sayton
Bio
he/him 25
I try to play at least 30 games for the first time per year.
This is really just to catalog games I've played in case I forget them.
If you look at my game list, you'll see I have a column system where every 10 games, I'll add a game related to/matching a theme with the game below it. For example. I've had a column for Mario, Sonic, Fighting Games, Visual Novels, etc. The only column that's stayed the same for over 1000 listed games is Licensed Games. I do this as a motivator to play more types of games to keep a column going. Just a fun personal game for me.
Profile picture drawn by me.
he/him 25
I try to play at least 30 games for the first time per year.
This is really just to catalog games I've played in case I forget them.
If you look at my game list, you'll see I have a column system where every 10 games, I'll add a game related to/matching a theme with the game below it. For example. I've had a column for Mario, Sonic, Fighting Games, Visual Novels, etc. The only column that's stayed the same for over 1000 listed games is Licensed Games. I do this as a motivator to play more types of games to keep a column going. Just a fun personal game for me.
Profile picture drawn by me.
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GOTY '23
Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event
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GOTY '22
Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event
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Journaled games once a day for a month straight
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Played 1000+ games
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Played 500+ games
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Journaled 5+ games in a single day
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Played 100+ games
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1406
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005
Played in 2024
099
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This review contains spoilers
disappointing in a lot of areas, but i was prepared for that. when they were hyping up that the story itself is around 50-70 hours, alongside being the 3rd release for the series in under 12 months, i knew it was gonna be bloated as shit. probably the longest stretch of dull moments in a yakuza game's story. there are entertaining little bits peppered throughout the nothing, but its a lot of buildup for a very predictable final act.
there is a bit too much said rather than seen, and not enough elaborated on, especially in regards to the mediocre rogues gallery. this is really a problem with eiji in particular. hes one of many yakuza characters where the writers expect the player to think the way ichiban does a bit too much. i couldnt believe that the child soldiers never came up once in the finale for ichiban. it seemed like that was going to become a huge moral dilemma at some point, but i guess all it was for was to show us how fucked up bryce truly is. wong tou amounted to nothing, he feels like he shouldve been a party member. dwights death was stupid in a great way. ebina is a very watered down masato, its kind of crazy that they just did the same thing twice in a row. ebina just has nowhere near the amount of character that masato had, so it was just really eye-rolley seeing his past and intentions become revealed. the only villain i enjoyed was yamai, who becomes an ally and majima-equivalent to ichiban. im not sure how hes going to stick around given where we leave off with him in this game, but i thought he was a great addition, and had a nice story. yamai also easily had the best fights in this one.
akane and lani are whatever, they really do not do much other than be on the run and then in japan with seemingly no danger past that point, and then everything is completely fine after bryce is defeated. im not saying i need a complete breakdown of how things unfolded post-boss fight, but there was simply no reason for me to care about these characters when they werent anything more than goals for our protagonists. the most we get out of akane is the scene on the beach with ichiban and her, and it plays out exactly how you would imagine. i feel like seeing these 2 interact with bryce would've been the most interesting scenario for them, but it never happens. the end felt really rushed too, feels like we got half of an ending after the credits rolled.
something yakuza now shares in common with ace attorney is that our new red clad protagonist has to share the spotlight with his predecessor. funny that both ichiban and apollo have had stories centered around their mothers and half-siblings. anyway, ichiban is like a stereotype of himself now. the way kiryu gets cancer is so out of left field and stupid, just what the fuck ever man.
what was the point of the daidoji????? all gaiden boils down to at this point is showing us how watase was driven to the great dissolution
you can really tell some characters werent supposed to be here, like joongi and zhao. i am fine with ichiban having a group of friends that will stick around for forever, i just hope they all get some real time in the spotlight throughout this saga at some point. the drink links this time around were also pretty whatever. joongis and seonhees are the ones that i enjoyed. tomizawa is great, chitose is alright. she is definitely one of the better women in yakuza, her twist is really obvious though.
side note: am i crazy or does it feel like theres too much fluff in the dialogue with this one? i was pretty bored out of my mind listening to conversations that couldve been trimmed down, ive never felt this way with past yakuza games.
the memoires of a dragon were cool, but i really wish the life links had those sleek ultra hd animated cutscenes. it feels very unceremonious for these to be animated in the stock sub-story style. especially with all the returning characters. matsunaga was my favorite character in 6, so i was shocked and happy as hell to see him and naoto. we get to see akiyama again after all this time and i cant see every pore on his face?? fuck you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the life links were sweet regardless.
the minigames are neat this time around. dondoko island is already an all time best for yakuza minigames, sujimon league is something i look foward to being expanded on in future entrees, and the little stuff is fun for an hour each. i was hoping crazy eats would be a bit bigger, but thank god i didnt need to play it as much i had to play can collector in 7. ptsd
the combat is much better than 7's, which was already great. i appreciate all the enhancements to ichiban and co's behavior that make fights much snappier and less bullshit. didnt care for many of the jobs this time around though. in 7, it felt like you absolutely needed to try out other jobs to have a chance at the true millenium tower. in this, i seriously only changed joongi to desperado, and tried sujimancer on ichiban for a bit before realizing it wasnt worth the time to max it out. the base jobs, and weapon upgrades, just give you enough to work with. its really disappointing that the true millenium tower equivalent is also locked behind dlc. getting to level 70 for the platinum felt like a chore due to how the base game doesnt offer any fun way to actually get there. the hardest dungeon only needs you to be at about level 52, so you hardly get anything once youre past that. theres not any incentive to max anything out because theres nothing to use your maxed out characters on...
...unless you buy the dlc of course!! the dlc/microtransactions are pretty scummy as well. the big swell looks like it has the best and funniest stuff in the game but im not willing to spend $20 on it right now, maybe when it starts to get discounted ill get around to it. it was very odd beating the game, realizing 3 characters never even came to hawaii when i know i saw screenshots of them all together in hawaii before the games release, and then discovering that in order to see that, i have to spend more than the initlal $70. and new game plus also being locked behind this dlc is stupid too. fuck that
i hope they can rekindle the same energy they had for 7 in the next entry, and that its not being developed alongside 3 other games again. i would much rather have a smaller scale game with a tighter focus on story. i guess thats hard to do with an rpg so its pretty pointless to even suggest, but with gaiden coming out right before this one, i kinda hope for something like that with ichiban and friends could be a possibility. or an akiyama game. wishful thinking.
anyway i cant wait to see why yagami goes to hawaii in judgment 3 where there will be a segway racing minigame
there is a bit too much said rather than seen, and not enough elaborated on, especially in regards to the mediocre rogues gallery. this is really a problem with eiji in particular. hes one of many yakuza characters where the writers expect the player to think the way ichiban does a bit too much. i couldnt believe that the child soldiers never came up once in the finale for ichiban. it seemed like that was going to become a huge moral dilemma at some point, but i guess all it was for was to show us how fucked up bryce truly is. wong tou amounted to nothing, he feels like he shouldve been a party member. dwights death was stupid in a great way. ebina is a very watered down masato, its kind of crazy that they just did the same thing twice in a row. ebina just has nowhere near the amount of character that masato had, so it was just really eye-rolley seeing his past and intentions become revealed. the only villain i enjoyed was yamai, who becomes an ally and majima-equivalent to ichiban. im not sure how hes going to stick around given where we leave off with him in this game, but i thought he was a great addition, and had a nice story. yamai also easily had the best fights in this one.
akane and lani are whatever, they really do not do much other than be on the run and then in japan with seemingly no danger past that point, and then everything is completely fine after bryce is defeated. im not saying i need a complete breakdown of how things unfolded post-boss fight, but there was simply no reason for me to care about these characters when they werent anything more than goals for our protagonists. the most we get out of akane is the scene on the beach with ichiban and her, and it plays out exactly how you would imagine. i feel like seeing these 2 interact with bryce would've been the most interesting scenario for them, but it never happens. the end felt really rushed too, feels like we got half of an ending after the credits rolled.
something yakuza now shares in common with ace attorney is that our new red clad protagonist has to share the spotlight with his predecessor. funny that both ichiban and apollo have had stories centered around their mothers and half-siblings. anyway, ichiban is like a stereotype of himself now. the way kiryu gets cancer is so out of left field and stupid, just what the fuck ever man.
what was the point of the daidoji????? all gaiden boils down to at this point is showing us how watase was driven to the great dissolution
you can really tell some characters werent supposed to be here, like joongi and zhao. i am fine with ichiban having a group of friends that will stick around for forever, i just hope they all get some real time in the spotlight throughout this saga at some point. the drink links this time around were also pretty whatever. joongis and seonhees are the ones that i enjoyed. tomizawa is great, chitose is alright. she is definitely one of the better women in yakuza, her twist is really obvious though.
side note: am i crazy or does it feel like theres too much fluff in the dialogue with this one? i was pretty bored out of my mind listening to conversations that couldve been trimmed down, ive never felt this way with past yakuza games.
the memoires of a dragon were cool, but i really wish the life links had those sleek ultra hd animated cutscenes. it feels very unceremonious for these to be animated in the stock sub-story style. especially with all the returning characters. matsunaga was my favorite character in 6, so i was shocked and happy as hell to see him and naoto. we get to see akiyama again after all this time and i cant see every pore on his face?? fuck you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the life links were sweet regardless.
the minigames are neat this time around. dondoko island is already an all time best for yakuza minigames, sujimon league is something i look foward to being expanded on in future entrees, and the little stuff is fun for an hour each. i was hoping crazy eats would be a bit bigger, but thank god i didnt need to play it as much i had to play can collector in 7. ptsd
the combat is much better than 7's, which was already great. i appreciate all the enhancements to ichiban and co's behavior that make fights much snappier and less bullshit. didnt care for many of the jobs this time around though. in 7, it felt like you absolutely needed to try out other jobs to have a chance at the true millenium tower. in this, i seriously only changed joongi to desperado, and tried sujimancer on ichiban for a bit before realizing it wasnt worth the time to max it out. the base jobs, and weapon upgrades, just give you enough to work with. its really disappointing that the true millenium tower equivalent is also locked behind dlc. getting to level 70 for the platinum felt like a chore due to how the base game doesnt offer any fun way to actually get there. the hardest dungeon only needs you to be at about level 52, so you hardly get anything once youre past that. theres not any incentive to max anything out because theres nothing to use your maxed out characters on...
...unless you buy the dlc of course!! the dlc/microtransactions are pretty scummy as well. the big swell looks like it has the best and funniest stuff in the game but im not willing to spend $20 on it right now, maybe when it starts to get discounted ill get around to it. it was very odd beating the game, realizing 3 characters never even came to hawaii when i know i saw screenshots of them all together in hawaii before the games release, and then discovering that in order to see that, i have to spend more than the initlal $70. and new game plus also being locked behind this dlc is stupid too. fuck that
i hope they can rekindle the same energy they had for 7 in the next entry, and that its not being developed alongside 3 other games again. i would much rather have a smaller scale game with a tighter focus on story. i guess thats hard to do with an rpg so its pretty pointless to even suggest, but with gaiden coming out right before this one, i kinda hope for something like that with ichiban and friends could be a possibility. or an akiyama game. wishful thinking.
anyway i cant wait to see why yagami goes to hawaii in judgment 3 where there will be a segway racing minigame
did not think this one would make me cry. also im down for any setting based on venice. probably my favorite layton at the moment
I need to sit on this for a while but it pisses me off that even before the game released, one of my most recurring thoughts was "I can't wait for the sequel to be way better", and that's most likely going to be true in the next 5 years! I just want to appreciate the fact that I get to have a spiritual successor to my 3rd favorite game of all time, but this really does feel like Jet Set Radio 1 at times, rather than Future, in the sense that it knows what it wants to be, but can't be it quite yet.
They've laid the groundwork for something perfect to come and I look very forward to that. What we have here is great though.
For half of my life, all I've wanted is Beat from Jet Set Radio to actually be a character with a story, and boy, I sure got my wish and then some with this game. Absolutely love the protagonist. The characters involved with the story have excellent designs. The unlockable crew members are pretty whatever though. Most people I know didn't even realize Shine for example was a recruitable character, she just looks too normal, even though she's just in place dancing for your attention. I was shocked Coil wasn't a story character, his design is much more unique than say Shine or Mesh, but he's just completely miss-able. He's all over the place in the trailers too! Also, why can I not play as Escher? Not cool. I also wish there was more voice acting on display throughout the story. We're missing a pretty big piece that made Jet Set Radio so special here in regards to that. I'm not sure what the equivalent to DJ Professor K would be in this world, but I hope to god we get anything comparable to him in a sequel. Not trying to be mean here, but I wanted to highlight Rise's voice acting. Were those lines selected after one take?
Also......you're gonna have a guccied down to the nuts dog design in this game, and just make it an NPC??? You couldn't make that design be this world's Pots the Dog?????? FUCK YOU!!!!!!!
The additions to the Jet Set Radio style tricking are nice, but I do feel like the addition of manueling created the requirement for way too many open spaces, like the 2nd part of the mall for example, that didn't need to be that big. Hopefully in a sequel, they can craft tighter environments. I don't mind the simplicity of the tricking as much as most people, as Jet Set Radio never had that in mind much. I never expected it to be THPS levels of complex in this game, and thank fuck it's not. Absolutely love the addition of bikes though. We don't see enough bikes in extreme sports games these days.
I like the spraying mechanic here. It's cool to see it take from JSR 1 rather than Future in this area, as it was a really cool mechanic in JSR 1 that was sadly scrapped for the much quicker spraying in Future. I wish they kept the sense of fear that came with spraying in JSR 1, where while you're doing it, the cops are still getting closer, helicopters included. To be fair though, the police in this game are already extremely annoying to deal with. So annoying in fact, that there are portapotty's you can use to make your heat meter go down to 0 stars. Thank goodness they were self aware of that. It sucks that past 2 stars, the police just despawn all civilians and make the world feel very empty.
The music is pretty good. This game has it's own things going on in that department, and I respect that it wasn't trying to be 1-1 with Future's flavors, but I did find myself getting really tired of a lot of the songs here pretty fast. I am a B-Side kind of person, but some of these picks are kind of C-Sidey to me. The Klaus Veen song especially made me feel that way. His contribution to the soundtrack was the thing I was looking forward to the most, and it turned out to be a track from one of his albums released a few years ago. I immediately recognized it because I've had it in my Spotify likes for quite a while. And Anime Break is a good song, obviously I think so because I just said it's in my Spotify likes, but would I expect it in this game? No. Do I like listening to it after the 10th time in game? Not Really. I guess I just expected more stuff that would stick around in my head than what I got. It's got flavor, but not as much crazy variety as the games this is trying to emulate have. My favorite tracks are pretty much all the songs used in the trailers for the game. I love Agua a ton. It is very cool that you get rival gang's playlists after defeating them.
I think the game is the perfect length. Both Jet Set Radio's are between 8-13ish hours, and it took me about 11 here. I don't want a 20 hour long Jet Set Radio, and neither would you man. It would get repetitive.
A lot of what I have to say at the moment sounds negative, but I love the game regardless. It is still an extremely fun time whether you've played either Jet Set Radio's or not. It's probably more fun for you if you haven't touched them. I just know that a sequel to this will probably be as perfect as Jet Set Radio Future, and I look forward to that dream being real eventually. I hate that that's my foremost thought at the end of this, looking forward to the Future rather than what we just got not even a week ago. But can you blame me? The Future is amazing as long as it has Jet Set Radio before it! I think the Future with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk before it will also be incredible.
They've laid the groundwork for something perfect to come and I look very forward to that. What we have here is great though.
For half of my life, all I've wanted is Beat from Jet Set Radio to actually be a character with a story, and boy, I sure got my wish and then some with this game. Absolutely love the protagonist. The characters involved with the story have excellent designs. The unlockable crew members are pretty whatever though. Most people I know didn't even realize Shine for example was a recruitable character, she just looks too normal, even though she's just in place dancing for your attention. I was shocked Coil wasn't a story character, his design is much more unique than say Shine or Mesh, but he's just completely miss-able. He's all over the place in the trailers too! Also, why can I not play as Escher? Not cool. I also wish there was more voice acting on display throughout the story. We're missing a pretty big piece that made Jet Set Radio so special here in regards to that. I'm not sure what the equivalent to DJ Professor K would be in this world, but I hope to god we get anything comparable to him in a sequel. Not trying to be mean here, but I wanted to highlight Rise's voice acting. Were those lines selected after one take?
Also......you're gonna have a guccied down to the nuts dog design in this game, and just make it an NPC??? You couldn't make that design be this world's Pots the Dog?????? FUCK YOU!!!!!!!
The additions to the Jet Set Radio style tricking are nice, but I do feel like the addition of manueling created the requirement for way too many open spaces, like the 2nd part of the mall for example, that didn't need to be that big. Hopefully in a sequel, they can craft tighter environments. I don't mind the simplicity of the tricking as much as most people, as Jet Set Radio never had that in mind much. I never expected it to be THPS levels of complex in this game, and thank fuck it's not. Absolutely love the addition of bikes though. We don't see enough bikes in extreme sports games these days.
I like the spraying mechanic here. It's cool to see it take from JSR 1 rather than Future in this area, as it was a really cool mechanic in JSR 1 that was sadly scrapped for the much quicker spraying in Future. I wish they kept the sense of fear that came with spraying in JSR 1, where while you're doing it, the cops are still getting closer, helicopters included. To be fair though, the police in this game are already extremely annoying to deal with. So annoying in fact, that there are portapotty's you can use to make your heat meter go down to 0 stars. Thank goodness they were self aware of that. It sucks that past 2 stars, the police just despawn all civilians and make the world feel very empty.
The music is pretty good. This game has it's own things going on in that department, and I respect that it wasn't trying to be 1-1 with Future's flavors, but I did find myself getting really tired of a lot of the songs here pretty fast. I am a B-Side kind of person, but some of these picks are kind of C-Sidey to me. The Klaus Veen song especially made me feel that way. His contribution to the soundtrack was the thing I was looking forward to the most, and it turned out to be a track from one of his albums released a few years ago. I immediately recognized it because I've had it in my Spotify likes for quite a while. And Anime Break is a good song, obviously I think so because I just said it's in my Spotify likes, but would I expect it in this game? No. Do I like listening to it after the 10th time in game? Not Really. I guess I just expected more stuff that would stick around in my head than what I got. It's got flavor, but not as much crazy variety as the games this is trying to emulate have. My favorite tracks are pretty much all the songs used in the trailers for the game. I love Agua a ton. It is very cool that you get rival gang's playlists after defeating them.
I think the game is the perfect length. Both Jet Set Radio's are between 8-13ish hours, and it took me about 11 here. I don't want a 20 hour long Jet Set Radio, and neither would you man. It would get repetitive.
A lot of what I have to say at the moment sounds negative, but I love the game regardless. It is still an extremely fun time whether you've played either Jet Set Radio's or not. It's probably more fun for you if you haven't touched them. I just know that a sequel to this will probably be as perfect as Jet Set Radio Future, and I look forward to that dream being real eventually. I hate that that's my foremost thought at the end of this, looking forward to the Future rather than what we just got not even a week ago. But can you blame me? The Future is amazing as long as it has Jet Set Radio before it! I think the Future with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk before it will also be incredible.