few studios have ever had as good a grasp on the concept of quick, go from making them laugh about this guy's silly crawfish companion to making them cry about the incredibly well-crafted and elaborate family dynamic we've cultivated over the last 15 chapters better than RGG did when they made this. RGG has done this really well in past games to a certain extent, but never with this wide of a range of emotion. they fired on all cylinders the whole way through.
i finished yakuza 6 and audibly sighed. i'd gotten LAD for free a while back through PS+ but put off playing it partly because i hadn't finished the rest of the games, but mostly because i was dreading the shift to turn-based combat. i hate turn-based combat. i think it's uninventive, unintuitive and unimaginative. 48 hours and 21 minutes of LAD later, i can't wait for LAD8. good god, they hit a home run. QTE triggers, parry mechanics, the entire job system -- it all brings the series into this new age that i'm so glad they took. it's not perfect, of course: it can get grindy, some bosses have absurd difficulty spikes, there's a mishmash of abilities and sometimes it does really boil down to how much you've grinded: but i'm not sure i would've loved this game the same if it had the original Yakuza combat -- even if it's as good as Lost Judgment's.
furthermore, this game does characters in such a satisfying way. the bond system, the organic conversations that crop up when navigating the locales, the main story developments that lead to people joining the party despite the prior relationships with ichiban... it's all just masterfully crafted. what this game does to develop the narratives of the characters: you understand every protagonist's unique motivations, their principles, their history -- the decisions they make make sense and feel founded in years and years of careful attention to detail to their stories by a team of individuals that obviously love these characters to death. if this game does nothing else correctly, it does people justice.
also, the english dub is fantastic. nanba's voice is a little too gruff for my liking and there's a couple characters from prior games that have cameos and don't sound right (probably because you're used to their japanese VAs) but everyone else rocks.
TL;DR if you play this you might need to prepare for getting a dragonfish tattoo sometime in the near future because ichiban can and will win your entire heart
i finished yakuza 6 and audibly sighed. i'd gotten LAD for free a while back through PS+ but put off playing it partly because i hadn't finished the rest of the games, but mostly because i was dreading the shift to turn-based combat. i hate turn-based combat. i think it's uninventive, unintuitive and unimaginative. 48 hours and 21 minutes of LAD later, i can't wait for LAD8. good god, they hit a home run. QTE triggers, parry mechanics, the entire job system -- it all brings the series into this new age that i'm so glad they took. it's not perfect, of course: it can get grindy, some bosses have absurd difficulty spikes, there's a mishmash of abilities and sometimes it does really boil down to how much you've grinded: but i'm not sure i would've loved this game the same if it had the original Yakuza combat -- even if it's as good as Lost Judgment's.
furthermore, this game does characters in such a satisfying way. the bond system, the organic conversations that crop up when navigating the locales, the main story developments that lead to people joining the party despite the prior relationships with ichiban... it's all just masterfully crafted. what this game does to develop the narratives of the characters: you understand every protagonist's unique motivations, their principles, their history -- the decisions they make make sense and feel founded in years and years of careful attention to detail to their stories by a team of individuals that obviously love these characters to death. if this game does nothing else correctly, it does people justice.
also, the english dub is fantastic. nanba's voice is a little too gruff for my liking and there's a couple characters from prior games that have cameos and don't sound right (probably because you're used to their japanese VAs) but everyone else rocks.
TL;DR if you play this you might need to prepare for getting a dragonfish tattoo sometime in the near future because ichiban can and will win your entire heart