Chapter 5 Substories - Yakuza Kiwami Walkthrough & Guide ...

I've been thinking of making a list just for myself but figured why not share it with this community and start a discussion. It could be beneficial for others who are looking for recommendations or just for you to get your thoughts out about a game. Below I ranked my personal 10 with a bit of description as to why I like them.

Half Life 2 - This game hasn't left my #1 spot since it came out. It was the first single player FPS game I played. I haven't played Half Life 1 before Half Life 2 so I didn't really know that standing Valve had in the FPS community. But man, the gravity gun changed my life. The physics engine blew my mind. I was so happy that Half Life 2 included puzzles based on physics as well. I think its incredible that a game whose protagonist is a physicist compared to a soldier did so well. I remember when the demo came out I played the Ravenholm level probably 20 times. Then when I was able to buy Half Life 2 I played it another 20 times. I love the setting of Half Life 2, and the oppressive nature of the Combine. The strider fights were a spectacle and meeting DOG was amazing. I personally believe this game is perfect, between gunplay, story, setting, music. I almost cried at the end of Half Life Alyx and am so happy that Valve is continuing the universe. I believe that Half Life 2 still stands the test of time nowadays. It goes on sale often so please try it out! My ranking of the Half Life games are 2 > Alyx > Episode 2 > Episode 1 > Black Mesa > Half Life.
Persona 4 Golden - Atlus shows a masterclass of JRPGs with the Persona series. I haven't played Persona 1 or 2 and my first intro to the series was Golden on the Vita. I remember I played it and finished it in one weekend during college. I didn't even leave my room and stayed up all night getting it done. The characters in Golden from Chie to Kanji are a joy to be around and building relationships with. The soundtrack of the Persona series ties so well with the atmosphere of each game. Persona 4 Golden was also the first JRPG I played and finished. Boy it was a joy. The combat got improved upon greatly in Persona 5 but having the introduction to the series through Golden puts it over the top for me. Soon after beating Persona 4 Golden, I played Persona 3 Portable which was a great game too! Persona 5 deserves all the accolades its getting but I believe that the groundwork for the Western audience was laid by Persona 4 Golden on the Vita.
Judgement - As with many others, my first taste into the Yakuza franchise was when Yakuza 0 came on Steam. Since then I have finished 0, Kiwami, Kiwami 2, Judgement, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 in that order. While the other entries in this series are amazing, it was nice to see Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios venture out from the Yakuza storyline and focus on a detective story. The combat was a lot more fluid, almost reminding me of Majima's moveset in Yakuza 0. There was also a slice of life feel to Judgement. I think my favorite thing about the game was the pay off for completing side stories and relationships with people in the city. The last substory was amazing to see. I put this on the list even though I love the other games in the series so here is my ranking for the series. Judgement > Kiwami 2 > Yakuza 6 > Yakuza 0 > Yakuza 4 > Yakuza 7 > Kiwami > Yakuza 5 > Yakuza 3.
Hotline Miami 2 - The Hotline Miami collection introduced me to Retrowave music, and I will forever be grateful for that. Hotline Miami plays as a top down shooter with a very David Lynch like story. The chapters jump from the Past to Future to Present in different ways focusing on different characters. It is all tied up nicely at the end of Hotline Miami 2 in my opinion. This game is as bloody as a pixel game can be. The sense of fear you get when you try to see if anyone heard your gunshot is insane. I put Hotline Miami 2 here instead of 1 because of the larger cast of characters and for the ending. While I did love Hotline Miami 1, 2 for me was just a bit better. This game is eye candy from the floor plans of each level, the retro Miami colors, and the gory way of killing enemies. Hotline Miami 1 started my appreciation for indie games as being powerhouses.
Inside - I once heard someone on the Gameinformer podcast refer to this game as being carved out of one single block of clay. This game runs so smoothly you forget that there is a bunch of code in the background. Playdead is on a roll after Limbo and Inside in the creepy side scrolling puzzle platformer game. Inside had one of the most interesting backdrops I have seen. You are a child breaking into a facility of seemingly unknown reasons. But the game doesn't tell you that, there is no narration or voicework in this game. But its a testament to how carefully crafted this game is that the story can be told by what is happening in the background as you are making your way from left to right. The ending of this game caught me by surprise but I absolutely adored this game from start to finish.
Wolfenstein: The New Colossus - Who doesn't love killing Nazis? Ever since Machinegames took over the franchise of Wolfenstein each entry has just gotten better and better. I've heard different qualms about TNC mainly about the story, but to be honest that was my favorite part of this game. It made BJ into a deeper character rather than a meathead and his Jewish ancestry being a background for fighting Nazi's was poetic. My favorite moment was, in the courtroom dream sequence, right after you get out and meet the memory of your mom. It honestly brought me to tears. The gunplay was as good as it gets as well as the characters on your ship. My one issue was the hacking minigame. I did love the sound effects used but felt overall it was a useless addition. Although I did complete all of it! If I had to rank all the Machinegames Wolfensteins it would go TNC > New Order > Old Blood > Youngblood.
Mass Effect 2 - This game has about 200 hours of play time on my Steam. Bioware were masters of incredible RPG experiences. Mass Effect 2's companions were some of the best party members in an RPG ever. The storylines for each of these characters were a joy to take part in and it was extremely daring for Bioware to say, Hey! Lets put a suicide mission for the ending and have some of your characters permanently die. While the main villain wasn't that good, the overarching villain with culminated into the grand finale of Mass Effect 3 was worth it. I can't say enough as to how fleshed out the crew on the Normandy was. I'm excited to see any quality of life changes in the legendary edition!
What Remains of Edith Finch - I was debating putting this on my top 10 but the more time passed, the more and more I was thinking about the experience playing this game. I didn't play Unfinished Swan so I didn't know much about the developer but I do love Annapurna Interactive's published games. Edith Finch was no different. A first person/adventure/walking simulator game with an engaging story about a very strange family, the game immediately dug its hooks in me and never let go. The house of the Finches felt like a maze but because of how well crafted this game is you never feel lost. The side story about the unfortunate ends of the family is engaging. Not enough can be said about the last family member's story you find and how incredible that experience was.
Pokemon White - I am a huge Pokemon fan having bought one of each of the main series. I am also one of those people who liked SwSh. But I believe that Pokemon was at its best during the Black and White era. Created a new 150 pokemon while not including any past ones was risky, but for me it paid off. It was fun not being shackled by past favorites and looking towards a new generation. While it did seem that they just replaced skins for Pokemon, i.e. Swoobat/Zubat, TimburMachoke, etc. I liked almost all the new designs. The story for this game was also great. N was a great antagonist and actually made me sympathize with what was supposed to be your foe in the game. Why would I fight against someone who views that Pokemon should be free from trainers?
Ori and the Will of the Wisps - I absolutely adored Blind Forest and when Will of the Wisps came out it was just more of Ori but with a bunch of quality of life improvements. The story was even more emotional than the first. Without spoilers I found the villain's story especially after the final fight to be incredibly touching. I love how Moon Studio works as well, being completely decentralized while producing beautiful games.

Mr Libido's: The true heroes of Yakuza 0.

There will also be FULL spoilers for Yakuza Kiwami in this character analysis, so beware if you haven't played that/1.
During your playthrough with Majima in chapter 3, you'll be tasked with scouting out Odyssey, a rival cabaret club. Majima goes into it not expecting any surprises. You look around, and Majima comments on many things in the club. Surely this information will be integral in beating Odyssey in the Cabaret competition. Then, Majima looks to the left of the club, and sees the sight of his life. A man in nothing but his underwear, in the back of the club, for all to see. Not to mention preforming a dance, which is integral to Majima's character, we'll see how later. Majima is reasonably thrown off guard, but there's nothing else to the first encounter of this beautiful man. Most players will assume this is just Yakuza doing it's thing; Surely this character won't come back.
But then, Yakuza 0 throws you for a loop. In chapter 4, Majima goes to a telephone club find more info about one Makoto Makimura. He's found someone who might share him info. Ready to go on the date, Majima is instead interrupted by, you guessed it, Mr. Libido. This "walking erection" has no shame, and assumes Majima to have come to the telephone club to slay his dragon. Majima naturally says that there's more to it then that. Mr. Libido (actual name Habu, who I'll be calling as such for the rest of the analysis.) doesn't really care, but thinks that he and Majima are in the same boat. He claims his libido is legendary, and he needs to take care of it multiple times per day. He asks if Majima has any recommendations for girls, and that they can trade info. Majima refuses, but Habu let's him know he'll be around if he changes his mind.
For some, this was the last time they ever encountered Habu, and just chalked him up as a weird character. Maybe he's an easter egg or something. But rest assured, this is far from his last appearance. If you go out of your way to view good ol softcore porn, you'll not only gain a wholesome friendship with the worker there, but also run into Habu once more. He's glad he was right about Majima; Just as much of a horny man as he is. Majima again denies his accusations, but it's clear he had ulterior motives. Habu is certain Majima's five knuckle shuffle is still to come. And gets so excited, that he... Presumably nuts right then and there. But the man is already raring to go not 10 seconds later. He goes to pursue other girls, and leaves Majima to himself.
It's important to state that you have to go out of your way to meet Habu. He ONLY shows up if you watch a variety of erotic videos. Ultimately 15 are required to view to finish the friendship arc. This is important because the more videos you watch, the more Majima let's loose, the more he let's go of the shackles holding him back. We'll continue through more of the questline before we talk more about the many hidden layers of this arc of Majima's.
We see this during the many info exchanges between the two lustful lads. The more that gets shared, the more we see a bond forming between Habu and Majima. He even openly admits that after all that he's going through, this place is relaxing. No doubt part of it is because of Habu, who proves to be one of the greatest friends Majima ever had. It also contributes to Majima's transformation. If Nishitani represents the crazy side of Majima, then Habu represents the side that let's loose, that ultimately doesn't care about what others think of him. We even see this with Habu's dance. This is the first thing you see him doing in Odyssey, and Majima inherited it for himself, as players can see during the Disiple of the New Order sidequest, as well as during points of the Majima Everywhere encounters. For all intents and purposes, Habu is as much of Majima in the future as Nishitani is.
But of course, not all substories can be sunshine and rainbows, as we see this friendship event take a dark turn. Majima encounters Habu, who reveals that he's been cutting back on clubs, and now he can't get "it" up. He insists that an energy drink he frequently has will solve everything. Though Majima worries that a drink of that magnitude could make things worse, and even kill him. But Habu has nothing left to lose. Majima gets him the drink, and of course, Habu is perfectly fine after that. He laments how he's seen just about every girl in Sotenbori , but Majima reminds him to just see his favourites. The quest ends on a lighter note, with Habu and Majima closer then ever.
And that's it. All in all, Habu is a wonderful character of deep intricacies, who is a perfect representation of what Majima will beco-
Oh, yeah. Kamurocho has a Mr. Libido too.
So Kiryu's just walking around one day, no doubt contemplating if it was a good idea to buy a sophisticated lad porn magazines, when he comes across a strange bald man, asking for telephone cards. The man has a unique power where if he sees a mere photo of a woman, he gets to see absolutely everything. He reveals his name to be Akimoto (not to be confused with domestic accident waiting to happen Akimoto from various substories throughout the series), and tells Kiryu to see him if he has anything to show. Until then, he'll be "wrecking the weasel". It's never clear whether Akimoto and Habu are related, though it's assumed that they are, sharing the balding hair, and the near endless stamina and love for all things women. Perhaps it's genetic. Wonder what their fathers like. Anyway, we see how much more subdued Akimoto is compared to Habu. Not to say that he's polite and respectful, but he certainly goes to much less extents then his brother from possibly the same mother (I mean, at least Akimoto wears clothes) Much like Kiryu is a naturally subdued person. Again, the libidos symbolize what are protagonists are, or will become. In that regard, they're wonderful.
Admittedly this substory is much more out of character for Kiryu. I don't really see our never killing friend picking up cards and showing them to Akimoto. Nevertheless, throughout the quest we see more of Akimoto's powers in action, which impresses Kiryu, and no doubt makes the player jealous. The next time we see him he reveals he even sees through the pixels that censor it. During his next encounter, he reveals he wants to stop looking at cards altogether, and let his mind do all the work.
This however, does not have a happy ending. Like Habu, Akimoto lost the ability to finish the job. He can get it up just fine, but he theorizes that his imagined girls are so much better then reality, that he can't have that sweet release. And whenever he so much as blinks, he sees them. I'd wager it's a sadder tale then Habu's, and I'm not scared to admit this scene had me in tears. Kiryu takes the time out of his life to find the girl of Akimoto's dreams. He goes to the Okama bar (the one place Akimoto probably hasn't gone to), and gets Akimoto to visit the Mama there.
Akimoto does so, and all is well in the world. Akimoto can finally be content with girls that aren't in his head. Like Habu, Akimoto develops a bond with the protagonist not unlike a bond of Kyodais. Akimoto is more then glad to have met Kiryu, and the two go their separate ways, though no doubt we'll see these two beautiful bastards in a sequel. All in all, the Mr Libido's are a masterclass of storytelling, and symbolize perfectly what these two characters become/already are. And that's everything. Sorry for the long post, and I hope you enjoyed me talking absolute nonsense for a long time.

There anyone else that doesn't care for Yakuza 2/Kiwami 2's story as much as everyone else?

(There's also gonna be Yakuza 1/Kiwami spoilers in this post, so be warned if for some reason you played 2 but skipped 1)
Mainly making this post to see if my opinion's valid. I didn't care for Yakuza 1's story at first, but after giving it some time to settle in, the reason's I disliked it (how much characters died) is exactly what makes it a good story. Kiryu managed to come back from all this death and pain. He essentially had everyone he knew and loved die on the same night, but he came back from it, because he knew he had to. That's some powerful stuff right there. Not saying 1's a masterpiece, it's villains leave something to be desired (except for Nishiki, who's still probably my favourite in the series). Some portions of the story seemed like filler, and more suited for substories. But the pros outweigh the cons, and now I look at 1 extremely fondly, especially it's first and last act.
And it's not like Kiwami 2 doesn't start well. Kiryu mourning the deaths of his loved ones and essentially being forced to help the Tojo are pretty good. Terada's "death" was shocking, considering I was confident that even if he died, it wouldn't be at the start of the game. But that of course leads to my first point for why I felt Kiwami 2 was underwhelming compared to others. Terada is Jingu 2. Show's up and reveals his true colours in the last chapter. Is the fake final boss. Then dies not long after he shows himself. However, Jingu's main problem was his sudden inclusion, but I thought he was genuinely entertaining. He's slimy, he's no Yakuza, and he gets others to do his dirty work. Not to mention the presence of a third party besides the Yakuza has been hinted at quite a bit. But Terada? Dude showed up, and died in chapter 1. The ONLY foreshadowing that there might be more to it is Majima mentioning that it's weird how the Omi killed Terada. Then he shows himself in the last chapter, and (while he has his own unique motivations) is more or less generic bad guy pulling the strings number 200.
It's not just Terada either. Sengoku is generic bad guy that wants chaos and wealth number 400. Though to be fair, the game seems to realise this, as he's sorta treated like a joke in his last few scenes. Takashima is so forgettable I didn't realise who he was when he was on screen for quite a bit. He's Terada's Jingu, and there's even less to talk about there. Shindo was admittedly pretty cool, and he's got a bit to him, but he's really only in the story for 2 chapters. And yeah, Ryuji's awesome, but he's the good in the bad lot. This was a issue in Kiwami and to a lesser extent 0 as well. With some exceptions, the villains are just kinda underwhelming.
The ending was kinda bad as well for me. We'll talk about the fakeout ending first. Kiryu and Kaoru getting blown up. I don't like it. I think it's out of character for Kiryu to just kiss Kaoru and abandon Haruka and everyone else, without even really trying to get out of there. You could make the argument that he knew that by Terada telling him to have faith, that the bomb wasn't gonna go off. But Kiryu said himself he didn't really know. And no disrespect to the band, SiM, but the song that plays in the background, "Sound of Breath", just makes the scene so much worse for me. IN fact, the song may be the actual problem. It was like this for the scene where Kiryu gets stabbed, too. The song itself is fine, but I just don't think it should be playing in scenes like these. And then it's revealed that the bomb was fake. It's going for the feeling of Yakuza 1's ending, and maybe it would've worked if not for the fakeout earlier, but I just don't think it does.
I also both like and dislike how everyone was involved with the Jingweon incident. Like because we get to see more character's in action. Like, it's cool as fuck to see Shimano and Kazama in their element. But it almost gets comical at certain points. "Kawara? Kurahashi? Kaoru? Kiryu? Terada? Everyone's related to the incident, fellas!" With that being said, some characters went severely underused. Daigo is meant to be this saving grace the Tojo needs, but he doesn't really DO anything of note. Kashiwagi get's shafted from the main story for the 2nd (3rd if you play in chronological order) time. I'm glad the dudes alive after the bloodbath that was 1, but give him something to do. Yoyoi and Majima are introduced well, and have good scenes, but I wish they had a bit more to do. Those last 2 are probably just me, though.
The game has good moments, even great moments. Watching how far the Tojo has fallen is interesting. The game isn't afraid to put humour in the main story, which is appreciated. Majima's bomb disposal is still a top tier scene in the series. I like the growing relationship Kiryu and Kaoru have. Act 1 is fantastic, honestly. The game is just hurt by it's frankly underwhelming last couple chapters. But hey, that's my opinion. If you like this story, great! I do too, it's not like it's bad. But after being told this story rivals 0's, I'm left thinking it's the worst one in the series so far (keep in mind I've only played 0, 1/Kiwami, and 2/Kiwami 2). Maybe it'll grow on me in time, I don't know. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Thanks for listening to some guy ramble about funny Yakuza game.

Just Played Thru Yakuza 4 for the First Time!

Hey everybody I'm back! from the creator of such post as "Just Played Thru Yakuza 3 for the First Time!" I'm back with the sequel! I'm gonna tell y'all what I liked and disliked about the game as well as have some questions for y'all to hopefully answer! It's currently 2 AM and I finished playing like, an hour ago so if like, sentence and spelling comprehension go out the window, that's why. Let's go babey!!
Right off the bat though I'll say I enjoyed 4 so much more thoroughly than 3! I know it's a basic bitch opinion but that's how I feel! Frankly, Kamorocho felt so much more fun to explore around and do stuff in than 3 did. The fact that they finally added in rooftops and underground sections to the city made it feel just that much more alive to me and I loved exploring the different nooks and crannies. When I realized you could go up to the rooftops and explore on the roof AND see the streets below I was almost as excited as when I was the first time I went into a store and it was a seamless transition right into it in Kiwami 2. Honestly I think if they could pair Yakuza 4's rooftops and underground areas with the Dragon Engine, that'd probably have the makings of the best possible version of Kamorocho.
Anyway, with that intro out of the way here's a more detailed and itemized list of the shit I liked and disliked as well as questions for y'all for when I play Yakuza 5!
The Good/Cool Shit:

While we're on the topic of basic bitch opinions, holy fuck Akiyama is THE BEST!!! His fighting style is supa cool and unique, I loved his mannerisms, and he just gives off the vibe of a cool ass dude I'd wanna hang out with IRL. That said, I also see where they got the inspiration for Y0 era Majima from too. The laid back demeanor, casual way of speaking, even fuckin' owning a cabaret club is all shit they'd do for Majima later on in 0 and it's so cool kind of seeing the 1.0 version of that in Akiyama.
There's finally a cute chubby gal in a Yakuza game!! For real tho, Hana-chan can get it. Deadass the whole time I was playing through the "Lonely Hana-chan" substory I was just like, "yo send ME in" lol!
Gramphics got real good! Idk what they did but there's a real noticeable uptick in graphical fidelity between 3 and 4! Did they switch engines or something during development or just learn to utilize PS3 hardware better with the new entry?
The progression system is so much better omg! Each level up felt meaningful and there's a degree of customization that absolutely blows 3's out of the water.
The melodrama is so juicy in this one! I feel like aesthetically and tonally, the series really starts to hit its stride here and I'm struck with the over the top craziness and emotional highs that I feel in love with from 0.
I loved the way the different characters navigated Kamorocho! Akiyama's normal run through in the first quarter gets subverted by Saejima having to deftly navigate the underground and areas Akiyama never got the chance to visit. And Tanimura being able to access Little Asia, a feat nobody else was able to do up to that point gave so much depth to the city showing how people from other Asian countries are treated in Japan.
It's interesting that the same series whose first game's only interaction with Chinese people was the super stereotypical ancient Chinese temple whose members all spoke broken Japanese shows the plight of Chinese people being subject to intracontinental racism in the 4th game in the series. Is this a benefit of the new writing team somebody told me about in my last post (shoutout u/TheImadoof for that tidbit of info!) or is it the same writers doing something different?
Tanimura's quirk was gambling and specifically playing Mahjong and I don't know what it is about this version particularly but I played A LOT of mahjong because of this! I didn't quite get the trophy for beating the tournament or anything but I was able to go toe to toe with the Advanced AI pretty regularly after brushing up on game knowledge. I now like, know about mahjong! I'm not the best at making amazing hands or anything and sometimes I feel like I totally should be able to call Tsumo when the game won't let me but damn if it ain't fun! I almost wanna play 0 or K2 again just to see what their Mahjong tables are like now!
Revelations still slap!! Each character getting their own little bit to do when they discover something cool was a nice touch too! I loved Tanimura sketching in his notebook and noting down different things about the moves he'd pull off and I laughed every time Saejima would fuckin' brake out the woodcarving tools and just hammer shit away the absolute madman lol!
The game became that much better for me when I realized Akiyama is basically Tom Nook (0 interest loans paid off at whatever rate you want) and Saejima is basically Cotton Hill (I killed 18 men!). In that respect I would have LOVED if Saejima was like, 4 feet tall and still built like at truck. Peak "Mom said it's my turn on the Xbox" energy
Majima!! He's still the man (as you saw!) and I love his scenes so much! When he got taken to jail you know ya boi was yellin' "Free the homie!!"

The Stuff I Didn't Like:

The repeated content kinda blows if I'm being honest. Having to repeat the "X Character VS Cabaret Clubs" substory for 3 separate characters is so boring and tedious. It's the same thing every time, go to each club once to meet the hostess, then a second time to talk to them, THEN go to the Cuze Bar and talk to The Mars Fighters about each girl. Answer each question right and get 30,000 yen. That and this may be my PC user showing but there's a pretty consistent bug where if you go into either Shine or Jewel and try to the other club, the game is straight up stuck at a loading screen and I have to restart the game to get it to work.
Repeat revelations are a crime tbh. The best thing about revelations is how unique and weird and once in a blue moon they are! When you repeat them the magic is totally gone! Also am I supposed to believe that a good like, week or so apart Kiryu and Akiyama just happen to find the exact same lady cop sticking up the exact same hostage with a knife?? How often does this kid get stabbed?
It feels like they were really running low on steam when they finally got to Kiryu content wise. To give perspective, he only has 2 revelations and they're BOTH recycled content from earlier in the game and by the end of the story I was kinda like, "wait why is Kiryu fightingDaigo? He already beat his ass in like, the second game and there's nothing to really demonstrate that he's gotten more powerful or anything like that other than the fact that he just kinda is more powerful when you fight him.
Saejima's main story is WAYYYY more interesting than any of his substories! It feels like such a subversion of what I normally play the Yakuza games for. Normally I play thru the main story to get more substories and the added power I got from completing them was just a bonus but with Saejima it's like they pumped his story full of interesting stuff like him breaking out of prison and fighting Majima in a batting cage but then all of his substories are just like "be a bodyguard!" I play these substories to see how these people react in different situations! Not just like, the same situation over and over.
I'm just gonna say it, I don't like Saejima. Maybe it's that he tries to force himself on Haruka and 3 games with this girl has made me go into full on protec mode and be like NO! YOU DON'T DO THAT! GET AWAY FROM HER! Or maybe it's just that I gelled with his combat style the least out of all the characters but for what ever reason I like Saejima the least out of all the characters.
Tanimura I'm more disappointed in than anything because they have such a cool character with so many character quirks and a super interesting battle style that has you literally handcuffing people in battle then give him almost nothing in terms of substories. He's a fan of Mahjong but aside from a few lines here and there, absolutely nothing about it comes up! I'm not expecting like, a Yakuza 0 tier minigame substory or anything but like, something? Please?? Most of his substories felt like extensions of the main story, finding out who his dad is and all that junk, and that's not what I play substories for! Aside from like, maybe 2 that were legitimately interesting, a lot of hella boring substories for him and it sucks bc I really like him as a character!
I'm hella conflicted on the story bc on one hand the melodrama is fucking palpable and the writers are clearly masters of suspense and payoff and all the story fights are cool as fuck and crazy as hell but on the other hand... Rubber Bullets...
You're telling me Saejima went to kill a whole fucking group of people and ALL OF HIS GUNS were filled with RUBBER BULLETS?? And then AND THEN when Arai shoots the police chief, his gun was ALSO RUBBER BULLETS and he didn't think ANYTHING was weird when he shot the chief and there wasn't any blood?? I swear to god this game had me howling and just repeating "RUBBER BULLETS" at the top of my lungs because gaaah that's so dumb!! I swear when Akiyama gets shot at the end and he goes to be like "oh wait I'm okay actually" I was yelling "I SWEAR TO GOD THIS BETTER NOT BE RUBBER BULLETS!!" I feel like that one real estate lady in that Spongebob episode going "ARE THERE ANY MORE RUBBER BULLETS I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT??"

Expectations for When I Play 5:
I'm real excited to play 5. I've heard it's both in the same engine as Yakuza 0 and it's supposedly the biggest Yakuza game ever so I bet that'll be fun! I've seen it regularly top people's lists of the best Yakuza games with either it or 0 being consistently at the top so I'm expecting something fuckin' dope and I'm gonna be disappointed if I don't at least like it as much as 4.
Questions:
Just some random questions for y'all since you were so kind as to read thru this whole screed!

Who were your favorite characters in 4?
What did you think of the story?
What is your impression of 4 overall?
Is 5 better than 4 as a lot of people say?
Do you think I'll like 5 based on what I've described here and in other places?

Thanks again for reading!

Ranking The Series From Yakuza 0-Yakuza 6

Prelude:
I played the first Yakuza when I rented it back when I was younger.
I only made it halfway through the game and I never rented it again, I don't know why I didn't rent it again because I distinctly remember it being one of the most unique games I had played on the PS2, there was no other game that had its atmosphere.
Time passed by and I would always notice Yakuza in the background, occasionally seeing a trailer for the most recent entry and sometimes finding a game in a store and going "I remember playing that on the PS2" and then looking for a different game.
Eventually, I saw a review of Yakuza 0 around the time it came out, I decided "You know what? How 'bout I try a Yakuza game again?".
Cut to three years later and as of a couple of months ago, I've completed every game in the Kiryu saga and I'm here to summarise my thoughts and rank them from best to worst.
Yakuza 0:
This game is amazing.
When I started 0, I was enjoying it well enough but I didn't think it was amazing, but at a certain point after the first few hours, that's when it became great, from that point to the end.
The story is very well done with all the twists and turns and emotional payoffs, the relationship between Majima and Makoto I thought was really touching.
The gameplay was really fun with the different styles, my favourite was Majima's slugger style.
Some of my favourite moments of the game come from the substories, even after playing through the entire series, I still think that 0 has some of the best substories.
I know I'm not being very descriptive but there are only so many ways to say that Yakuza 0 is great and I don't have anything to add to the discussion when practically everyone thinks Yakuza 0 is great.
Starting the series with the prequel was an interesting experience, to most Yakuza fans this game is the backstory to characters they already know, to me, this is my introduction to these characters.
There were only a couple of times where I was confused due to not having played the other games, the part where I was confused the most was at the very end when it mentions the Millennium Tower.
Yakuza 0 is a great game, but you probably knew that already.
And one last thing before moving is when I unlocked the Dragon Of Dojima style, I decided to put on Kiryu's classic suit and went out on to the streets at night, and as I was beating up some thugs, I ended up getting flashbacks to Yakuza 1 on the PS2, it was a cool moment of nostalgia for me.
Yakuza Kiwami:
This game is a mixed bag.
Starting with the story, I don't think it has held up to time, and that's excluding the bits with Majima they added which I'll get to that in a bit.
There's a lot of sections in the campaign where the story digresses from the main plot and spends time on subplots that have very little to do with the main story.
The best way I could explain it is that the story lacks momentum, it constantly stops and starts for detours that it feels less like the story is progressing and more like events just happen.
The stuff added with Majima clashes with what was in the original game, Majima changes from how he is in 1 and how he is in the rest of the series, and considering that they're essentially two different characters, it's incredibly jarring.
I think there are two ways they could have gone, either change the story cutscenes so that Majima acts like he does in later games or don't have the Majima Everywhere system. Having Majima swap between two different versions of himself just adds issues to the story and makes the game inconsistent.
The gameplay is similar to 0, except I didn't like the bosses as much.
There were a lot more moments during gameplay where I would get attacked constantly and would have very little time to react so it felt cheap.
The Majima Everywhere system was fun because of all the different interactions with Majima, one of my favourite moments was when he busted out his karaoke outfit from 0.
The thing I didn't like about it was that after I had finished the Majima Everywhere storyline Majima would still fight me which made finishing up all the substories annoying.
My least favourite part of the game was the presentation, the cutscenes were just the PS2 cutscenes with newer models pasted over them. The low-quality animations and Kiryu's dead eyes were incredibly distracting and took me out of the experience.
I also noticed really bad tree pop-in, not sure if anyone else had that but it was very distracting during the daytime.
I've been crapping on the game for the last several paragraphs, so what did I like about Kiwami?
I liked the connections to 0 and how they felt natural and not forced.
Added substories like pocket circuit and the woman asking about the bubble period were some of my favourite substories from the game.
The line Kiryu says to Haruka, "Something bad happened there a long time ago." acknowledges the events of 0 while being subtle.
Haruka is freaking adorable.
Even though I had issues with the story, I did like the ending, it sorta made up for the story a little bit.
Overall, even though I said more negatives than positives, I didn't hate my time with Kiwami, I liked it as much as I disliked it, it's a mixed bag but I didn't regret playing it.
Yakuza Kiwami 2:
This game is way better than Kiwami 1.
The first thing I want to mention is the presentation, the cutscenes look way better than Kiwami 1, probably because the original Yakuza 2 had better animations, so they don't look half bad with newer models, there were times where I completely forgot that the cutscenes came from a PS2 game so I wasn't nearly as distracted as I was in Kiwami 1.
There were a few times where animations looked robotic but thankfully they were few and far between.
The story is a huge improvement from 1, it fixes the issues I had with 1's story, it's more focused and gets less distracted.
Ryuji Goda is probably the best antagonist of the whole series.
Overall I don't have many issues with the story except for the ending, the fake-out cliffhanger was bizarre, and the after-credits scene of Date going "Boy it sure was a good thing that bomb was fake!".
It was as if they originally intended to kill Kiryu off but they had to change it so he lived.
That's probably not the case but that's how the ending came across for me.
Other than the bizarre execution of the ending, the story was really good.
The additional content that they added to the remake, the cabaret club minigame and the Majima sidestory, are very good additions to the game.
I'd say that stuff between Majima and Makoto is some of the best writing in the series.
The moment when Makoto realises who Majima was on the airplane is great stuff, one of my favourite moments in the series.
The cabaret club was the better of the two sidestories from 0 so I was happy to see it return in this game.
Overall, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a great game, almost as good as 0, and is a way better remake than Kiwami 1.
Now that I'm done with the remakes, it's on to the Remastered Collection.
Yakuza 3:
This game holds up surprisingly well.
I was pleasantly surprised by how good this game is, I was expecting it to be a bit dated but it didn't feel dated to me.
Starting with what I liked:
I liked the story for the most part.
I liked a lot of the new characters, Rikiya especially, shame he ends up dying, would have liked to see him in later games.
I liked the story of Kiryu becoming a sort of dad for the kids.
I don't know what the consensus on the orphanage kids are, but I liked them, I thought they were fun and well written and they didn't detract from the game for me.
Ryukyu is my favourite location in the Yakuza series, shame it never makes a reappearance, I can only imagine how it would look in the Dragon engine.
My favourite parts of the game were the Revelations, I thought they were a fun way of learning new moves, I liked exploring the world finding all the unique cutscenes.
Overall, the gameplay was fun, I thought the story was decent, the side content was also fun, but what didn't I like about Yakuza 3?
The biggest issue I had with the story was the antagonist Mine.
I couldn't understand his motivations and thought it didn't make sense, even during his villain motivation speech, I couldn't get a grasp on his motivation.
Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention but it did feel like his motivation was overly convoluted.
I think he could have been a good villain had his motivations been clearer.
The twin brother reveal, while I don't think it's that big of an issue, I still think it's a bit far fetched.
The hostesses made completing all the substories a pain in the ass, I must have spent several hours just on the hostesses, easily my least favourite part of the game.
It ends with another fake out death for Kiryu, this one even less justified than 2's.
Other than those things, I think Yakuza 3 is a solid entry that holds up surprisingly well.
Yakuza 4:
This game is terrible
Absolutely terrible.
It's kind of impressive how abysmal it is.
This game has the dumbest plot twist in any story I've ever experienced.
And it wasn't just that twist, it was also another event that came afterwards. The event was Hamazaki landing on Kiryu's beach.
It was that tag team that solidified that this game was a poorly written mess, not that there weren't signs before them, but these two events were what confirmed it for me.
First, the rubber bullets twist because I have a lot to say about how stupid it is.

He still would have injured someone.

Saejima at a few points sticks his guns directly into the stomach of a few of the people at the ramen shop.
Problem is, if you stick a gun to someone's stomach, you're going to put a hole in them because the force coming out of a gun is enough to put a hole in something.
So everyone Saejima did that to should have holes in their stomachs.
But what about the people that weren't shot directly in their stomachs, they should be fine right?
Neither would they be ok, because Yakuza 4 states that the rubber bullets are powerful enough to knock people unconscious.
If they're powerful enough to knock people unconscious, that would also mean that they're powerful enough to break people's bones.
What would have happened is that they would get shot, it would hurt like a bitch, then they realise that they weren't shot with real bullets.
It wouldn't take until after Saejima left for them to wake up, they would realise it shortly after getting shot.
But okay, let's try to ignore that and take the game at its word, that the bullets just knock people unconscious.

How would they knock people unconscious?

I don't see how shooting someone in the stomach or shoulder would knock them out, In the chest maybe you can reason it as the bullets knocking the air out of their lungs or something, I know that's a big stretch but at least it's more than what the game gives.
What would have happened is that they would get shot, it would hurt like a bitch, then they realise that they weren't shot with real bullets, just like with real rubber bullets.
So if the bullets worked as they do in real life, it wouldn't knock people unconscious, if the bullets worked like how the game describes them, it still wouldn't work.
Then there's the third point, which isn't a gun logic issue or bullet logic issue, it's a character logic issue.

Saejima does not aim for the head, despite having no reason not to.

Saejima knows that he is risking his life and that if he succeeds, he will go to prison.
So why does Saejima half-ass the assassination attempt?
Ueno is sitting down, he's completely powerless in this situation, nothing is stopping him from shooting him in the head, yet he doesn't for whatever reason.
Saejima isn't the only character in Yakuza 4 to make the same mistake, Arai also doesn't shoot Munakata in the head when he has the upper hand.
This is even more egregious when you remember that he shot Ihara in the head at the beginning of the game, so it's established that he does shoot people in the head, but when it came to Munakata he just doesn't for no reason.
I can't even say that this twist has faulty logic, it just has no logic.
The twist depends on guns not working how they should, rubber bullets not working how they should and Saejima half-assing the assassination attempt, had Saejima aimed for the head then the plot wouldn't even happen, and that's why it's the worst plot twist I've ever seen.
Then the final nail in this game's coffin is when Hamazaki somehow survives 3 bullet wounds to the chest, somehow doesn't bleed out, somehow doesn't drown and by pure coincidence lands on Kiryu's beach.
That was the exact moment I checked out and stopped caring about the game.
Let's list off some more issues, shall we?
Saejima by pure coincidence ends up on the beach of the person he was just told to look for, then and even though he is a wanted prisoner on death row, somehow manages to get Kamurocho undetected and the game doesn't explain how he does it.
Akiyama's life is saved due to a wad of cash that was never established.
Arai somehow escapes the police station after shooting Munakata.
The weak attempt at tying the plot of Yakuza 4 to Yakuza 1.
I could on and on about the issues the plot, if I did, I would never get to the gameplay, which isn't much better, to be honest.
The biggest disappointment was the lack of a new location, just Kamurocho for this game.
I didn't have much fun playing with Akiyama's or Saejima's combat styles in this game, I liked Tanimura's focus on parrying but because of the whole debacle with Tanimura's original actor, they couldn't build upon it in later games.
I'll always think of Yakuza 4 as "the bad one", the writing is a massive drop in quality from the rest of the series.
Yakuza 5:
This game is amazing.
While Yakuza 0 is agreed upon by the Yakuza community to be a great game, Yakuza 5 seems more divisive.
I've seen a post stating that Yakuza 5 has the worst story in any Yakuza game. I obviously disagree, but I would say that Yakuza 5 has one of the best stories in any Yakuza game.
The intro to Yakuza 5 is the best in the series in how it effortlessly sets up the main plot.
The mystery of how we ended with Kiryu as a cab driver and Haruka as an idol made it the most intriguing intro in the whole series.
From the first hour, I was hooked.
A major strength of Yakuza 5's story is giving the main characters and their surroundings time to breathe.
The game gives a lot of time to flesh out its characters and not just the main ones but the side characters as well.
For me, Yakuza 5 has the most memorable side characters in the series, I pretty much remember all of them from Kiryu's coworkers to Saejima's prison mates to the employees at the Idol agency to the citizens of Kineicho.
The finale is really good, I love how almost everything gets paid off, like how the prison mates return and save Baba from killing himself, Takasugi calling Shinada, and Watase, Madarame and Kitakata showing up to help Akiyama, it makes the whole game mean something.
Then there's Shinada, I don't know what the consensus on Shinada is, but out of all the playable characters besides Kiryu and Majima, he's my favourite.
Akiyama's philosophy is interesting but in comparison to the rest of the cast he comes off a bit bland to me, Saejima is cool but he's attached to that dumbass twist and Tanimura had very little going on except his combat style.
When I played Yakuza 5 I had no idea what kind of character Shinada was, so I was surprised when he turned out to be a sleazy goofball.
I really sympathised with his backstory, plus, he's a bit of a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass type, and I have an affinity for those kinds of characters.
Gameplay is way better than Yakuza 4, Akiyama and Saejima were better to play in this game, Shinada being a weapons based character is cool, the sidestories such as Kiryu's racing sidestory, Saejima's hunting sidestory, and Shinada's baseball sidestory were all fun.
That's everything I liked, but what didn't I like?
The Kitakata kidnapping scene is complete bull.
Aizawa being the final boss could have been set up a lot better.
The game is very on the nose with what the theme is.
Haruka becomes part of an Idol group called Dreamline, the track they sing is called dream, the final boss theme is "Battle for the dream", the Japanese subtitle is "Fulfiller Of Dreams" and I'm pretty sure every character says the word dream at some point.
Overall, despite these issues, I still love Yakuza 5, I think it's on par with Yakuza 0, to the point where I can't decide which is better.
Yakuza 6:
This game is alright.
This is the most "ok" game in the series, I did enjoy my time with it, but if there's one phrase that encapsulates my feelings on the whole game, it would be "it could have been better".
Starting with the story.
Something that I noticed is that even though the opening of Yakuza 6 takes place immediately after 5, Shinada and Baba don't even get a mention, which is weird since they were major players in 5's story but they don't even get a throwaway line.
One thing I like about the opening is Haruka facing consequences for the stunt she pulled at the end of 5.
Initially, I was annoyed at that when I was playing 5, but as I thought about it more, it does make sense that Haruka would do that.
Haruka is pure, she has an optimistic view of the world which in the opening of 6 gets shat on by reality, Akiyama even says to her, "This may not turn out the way you're hoping it will".
I've seen some people say that they don't like how Haruka is depicted in 5 and 6, but I didn't have any problems with her.
Also, it was nice seeing the orphanage kids return from 3, even if it was just for a little bit.
The game has some similarities to Yakuza 3, we're back to having Kiryu being the sole protagonist, we're in a small-town setting and a portion of the game is spent on Kiryu befriending the local yakuza.
The mystery of who the father of the baby was I did find to be intriguing and the reveal did surprise me.
Now let's go into what makes the game just okay instead of good.
The Onomichi yakuza, they're fine characters but they mostly made me miss Rikiya.
The letter scene at the very end is really bad, the father and son thing between Kiryu and Daigo was never a thing.
After Yakuza 2, Daigo was done dirty, in 3 he was in a coma for the whole game, in 4 he was a bad guy for some reason and 5 is the best outing he's had and even in that game he only had two scenes with Kiryu.
Subverting expectations doesn't work when the subversion makes less sense than the expectation.
The biggest issue that I left Yakuza 6 with is that it didn't really feel like a finale.
The only thing that makes it a finale to Kiryu's story is the ending, otherwise it's a standard Yakuza story.
Kiryu and Haruka are the focus of the story but a lot of time is spent with the Onomichi yakuza when other more important characters are relegated to cameos.
Majima, Saejima, and Daigo only appear at the very beginning and the very end.
The only other prominent Yakuza characters that have any presence are Akiyama and Date.
The game doesn't feel like the culmination of a story 6 games in the making, it feels like any other game in the series but Kiryu leaves at the end.
By itself it's fine but as a conclusion to Kiryu's story, it could have been better.
Ranking:

Yakuza 5/Yakuza 0
Kiwami 2
Yakuza 3
Yakuza 6
Kiwami 1
Yakuza 4

Summary: I really enjoyed my time with the Yakuza series, it took a while but it was worth it in the end.
I'm excited to play Like A Dragon whenever I get it, I'm curious to see how the team handles an RPG rather than a beat-em-up.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
Favourite battle music:
Force Addiction
One Eyed Slugger
Funk Goes On (Original)
Scarlet Scar
Independence For Violence
Favourite Final Boss Music:
Fly
Favourite Receive You Variations:
Receive You The Madtype
Receive And Slash You
Favourite Box Art:
The Western PS3 Yakuza 4 Cover

Help narrow down my backlog?

The biggest flaw in RGG studio is their refusal to properly accept continuity

Warning: long and detailed post. Please read it all if possible before commenting!
Introduction:
Originally, this was going to be a much bigger post, detailing how RGG studio is really good at making games when they don't need to worry about continuity, but they simply refuse to take into consideration past events and characters, for the sake of telling the story they want to tell. However, for the sake of getting across the message I want, I rather just focus on my biggest frustration with the studio and Yakuza 6 as a whole.
I love this series, Yakuza 6 will not change that. But the more I think about the story of the latter, the more frustrated I get.. The more these glaring flaws I could ignore before, become too big to set aside.
What I'm trying to say is that Yakuza has nearly always been used as a vehicle to tell a singular story. It's like a toy box, where the people in charge can use all the toys that are already there or bring their own. Most of the time, the most "important" toys are used again when creating a story, while some others are taken away. This WORKED in most games, they could mostly stand on their own without having to worry about the disappearance of certain characters or ignoring other events.
Most of the time, we could just roll our eyes collectively:
- Where did Yayoi Dojima go? Why is she nowhere to be found when she kept things together in the events of Yakuza 2? She already proved herself to be capable, why was she never called again when shit hit the fan in future entries? We never even got a reference regarding what could've happened to her.
- Why would Kaoru from Yakuza 2, literally feel like dying for and with Kiryu, but as soon as she gets a job, she goes away the next game?
- Why on earth does the FBI twin brother plot line exist and why on earth is he never even mentioned once more?
-Why in the absolute universe, is nearly every single villain and their lackeys, never mentioned or seen in past games, when they are part of the Tojo clan? There is absolutely no justification for this.
- Why does Hana from Yakuza 4 disappear? Why is Tanimura never given a proper send off? Even just having the characters say where he went?
The list could go on, but the answer is always the same: Were they to accept this continuity and these characters, the story they want to tell would need to be INCREDIBLY adapted or wouldn't work.
But THAT is the issue. If you play the games separately, they are all great. They all have incredible stand-alone stories, even Yakuza 6. But if you play them ALL in order (like I did) it's clear they rather defy canonical logic than accept the world they've created, in full.

Yakuza 6 or How to completely solidify the lack of care for continuity in this franchise
I've beaten Yakuza 6 a few days ago. I had time to sit down, think about it and reach a proper conclusion. And boy.. Is there SO MUCH WRONG with the story of this game. I will focus on the story and characters in its entirety. I'm not here to write a critique about the gameplay and whatnot. That said, I will be a bit nitpicky, so keep it in mind when reading. Let's begin:
From the get go, Yakuza 6 is flawed and disappointing. As a fan who's been following the games for around 3-4 years and played them in time-line order (started with 0 then went forward with the Kiwami games) I think it's needless to say that the expectations about the last game in Kiryu's story were high. Yakuza 0 proved how good the studio was when they wanted to give protagonism to someone who wasn't Kiryu.. And Yakuza's 4 and 5 proved it further. To me, 5 is one of my top 3 in the franchise, easily.. But at the core of it all, Kiryu's there.
I say this because Yakuza has always been a game about characters and their stories. We meet an incredible cast throughout the games, even those silly substories that seem to keep a continuity of sorts (I'll touch on them later) Kiryu is a good man, and it's this goodness in his heart that earns him so many allies. But.. Where are these allies when the story most needs them? Ignored for the sake of the story they want to tell.
Yakuza 6 begins with Kiryu going to jail so he can finally get the Yakuza stain off his back. This technically works because we know that spending 3 years there, things will happen in the clan and he won't be bothered, until he's forgotten. Haruka is left at the orphanage to take care of the other kids in his absence. Now: I understand Haruka feeling guilt about what's happened and the paparazzis coming around.. What I don't understand is where Mikio and Nakahara are.
Remember them? The little family that took care of Okinawa? Rikiya's death? The fact that Nakahara's left with a huge debt to Kiryu for saving his adoptive daughter, Saki? How Mikio (Rikiya's friend) ends up hanging out with the rest of the kids and Haruka, when the game is over? HOW THEY LITERALLY PROTECT EVERYONE IN THAT GAME AND RISK THEIR LIVES?
Are you actually going to tell me that these important characters from Yakuza 3 aren't just gone, but if they were there, they could've stopped the paparazzi from annoying Haruka and would've kept an eye on her?
Okay, fine. Let's accept they are gone for whatever reason and Haruka uncharacteristically leaves and goes to Kamurocho, despite knowing better. It is never explained why or how she ends up in Onomichi of all places, but again: Let's just accept it and move on. She hangs out there and, despite knowing the issues that hanging out with Yakuzas brings, she befriends this little Yakuza family.
Now we are to assume that she falls in love (?) with Yuta? And just fucks him without protection? THIS MATURE GIRL WE'VE KNOWN FOR YEARS, JUST DOES THAT, DESPITE KNOWING BETTER. And what's the only flashback we get? A scene where Haruka finds Yuta punching in a paparazzi's face for taking pictures: A civilian. This should be further reason for her to not hang out with this crowd, yet she just fucks him unprotected and gets pregnant, right after witnessing this.
Okay, let's accept this happened and move on. Kiryu is out of jail while all of the characters that should've been around this game, are sent to jail for the sake of the story they want to tell. No longer will this game be the epic conclusion we've been craving, where all the bonds Kiryu made, come back to support him in this amazing, deep and personal story we wished it would've been. But fine, let's accept these characters are gone and Kiryu's on his own. Haruka's gone, not where she should be and he sets off to Kamurocho to find her.
We find out that Chinatown was burnt to the ground and has since been rebuilt. Hmm.. I wonder which character had a deep connection to that place and would've been around to help Kiryu solve this issue? \cough* Tanimura *cough** Okay, whatever, he's not around.. Let's accept it yet again. We find out that Haruka WAS around! She got hit by a car and is in a coma!! Where did the hit and run happen? It happened in Kamurocho! Okay, okay. Do we know who did it? doesn't seem like it.
Okay! Kiryu and Akiyama have teamed up to find out who did this to Haruka. Time to go talk to The Florist, a character who's been used in every game except for Yakuza 0, a character who has hidden cameras all over Kamurocho, with a secret web of homeless men who are the second set of eyes for the city. Similar things have happened in the past and the answers were always there! They can just ask him, he'll probably just ask Kiryu to fight at the coliseum and the info will be theirs!
...
What? Sorry.. I've just received word that the florist is not only missing from the game's story.. But he's never even mentioned or brought up as an option. ... Oh? We are going to spend 40% of the game's story looking for clues as to who was driving the car? O..Kay. let's.. Let's just accept it and move on.. Yet again.
It turns out, there's been a guy all along. A guy who's been an advisor for the chairmen in the Tojo clan since the second one. That's right, folks: this important character in Yakuza 6 has supposedly been around since at least Yakuza 0 but he's never even mentioned ONCE. NOT ONCE. THE ADVISOR OF THE CHAIRMEN.
What follows is a chore of a story where you go back and forth between Kamurocho and Onomichi, with Kiryu making new pals along the way as usual and making the five thousand' sworn brother, finishing up with calling these folks his "family". Uh.. Did you forget your other "family" from Yakuza 3..? You know.. That family where Rikiya sacrificed himself to save you? Alright then.
In the end, every little story beat is either gone or dumbed down. Even the substory stuff. The only substories that get a proper ending are the ones from Yakuza 0, since 6 was made afterward. Jo amon's last fight is the easiest in the series and the ending ends up being an excuse for him to join the Kiryu Clan for the fighting minigame. The crazy scientist who was connected to the Amon clan and made that virtual fighting game doesn't ever show up. Also.. Correct me if I'm wrong: but wasn't Kiryu the one who defeated the color gangs? Or they were gone after defending purgatory? Because the guys from JUSTIS say THEY were the ones who got rid of the color gangs. ???
Anyway. The game ends with Kiryu "dying" and Date being the only one to know the truth. (PS: Date is the only character that was treated the best in this series). Kiryu writes a letter to Daigo saying that he was like a son to him..? Uh.. Am I the only one who felt this was super out of place? As far as I know, Daigo was old enough to have considered Dojima as his father. And he even had a mother who disappears. Kiryu forces him to be the chairman and that's that. The relationship between them is just Kiryu constantly keeping him in his place, but they never even share a personal moment aside from that fist fight at the end of Yakuza 4.
Most underused characters Saejima and.. Majima, are just hanging out with him. We see Haruka now in Okinawa with Yuta. (Remind me where their chemistry is?) and little Haruto just hanging out there with them.
All in all: Yakuza 6 decides to throw away continuity for the sake of telling the story they want to tell. Characters behave non-sensically and make stupid choices just for the sake of the plot, while other characters or entire groups of characters.. Heck, even entire plot points from last games, are ignored just for the sake of the story.
And for what? A game that can stand on its own but serves as a pethetic waste of potential? A lackluster ending to Kiryu's protagonism? The destruction of any respect I had for Haruka?
I'll play Judgement next. I heard very good things about that game! And I'm not surprised: They excell when they don't have to care for continuity. But Yakuza 6? It's just proof of badly placed their priorities are.

I just finished kiwami 2 and wanted to give a review of the three to see what others think I will try yo keep it spoiler free with manganese and story but I can't promise the comments will

Yakuza 3's combat is awful (on hard and legend difficulties) and makes the game worse as a whole.

Beat Yakuza 0 to 6...

The Yakuza games will go down as one of my favorite video game series of all time. I never spent so much time in a video game series in a while. So much time dedicated to get all platinum trophies. Managed to get at least 2, Yakuza 4 remastered and Yakuza 6, I might go back to get the rest someday but there are other games I would to play down the line and I have to deal with college and family. Can't deal with pool, pachinko, slots, and mahjong. Other than I like to share my thoughts/ramblings towards the games.
Yakuza 0:
I regret not playing this first when I decided to give the series a try because I was looking for something new that I haven't played. It's a perfect introductory to the series with a unique setting. The only issue I had is the idea of Majima and Makoto's relationship being centered around romantic love. I don't see it as that kind of love as the "love" it's simply just caring for one another with no romance. I enjoyed how it developed characters like Kiryu, Majima, and Nishiki. The Dojima lieutenants were cool with Kuze being the best. I like how the substories introduced Ryuji,Daigo, Haruka's dance teacher, Shinji, and made references to the previous installments (fortune teller) before 0. Never knew how much certain boss battles can hype you up. I enjoyed the story a lot.
Yakuza Kiwami:
This was my first Yakuza game after making the decision from outlets saying to start from 1 than 0 based on the ideas of prequels not being a good starting point. Story is more short but I got to understand the world and the characters somewhat. Despite it being my first Yakuza game, I still enjoyed what it offered. Majima Everywhere was fun but it can get annoying at times. The Nishiki boss fight is my all time favorite fight with the perfect ost. However, I believe Nishiki didn't get enough screen time and turning heel made sense with the constant comparison to Kiryu, pressure with Yumi missing, and failing to save his sister.
Yakuza Kiwami 2:
I liked the rivalry vibe between Ryuji and Kiryu, reminds me of a good feud for a world heavyweight championship or anyone who wants to be the best. Kaoru's relationship with Kiryu felt more natural, believable, and better developed than his relationship with Yumi. The twists and turns felt kinda silly like Big Show's face and heel turns but whatever video games I guess. It's great that Majima got closure with Makoto for good but he should've gotten more of a story than just an hour gameplay and story.

Yakuza 3:
I like how Kiryu has a fresh new start but... Why did Kaoru decide to leave Kiryu for her career? After all the stuff in 2, at least have more a discussion to make it believable than changing your mind the next day because Kiryu legit killed your brother (delivered the final blows to a weakened Ryuji) and you were willing to die with him... "Kiryu's true love is Yumi." I declare it BS because it's possible that Kiryu can still love another woman based on his relationship with Kaoru and how he still goes to hostess clubs. Where did Joji Kazama come from? This is like Uncharted 4 with Sam Drake... They did our boi Rikiya dirty even though he had his own substory before his death... Why do idiots rise up in the Nishikiyama Family? Mine was a good villain and I can't believe that Hamazaki was still alive.

Yakuza 4:
Not a big fan of the retcon with the 10 billion yen because I can't believe a higher power went unnoticed. I'm fine with the sky finance from the tower introducing new characters. At least Kiryu beat some sense to Daigo in the end. Rubber bullets as a plot device is stupid... no blood makes it obvious... Why did Yasuko have to run off if Kiryu was already trustworthy back in Okinawa? What happened to the Ryudo Family? Hamazaki's character development is underrated. I like how introduces multiple characters to play as. Sucks that we never saw Tanimura again despite being referenced in 5 towards the Amon fight.

Yakuza 5:
This was a pretty long game but enjoyable. I didn't expect Majima to open to another woman again after what occurred in 0 as he wants to do what he wants. How did he fall for an 18 year old? What was his thoughts towards her when wanting to see her again? What is his reaction to her death?Sucks how Kiryu has to keep suffering while being away from his family. Glad to see Haruka live a dream for a moment. Wish we got a follow up from the people who worked with her, like their reactions towards Haruka retiring or making an attempt to contact her. In my opinion, Shinada got a proper send off by going back to Kineicho as it made sense with the implications of his final scene along with Baba going back to prison.

Yakuza 6:
I like how it continues from 5's ending but it shows how Kiryu's time with Haruka in 5's premium adventure was a dream. I hate how her character was ruined by running off due to the internet and media. It puts disrespect to Yumi's final wishes. At least expand upon it like the level when Kiryu decided to leave after he was told by Park that he was holding the kids back with how they make their own sacrifices to help the orphanage. Using a baby is a cheap plot device to some but I kinda enjoyed it since I have a baby brother that looks like Haruto to me and tension is made well once there is danger towards him. Yuta being the father was a surprise to me but I wish there was more development on Haruka and Yuta's relationship like how did they meet for the first time and how they developed feelings for each other before Haruka was pregnant. Yuta turning heel for a bit was predictable and felt wasted in my opinion as it was dumb to run off and commit murder. Actually reason like how Kiryu wanted him to risk his life for Haruto to be his father. Also how did the door to Hirose family's base magically repaired itself? I believe more could've been done with the story and I like that Nagumo got a happy ending in a way. They did our boi Kiryu dirty with him not getting a happy ending like he deserves with all the shit that the Tojo Clan drags him back into... I get it was for the best... Tojo Clan wouldn't be shit without Kiryu. Wonder what Yakuza 7/Like a Dragon has for him once the game comes to the west.

Also I played Judgment before the remastered collection was out and I love how it stands alone away from Yakuza by being it's own thing with the world of it.
Say anything you want as I have nothing else to say and thank you for your time reading this. Might've got some details wrong and/or forgotten some things. I would like to hear you guys out about your own thoughts.

My Yakuza Obsession

Goro Majima: Character discussion and the significance of his tattoo

Get ready for a massive fucking wall of text built with my feels. I just finished Yakuza 0--so far, the only Yakuza game I've played--and promptly spoiled myself on the rest of Goro Majima's anti-hero arc throughout the series due to a combination of a quarantine situation and my unhealthy obsession with his lore, which I'm purging by writing this. While somewhat inconsistently written over the years, his transformation between Y0 and Y1/Kiwami 1 and ensuing characterization carries undiscussed literary depth within the context of details like his tattoo. It goes without saying that spoilers follow in the discussion, though I've blacked out some character reveals or deaths in the main post.
Biography/Character Development As series fans are aware, at some point between the end of Yakuza 0 (1988) and the start of the first Yakuza game/Yakuza Kiwami (1995/2005), our favorite one-eyed boi's personality does a 180 from a calm, collected gentleman to the Joker counterpart to Kiryu's Batman--at least, from the point of view of someone who started with Yakuza 0. Hell, Mark Hamill even voiced him in the English dub.
Fan discussion varies on whether Majima's crazy side (shown in most of the series and around the other yakuza post-Y0, and particularly in Kiwami 1) is an exaggerated defense mechanism for him to operate efficiently in the yakuza underworld, if his sane side (shown around civilians and occasionally Kiryu/Saejima, particularly in Y0 when he's imprisoned in his 'gilded cage' in Sotenbori) is a repressed/depressed act, or if both represent him accurately (à la Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde) and he's not acting. The only consistencies in his character seem to be his loyalty and his respect for people who display courage, honor, and independence. Out-of-universe, he debuted as an insane character who was later given backstory and depth; in-universe/in-game, chronologically, his seemingly gentle nature gives way to a maniac with touches of sanity. It is worth noting that the lead English translator for the game, Scott Strichart, has said that Majima "makes a conscious choice to... let loose," though this is never alluded to in-game.
To recount the rest of Majima's history: 1985 - We are unaware of how he acted pre-Yakuza 0, but know that he endured a year of isolated torture for insubordination to his superiors out of concern for his oath brother. 1988 - Yakuza 0 takes place. Even in Y0, Majima acts a little crazy at times in karaoke and in his Breaker Style, more so than Kiryu would. Additionally, during Y0, we see the loss of people he admires or who died to defend him, including Lee, Awano, Sagawa, and especially Nishitani--all of who contribute to his later personality. His wild persona is partially inspired by how he's treated while he's acting like a gentleman, including him being used by Sagawa and Shimano throughout the game--hence the 'dog' part of his 'mad dog' title--and giving up Makoto so she can have a happy life, both of which could have their own textposts. 1992 - As revealed in Yakuza 5 in 2012 anecdotally by his pop idol/superstar ex-wife Mirei Park: sometime between Y0 and Y1/Kiwami 1, he goes through an ill-fated marriage at 28 with a then-18-year-old, hits her after finding out she aborted their child without telling him, and divorces her in part to save her career. 2005 - The original Yakuza game/Kiwami 1 takes place. Majima stalks Kiryu every chance he gets. 2006 - After the events of Kiwami 2, Majima also temporarily leaves the yakuza to begin a construction company--a venture that recalls his business acumen and many dualities (civilian/criminal, destruction/construction, and the ultimate duality of the Yakuza series itself: strategic management minigame set against a lighthearted story/cartoonishly violent beat-em-up set against a serious story). (Majima continues to show up in future Yakuza games, but I haven't seen any character development easter eggs in his reactions to major game events like his oath brother Saejima being released from prison. Every biographer is biased, though--I believe I've underplayed Saejima's role in Majima's motivations simply because I've only played Y0, a game in which Saejima was barely mentioned. See character analysis by Scott Strichart in an AMA here) (contains major Y5 spoilers).
I argue that Majima's tattoo, which existed pre-1985, foretells his arc and represents the conscious dualities of his nature.
The Tattoo Concept art of Majima's tattoo Y0 Majima wearing the tattoo on his front Y0 Majima wearing the tattoo on his back
Every Yakuza (game) character's tattoo has an animal or figure that symbolizes them to some extent, but I believe Majima's has a deeper connection to his story arc as opposed to just his personality. (The same could be argued for Nishikiyama's koi in relation to Kiryu's dragon and Japanese folklore, or how four of the protagonists' tattoos from later games represent the four Eastern Guardians, but those are their own walls of text.)
According to the Yakuza fandom wiki (emphasis mine):

[Majima's tattoo] covers his biceps, upper chest, and stretches from his neck to the back of his thighs. It consists of a floral motif (similar to Shimano's), with a Hannya on his back, and twin snakes wrapped around his arms and chest.

I'm going to analyze Majima's tattoo in two parts: the symbology of the twin snakes in relation to his arc and the symbology of the Hannya.
Snakes - Analysis Why the snake, of all animals, to represent Majima? Why not the dog, given that his nickname is 'The Mad Dog of Shimano'? While Majima matches the energy and loyalty of a dog, a dog would represent only the acted, artificial facets of his personality: him being 'leashed' in Sotenbori or 'barking' at thugs. Even this nickname is a red herring; if he were called 'The Serpent of Shimano,' that'd ruin the point of his entire façade(s). The serpent, in addition to a plethora of more specific cultural and historical symbologies associated with it, is hidden, agile, flexible, cunning, and deadly. This suits both of Majima's personalities more completely--even as his 'Lord of the Night' persona, in his Y0 introduction, he uses calculated, indirect methods to deal with a disruptive customer as the manager of The Grand. (In my opinion, all of the Youtube video clips of this introduction leave out the best part: the end of the night, when the player controlling him returns to a tiny, bare apartment on the trashy side of town after having just made 100 million yen managing his lavish cabaret, and collapses sleeplessly on a bare mat on the floor for another night of PTSD flashbacks.) In battle, especially in Y1/Kiwami onwards, Majima's style is quick and knife-like, relying on his speed and agility rather than brute physical force. We also see in multiple cutscenes, especially in Y0 (if you don't already believe he's acting most of the time either way), that he's capable of deception and guarding secrets when needed.
This begs the second question--why twin snakes? As you can see in the concept art linked above, one of the snakes--the one prominently displayed on his chest--has its mouth open as if to strike, whereas the other--less visible and hanging off his shoulder--does not. They may represent the series' recurring theme of the Yakuza way of life being a dichotomy between criminality and civility. The snake alone represents the infinite cycle of death and rebirth in the classic symbol of the ouroboros, where it eats its own tail, and also has been portrayed for the dual contrasts of medicine/poison and good/evil. Whenever Majima embodies one of his personas, he 'sheds' the skin of the other, because much like pedestrian life (blood/married family, legitimate business, honesty, civility, tuxedo used for work, and long hair tied back) and Yakuza life (crime/sworn family, illicit business, manipulation, violence, snakeskin jacket that he chose, and loose short hair), the two are incompatible. His eyes are also symbolic in this way: one eye sees normally, while the other is mutilated and covered with a black eyepatch. This duality is displayed in Majima's many "snake skins," for (minor Kiwami 1 spoilers ahead) Majima is neither female (Goromi), lawful (Officer Majima), dead (Zombie Majima), a beloved celebrity (in-universe, anyway--Everyone's Idol Goro), nor a domestic service worker (at least in Kiwami 1--Taxi Driver Majima). We'll cover his last persona, Hannya-man, in the next section. The reason for Majima's duality existing is that psychologically, Majima needs both in order to be healthy and true to what he is: he needs to ground himself on occasion so he doesn't totally fly off the handle, and inversely, he needs to let his 'crazy' out in order to stay sane.
Hannya - Analysis According to the Wikipedia article for Hannya:

The Hannya mask is said to be demonic and dangerous but also sorrowful and tormented, displaying the complexity of human emotions. When the actor looks straight ahead, the mask appears frightening and angry; when tilted slightly down, the face of the demon appears to be sorrowful, as though crying.

The original Japanese legend of the Hannya tells the story of a jealous, hideous she-demon-slash-beautiful woman twisted by betrayal. The 'frightening' side of the Hannya is Majima's crazy side that he shows in battle and when dealing with other yakuza, whereas the 'sorrowful' side is Majima's life outside of the yakuza. In real-world Japanese culture, the face of the Hannya is a mask used in kabuki theatre; Majima is wearing a mask at all times (both figuratively, and also on the tattoo on his back). There is no one in the world whom Majima can show both his sensitive/caring side without being hurt or manipulated, and his bloodthirsty/criminal side (he joined the yakuza of his own free will multiple times and seems to enjoy the thrill of a fight) without being feared or putting others in danger, to except for possibly the powerful but righteous and emotionally-balanced Kiryu, which helps explain why Majima's so drawn to him.
We now focus our attention on Hannya-man, one of Majima's masks that he literally wears in a battle against Kiryu. In Kiwami 1, the main reason he fights Kiryu, despite threatening to kill him, is conversely to make Kiryu stronger after Kiryu gets out of ten years of prison. At the end of Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2 (this entire section is gonna be one big spoiler about Majima's personal life through Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 5 - I wouldn't click past the next spoiler if you haven't played Kiwami 2), Majima goes out of his way to avoid revealing who he is to Makoto in-person, even though he loves her; his ignorance of her in order to shield her from the yakuza life is his greatest act of love. It's interesting how much Makoto and Mirei compare and contrast in their personalities and relationship with Majima. This addresses the question of why the Hannya mask appears "sorrowful, as though crying" from a different angle. Majima never fully got over Makoto, the only character who understood what his year of torture and losing an eye was like; when Makoto gives him a massage and some closure by chance at the end of Kiwami 2 after she reveals that she ended up having a son with the doctor who saved her, Majima mutters to himself that by thanking him and telling him that she's been happy, she's untied some loose knots he's had "for 18 years." He's kept count of this in his head. The game executes the 'show-not-tell' rule of storytelling masterfully here--Majima never directly shows her nor tells anyone that he's in love with her. We only get this impression by his body language, actions, and dialogue from other characters like Shimano. Majima doesn't discuss his civilian life, at least in-game. We wouldn't even know about (major Y5 spoiler) his failed marriage and dead baby from 1992 if it weren't for another character's dialogue in Yakuza 5. For all we know, Majima could really want to become a father, but can't--in addition to his actions (again, Y5) towards Mirei upon finding out what she did, he displays fatherly instincts multiple times during Y0's civilian substories/hostess training, especially towards Yuki, and throwaway lines of dialogue during those trainings indicate he's not completely averse to having a kid. Unlike the Hannya in her jealous fury, Majima accepts that he would never receive a 'happy ending' from his relationship with Makoto, only a bittersweet one. Yes, that was a symbolic massage pun. His civilian life is, in some ways, ironically more tragic than his yakuza one.
To conclude, Majima's tattoos tell their own lore--that of the multiple dualities of his story and character arc.
I'll wrap up with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, a 20th century writer who turned to the absurd to sculpt the effects of PTSD:

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Additional miscellaneous credit for this writeup goes to commenters on Youtube, Tumblr, Reddit, and various gaming forums.

I just finished Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise. Here's what I think of it.

So technically it isn't Yakuza, buuuuuuut it is made by the same people with a very similar style to the Yakuza series, and it features many of the Yakuza series voice actors if you play the Japanese dub, aaannndd there's a flair for it on this sub (obviously the most important criteria I know) so therefore, I'm reviewing it. Also, it'll be a change of pace from the bombardment of Yakuza 7 stuff (which I can't wait for release date please RGG studios)
So before we start, quick note. I don't know much about FOTNS. I haven't watched the show or read any of the manga, a majority of my knowledge comes from various miscellaneous clips on Youtube that looked kinda cool (some of which were, indeed, that one meme). Therefore, if anything I say is a bit inaccurate, or if anything is brought up in more depth in other forms of media, feel free to correct me. That being said, let's get started.
So first off, story. It's super simple, and I liked it for that. The motivation for our main protagonist, Kenshiro, is that he wants his girl back. Simple as simple gets. To achieve this, he heads towards the city of miracles- Eden- and the story unfurls from there. I was engaged with the story, in most part thanks to how likeable Ken was. Basically, for the uninitiated, he's an enormous hunk of masculine energy who gets his way by poking people until they explode in hilariously graphic ways, all while mumbling to himself with his absurdly gravely, masculine voice. Which is a clever way to quickly segue to this games dub.
So I played with the English dub, and this was for two reasons. One, it felt a bit weird to have Kiryu's VA talking over, well, not Kiryu (although I am planning a second playthrough using the Kiryu skin using the Japanese VA) and two, the English sub was honestly fine. Everyone's got a slightly goofy, toned up to 11 voice, but it works for the exaggerated feel of the source material. Xsana is super delicate yet has that commanding tone when necessary, Kenshiro is just DEEP, Lyra is seductive to hell and back, Jagre... is Jagre.
Alright back to the story. Again, I liked it, but there were a couple of problems when it came to advancing the story. Especially in the second half, so many sections just involve you wandering around talking to people. Two example stick out as really bad design. Firstly, chapter 8, when you're looking for Jagi. You go to these places, with Rei tagging along with you (quick side note, Ken and Rei were super cool and I wish there was more of their bromance) investigating where to find Jagi. You're told THREE TIMES to go back and wait for time to pass while Rei sits there twiddling his huge thumbs. What is the point? it became ridiculously tedious. Another awful section was chapter ten. You have to go and find the Sage of the Desert in order to track down the Army of Ruin. Let's bullet point how this goes...

You go to look for the sage south of Eden. It's blocked. You go back to Eden.
Bat gives you a rock smasher thingy on the front of your car to get through, but it needs repairs, so you drive back to where the path is blocked to pick up a bunch of shit that isn't challenging or engaging in the slightest. And then you drive back again...
You fix the thing. And then you drive back again...
You finally get to the Sage. He tells you he has no idea, but people in Eden might. Are you fucking kidding me? all of that just for another dull 'go and talk to people' section?!

It's a textbook example of AGL's- artificial game lengtheners; the only purpose of which is to drag the game out because it'd be too short otherwise.
Last point on story, the ending. It was pretty great. There were a lot of pretty surprising twists, although not all of them had satisfying conclusions. Basically, it turns out that Jagre and Lyra were working with Targa, the big baddy at this point, in order to get into Sphere City (which was a really cool location, btw). Targa has his own plans (world domination muhahahahahahahaha) but he gets Jagre and Lyra in his side with the prospect of revenge against Nadai, because Nadai killed Jagre and Lyra's parents years ago to protect the secret of Sphere City. Targa eventually asks Jagre to kill Xsana, but he can't because this big doofus developed a little crush on her, and he can't pull the trigger. Targa shoots Jagre, then Lyra, and then Nadai, basically his whole world domination plan unfurls and he's duped them all. It was an engaging scene, if anything because Targa's VA fucking killed it as the suave, flamboyant villain. It was a treat to watch him finally unleash his true potential.
So to talk about the bits that didn't make much sense, we have to get to the very ending. Ken beats Targa, the nukes go off but Sphere City's dome closes and shields the blast, presumably killing Ken and Yuria (whose reunion was super sweet, and it was nice to see Ken actually be tender for once). And then the post credits happened, and questions need to be asked.

So Jagre and Xsana seem to get together, or are at least super close friends (c'mon don't do my boy like that). How? I guess Jagre taking the bullet for her was meant to be super heroic and stuff, but he's conspired against your entire civilisation, and threatened to kill your father. Seems a bit of a stretch, but oh well.
Ken and Yuria get saved when Nadai pushes them into the Chamber of Miracles, saving them from the nukes. How do the nukes not obliterate everything in Sphere City? It's made a point that Sphere City powers Eden, and provides tons of clean water, how the hell do 6 super powered nukes going off not affect this?
The big one. So Yuria wakes up and delivers the cardinal sin of storytelling- "it was all a dream". I refuse to believe this is true, so here's some rationalising. She was knocked out during the explosion, Ken carried her out, drove her away, and she woke up dazed and confused. That's my head-canon at least. Ken's got a big ol' crate of fresh fruit he's delivering to that little town from the start (I believe) which also leads me to believe that Ken stopped off in Eden to grab some supplies, presumably out of good will for, y'know, not letting a nuclear holocaust happen again. If it actually turns out, either through the manga or anime, that this really was a dream, I'm going to be very sad.

So that's the story done with, let's move on to this game's strongest suit- combat. The combat might be some of the best the series has to offer, both dragon engine or otherwise. The main differences compared to Yakuza are that instead of building heat, you build up the 7 stars to charge up burst mode, this games equivalent to the EX heat mode of Yakuza 6, Kiwami 2, and Judgment. Secret techniques (heat moves, basically) don't use any type of resource and can be used indefinitely, assuming you've filled the parameters. Finally, after hitting enemies enough, you place them in Meridian shock, allowing you to do big damage (or insta-kill basic dudes), stun enemies, and unleash secret techniques. These factors allow the combat to maintain a distance from the usual Yakuza combat, while still feeling familiar to fans of the series.
Another big change is the sense of verticality in this game, which I'd argue is it's strongest feature. Being able to juggle enemies, and most importantly bosses, is unbelievably satisfying and can lead to some badass combos, especially when combined with some really fluid dodge cancels.
Buuuuttt, it is RGG studios. Combat isn't perfect, and there are some gripes I had with it. Firstly, big enemies. Not the giant dudes you fight in the coliseum, but the guys usually wielding some big hammer or something. They're not fun at all. No juggling, no nice combos, just walls you have to force your way through which slow down the pacing of the combat to a crawl. And they appear in almost every random encounter in Eden. Next, burst mode. Burst mode allows you to jump super high and do special attacks, ranging from AOE's to more direct hits. The tracking on these direct hits is, well, hit or miss (mostly miss). They're super inconsistent to land, and even when locked on you end up flying past people and wasting valuable burst mode time. Finally, hard knock-downs. This is when you have to mash X to stand up from taking damage. There's so damn many in this game, especially in huge group fights that it becomes kinda laborious. Even with the skill to recover quickly from them, that's only if you get knocked flying away, and not counting various other instances (like when Ken kinda pirouettes and lands face first).
OK, last but not least, side content. It was great! There was a surprising amount of variety compared to the Yakuza series, with some old favourites tossed in for good measure. Baseball is now replaced by swatting away motorcycle driving bandits, which is great. Karaoke is replaced by a rhythm mini game at the clinic, which is pretty goofy and fun. You get to be a barkeep, which works two fold. Not only do you get to learn more about the citizens of Eden, but you get to unlock more items from shops by serving shopkeepers, which is an engaging and satisfying way of earning goodies. The coliseum is back, and you can re-match reskinned bosses, which is super cool. The cabaret is back, but rather than just rinse and repeating the same (although admittedly stellar formula) of Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2, they mix things up a bit, with only 4 tables, an ability for 2 hostesses per table, a greater emphasis on special abilities, and cleaning up trouble, it was a refreshing take on a really fun mini game.
Substories really played on what makes Yakuza's, especially Kiryu's, substories so great. Ken is a badass, he hits things, they explode. So when you take this character and put them into various quirky situations, it makes for enjoyable side content that really develops Ken's character. Sometimes he's a slightly awkward goof, sometimes he's put in tender and emotional situations, sometimes he's playing hide and seek with random kids. Of course, some substories do fall into the category of 'something went wrong, punch dudes, problem solved' but for the most part, they were enjoyable.
Now, not all of it was perfect. I wasn't at all bothered by racing, mostly because the car physics in this game are, to put it politely, fucking horrendous. This criticism is two-fold, not only for the car physics, but by extension the exploration of the wasteland, and why it wasn't very fun. The car physics are dreadful, if you bounce off of any sloped surface you jerk around, turning is so slippery it makes GTA IV look tame, boosting over a hilly surface, I kid you not, has the same physics as fucking Big Rigs Over the Road Racing (and if you don't understand what I'm referring too ,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCW1QaOH1Y8 ,enjoy) By that I mean, you don't actually bounce around the hills, you just stick to them awkwardly and it looks dreadful. If I have to compare your game to BIG RIGS OVER THE ROAD RACING you've fucked it up majorly. Therefore, when you're forced to drive around the wasteland for various menial tasks, it leaves a real sour taste in your mouth. I really didn't enjoy these sections at all.
And I think that about does it. Overall, a great game with a simple yet engaging story, satisfying combat and great time wasters, that is only occasionally let down by tedious, janky gameplay sections. As always, if you made it this far (without skipping to the end) well done. I swear these get longer each time...

Just finished Kiwami2, i have questions!! CONTAINS SPOILERS

I just finished Yakuza 3. Here's what I think of it.

In a word? Good. I enjoyed it. Put simply it's just more yakuza, you've got Kiryu being Kiryu, you've got a pretty good story, you've got your nice detailed cities to explore, you've got your wacky side content, and you've got that head-smashing combat.
Let's talk story first. It ranks pretty decently among yakuza stories I've played. The development of the plot from Kiryu protecting his orphanage to a full blown political conflict about the Okinawan resort/ military base had me hooked to see what happened next. That being said, I felt this kinda fell a little flat at the end. We never get much satisfying conclusion with the death of Richardson and the impact of that on the Black Friday, much less details about the resort and Tamiya. Hell, you don't hear anything about Tamiya and the resort past the fight with Joji. Considering this was a main part of the plot, I wish there was a bit more development on, well, the resort/military base development. Onto a more positive note, the areas of the story which focused on Kiryu, the orphanage and the Ryudo family were immensely charming, especially the more slice-of-life side stories with the kids (the wrestling match for instance between Kiryu and Rikiya was so dorky and fun). This is also where the story carried its most emotional moments, like the destruction of Morning Glory and Rikiya's death, and where I was most invested, given the chemistry between Kiryu, the orphans, and the Ryudo family (I don't think I've seen Kiryu so heartbroken than when Rikiya died, you could even argue it was slightly out of character, given how he was less emotional when Kazuma died in his arms for goodness sakes, but I digress).
A yakuza story wouldn't be complete without it's villains, and Mine was one hell of a villain. The contrast between initially seeing him as the confident, polite, yet stern businessman and the total fucking crazy violent side of him made his character really endearing. His backstory, while pretty simple, was still a good motivation for his actions, and the scenes after his fight were satisfying as we saw his character turn face at the end.
Moving on, substories. Not much to say. Yakuza has it's fun substories. Yakuza 3, funnily enough, is a Yakuza game, and so had a great selection of substories (that being said, the early honeymoon substorm needs to be purged from existence).
I've saved the most controversial until last, the combat. Before I rant, I should preface that I played on hard. Now, I was excited to get back to the more arcade-like style combat, after Judgment and Kiwami 2's Dragon Engine. While the combat was still fun, despite showing its age a bit, playing on hard quite frankly soured the mood for my playthrough. In the yakuza's that I've played (which is now every main entry bar 4 and 5) hard difficulty was never super challenging, but was a way to make the game a bit less of a cakewalk, and offered a fun balance of feeling like a badass and having to actually focus in fights, rather than button mashing. In Yakuza 3, hard difficulty might have some of the most artificial difficulty I've played in a game for a long time, and it's the combination of these shit mechanics that make long combat sections (especially bosses) tedious as fuck. So enemies block most of your attacks, ok then. This forces you to punish opponents more, watch their moves, hit their backs for big combos, and utilise the grab. This would be the case, if it weren't obnoxiously hard or impossible on many bosses. The recovery on some bosses meant that you can barely get hits in, as either their chain of attacks would have short recovery, meaning you can't smack them in the back easily for a big combo. Sometimes they recover so fast after being hit in the back, you can barely get more than. a 2 or 3 hit combo without a follow-up being blocked. This, combined with the pitiful amount of damage you do means that boss fights last for way, way too long, and go from tense encounters to chores. 'oh, but you can grab bosses' backs to get some damage in right?' that would be the case if bosses weren't either so big that they push you off when you grab them, or just counter the grab naturally, so that damage is lost. 'oh, can't you use the wide amount of heat moves at your disposal to whittle the bosses health down?' again, not really. With how hard it is to keep up consistent damage, and therefore heat, you can barely do any heat moves on bosses. Combined with the fact that you can't grab bosses for more than a second without being thrown away, and the fact that weapon heat moves barely work because this requires the enemy to be in a neutral position (if they are moving too fast or attacking the heat move won't activate) this means the main heat move I spammed for most late game bosses was grab into head stomp, because I literally couldn't do anything else.
Now I hate to be negative, I love this series to pieces, but the boss fights in this game (save for Mine, who funnily enough, despite being the final boss, could actually be comboed slightly and grabbed, meaning he was pretty fun) are some of the least fun I've had in this series. Now, I understand that I did have the option at any time to swap to an easier difficulty. But that doesn't change the fact that hard mode is awfully designed, and is undeniably unfun. That being said, I did mess around on normal difficulty in Premium adventure and it was remarkably easier and more fun, because I could, you know, do more than square square square triangle triangle because that move string can do the tiniest bit of damage through someone's guard. When I do play this game in the future, I will most likely play it on an easier difficulty, and that would likely make the game much more fun (Jesus, take a drink every time I say fun in this paragraph alone).
To conclude, while I have my gripes about this game, and it is one of the weaker entries in my humble opinion, I still had fun with it, and I hope that the issues that I have will be fixed somewhat in Yakuza 4 and 5. I'm sure there's stuff I've missed, but oh well. It's late and I need sleep. I'd like to hear what you guys have to say about this game, I do know some older school fans rank this game very highly, so please don't hurt me too much. Also, congrats on reading this bulky wall of text too. :)

Finally recently started playing the Yakuza series, and I'm hooked!

Great Start [January Report ‘19]

First and foremost, I’m extremely happy with the activity we had in the sub over the past month. Not only am I happy with the amount of new posts every day but how some of you find the time to discuss other’s 12in12 lists and their progress posts. I hope we can all keep the activity going and make this an even greater sub to talk about our favorite hobby.
For the first time in about half a year, I had a ton of time in my hands. This might change over the coming months but for at least for one month I had 2+ hours available almost every day to spend on whatever I wanted to. In January, that was mostly games, so I have made a lot of progress and played a few great games to report on. Here it goes.
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Games I've Added - 3

The Division
What Remains of Edith Finch
Yakuza 0

What Remains of Edith Finch was free on the Epic Store for two weeks, hope you didn’t miss it. Well, unless you don’t care for the Epic Store of course. Or maybe you haven’t heard the news at all that Epic is challenging Steam for the #1 PC gaming storefront. What’s the difference? The Epic Store allow devs to keep 88 % of the income, while Steam only allows for 70 % (just like Sony with the PS Store for example). Also, Steam is full of shitty games, the Epic Store is not (yet).
Anyway, enough of the Epic Store. I’ve purchased Yakuza 0 and The Division as the early unlocks for January’s Monthly Humble Bundle. By the way, The Division 2 will be available on the Epic Store but not on Steam. OK, now it’s enough.
After playing Yakuza Kiwami, I had to get the next game in the series, which is actually the prequel to the original, which Kiwami is the remaster of. If you haven’t played any game in this series yet, give Yakuza 0 a try. It costs a measly $12 (I got it for 10 on a discount) and you get 5+ more games, including The Division.
Also, the Jackbox Party Pack is currently free on the Epic Store. God bless the Epic Store. Or something. DISCLAIMER: This is not an endorsement for Epic. Please don't get offended by miniscule things like this, I was trying to make a joke. :)
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Games I’ve Quit/Abandoned – 2
The 12in12 “veterans” know about this section already but for anyone reading my style of progress update for the first time: These are the games I do not count towards my total completion. Maybe I got bored of them, maybe there were too many technical issues, sometimes I will realize that I don’t even own the games that I thought I did and sometimes a thing like the “Koch Media-gate” will happen like in last January (maybe someone still remembers that :D).

2Dark

This was free on IndieGala in late December. I’ve had this on my wishlist since it was released actually, it looked interesting enough. You play a man whose children were kidnapped and who, since then, made it his task to rescue other kidnapped children. It’s an indie stealth game and does have a few interesting ideas but at the end I was left unimpressed and too uninterested to continue.

Little Nightmares

I wanted to like this game. I did like the art style a lot. The enemy design a lot. The soundtrack a lot. That’s about it though. The enemy AI is just horrible. Run past a guy? He sees you, of course. Walk past a guy? He sees you again. Fine. Sneak past an enemy? You still get caught. I’m guessing this is by design and maybe they can just smell you or whatever but retrying 10 times with a sub par checkpoint system got very annoying, even for a game of this length. Though I gotta admit, this game had one of the more memorable moments in recent games I’ve played between the main character and a rat. If you’ve played this, you might know what I’m talking about.
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Games I've Beaten - 6

DmC: Devil May Cry

Platform: PC
Playtime: 9.5 hours
I’m one of the guys who never played a Devil May Cry game before. Now you might think “That’s horrible!” but let me be the one to tell you that the only way you won’t have a grudge against DmC: Devil May Cry is, if you’ve never played a prior version of the game. So it all worked out in my advantage in the end. Most of us know Dante. Red jacket, gray hair, fights demons with a sword. I first saw him in SMT: Nocturne actually.
Because I didn’t play a DmC game before and didn’t have any prior opinion on Dante, I didn’t mind the switch to black hair in the reboot, DmC: Devil May Cry. So I didn’t focus on the game in the big picture of how it fits in with the rest of the series or what it had changed. I focused on the game itself and I had a great time.
Almost every hack and slash game I’ve played recently has been great. I’d put Metal Gear Rising in my Top 10 all time. DmC: Devil May Cry is no different. Slashing your way through dozens of demons is tons of fun and with the metal soundtrack blasting through your ear you feel hyped to destroy anything that dares to stand in your way. You get a ranking after each mission, the best you can get is SSS I believe. To do this, you need to use different moves to get the maximum amount of points. This forces you to switch things up, if you want a good grade, which is pretty good game design in my opinion.
The story revolves around Mundus, a demon prince, who rules over “Limbo City” by brainwashing its’ inhabitants. How? Through an energy drink. Yep, read that right. Dante is not affected by this because he is a Nephilim (half-demon, half-angel) and not a filthy casual human. Dante’s goal is to kill Mundus with the help of his brother Vergil, who Mundus doesn’t know about and Kat, a girl who joined Vergil in his mission. Dante’s mother was actually killed by Mundus, so that’s why Dante is very keen on getting revenge. It’s a solid story with a bunch of cool moments. In one scene near the end of the game, Mundus kidnapped Kat. In turn, Dante kidnapped Lilith, the carrier of Mundus’ son. During the exchange of the two, Vergil actually shoots Lilith in the stomach and kills the baby. Crazy and epic moment.
I started the game in German and just hate the voice acting. In movies and series, German voice actors are pretty good but it’s rare to find good voice actors in video games. The switch to English made such a huge difference 1/3 of the way through.
The game made me a fan for sure. I own Devil May Cry HD and will definitely play it this year. Pretty excited for DMC V now, even though I probably won’t buy it until at least 2020.
Rating: 9/10

Jazzpunk: Director’s Cut

Platform: PC
Playtime: 3 hours
On my wishlist for a few years. I bought it in December after realizing that some Steam functions were blocked because I hadn’t bought a game on Steam in over 12 months. I got it for a few euros on sale.
You’re working for an espionage agency and are given a bunch of weird infiltration missions. The game plays in multiple, short levels with a bunch of extra random things and side quests to do. For example talking to a wrestling champion on top of a random roof triggers a scene where you are in a wrestling cage. You just throw the guy on the tables nearby and win. There also was a robot prostitute in a different level. If you give her a coin that you can steal off a street musician, the game triggers one of the weirdest scenes ever. There’s an overarching story connected to all of this as well.
The game is full of movie and internet meme references and to be honest, they were just so unfunny most of the time. This made the game get tedious pretty fast, even if it only took 3 hours to beat. Apart from a few fun mini games like the wrestling match and the overall somewhat charming effect of this game, I wasn’t too fascinated by it.
Rating: 5/10

Mortal Kombat XL

Platform: Xbox One S
Playtime: About 10 hours (+- 2 hours)
The playtime divides itself into the story mode and a few fights against my brother + a few "tower" playthroughs. The tower is basically a mode in which you fight against 10 fighters in order with a fighter that you can select.
The story of Mortal Kombat X is what you'd expect out of a fighting game, I guess? I'm not very experienced in fighting game stories but this is what I expected going in. This being a basic hero's story and just a bunch of fights in between. This is my first Mortal Kombat game, so I don't know anything about each character's back story. But tell me, is it good storytelling to have all the characters talk like they've just read each other's Wikipedia page? "You are Raiden, the guy who stands for XYZ. How could you do the horrible thing you di?" - "Well, that's because of the one thing that happened 4 Mortal Kombat games ago. That's why I had to do what I had to do!" Of course, the dialogue didn't go exactly like that but that's the gist of it. :D Overexplaining everything.
The writers thought about all the newcomers coming in and that's not a good thing to do, if you want realistic dialogue. I'd have been totally fine with being kept in the dark somewhat because at some point, I'd know enough about the characters and their intentions to give a damn anyway. Especially since the pace of the plot started picking up after all the introductory Wikipedia bull crap ended and shit started happening.
Let me tell you though, Johnny Cage is such a horrible character. Like laughably bad. He easily has the worst one liners of any video game character ever and that's basically all that is coming out of his mouth. This guy makes fun of any situation, while everyone is busy fighting for their lives.>! In one scene, Johnny is bleeding and as his daughter comes to help him, he says "Blood...is supposed to be inside the body" or whatever, I played with german dubbing, so the translation might be a bit off.!< At some point I just started laughing every time he said something because I knew it would be stupid and that's what it always was. I gotta tell you though, I had to use him against my friends just to see how stupid his pre-fight interactions with the other characters would be. Didn't disappoint.
The fighting is extremely enjoyable, with a ton of combos to master and a bunch of fatalities and "X-Ray" moves to enjoy. X-Ray moves build up as you get hit more and more often to give you the chance to get back into the fight and show bones breaking. Pretty brutal. Fatalities are just 10 times more brutal and looking at a new one has always been fun. I'll definitely get back to this game at some point. Also, I don't know how I haven't mentioned this yet but this game has QTEs done so poorly. I've purposefully messed up many times. There is no penalty for failing. The ensuing scenes just don't make any sense anymore because even though your character gets hit all the time, the next scene shows you standing over your enemy victorious. This was really bad.
Rating: 6/10

What Remains of Edith Finch

Platform: PC
Playtime: 2 hours
What remains of her indeed. A terrible curse has befallen the Finch family. Everyone dies in terrible circumstances. A lot of them at a pretty young age even. When you go into the pause menu, you’ll see a family tree that shows a lot of the members in the Finch family die at a pretty young age. Only great grandma Edie has done a great job avoiding her fate.
You play as, surprise, Edith Finch, who revisits her childhood home. By going through each room, you read about the deaths of your relatives. These are always presented in such a clever, unique and engaging way, in a comic book style for example. I also got one of my favorite quotes of the year out of this game. “And suddenly, I was a shark.” That part is probably the only time where I thought “Are you kidding me, game?”, especially with what ensued after that sentence. Other than that, I had a great afternoon spent on something I haven’t experienced in this way before.
I’m not an advocate for walking simulators, far from it actually but I can easily recommend this to anyone. I still don’t like the walking around parts in these games all that much but it was actually not that big of an issue here. The story was engaging enough to keep me motivated throughout but I still like more fleshed out gameplay mechanics in the games I play.
Rating: 7/10

Yakuza Kiwami

Platform: PlayStation 4
Playtime: 25 hours
Depending on which subreddits you’re subbed to, you’ll have heard a few things here and there about the Yakuza series. If you’re subbed here, which I’m guessing you are, you’ll have heard of this a goddamn billion times. This game is definitely sharing the #1 spot with The Witcher 3 for “Game with most appearance in 12in12 lists". Everyone and their mother plans to play this game this year… and I love it. All the praise you’ve heard about the series this year is warranted in my opinion.
Kiryu Kazuma is the main character of the series. He is a member of the Yakuza and is on his way to a promotion to lead his own small family within the Yakuza when the game begins. He grew up in an orphanage, having lost his parents at a young age. His best childhood friend, Nishikiyama, grew up in the same orphanage as well.
The story really picks up a couple hours in, as Nishikiyama kills a family patriarch. Kiryu sacrifices himself for his friend and goes into prison for 10 years, while Nishikiyama gets promoted in Kiryu's place.
So at this point, I'm already completely engaged in the story already. The characters are all very interestingly presented, Kiryu is already likeable due to his calm, composed personality and THE DRAMA, oh THE DRAMA. Everything you'd like is packed into the first few hours, leaving you confused but fascinated. Through the duration of the story, there are so many well executed twists and turns to the plot. Each character's motivations are well explained and have a point in the grand scheme of the story. This leaves a ton of option for how the story could unfold and leaves you guessing as a player. Really checks all the boxes for me, though the "japanese trademark cringiness" is present here as well from time to time.
What I particularly love about this game is its' setting. Kamurocho is not the most beautiful and special place I've seen a game play in (it's not even the best setting in the games I've played this month :D) but I love how small it is. In a world where gaming marketing boils down to "this games map is 10x larger than XY's map" sometimes, this is a nice change to that. Kamurocho becomes recognizable fast and each little shop is part of at least a few missions. Every corner of the map has something for you to do.
You can either play through the story, do a total of 78 substories or play some mini games. The substories are hit and miss, some of them are hilarious but some just very basic "go here, do this" style missions. Each substory is supposed to act as a life lesson, like "don't fall for phone scams" or "don't fall for F cup breasts scams" (yes really). The mini games can range from basic casino games to a rock-paper-scissiors styled wrestling game (in which two women dressed in insect costumes fight each other) called "MesuKing". There is also Karaoke, Bowling and Darts for example.
The game manages to switch between serious and funny sections very well, which is something I was particularly impressed by. Going in, I expected this game to be something I'd like but it definietly exceeded my expectations. Such a fun game. Oh yeah, brawling and kicking ass was also a lot of fun.
Rating: 10/10
LAST MINUTE COMPLETION: Red Dead Redemption 2
Platform: PlayStation 4
Playtime: About 70 hours
(Just beaten this game. Not even updated my backloggery page, so this is a very special surprising completion I guess.)
I don't think anything that I'll write could do this game justice. This was such an emotional rollercoaster. A story as epic as any other in gaming. As someone who was disappointed when beating the original 2 years ago, I was completely blown away by Red Dead Redemption 2.
The character of John Marston didn't click with me that much in the original but I've found myself connecting with Arthur Morgan pretty quickly. The story of this game is about the Dutch van der Linde and his gang of outlaws after a failed robbery on a train in Blackwater. John Marston and Arthur Morgan are part of the gang, so this is basically taking place a few years before the original.
I don't really want to touch on the story too much, so that you can go into it as blind as possible but it really was amazing. Every single character is unique and so well written. You learn more and more about them as the story progresses and build up relationships with each of them. Some you will like, some you will hate. You all live in camps together. Whenever you return to the camp, you'll be able to listen to conversations between the characters. Characters will approach you and talk to you, reacting to recent events. Sometimes you'll have parties together. You can talk while playing poker together. You can have little talk sessions with the women, where Arthur just lets out what is bothering him. There is hours and hours and hours of this side content where you can just learn more about Arthur and the other gang members.
Their clearly went a ton of time into animations, as each one is as detailed as possible. Filling a plate with food, pouring coffee into a cup or chopping wood. Thanks in part to small details like this, this is easily the most immersive game I've played. AI daily routines contribute to this as well. Each NPC has a realistic routine that they follow, which breathes so much life into each of the games towns.
What else is there in this game content wise? You can spend hours fishing, hunting, playing games, doing chores around camp, being a bounty hunter, robbing coaches, looking for treasure, beating all the 90 challenges, collecting cards and a lot of other random things. There are so called random events in the game, which pop up when you're riding around randomly. These can be as simple as helping out someone who got poisoned by a snake to giving an injured woman a ride home. Even in these simple moments, Arthur will engage in interesting dialogue with the NPCs and give these short sequences extra meaning. All of this just helped immensely with the development of Arthur's character and led to me loving everything about his story.
Can't forget about the stranger missions, which are side missions where you meet random people. These are almost as detailed as the main story, as they use cut scenes as well. You'll meet colorful personalities and will be asked to do a bunch of random tasks for them. As you progress through the main story, you'll find out that even these side missions carry a big weight in the progression of Arthur's character and story.
Of course, other things to do include reading through all of Arthur's diary entries after every mission, reading through the dozens of newspapers that are released as you play, reading notes that you randomly find or reading through the shop's catalogs. These contain detailed entries an all outfits, food and guns that you can purchase. These will be overlooked by 99 % of the players but probably took 100s of hours to fully create. Also there is a compendium with 500+ entries on animals, guns, plants and bandit gangs. It's just amazing.
So yeah, that's the world of Red Dead Redemption 2. I haven't even told you the half of it yet. You got a shit ton to experience here. Well worth the $60 entry price and can be purchased a bit cheaper these days. I will 100 % go back to this game and replay the story, take my time to do all the little things and really delve into the lore of this. Also. there is one point in the story that was just incredibly shocking to me. When you ride into Saint Denis to do a Sadie Adler mission, Arthur just collapses all of a sudden without you having triggered the mission yet. So surprising and well done. There were a few parts where I got really emotional, especially thanks to an incredible soundtrack. May I? Stand Unshaken is probably my favorite song of the year. Also, did you like the Mexico ride in the original? Well, there are at least 2 rides with a way bigger effect on you for sure. Such good use of the music. Such a good game.
Rating: 10/10

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What I'm Playing in February
6 games beaten. I'm extremely happy. as I managed to beat RDR 2 after three months, found two series that are right up my alley in Yakuza and Devil May Cry and have a bunch of great games lined up for February and beyond.
PC

Beyond Good and Evil - Next up on my 12in12 list. I got this back in 2016 I think, so it's time to play this finally. I'm worried about potential technical issues with this one. We'll see.
Football Manager 2019 - Should maybe mention this, as I've spent 60 hours (!) with this in a month. I'm in my fourth season currently and not looking to stop. So much fun.
Resident Evil 5 - Started this almost a year ago. On Chapter 4-2, so I'm guessing it'll take my brother and me another 6 months to finish this. :D

Playstation 4

Persona 5 - Only game left to play on my Playstation 4 currently. Finally time to get back into this.

Xbox One S

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - Next game on console after beating RDR 2. Has potential to be great.

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12in12 original list - Progress: (3/12)

Batman Arkham City
Beyond Good & Evil
Bioshock Infinite
Deponia Doomsday
DmC: Devil May Cry - DONE
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength
Persona 5
Red Dead Redemption 2 - DONE
Resident Evil 5
SOMA
The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine
Yakuza Kiwami - DONE

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My Yearly Stats:

Games Added: 3
Total Price: 9 €
Games Removed: 2
Games Finished: 6
Games Left in the Backlog: 55

So far at +5 for the year. The goal was to be done with the backlog at the end of the year but that doesn't seem very likely to be honest. What would we do without a backlog anyway, right?
Best of luck to all of you for February, keep them posts coming. And if you've read all of this, you're obviously mental.. but thank you!

Just beat Yakuza 0! Have a ton of questions and thoughts and I'm hoping you guys can help out!

Played 0 as my first game in the series (on PC) and have loved it so much!
Thoughts:

Kuze as a character just sounds and looks so badass. You'd think a boss you face five (FIVE!) times would be a joke around fight three, but he never became that for me. Tbf, his theme is 10/10.
A lot of these substories are some of the most laugh-out-loud moments I've had in gaming - the girl looking for a boyfriend who looks exactly like Majima, the kid who wants a porn magazine and Kiryu has to sneak past women, the Shurepippi cult, the poor Erran-kun, - absolutely hilarious!
I played through on easy, because I was kinda shit at the combat (and I was constantly dying because I forgot how healing items work) and mostly just wanted to see the story and non-violent parts more than an actual fight system. I cannot comment, really, because easy does make things very, well, easy, so one doesn't need to learn a lot about the system. One thing that is weird is the heat animations - those should kill at least some people, yet throughout the entire game both protagonists have a kill count of zero. I at least expected Majima to rack up a kill count in the finale as he's charging through Dojima HQ.
Story is good. I expected that certain plot elements would be used more than once, and I thought it would end far more tragically than it did, but it wasn't bad, really.
The detail level is so odd imo. When people are in cars it seems like someone made an empty road in blender, but the rest of it is super detailed, especially the major characters. Also the generic suit-wearing mobsters have a pretty low quality suit, but when Majima holds one by the tie, it is held perfectly, with no clipping or anything. Plus, what's with the four types of cutscenes?
I do wish that the game lost the free roaming around Kamurocho/Sotenbori in the later acts completely so that the plot could make a sprint to the finish, and frankly while I am satisfied in terms of content and bang for buck, I do think the story stretches out its welcome a bit.
I am genuinely surprised they managed to make a game about cabarets and have major scenes in a red light district and have zero nudity. Not a point for or against, just an observation.

Questions:

Why do Dojima thugs attack Kiryu after the Tojo clan specifically forbid that he be touched? Is it not a sign of insubordination, which could be a big deal in a criminal organisation?
What is the deal with the whole Omi Alliance thing? I understood the hierarchy of the Tojo, but the whole part about the Omi alliance and the guy Shimano shoots in the finale and what role Shimano played in this game completely went over my head. I understand Shimano is a major character in later games, but he literally shows in less than five scenes here, and as a newcomer I barely understood anything beyond the fact that he is Majima's boss (or Majima's boss's boss) and that he was responsible for Majima losing his eye.
If Shimano didn't want Makoto dead, why the hell wouldn't he tell Sagawa even if he didn't tell Majima? Its not like he was indifferent to her survival - he wanted Majima to woo her so that she would sell the lot to him. But Sagawa could have killed Makoto twice - in the car bomb that killed Lee, and when he was pointing the gun at Majima and Makoto before being interrupted by Sera. Why did Sagawa not know?
Guns seem to function very arbitrarily in this world. I get the basic gameplay and story segregation which most games have where single bullets kill characters in cutscenes but they need several to kill them in game, but even in cutscenes it's not clear how deadly guns are supposed to be. Sera shoots Sagawa and he's barely impeded, and Sagawa shoots Sera and he lives, but people do die of gunshots - the poor guy at the start, the girl dancing with Awano, Awano himself, the Omi Alliance guy, Sagawa. Why the arbitrary power?
I don't get why Kiryu decided to rejoin the Dojima family after the game finished. Obviously I presume this ties into the first game, but if I had been a major part of what caused a major downfall of a Yakuza family, I wouldn't join that exact family.
I don't get why Majima starts wearing that weird costume, either. Its not that he went crazy (which is what I thought would happen after a more tragic ending to his story), but he... decides to live life the way he wants or something? I don't understand that.
How does Majima recognise Kiryu in the epilogue? They have never met before this point, the only thing Majima knows about Kiryu is from his business card of him working for Tachibana. And why does he get all excited about him?
Why doesn't Sagawa kill Majima after the whole bombing thing? Worse, why does he ask for his help? At the point Majima is captured, all he has done is do his best to keep Makoto alive, and is en route to escaping from the city when Sagawa stops him. Why would you trust this man to find her and kill her?
Also, how does Kiryu kill zero people in the game during the car shooting bit? Do those guys not count for "crossing the line" purposes?

While those questions might sound like a lot (mainly because I am a newcomer to the series and so there's a lot of background that I don't have), I still really do love this game. Its superb in terms of an experience, and I am looking forward to Yakuza Kiwami when it comes out! Maybe if I get a PlayStation (4?) soon (for Bloodborne purposes TBH) I might try the non-PC games too!

yakuza kiwami substories not working video

i'm working my way through the yakuza series after playing 7. I beat 0, kiwami, and kiwami 2, and am currently on 3. I...do not like 3. I understand some of my issues (relating to gameplay) are relics of when it came out but so far I don't find it nearly as enjoyable as any of the others I've played (I'm on chapter 6). A slow brawler that cannot be grabbed. His attacks are wide sweeps reminiscent of Yakuza 0's Mr. Shakedown, but not nearly as powerful. Grasshopper Hoshino: A self-taught fighter with a quick and precise style. Isamu Kumada: A pretty standard fighter without too many strengths. He has some combos. Kenzo Higurashi: A drunken master with some ... (Yakuza Kiwami 2) I think one of my substories is bugged. Gameplay Hi all, I've been on the hunt for the platinum trophy for Kiwami 2 and as I've been completing the substories, I noticed Substory #2 (The Legendary Dragon) is not working like it's supposed to. kind of over the top. Dunno if Kiwami 2 will eventually get there too, but so far I'm really liking it. Also, while Kiryu is already a super strong Superman who can take a bottle to the head and not even flinch his personality still feels a lot more real than his super Jesus form in later games. I like his relationship with Kaoru. Yakuza Kiwami is filled with immersive and rewarding side quests called Substories. This Yakuza Kiwami Substories Guide will tell you where to find each of the Substories, the best way to complete them and any information on the rewards you receive once completed. Chapter 5 Substories Yakuza Kiwami ... Head to Don Quijote and pick up one of each (they're not cheap) and head back to Debolah. Hand her the clothes and you'll get Double Feathered Fans as a reward. #52 - The Value of 2,000 Yen. Inside Vincent, approach the man at the bar wearing glasses. Yakuza Kiwami 2. All Discussions ... Once there you will meet the con artist who scammed the headmistress, with him a yakuza member. ... Story missions in this case does not include substories, only the Championship missions 👑 Complete the Cabaret Club Grand Prix Completion List 0 0 0 0 20. Yakuza returns with Yakuza Kiwami 2 and with it, tons of new Substories. This Yakuza Kiwami 2 Substories Guide will tell you where to find all of the Substories in the game, how to complete them and the rewards you get for doing so. API STATUS: Working February 2021. PSN Leaderboard is an API giving webmasters access to trophy information, profiles, metadata, images and video for PlayStation Network games and gamers on the PS3, Vita and PlayStation 4. Negrutzy's YAKUZA KIWAMI Trophies Hi Yakuza fans, We’re so excited to bring you Yakuza Kiwami on PC, and we couldn’t have done it without your continued support. So a big ‘arigatou gozaimasu’ to you! As always, we’ve worked hard to make Yakuza Kiwami on PC the best experience possible, but sometimes bugs go into hiding, unsquashed. If you run into any issues, please report them IN THIS THREAD along with your system ...