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March 28, 2024, 04:22:35 PM

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Yakuza series

Started by Bhazor, August 02, 2018, 04:29:47 PM

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Mister Six

As I said upthread, for me, Yakuza Kiwami was all about the side quests and minigames, and the main missions were just a way to get to those. I imagine 0 will be the same. Would strongly suggest sticking with it until the world opens up a bit and you're able to indulge in the extracurriculars, as brat-sampson said.

peanutbutter

Ah it's not that I'm hating it, I'm generally enjoying it a lot more than I do most big games, I just rarely touch anything that takes longer than an evening to get through. Will stick with it for a few more chapters just to make sure I get a full idea of what the game is about.

Have enjoyed the bits of side quests I've bumped into so far. The minigames have been novel but a bit more tedious (the baseball one in particular has an awful lot of bloat either side of the game to bother with).

madhair60

Been playing Yakuza 0, first one I've really put time into. MATE. WHAT A GAME. Just finished chapter 4 and WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT??????????? THE CLIFFHANGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

letsgobrian

#123
They've announced Lost Judgment, the sequel to Judgment, for September this year.

They're using the Yokohama setting from Yakuza 7. Not clear if they are sticking with the old style Yakuza combat or going with Yakuza 7's turn based combat. One shot shows the four leads from Judgment getting ready to fight, but Judgment had fights where NPCs helped out, so that isn't evidence in either direction yet.

Edit: It's confirmed elsewhere that Judgment will remain the action franchise, Yakuza is now where Toshihiro Nagoshi gets to live out his Dragon Quest turn based dreams.

Thursday

Torn on that decision, the turn based format makes sense for Ichiban, and I liked it more than most but ehhh.... I think I would rather just continue to smash lads faces in with button combo's rather than selecting it from a menu. Can they at least be inspired by a better JRPG next time?

Consignia

I grew to like the JRPG style, but after recently playing Kiwami 2 I think that there's something viseral missing from turn based were you twat some using a traffic cone you just picked up. I think a happy medium can be met. Have bonus damage for timing hits with an attack, and removing the special moves which teleport you out of the battle zone. Just try and make it feel more like a street fight that you are participating in rather than directing.

Timothy

Quote from: Thursday on May 07, 2021, 09:33:10 PM
Torn on that decision, the turn based format makes sense for Ichiban, and I liked it more than most but ehhh.... I think I would rather just continue to smash lads faces in with button combo's rather than selecting it from a menu. Can they at least be inspired by a better JRPG next time?

What JRPGs do you have in mind? I cant think of a better JRPG then the last Dragon Quest game. Might be one of the best ever made.

I really like the turnbased combat so happy that they continue to follow that route. Judgement will continue to be the beat them up. Hope the sequel is better then the first game.

Thursday

That's not fair at all of me actually I just mean they need to add a bit more depth and complexity to the turn-based mechanics.

brat-sampson

This is a beautiful image



The entire mainline yakuza series on Game Pass being used to advertise the new version of Windows. How far we've come.

I'm currently in the 3rd Part of Y5 but also started LaD because I couldn't resist. They're both brilliant, but have to say Haruka's One Song does get overplayed juuuust a tad. I do find it very funny though that she has this meek and nervous approach to her talents, then utterly Godzilla-Stomps every single opponent thanks to my half-decent rhythm skillz and that ability that takes their health down even faster. 5's a bit of a mess to be honest, but it's a great one. Easier to think of it as like 5 10-hour games than one giant 50-hr one. LaD has been honestly 80% cutscenes so far, but it's very engaging, so is taking a bunch of time away from 5 even though I know I should stick with the order.

Consignia

Yeah 7 is cutscene heavy until you get to properly into Yokohama. It's then got a similar balance to usual after that though. Love Ichiban and his gang, though. Worthy successors to Kiryu.

Mister Six

#130
Just started 0, though not very far into it. Wondering if I should have started here, because Kiryu's friendship with whatsisface wasn't built up well at all in Kiwami 1 and then got sidelined by Majima and the convoluted backstabbing among the higher ups. Love all the coins and money flying everywhere as I batter blokes, though.

brat-sampson

0 makes for a fantastic franchise entry point, it's just a much stronger game than Kiwami and doesn't require any prior knowledge. If you know some of the characters already though, you'll get to appreciate meeting their younger incarnations and dynamics, so it works both ways.

Mister Six

I did love Kiwami 1, but mostly for the pure gameplay and all the side stuff. Didn't feel very connected to the main story, especially as it started unravelling into a string of obliquely connected, hitherto unmentioned gangland bosses that only existed so I'd have a climactic battle to enjoy every five missions or so.

Pink Gregory

Stumbled into Kiwami out of curiosity and have just been *rinsing* it.  Is the only difference between normal and hard difficulty enemy health?  Because it feels a little like the boss fights could be a bit leaner, that's all.

Mister Six

Something Kiwami doesn't communicate very well is that if a boss doubles over with a glow over their head, during which time they regenerate health, you should run up and use the same-coloured heat action (Rush/Beast/Brawler - I don't think there are any Dragon enemies) on them. That's triangle on PS4 - obviously you need to have heat saved up in your gauge. You'll do a super attack that gouges the fuck out of their health.

I only found that out halfway through the game. Wish I'd known it when I was fighting that bald bloke who absolutely soaks up damage unless you Rush around the back and kick him up the arse.

Pink Gregory

I think it was a bit early in the game to have unlocked them as well, I did turn down the difficulty for that one because it just ended up being *such* a long, boring fight.

Currently desperately trying to catch up with Majima fights because I didn't twig that he was hiding in a giant traffic cone

Mister Six

He pops up when you play minigames and go into certain restaurants too, so try that if running around hoping he'll appear isn't getting you anywhere.

Pink Gregory

I'm not having any trouble now, it's just that not twigging that he was hiding stopped him from appearing for a few chapters (you only get a phone call about it so you don't get the email clue, like when he shows up in the hostess club) so I'm grinding the street encounters back up.

Though he's starting to outclass me a bit now with three health bars and really long attack strings that stunlock you, so maybe I'm overconpensating now.  But I just love the little guy.

MoreauVasz

One way to navigate the weird tone shifts is to realise that Yakuza melodramas are a staple of Japanese genre cinema and they are all about tattooed dudes doing incredibly stupid things and getting incredibly upset over minor social trespasses involving criminal organisations. As such, I think the Yakuza games can be understood as being satirical both in terms of making the conflicts ridiculously OTT and in terms of showing us the silly and mundane things that the intense tattooed dudes get up to when they're not agreeing to go to prison for the sake of a mate who embarassed himself at a party.

peanutbutter

Bailed on Yakuza 0, it seemed great for what it was but I don't have the patience to engage with a game like it anymore

beanheadmcginty

I've not got far in this, but so far I've had to skip about 45 cutscenes in a row, run somewhere, skip another 45 cutscenes, sit through 10 unskippable cutscenes that are weirdly silent, have a brief punch up, then skip another 45 cutscenes and so on. Are the games like this all the way through?

brat-sampson

They're largely story-focused games, so... yes. If you're not willing to engage with the game and watch some 5-20m cutscenes on occasion, stay away. The rest will just be contextless brawling and weirdness, unless you decide to go bowling or sth.

bgmnts

Yeah I definitely burnt out on it quickly.

Lasted a few hours on the first one and got a bit bored. It's a bit gutting really because the combat can be quite fun at times.

peanutbutter

I didn't mind the cutscenes so much, I had issue with the missions that were broke up into tons of tiny chunks and each chunk would have a big ream of text to click through at the beginning and end of each segment.

Get the point of it all but I just have no patience for that kind of thing.



There was a couple of properly shitty fetch quests too iirc. Never get the appeal of that shit in a game that is already fairly long, just pull out a walkthrough instantly to save myself some of the time it's trying to rob from me.

letsgobrian

Yakuza 7 & Judgement handle their exposition dumps a bit better, in that they are now conversations that you can step away from if you want to go and indulge yourself in other parts of the game.

Playing DQ11 recently I was not surprised that this is where they appear to have stolen this approach from.

Pink Gregory

Can't imagine what this must have been like with PS2 loading times.

Spiteface

Quote from: Pink Gregory on July 18, 2021, 07:08:15 PM
Can't imagine what this must have been like with PS2 loading times.

I replayed the original PS2 Yakuza (complete with English dub!) Last year. Maybe it's because I'm used to more modern games, but the loading times were definitely an issue, not as much as the camera angles though.

Thursday

Quote from: beanheadmcginty on July 18, 2021, 09:58:20 AM
I've not got far in this, but so far I've had to skip about 45 cutscenes in a row, run somewhere, skip another 45 cutscenes, sit through 10 unskippable cutscenes that are weirdly silent, have a brief punch up, then skip another 45 cutscenes and so on. Are the games like this all the way through?


If you absolutely hate story in games, and you're not willing to give it a chance, this is not for you. Just stop. Don't bother with it.

bgmnts

Re: loading times.

Would everyone prefer if instead of loading times for levels and such, the game just took a few minutes to start up and load the whole game? Like your open world Rockstar games and those survival games do.

beanheadmcginty

Quote from: Thursday on July 20, 2021, 12:54:15 PM

If you absolutely hate story in games, and you're not willing to give it a chance, this is not for you. Just stop. Don't bother with it.

Way ahead of you. I've been playing Burnout Paradise all week instead. It's fucking great.