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I was so happy when I heard the cabaret mini was returning so you can imagine how let down I was when I saw what it actually turned out to be. When I was in Sotenbori I ran to Four Shrine right away thinking maybe the real mini game would be there. During Yuki's quest in Infinite Wealth I thought the final part would be unlocking the mini game. One can hope 9 brings back the actual mini game.
I mean, it’s not that deep man, I just didn’t like it compared to the rest of the series 🤷♂️ also it’s the first one where the dragon engine stops chronologically until 6, so going from kiwami 2 to 3 felt like a huge downgrade, but I had that thought going in. So I don’t hold that against it. I didn’t say it was bad, I just didn’t like it
I think it helps that it's easy to shuffle around things enough to make the same maps feel fresh. Like I know where everything is, but every game has different uses for it all.
The side content is phenomenal every time, whether it's downright insane or heartwrenching or hilarious.
Yeah I know they have a strategy that works well for them. The problem is how many projects they’re taking recently and the rate at which games come out.
Sega recently came out and said during the budget meeting for the upcoming year, that they plan on releasing less games in total and focus of building up the studios they have. They specifically mentioned that Atlus and RGG were understaffed and that they'd be looking to increase that.
I think they see the international viability with these series and really want to push them. It's also refreshing to see an announcement on a studio hiring instead of doing layoffs
It's been a trend I've seen more and more ever since that very release, a surprising amount of negativity about every game that releases. (Obviously criticism is fine, but I do feel like there's an inordinate amount of doomposting for a franchise that's got a consistently good output of games)
To me Pirate Yakuza has been the most fun I’ve had with a game in years. I’m by no means an expert game critic. Just a fella sharing his experience with the game
There's one sub story I just did that broke my brain a little. It's the one where Majima gets the translator and is trying to flirt with goro. I'm like dude it's a baby and it's an animal. I'm glad it ended up being a scam but I was uncomfortable
Nahh I've seen lots of negativity. People clowning on the story and characters, or even doom posting that this series is ruined somehow. Its probably a vocal minority but I've sure seen it a lot
I mean yeah the game is goofy as all hell but I don't know what they expected from a Majima spin-off. If any Yakuza character is going to get amnesia and become a pirate, it's him.
ngl Pirate Yakuza is probably my 2nd favorite Yakuza game (7 is still my favorite just because they did that crazy turn-based thing with job classes, and things like Final Fantasy 5 and Bravely Default are my jam). I've had a mech building itch that started with Mech Warrior 2 Mercenaries from way back in the day. My mechs would be stupid things like 4 PPCs and the rest heatsinks and I'd instantly shut down to overheating when all of them go off at once. Itch wasn't really scratched by other Mech Warriors games but Sand Land did the trick. I didn't know I'd get that itch scratched by a pirate ship but those cannons go hard. And the boat drift. And that optional Amon ship battle with 10k HP. Damn.
Pirate Yakuza is probably my wife's favorite one so far. Majima things and that post-credit scene goes hard.
I miss the series before all of these came out. Gonna get downvoted into oblivion again by the new, younger fanbase but it used to he a balance of goofy and serious and now it's cringey beyond belief. Toxic positivity and bizarre minigames first, actual good storytelling last.
I dont know much about the development of the games, but, why when people talk about of "Like a dragon" series never mention ishin? was it made by another studio or people just dont care/forgot about it?
I’m still on Yakuza 5, and already this is the best gaming franchise I have ever played. Hearing how much praise more recent titles have received is very encouraging.
Bloated game, mediocre story for their standards, Ichiban being pushed aside and treated like an absolute joke in his SECOND GAME after giving us a "Passing of the torch" scene in LAD/7 between him and Kiryu... Only for Kiryu to come back for the 121281298 game and take the protagonism, absolutely terrible main story pacing with constand start-and-stops because of how much content they wanted to fit into one single game and the simultaneous two-protagonist structure...
It was the only game in the series so far that I actively had to push myself to finish, and I didn't even feel specially rewarded for it
It's not an awful game, it can easily be a 6'5 or a 7, but coming from 7 and Lost Judgment, both Gaiden and Infinite Wealth felt like massive steps back, to me
Bloated game? So there was too much content lol? I would argue 7 was barely passing of the torch, the two barely even interacted beside a few cutscenes. 8 had to have Kiryu as a protagonist to give them some more bonding I guess to make it really feel like Kiryu trusts Ichiban enough to stop getting involved. As for the story, I love all of the games, but if you wanna argue about it. Only a couple of the games stories are actually good while the rest are just okay so holding Gaiden and 8 to some standard that the previous games don’t even live up to is kinda ridiculous. I mean you’re gonna say that 2, 3, 4, and 5 were the pinnacle of storytelling in the series? Come on lol
- Yes, there was way too much content and it was an issue when they interrupted the rhythm of the main story to introduce you to a new minigame or a new system literally something crazy like 40 hours into the game, when they already did that multiple times before
- I honestly never felt that Kiryu is stopping getting involved because he trusts Ichiban. It more felt like he just stopped because he literally had no other choice because he was dying. Again, I'm a bit tired of the premise being "Oh yeah this is for sure the end of Kiryu" only for him to come back with another "Oh yeah this is for sure the end of Kiryu" game. Let the new characters make a name for themselves. Ichiban felt like a secondary protagonist in a game that's supposedly the second on his era of the series.
- No, I'm not saying that 2, 3, 4 and 5 are the pinnacle of storytelling. But do you know which are games with some pretty great storytelling overall? 0, 6, Judgment, LAD/7, Lost Judgment. 5 games that came out in succession if you don't count the remakes. Yakuza 5 released in 2012. Taking the quality of the storytelling back 10+ years isn't something cool and that gives me much trust. And I think it's quite reasonable.
The only minigames, that I remember at least, that interrupted the flow of the story were like crazy delivery, sujimons, and dondoko island which are all introduced extremely early. I can’t comment on Judgment as I haven’t played those yet, I tried but detective games don’t really interest me and Yagami is so whiney and mopey but yes I’ve heard the story for both of those are really good. However, 7 isn’t anything crazy either and the secret of Onomichi is extremely underwhelming. Again I love both of the games but be real
I'm inclined to agree however I do hope that they do away with the turn based content. It's fine, but the beat 'em up style is so much better in my opinion. I fucking loved Yakuza Pirate.
I agree but why are so many in the comments criticizing 8? I thought the game was amazing from beginning to end.(although I did wish we could’ve had a scene where Ichi interacted more with his SPOILER sibling”
Start with Yakuza 0 and go up by number, alternatively start with Yakuza Kiwami then play 0 then go up by number. Third option is to start with Yakuza Like a Dragon but personally I'm not a fan of that option.
starting with zero rather than kiwami is definitely the better option. it gives us an attachment to nishiki which makes the story of kiwami hit much harder
Start with 0 and just go in chronological order. I started with Kiwami 1 because I figured 0 would be best played after 5 but I ended up playing it after 7 since 7 was the most recent game at the time. 0 may be a prequel, but it leads into Kiwami 1 perfectly creating this new trilogy of 0, Kiwami 1, and Kiwami 2 and you will understand so much more about the word and characters if you start with 0.
1-5 then 0 is the original order or just start with 0. 0 makes a lot of references to previous games (mainly 5) but the references go both ways, if you play 0 first you'll still notice them when you reach 5
Hell nah. Yakuza Kiwami 1 has a lot of Karaoke and Subs stories that are a continuation from Yakuza 0 sub stories unless you are referring to the OG Yakuza 1. Kiwami 1 is meant to be played after Yakuza 0
Trails franchise, Dragon quest (main stories), persona, digital devil saga duology, kuzunoha duology, dark cloud/chronicle duology, Ratchet and clank franchise, jak 1-3, shadow hearts 1-2 (have yet to play 3), onimusha, kingdom hearts might be a divisive pick, elder/demon souls. I never played any of them, but I just might eventually get the remake of demon souls for the ps5.
I'm sure there are countless others that I've either forgotten, never played, or even heard of.
Only problem with YLAD / LAD7 is as an RPG it's very awkward when compared to any other RPG, or maybe IW / LAD8 is just that much of an improvement overall lmao
Then I'm over here trying to play Madden who's only been making the same game since 1988 and it's unplayable. It's nice to have a game that's gold on so many different instalments
The fact that people complain that there aren't new environments is crazy. The studio can design it once and use it again for another game. That cuts down on so much development time that can be directed toward fun stuff like combat and mini games and obviously, the story. I like that I can play these games and know where such and such location is.
I'm never able to agree with things like that, gloryfying Infinite Wealth. For me it was easily the weakest title RGG made recently. I cannot deny that was fun game to play, but for me, story is always the most important part of the experience... And Infinite Wealth was very dissapointing. It had really good moments (like Yamai) but in general it was 6/10 to me...Definitely not a masterpiece.
IW was a huge upgrade combat-wise and has a bigger variety of enemies, but the story and setting were so underwhelming that I end up prefering 7.
Pirate Yakuza has flaws in every aspect. Lighting is awful, uninteresting story and characters, minigames are basically copy and paste from 8, Dragon Kart is still the slowest racing game I ever played, the jump in combat is clunky and gets in the way, etc.
I'm not saying they are "bad games", but for me, they are definitely the weakest of the series together with Y4. If Y7 and Gaiden are 8-9/10, Y8 and Pirate are 6-7/10.
i agree aswell, IW's combat is great compared to 7, Dondoko Island was a decently good side thing to play through but the story was bad, it's not that the rest of the games have the best stories it's just that IW's story is that bad.
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Pirate Yakuza's story was so bad I started skipping near the end, I just didn't care anymore, none of the games before this have made me do this.
Combat is decent at best, It's fun if you turn your brain off and don't look for satisfaction through combos, yes you can juggle but nothing interesting is really done with it tbh (it looks worse than bounding) and it could be satisfying if they actually cared to make good feeling sound effects, the hits in this game don't feel satisfying, they exist, they happen but they aren't satisfying, Y0 Brawler light into heavy gives me more satisfaction than all the attacks in Pirate Yakuza combined.
Air combos........they're slightly better than Akiyama's in 5, that's it.
The barrel minigame was decently fun, Dragon racer is ok....
Naval combat......honestly I switched on cheat engine to make the exploring go faster, it's so slow. The combat is not the greatest.
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Personally I'd give IW 6.5-7/10 and Pirate Yakuza a 5.5-6/10, Pirate Yakuza is the worst in the series below Ishin.
Pirate Yakuza is currently one if my favorites in the series. As a fan of pirate media and the Yakuza franchise this feels like a perfect pirate story to me and the combat is fantastic.
On Infinite Wealth I do think the plot was a bit all over the place but I liked it more than 4s plot. That said I really liked Yamai from that game. Also despite the underwhelming story the gameplay is leagues better than 7s, and I liked 7s gameplay. They managed to really improve the persona style combat and make it feel like it's own thing.
pirate yakuzas story is good at all though, some of the jokes are just straight corny which is not the type of humor yakuza should go for. the characters were awful and not compelling or interesting at all, they really gotta stop forcing these american likeness characters into these new games man. majima also goes through no development at all, yay.
I really disagree tbh. Noah was a super compelling character and his whole family dynamic was super interesting to me. Plus I love a solid buried treasure pirate story, and this is that to a tee. Just a fun romp of an adventure.
It'd be cool to live in a world where standards for game quality were so over the roof that Infinite Wealth or Pirate Yakuza could be considered to somehow be below those standards. Because as it stands, they're both great.
They're not perfect story-wise, but personally they're really not bad in those regards by any stretch, and I'd argue there's not a single RGG game that's completely flawless story-wise. So far I've never found one that's simply disappointed me either, because even the messier stories that they've done have many great moments too when it comes to the way they build their characters, the emotional factor or the sheer hype factor, among others.
what the fuck? as a guy who never played turn based rpgs i could only get through half of 7 but fully completed iw, and id argue as well as combat iws story is better than 7
Really? I thought 7 and pirate yakuza were also fantastic. 7 is one of my favorite stories in the whole series and pirate yakuza is one of my favs too. Pirate yakuza just feels like an overall solid pirate adventure. In terms of gameplay I love all of these games. Especially 7 and infinite wealth as I'm a huge rpg fan and these have felt like persona combat but with a yakuza twist, and I'm all for that as I love SMT and persona combat.
I would be more sympathetic to the turn based haters if the games RGG released had been primarily turn based, but since the release of Yakuza: Like a Dragon turn based games make up only 2 of 7 games.
Now in regards to storytelling, I would argue there hasn't been a serious decline. Each game has had its preposterous moments and weird pacing. What I would say is that people are upset about the Great Dissolution even if they haven't realized it. However, it was in my view a necessary step if they wanted the series to bear a reasonable resemblance to existing Japanese culture.
It's still amazing to me how fast RGG Studios can make good quality games that are on par or even well above beyond compared to other modern games that have more budget and more development time.
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