I will say that the Coliseum is definitely one of the better ones in the series and had some fun fights and gimmicks (Hell Team Rumble was a solid new mode) without overstaying its welcome. Special shoutout to that final Platinum fight.
You can sort of let Gaiden off the hook for all of this though, as it was never meant to be a huge new game with totally original side content. So it's not unexpected that this is a short new story with whatever side content was laying around thrown in + some extras, but that doesn't really make it the most interesting Yakuza game to engage with.
On to combat. This is definitely the Dragon (sorry, "Yakuza") style's best showing in the Dragon Engine, though that's not saying much. After Judgment and especially Lost Judgment, I was hoping they would take more of the lessons learned when returning to Kiryu. But the main borrowed concept there seems to be Mortal Reversals, which are pretty fun, so that's nice at least. DE Dragon was still just solid overall, nothing amazing. I did not click with Agent for a long time, using probably 90% Yakuza for over half the game. Eventually I warmed up to it some more, but its basic combos just felt out of place for Kiryu, especially in Extreme Heat. The gadgets were fun enough gimmicks, especially once I realized that a fully upgraded Spider would just annihilate small enemies while you also zoom around with Serpent, which was super goofy. Overall, the combat was pretty good by Yakuza standards, but a bit disappointing after Lost Judgment, especially if this may be the last brawler Yakuza for a while (and possibly last Kiryu brawler ever).
The main story took a little bit to capture me, but I appreciated the condensed scope overall. Without getting into spoilers, as someone who really liked the ending of 6 and really disliked the extremely quick backtracking of it in 7, I'm still conflicted about the path Kiryu takes here. Maybe Infinite Wealth will help settle this, but it feels like it's slowly tossing out the end of 6 as a silly idea and rendered the hardest hitting scenes in the series to me pretty much moot. On a more positive note, I like how this story gave them more opportunity to explore the implications around 7's huge plot development for the yakuza world as well; in hindsight this would have felt too swept under the rug without what Gaiden showed. (It's also neat to see this perspective of "before/during the storm" after seeing some of the fallout in LJ.)
The core group of new characters were all fairly interesting, though none really felt like amazing ones who'll stick with me forever. I like how pretty much no one was ever completely in the right or wrong at any given point, as the series sometimes falls prey to shallower portrayals of power hungry people who are clearly just evil by most standards. As many have already observed, [light vague spoiler warning] the final boss definitely felt like a more fleshed out version of another in the series, which is funny if you compare the lengths of those respective games. And of course, I'm a sucker for the kind of scenes that the very end of the game had, so those hit almost as hard as 6's ending to me.
Maybe I just wasn't totally in the Yakuza mood when I started, but it took a surprisingly long time for me to warm up to this game as a whole. Despite being the shortest main story in the franchise (outside of the Kaito Files), I ended up with around 25 hours spent since I did all substories, requests, coliseum fights, Amon, etc. (I passed on the Platinum just because I really don't care for Cabaret, and am also lukewarm on Pocket Circuit. Still got every Mahjong activity log item though.) The reuse of content and concepts wore down on me for a while, and the sparse new ideas didn't fully click at first, but eventually I came around. The side content took a weirdly long time to fully open up, but once it did, I cleared pretty much everything I could before moving on to each story beat. A good late game completionist session followed by a strong finale section gave this experience a sweet ending that makes me look back on it much more fondly than I felt halfway in, where I was pretty sure I would've given it a 3/5. Overall, a good little pocket of Yakuza content, even if much of it is well worn.
You can sort of let Gaiden off the hook for all of this though, as it was never meant to be a huge new game with totally original side content. So it's not unexpected that this is a short new story with whatever side content was laying around thrown in + some extras, but that doesn't really make it the most interesting Yakuza game to engage with.
On to combat. This is definitely the Dragon (sorry, "Yakuza") style's best showing in the Dragon Engine, though that's not saying much. After Judgment and especially Lost Judgment, I was hoping they would take more of the lessons learned when returning to Kiryu. But the main borrowed concept there seems to be Mortal Reversals, which are pretty fun, so that's nice at least. DE Dragon was still just solid overall, nothing amazing. I did not click with Agent for a long time, using probably 90% Yakuza for over half the game. Eventually I warmed up to it some more, but its basic combos just felt out of place for Kiryu, especially in Extreme Heat. The gadgets were fun enough gimmicks, especially once I realized that a fully upgraded Spider would just annihilate small enemies while you also zoom around with Serpent, which was super goofy. Overall, the combat was pretty good by Yakuza standards, but a bit disappointing after Lost Judgment, especially if this may be the last brawler Yakuza for a while (and possibly last Kiryu brawler ever).
The main story took a little bit to capture me, but I appreciated the condensed scope overall. Without getting into spoilers, as someone who really liked the ending of 6 and really disliked the extremely quick backtracking of it in 7, I'm still conflicted about the path Kiryu takes here. Maybe Infinite Wealth will help settle this, but it feels like it's slowly tossing out the end of 6 as a silly idea and rendered the hardest hitting scenes in the series to me pretty much moot. On a more positive note, I like how this story gave them more opportunity to explore the implications around 7's huge plot development for the yakuza world as well; in hindsight this would have felt too swept under the rug without what Gaiden showed. (It's also neat to see this perspective of "before/during the storm" after seeing some of the fallout in LJ.)
The core group of new characters were all fairly interesting, though none really felt like amazing ones who'll stick with me forever. I like how pretty much no one was ever completely in the right or wrong at any given point, as the series sometimes falls prey to shallower portrayals of power hungry people who are clearly just evil by most standards. As many have already observed, [light vague spoiler warning] the final boss definitely felt like a more fleshed out version of another in the series, which is funny if you compare the lengths of those respective games. And of course, I'm a sucker for the kind of scenes that the very end of the game had, so those hit almost as hard as 6's ending to me.
Maybe I just wasn't totally in the Yakuza mood when I started, but it took a surprisingly long time for me to warm up to this game as a whole. Despite being the shortest main story in the franchise (outside of the Kaito Files), I ended up with around 25 hours spent since I did all substories, requests, coliseum fights, Amon, etc. (I passed on the Platinum just because I really don't care for Cabaret, and am also lukewarm on Pocket Circuit. Still got every Mahjong activity log item though.) The reuse of content and concepts wore down on me for a while, and the sparse new ideas didn't fully click at first, but eventually I came around. The side content took a weirdly long time to fully open up, but once it did, I cleared pretty much everything I could before moving on to each story beat. A good late game completionist session followed by a strong finale section gave this experience a sweet ending that makes me look back on it much more fondly than I felt halfway in, where I was pretty sure I would've given it a 3/5. Overall, a good little pocket of Yakuza content, even if much of it is well worn.
Difficulty curve was a little wonky, but co-op in general had some cool ideas. Not all of them were stellar, but they definitely made us think in general. The puzzles are the strongest part of Portal 2, so I don't mind blasting ~40 of them without much break for story or anything, though it's noticeably a little dryer. Teasing a boss fight and then just ending on nothing (for DLC) was kind of lame.
2011
A lot more narratively driven than I was expecting, and I'm on the fence on whether that was a good move or not. Of course for the time it certainly was, though I don't think the writing has aged very well (in an "xD 2011 humor" sense, nothing bad). The original's idea of breaking out of the experiment, while superseded by plenty of other games by now, had a much more interesting tone to me. The puzzles are far expanded, which is neat, though I didn't love every new mechanic. The gels/cave section felt like it went on a bit long; I definitely prefer the shorter "futuristic" chambers in general. I'm less a fan of the unstructured bits in between where it's not always clear if there's even a puzzle to be solved or you're just walking the wrong way. When the right puzzle comes along though, it definitely hits.
2007
It's clear how innovative it was at the time, but for a first play in 2023 it only holds up OK. The first 2/3 of the puzzles are tutorials that take 30 seconds, then the last few are the actual game, which feels weird as far as pacing goes. I really disliked turrets as a mechanic (not as characters, they had cute lines), the puzzles were better without that type of pressure. Also resetting after dying takes frustratingly long. Rockets felt better as far as letting you take your time, but aiming in the final room was just awful. Feels like it barely scratched the surface of actual Portal stuff, which I guess is why 2 exists.
A fun twist on Classic. The initial level cap of 25 makes this easy to jump into without a huge commitment, and progressively raising that gives a good CTA to return later. The runes are pretty great overall, both in reward and acquisition, aside from a couple misses (not a fan of the 2 "every class go grind this" ones, but hey, it fits Vanilla). I went in thinking the "abilities from later expansions" runes would be sort of dry, but I ended up liking them as much or more than the original ones; they bring a really interesting flavor to the classic toolkits. The Battle for Ashenvale concept, while a little on the light side content wise, is a solid addition as well and the team's quick response and tuning are cool to see. A very promising start to the "let's mess with Classic and see what happens" path and I look forward to more.
(I played a Warlock, got all runes except the 2 grinds, tanked a little, geared a little, got my Ashenvale mount, and cleared BFD.)
(I played a Warlock, got all runes except the 2 grinds, tanked a little, geared a little, got my Ashenvale mount, and cleared BFD.)
2021
This review contains spoilers
Probably the best actual "game" in the Yakuza/Judgment universe, gameplay wise. However, I had a few critical notes I wrote after beating it that I never posted:
The main story was a little weaker than the original, I didn't feel it tied all the characters and events together in as satisfying a way as the original (for example, every time you present evidence, it's always the same gap in the station cameras, it never feels like that changes, you just wait for characters to do something about it). Side characters from the first game felt pretty irrelevant here a lot of the time, since their backstories were very tied to the first game. Hoshino in particular was a character who really could have shined in this game since he wasn't as vital in the first, but his character felt sort of ruined and shafted, which was a let down. Yagami also did not have much to argue with other than mentioning Sawa-sensei in the latter half of the game, which while valid felt like it got old.
For side content, I felt the side cases were very thin this time around, with a smaller total than usual and a lot of padding even within that number. This was, of course, because School Stories were the new big side activity, but I was lukewarm on those overall. Only 4 or 5 of them were really fleshed out, and of those, the big new ones got pretty repetitive and dragged out, like Death Races, Robotics, and Boxing. Dance Club, on the other hand, was great and its only downside was only having 4 songs.
The other big disappointment to me is the handling of DLC. The DLC girlfriends all feel like content scraped from the game just to make extra money putting them as DLC, especially how the base game has so few side cases and only 1 girlfriend. Boxing style is a cool addition, but again being DLC makes it feel sort of cheap. I only bought the DLC because this ended up releasing early by mistake, so I was still playing the game at the time. Otherwise, I would have waited for the Kaito DLC to release. The rest of the DLC feels pretty worthless, and the "Super Amon" fight was an absolute joke. It was the exact same fight from the base game, I was in disbelief when I realized it wasn't just a phase one. Really felt ripped off with that one.
The main story was a little weaker than the original, I didn't feel it tied all the characters and events together in as satisfying a way as the original (for example, every time you present evidence, it's always the same gap in the station cameras, it never feels like that changes, you just wait for characters to do something about it). Side characters from the first game felt pretty irrelevant here a lot of the time, since their backstories were very tied to the first game. Hoshino in particular was a character who really could have shined in this game since he wasn't as vital in the first, but his character felt sort of ruined and shafted, which was a let down. Yagami also did not have much to argue with other than mentioning Sawa-sensei in the latter half of the game, which while valid felt like it got old.
For side content, I felt the side cases were very thin this time around, with a smaller total than usual and a lot of padding even within that number. This was, of course, because School Stories were the new big side activity, but I was lukewarm on those overall. Only 4 or 5 of them were really fleshed out, and of those, the big new ones got pretty repetitive and dragged out, like Death Races, Robotics, and Boxing. Dance Club, on the other hand, was great and its only downside was only having 4 songs.
The other big disappointment to me is the handling of DLC. The DLC girlfriends all feel like content scraped from the game just to make extra money putting them as DLC, especially how the base game has so few side cases and only 1 girlfriend. Boxing style is a cool addition, but again being DLC makes it feel sort of cheap. I only bought the DLC because this ended up releasing early by mistake, so I was still playing the game at the time. Otherwise, I would have waited for the Kaito DLC to release. The rest of the DLC feels pretty worthless, and the "Super Amon" fight was an absolute joke. It was the exact same fight from the base game, I was in disbelief when I realized it wasn't just a phase one. Really felt ripped off with that one.
2023
A game with extremely high highs and some pretty dry lows.
Content pacing is the big discussion point here, mostly with side quests. The quests themselves are generally pretty good, and showing how the world is evolving outside of the main story is done really well. The issue is when about 4 hours worth of side content is dumped on you between major story beats near the end of the game. Early on, I was actually praising the game for its restraint in only giving out 2-3 quests every few story beats, which felt a bit on the low side but totally appropriate. By the end of the game, I'd never taken back a comment as much as I had that one. I'm glad I experienced all the quests once, because now on a replay I can just play the story, which I think will greatly improve how much momentum is maintained in the back half of the game. When a game's problem is more about evenly distributing content than the quality of the content, it's not the worst sin ever, though it did put a damper on some play sessions. I ended up with the feeling that the game could have been about 10 hours shorter, but I'm not sure on how much of that was due to side quests vs the main story itself.
The quests aren't the only way the pacing is a bit lumpy though. Aside from the huge setpieces that get diluted as more and more side content spreads them out as the game goes on, there's also a gradual shift in the balance of linear stages vs what I'll call "zone traversal". After playing so many modern games with at least semi-open worlds, the somewhat "retro" feeling (at this point) linear structure of the game was kind of a breath of fresh air at first. It did get a little tiring later on, reminding me why this isn't really the norm anymore. But it's hard to differentiate between the fatigue from exploring those zones as part of the story and the inflated time spent in them from side content. The first half felt like a more directed, higher tempo story with a bit of a different tone than what it eventually settled into, which felt a little more traditional JRPG fantasy by the end.
On a more positive note though, the combat was hyped up to be "the best game ever" and while I'm not sure about that, it was pretty great. It was deep yet approachable, it had a ton of customization, it let you experiment without penalty, it had some super cool looking abilities, what more can I say. Bosses were also pretty great, and though I prefer fighting as Clive to Eikon battles, their over the top presentation was also quite the spectacle. Accept The Truth was the peak of the story for me and just one of the hypest moments I've ever experienced in a game.
(Light spoiler warning): There was a weird trend I was noticing throughout the game where concepts and characters were introduced or brought to the foreground right as they became relevant instead of being seeded and built up beforehand. Some of this is probably just the intro of the game having too much on its plate to set the stage properly (better explanations of Bearers before Clive is branded, for example). Byron and others kind of pop up out of nowhere, Cid's idea about the Mothercrystals is just something you get from a line after a fade to black instead of hearing his actual pitch, etc. This isn't a huge deal, just something that seemed to keep happening. Vivian's "state of the realm" rundowns in the 2nd half would've been nice to have earlier as well for clarity, despite how direct they are presentation wise. The hyperfocus on how badly everyone treats Bearers in the first half was also a bit overdone, though I guess it was to contrast the treatment you receive later on.
Characters were a big of a mixed bag too. Clive, of course, is Clive, but most other allies felt very side character-y even if they were major players. There were some standouts like Dion, and some slight letdowns like Jill, but at the end of the day this is Clive and Valisthea's story, so that's not that big a deal. These just aren't necessarily characters that I'll cherish forever. There's such a large cast of medium-importance characters to support the feeling of a living world, and for that I think they did a pretty good job. And active time lore was a great feature for keeping track of everything.
Despite some mixed feelings on pacing, this was a pretty great game overall that I think will feel even better on a replay. I was on the fence about it beforehand and not quite sure how I'd like it, but now it seems crazy that I might have skipped this. Now give us Leviathan DLC you cowards
Content pacing is the big discussion point here, mostly with side quests. The quests themselves are generally pretty good, and showing how the world is evolving outside of the main story is done really well. The issue is when about 4 hours worth of side content is dumped on you between major story beats near the end of the game. Early on, I was actually praising the game for its restraint in only giving out 2-3 quests every few story beats, which felt a bit on the low side but totally appropriate. By the end of the game, I'd never taken back a comment as much as I had that one. I'm glad I experienced all the quests once, because now on a replay I can just play the story, which I think will greatly improve how much momentum is maintained in the back half of the game. When a game's problem is more about evenly distributing content than the quality of the content, it's not the worst sin ever, though it did put a damper on some play sessions. I ended up with the feeling that the game could have been about 10 hours shorter, but I'm not sure on how much of that was due to side quests vs the main story itself.
The quests aren't the only way the pacing is a bit lumpy though. Aside from the huge setpieces that get diluted as more and more side content spreads them out as the game goes on, there's also a gradual shift in the balance of linear stages vs what I'll call "zone traversal". After playing so many modern games with at least semi-open worlds, the somewhat "retro" feeling (at this point) linear structure of the game was kind of a breath of fresh air at first. It did get a little tiring later on, reminding me why this isn't really the norm anymore. But it's hard to differentiate between the fatigue from exploring those zones as part of the story and the inflated time spent in them from side content. The first half felt like a more directed, higher tempo story with a bit of a different tone than what it eventually settled into, which felt a little more traditional JRPG fantasy by the end.
On a more positive note though, the combat was hyped up to be "the best game ever" and while I'm not sure about that, it was pretty great. It was deep yet approachable, it had a ton of customization, it let you experiment without penalty, it had some super cool looking abilities, what more can I say. Bosses were also pretty great, and though I prefer fighting as Clive to Eikon battles, their over the top presentation was also quite the spectacle. Accept The Truth was the peak of the story for me and just one of the hypest moments I've ever experienced in a game.
(Light spoiler warning): There was a weird trend I was noticing throughout the game where concepts and characters were introduced or brought to the foreground right as they became relevant instead of being seeded and built up beforehand. Some of this is probably just the intro of the game having too much on its plate to set the stage properly (better explanations of Bearers before Clive is branded, for example). Byron and others kind of pop up out of nowhere, Cid's idea about the Mothercrystals is just something you get from a line after a fade to black instead of hearing his actual pitch, etc. This isn't a huge deal, just something that seemed to keep happening. Vivian's "state of the realm" rundowns in the 2nd half would've been nice to have earlier as well for clarity, despite how direct they are presentation wise. The hyperfocus on how badly everyone treats Bearers in the first half was also a bit overdone, though I guess it was to contrast the treatment you receive later on.
Characters were a big of a mixed bag too. Clive, of course, is Clive, but most other allies felt very side character-y even if they were major players. There were some standouts like Dion, and some slight letdowns like Jill, but at the end of the day this is Clive and Valisthea's story, so that's not that big a deal. These just aren't necessarily characters that I'll cherish forever. There's such a large cast of medium-importance characters to support the feeling of a living world, and for that I think they did a pretty good job. And active time lore was a great feature for keeping track of everything.
Despite some mixed feelings on pacing, this was a pretty great game overall that I think will feel even better on a replay. I was on the fence about it beforehand and not quite sure how I'd like it, but now it seems crazy that I might have skipped this. Now give us Leviathan DLC you cowards
2023
A cool entry to get me into the series for the first time. It's strange to join such an established genre where everyone already seems to know the swing of of things, but it's fun to explore and discover all the trappings of a franchise I've mostly ignored.
I played this like I would any other offline single player campaign game: doing a solid helping of side content, but not all, and playing the campaign at my own pace. By the end of it here, I feel like I've still barely scratched the surface. I don't think I'll end up hitting the real endgame and maxing out a character, but I'll check back to do some more in the world and maybe see how some other classes work.
The campaign itself was also pretty captivating. I really respect how it kept a consistent, mature tone, and the characters and their performances were overall great. Looking forward to seeing where this goes in expansions, and it will probably spur me to go check out some of the previous campaigns now that I have some idea of what's going on with the game itself. I'm glad I played and I enjoyed my time here, regardless of how much more I end up playing.
I played this like I would any other offline single player campaign game: doing a solid helping of side content, but not all, and playing the campaign at my own pace. By the end of it here, I feel like I've still barely scratched the surface. I don't think I'll end up hitting the real endgame and maxing out a character, but I'll check back to do some more in the world and maybe see how some other classes work.
The campaign itself was also pretty captivating. I really respect how it kept a consistent, mature tone, and the characters and their performances were overall great. Looking forward to seeing where this goes in expansions, and it will probably spur me to go check out some of the previous campaigns now that I have some idea of what's going on with the game itself. I'm glad I played and I enjoyed my time here, regardless of how much more I end up playing.
A worthy sequel with both pluses and minuses when compared to Breath of the Wild. They're so intertwined that it's easier just to highlight what was changed or addressed and see how they stack up:
The biggest change in how you approach almost everything in the game is the new Right Arm Abilities, replacing Runes. I think how you feel about these will largely come down to how much you enjoy Ultrahand, the clear spotlight of the game's mechanics. To me, it was ok. I prefer the slightly more limited nature of the Runes, which didn't feel as overcentralizing. But I still definitely had fun with the abilities overall, there were just more opportunities where they felt gimmicky compared to meshing well with the world. Fuse also had this problem, I ended up missing unique weapons with cool appearances a lot more than I expected.
The world is probably the other biggest change here. The sky islands felt a little small and empty to me overall, and the depths were also probably my least favorite area of the game, so surprisingly I think the best change here was the addition of caves and fleshing out the mainland more. I liked BotW's world, which fit its atmosphere, but there's really not much downside to these additions. Side stories were also well expanded here, which was nice overall. There felt like a lot of little plot threads to find and follow as far as you please, highlights for me being Hateno Village and Gerudo Town. The depths though, I may have enjoyed the game more without. I started out not disliking them, as they were a nice pace break for a different style of gameplay, but as the game went on I found myself getting more and more bothered whenever I had to trudge down there. In a smaller capacity, they would be something cool to explore every now and then, but a zone of darkness spanning the entire overworld just made it a bit of a slog after too long. Also, I felt like enemy variety was much improved and probably the best thing they addressed, even if there's still quite a lot of Bokoblins (now with silly horns glued to their heads).
Right off the bat, you get the impression that they heard feedback about how light the story was in BotW and wanted to push this more. Bizarrely, they end up just falling back to the "go collect memories" style after the introduction, which is probably what those complaints were more about. Either way, I don't have much of a problem with those, but I also didn't massively love the new story either. The extremely formulaic "regional phenomena" plots were not my favorite and felt like a very thin reskin of BotW's setup (just swap "champions" to "sages" and most of the plot is the same). The story after these was more interesting, though the gameplay tied to some of it (collecting certain parts) was a slog. Overall, this was all solid enough, but I definitely respect BotW's sense of discovery and freedom with the story more. Temples were also very short and not quite the true return to dungeons that I think many were hoping for. They did have more unique art and bosses than Divine Beasts, but honestly I think they are about equal overall. And thinking back to the intro, I think the overall experience (gameplay + story) of the Great Plateau blows the Great Sky Island out of the... sky. The complete sweeping under the rug of most of the replaced concepts from BotW also felt a little weird, like Sheikah tech being mostly missing or replaced 1:1 with Zonai stuff. This gave me the impression that BotW felt like a more cohesive game overall in its meshing of world, theme, and story.
One more thing I can't forget to mention: the controls for the sage abilities are possibly the worst thing in the game. They turn these somewhat-fun concepts for abilities into super frustrating to use, annoying, or just inaccessible tools that almost never feel like they're there when you need them. Having unique contextual activation conditions like BotW's champion abilities would have been an absolutely massive improvement here.
Overall, while this may have sounded somewhat negative, at the end of the day this is still a supreme adventure in a great world with plenty of fun mechanics and content to explore. Though I prefer BotW overall after this first playthrough, this is a great game on its own with a lot to discover and dig into, and I very much enjoyed most of my time with it.
The biggest change in how you approach almost everything in the game is the new Right Arm Abilities, replacing Runes. I think how you feel about these will largely come down to how much you enjoy Ultrahand, the clear spotlight of the game's mechanics. To me, it was ok. I prefer the slightly more limited nature of the Runes, which didn't feel as overcentralizing. But I still definitely had fun with the abilities overall, there were just more opportunities where they felt gimmicky compared to meshing well with the world. Fuse also had this problem, I ended up missing unique weapons with cool appearances a lot more than I expected.
The world is probably the other biggest change here. The sky islands felt a little small and empty to me overall, and the depths were also probably my least favorite area of the game, so surprisingly I think the best change here was the addition of caves and fleshing out the mainland more. I liked BotW's world, which fit its atmosphere, but there's really not much downside to these additions. Side stories were also well expanded here, which was nice overall. There felt like a lot of little plot threads to find and follow as far as you please, highlights for me being Hateno Village and Gerudo Town. The depths though, I may have enjoyed the game more without. I started out not disliking them, as they were a nice pace break for a different style of gameplay, but as the game went on I found myself getting more and more bothered whenever I had to trudge down there. In a smaller capacity, they would be something cool to explore every now and then, but a zone of darkness spanning the entire overworld just made it a bit of a slog after too long. Also, I felt like enemy variety was much improved and probably the best thing they addressed, even if there's still quite a lot of Bokoblins (now with silly horns glued to their heads).
Right off the bat, you get the impression that they heard feedback about how light the story was in BotW and wanted to push this more. Bizarrely, they end up just falling back to the "go collect memories" style after the introduction, which is probably what those complaints were more about. Either way, I don't have much of a problem with those, but I also didn't massively love the new story either. The extremely formulaic "regional phenomena" plots were not my favorite and felt like a very thin reskin of BotW's setup (just swap "champions" to "sages" and most of the plot is the same). The story after these was more interesting, though the gameplay tied to some of it (collecting certain parts) was a slog. Overall, this was all solid enough, but I definitely respect BotW's sense of discovery and freedom with the story more. Temples were also very short and not quite the true return to dungeons that I think many were hoping for. They did have more unique art and bosses than Divine Beasts, but honestly I think they are about equal overall. And thinking back to the intro, I think the overall experience (gameplay + story) of the Great Plateau blows the Great Sky Island out of the... sky. The complete sweeping under the rug of most of the replaced concepts from BotW also felt a little weird, like Sheikah tech being mostly missing or replaced 1:1 with Zonai stuff. This gave me the impression that BotW felt like a more cohesive game overall in its meshing of world, theme, and story.
One more thing I can't forget to mention: the controls for the sage abilities are possibly the worst thing in the game. They turn these somewhat-fun concepts for abilities into super frustrating to use, annoying, or just inaccessible tools that almost never feel like they're there when you need them. Having unique contextual activation conditions like BotW's champion abilities would have been an absolutely massive improvement here.
Overall, while this may have sounded somewhat negative, at the end of the day this is still a supreme adventure in a great world with plenty of fun mechanics and content to explore. Though I prefer BotW overall after this first playthrough, this is a great game on its own with a lot to discover and dig into, and I very much enjoyed most of my time with it.
An interesting game with a top tier story for the franchise, a unique atmosphere and setting, and mostly fun fanservice seeing familiar faces in new roles, though it is held back by just ok gameplay and combat.
Visually, this is a Kiwami-style remake of the original Ishin. It generally looks great, and it's cool to contrast it with the Dragon Engine and other HD versions of these characters (I prefer K2 Ryuji's face to Saigo's, but Izo >>> K1 Nishiki). There's also a dog at one point that references the original Yakuza and looks like it was ripped straight from the PS2. Nitpicking aside though, it's a treat to see, especially with some of the older characters who haven't gotten the HD treatment prior to this, like Hijikata/Mine. But for actual feel and gameplay, this is more along the lines of the HD remasters. There's a little bit of touching up, like tiny shops not having loading zones, but when it takes 20 years to pick up a sparkly object on the ground, it feels like I'm back in Yakuza 5.
The gameplay still mostly has its feet in that era too. It's got a bit of QoL, like being able to hit enemies on the ground (even though you don't lean over like in DE, you just kind of hit the air above them), and fancier looking health bars (though only 1 for bosses is lame). Overall though, it leaves some to be desired. It's clear that weapon based styles were an experiment for the series and they're... alright. There was something off about the balance between rush combos, finishers, and heat actions in these styles that made combat feel a lot more monotonous than usual, and the midgame seemed to have extremely health-spongy enemies that contributed to that feeling. For reference, I played on hard and crafted what seemed like somewhat overpowered weapons for that point in the game. Bosses, on the other hand, basically fell over, usually so fast that I forgot they even had wacky special powers.
And that's the elephant in the room when talking about this game's combat: the trooper cards. Before release, this was the thing I was most apprehensive about, and in hindsight, I think I was right. They weren't immensely distracting, but they felt like an immersion breaking band-aid for the slightly too stale combat, and I think overall they were a negative. They gave a much, much weaker but similar taste of "oh yeah, ugh" that comes when you fight a boss in LAD and have to use that game's JRPG combat: it just kind of gets in the way from how it feels like the fight should play out. The quality of some of the cutscenes makes it feel like it's prepping you for some cinematic clash that you'd find in Ghost of Tsushima, but then you remember you're playing a PS3 Yakuza game. Which again, is still pretty fun, but there's just a little bit of mismatch there. It feels like there's several ideas for combat that get mashed together in this game. Is this a serious samurai story with matching combat? It is a normal Yakuza brawler that happens to have swords and guns? Is it a wacky super power simulator with crazy effects? Is it, as the remake oddly seems to try and highlight, a stylish action game with ranks for every fight? I don't know, but it tries to be all of those and doesn't really nail any of them. It's like they tried to apply the unique balance of serious and silly tones of the Yakuza series to the combat itself, but it didn't really work for me. Also, spamming square on Gunman with a high fire rate gun like Vortex is so silly, and any fire sword basically stunlocks single targets, including bosses. The bandit leader in battle dungeons was also the worst fight I've ever done in an RGG game.
Moving on to more positive notes: the story and characters! As the entry from between 5 and 0, I was very curious to see which side this game would fall on: 5's mess of a main plot and finale, or 0's much tighter and more emotional story? I'm happy to say it was much closer to 0 than 5 here. I kept waiting for some ridiculous twists in the last few chapters, and while there was plenty of crazy stuff, it was all totally acceptable and well put together (vague spoiler warning: besides the last 10 minutes before the credits, lmao). On the character side, this was the other thing I was apprehensive about before release: the recasts. On this point, I'll concede that it pretty much worked out. The only character that I really wish hadn't been replaced was Todo (Baba -> Zhao), not because Zhao was bad, but I just think Baba seems like a much better fit and I would've liked that performance more. Every other recast was totally fine at worst (Yamazaki, Takeda), and great at best (Kondo, Oryo). The returning cast was generally very good too; it was fun to see the old faces in new roles and didn't feel too gimmicky to me in the slightest aside from maybe maintaining some old character quirks or accents. Hijikata/Mine in particular stood out as a great character who I didn't care for as much in his original role, but had much more room to breathe here and really grew on me. Even others like Kondo and Takechi had me liking them more than counterparts. (More vague minor spoilers:) It's also crazy that this is legitimately the game where Kiryu/Majima get the most time to shine as an actual pair. Overall, I really enjoyed the story, though in the middle I wasn't as sure about that and the slightly darker tone compared to Yakuza wasn't 100% hitting, but it pulled me back by the end.
Other minor notes:
The new remix of Affected Fight was really cool to see, and Fly got the same treatment which was nice, but then they just reused Pledge of Demon, which was weird considering how much effort was put into getting Kuze into this game in the first place.
The glossary is a perfect idea for this game for international audiences, and I was impressed at the foresight... for about 3 minutes, until it didn't have a definition for goshi. Then I realized it was literally only place names, which is probably the least useful thing it could have done. It was funny to be 25 hours in and see it still prompting me to check on where Tosa is in modern Japan though. No text log was also a slight miss.
This was a fun entry in the series that I'm glad worldwide fans now get to check out, and while the changes made for the remake are a bit of a mixed bag, it's still a good experience. Definitely worth playing for the story and characters, an interesting time period and place to explore, and at least judging the weapon styles and combat for yourself.
Visually, this is a Kiwami-style remake of the original Ishin. It generally looks great, and it's cool to contrast it with the Dragon Engine and other HD versions of these characters (I prefer K2 Ryuji's face to Saigo's, but Izo >>> K1 Nishiki). There's also a dog at one point that references the original Yakuza and looks like it was ripped straight from the PS2. Nitpicking aside though, it's a treat to see, especially with some of the older characters who haven't gotten the HD treatment prior to this, like Hijikata/Mine. But for actual feel and gameplay, this is more along the lines of the HD remasters. There's a little bit of touching up, like tiny shops not having loading zones, but when it takes 20 years to pick up a sparkly object on the ground, it feels like I'm back in Yakuza 5.
The gameplay still mostly has its feet in that era too. It's got a bit of QoL, like being able to hit enemies on the ground (even though you don't lean over like in DE, you just kind of hit the air above them), and fancier looking health bars (though only 1 for bosses is lame). Overall though, it leaves some to be desired. It's clear that weapon based styles were an experiment for the series and they're... alright. There was something off about the balance between rush combos, finishers, and heat actions in these styles that made combat feel a lot more monotonous than usual, and the midgame seemed to have extremely health-spongy enemies that contributed to that feeling. For reference, I played on hard and crafted what seemed like somewhat overpowered weapons for that point in the game. Bosses, on the other hand, basically fell over, usually so fast that I forgot they even had wacky special powers.
And that's the elephant in the room when talking about this game's combat: the trooper cards. Before release, this was the thing I was most apprehensive about, and in hindsight, I think I was right. They weren't immensely distracting, but they felt like an immersion breaking band-aid for the slightly too stale combat, and I think overall they were a negative. They gave a much, much weaker but similar taste of "oh yeah, ugh" that comes when you fight a boss in LAD and have to use that game's JRPG combat: it just kind of gets in the way from how it feels like the fight should play out. The quality of some of the cutscenes makes it feel like it's prepping you for some cinematic clash that you'd find in Ghost of Tsushima, but then you remember you're playing a PS3 Yakuza game. Which again, is still pretty fun, but there's just a little bit of mismatch there. It feels like there's several ideas for combat that get mashed together in this game. Is this a serious samurai story with matching combat? It is a normal Yakuza brawler that happens to have swords and guns? Is it a wacky super power simulator with crazy effects? Is it, as the remake oddly seems to try and highlight, a stylish action game with ranks for every fight? I don't know, but it tries to be all of those and doesn't really nail any of them. It's like they tried to apply the unique balance of serious and silly tones of the Yakuza series to the combat itself, but it didn't really work for me. Also, spamming square on Gunman with a high fire rate gun like Vortex is so silly, and any fire sword basically stunlocks single targets, including bosses. The bandit leader in battle dungeons was also the worst fight I've ever done in an RGG game.
Moving on to more positive notes: the story and characters! As the entry from between 5 and 0, I was very curious to see which side this game would fall on: 5's mess of a main plot and finale, or 0's much tighter and more emotional story? I'm happy to say it was much closer to 0 than 5 here. I kept waiting for some ridiculous twists in the last few chapters, and while there was plenty of crazy stuff, it was all totally acceptable and well put together (vague spoiler warning: besides the last 10 minutes before the credits, lmao). On the character side, this was the other thing I was apprehensive about before release: the recasts. On this point, I'll concede that it pretty much worked out. The only character that I really wish hadn't been replaced was Todo (Baba -> Zhao), not because Zhao was bad, but I just think Baba seems like a much better fit and I would've liked that performance more. Every other recast was totally fine at worst (Yamazaki, Takeda), and great at best (Kondo, Oryo). The returning cast was generally very good too; it was fun to see the old faces in new roles and didn't feel too gimmicky to me in the slightest aside from maybe maintaining some old character quirks or accents. Hijikata/Mine in particular stood out as a great character who I didn't care for as much in his original role, but had much more room to breathe here and really grew on me. Even others like Kondo and Takechi had me liking them more than counterparts. (More vague minor spoilers:) It's also crazy that this is legitimately the game where Kiryu/Majima get the most time to shine as an actual pair. Overall, I really enjoyed the story, though in the middle I wasn't as sure about that and the slightly darker tone compared to Yakuza wasn't 100% hitting, but it pulled me back by the end.
Other minor notes:
The new remix of Affected Fight was really cool to see, and Fly got the same treatment which was nice, but then they just reused Pledge of Demon, which was weird considering how much effort was put into getting Kuze into this game in the first place.
The glossary is a perfect idea for this game for international audiences, and I was impressed at the foresight... for about 3 minutes, until it didn't have a definition for goshi. Then I realized it was literally only place names, which is probably the least useful thing it could have done. It was funny to be 25 hours in and see it still prompting me to check on where Tosa is in modern Japan though. No text log was also a slight miss.
This was a fun entry in the series that I'm glad worldwide fans now get to check out, and while the changes made for the remake are a bit of a mixed bag, it's still a good experience. Definitely worth playing for the story and characters, an interesting time period and place to explore, and at least judging the weapon styles and combat for yourself.
This is a full, true Yakuza/Judgment hybrid story that just happens to only be only available as DLC and 6 hours long. Knowing the length beforehand, I was really surprised how intricate and high quality the plot ended up being. The core mystery was on par with the better stories in the franchise and never really felt like it was compromised or rushed to fit into a smaller package, with plenty of twists and turns along the way.
The gameplay/story ratio was a little off at the start, but it rounded itself out nicely by the end. Pretty much all of the Lost Judgment mechanics get at least a brief time to shine, which was also cool to see. Kaito also gets a little bit of new stuff in his sleuthing skills. Even if it's a bit of a reskin, it's still nice that new features made it in and their use in finding collectibles was a good, appropriate level of "city" content for this size game.
As far as side content goes though, this is where it feels the most like a DLC and not like a full game (which it is, so I can't fault it much there), and where I'm guessing Gaiden will get to flex a little more as a separate package. Since the series is already so side content heavy and I'm about to play Ishin though, I don't mind this too much. Maybe a very small group of side cases involving the supporting cast, new and old, would have been nice, but I get that it could take away from the focus of the story here.
On that note, the story really was nice and had more going on than I would have expected. I won't get too spoilery, but the thought occurred to me that while LAD felt like a reimagining of a large chunk of Yakuza 1, this felt like it was taking some of the remaining Y1 components and putting its own spin on them (in a good way). It really ended up fitting nicely with both parent series in terms of carrying forward their themes (failure of fathers, cycles of revenge, rippling effects of past actions, etc). Kaito himself, while still not my favorite character ever, does a good job overall being the protagonist of his own story. The worldbuilding was also really nice here and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see some of these characters and factions pop up in later games. There's also a plot point that felt straight out of Yakuza 4, though Y4 kind of butchered it so it was nice to see it executed better here. Also, the ending, IYKYK.
And finally, the combat. It's... solid. I think coming from Yagami in LJ, everything else is going to feel kind of bad, but throwing mostly-Brawler/Beast in the same base game as the LJ styles is just not going to feel as nice. The styles are definitely touched up and have a bunch of cool new LJ-stuff going on (like the buffs for each), though quite a bit is locked behind exploration, so I only got certain skills in the final couple fights of the game that I wish I had earlier. My biggest pet peeve was not having something like Rising Tornado to not have to spam X when you get knocked down (except for one EX action in a niche situation), because this happened a lot. Maybe it's also that a ton of enemies have blades in this game, I don't know. It was serviceable and I like the effort and having 2 styles, but this is definitely one of the weaker spots of this entry.
Overall, a pleasant surprise. I expected this to be a fun little adventure, but it really drew me in and convinced me it was its own full scale entry (as far as main story goes), just in a shorter play time. A lack of side content and just "solid" combat hold it back a little, but hey, at the end of the day, it's DLC. Definitely highly recommend anyone who enjoyed the base game to pick this up.
The gameplay/story ratio was a little off at the start, but it rounded itself out nicely by the end. Pretty much all of the Lost Judgment mechanics get at least a brief time to shine, which was also cool to see. Kaito also gets a little bit of new stuff in his sleuthing skills. Even if it's a bit of a reskin, it's still nice that new features made it in and their use in finding collectibles was a good, appropriate level of "city" content for this size game.
As far as side content goes though, this is where it feels the most like a DLC and not like a full game (which it is, so I can't fault it much there), and where I'm guessing Gaiden will get to flex a little more as a separate package. Since the series is already so side content heavy and I'm about to play Ishin though, I don't mind this too much. Maybe a very small group of side cases involving the supporting cast, new and old, would have been nice, but I get that it could take away from the focus of the story here.
On that note, the story really was nice and had more going on than I would have expected. I won't get too spoilery, but the thought occurred to me that while LAD felt like a reimagining of a large chunk of Yakuza 1, this felt like it was taking some of the remaining Y1 components and putting its own spin on them (in a good way). It really ended up fitting nicely with both parent series in terms of carrying forward their themes (failure of fathers, cycles of revenge, rippling effects of past actions, etc). Kaito himself, while still not my favorite character ever, does a good job overall being the protagonist of his own story. The worldbuilding was also really nice here and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see some of these characters and factions pop up in later games. There's also a plot point that felt straight out of Yakuza 4, though Y4 kind of butchered it so it was nice to see it executed better here. Also, the ending, IYKYK.
And finally, the combat. It's... solid. I think coming from Yagami in LJ, everything else is going to feel kind of bad, but throwing mostly-Brawler/Beast in the same base game as the LJ styles is just not going to feel as nice. The styles are definitely touched up and have a bunch of cool new LJ-stuff going on (like the buffs for each), though quite a bit is locked behind exploration, so I only got certain skills in the final couple fights of the game that I wish I had earlier. My biggest pet peeve was not having something like Rising Tornado to not have to spam X when you get knocked down (except for one EX action in a niche situation), because this happened a lot. Maybe it's also that a ton of enemies have blades in this game, I don't know. It was serviceable and I like the effort and having 2 styles, but this is definitely one of the weaker spots of this entry.
Overall, a pleasant surprise. I expected this to be a fun little adventure, but it really drew me in and convinced me it was its own full scale entry (as far as main story goes), just in a shorter play time. A lack of side content and just "solid" combat hold it back a little, but hey, at the end of the day, it's DLC. Definitely highly recommend anyone who enjoyed the base game to pick this up.
This game doesn't really feel like it justifies its existence. One way it tried to do so was its story, something unseen in any previous game that I wish had stayed that way. I don't need an uninteresting VN between my rhythm games that lacks the quirkiness and charm that the little bits around individual games had in previous titles (also, I hate Tibby).
The game keeps this padding up for the first thirty or so games, which are essentially extended practices played to jingles in comparison to the "real" games later on. Cut out the entire first section before the Lush Tower and this immediately becomes a better game.
Eventually, it picked up a bit, despite the majority of games being recycled from the older titles. I understand why this was done, and why we couldn't have a fully original game, and that this is a collection and celebration, but it just doesn't come through. The new games around this point actually start to improve greatly, though there's not many of them. Also, the single point I'll give to the story: it was cute how it contextualized the remixes having themes (unfortunately, limited to just this middle section).
Then we're back to the inferior format for Heaven World, and it ends with a whimper (I was fully expecting a remix with every game, and the existing larger remixes are already a not-so-cohesive mishmash, so why not at that point). A "full moveset" Karate Man was a cool idea though.
This game really feels like it was trying its hardest to get me to not like it in the entire first section, gave up for the middle, then tried again at the end. It's neat to have a collection like this and get a few new games in the process (which were hit or miss), but I would've rather just had a smaller scale "Rhythm Heaven Mini" eShop title with only the new games and no story or returning games over what we got. Sometimes less is more.
The game keeps this padding up for the first thirty or so games, which are essentially extended practices played to jingles in comparison to the "real" games later on. Cut out the entire first section before the Lush Tower and this immediately becomes a better game.
Eventually, it picked up a bit, despite the majority of games being recycled from the older titles. I understand why this was done, and why we couldn't have a fully original game, and that this is a collection and celebration, but it just doesn't come through. The new games around this point actually start to improve greatly, though there's not many of them. Also, the single point I'll give to the story: it was cute how it contextualized the remixes having themes (unfortunately, limited to just this middle section).
Then we're back to the inferior format for Heaven World, and it ends with a whimper (I was fully expecting a remix with every game, and the existing larger remixes are already a not-so-cohesive mishmash, so why not at that point). A "full moveset" Karate Man was a cool idea though.
This game really feels like it was trying its hardest to get me to not like it in the entire first section, gave up for the middle, then tried again at the end. It's neat to have a collection like this and get a few new games in the process (which were hit or miss), but I would've rather just had a smaller scale "Rhythm Heaven Mini" eShop title with only the new games and no story or returning games over what we got. Sometimes less is more.