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