This text will be blurredFinally finished this after playing it for, I don’t know, about a year. It’s a looong game, which is one of my complaints. Now, I love me some Yakuza, but this game just didn’t want to end. I also hated the change to turn based JRPG combat. I found it uninteresting and towards the end, the boss fights just slogged on way too long.
Loved Kasuga. Loved the characters. Loved the over the top melodrama. Loved the side stories. I don’t care for mini games, so I largely skipped them.
SPOILERS FOLLOW, THAT FOR SOME REASON ARE NOT GETTING BLURRED! BE FOREWARNED!
Some spoilers:
So who killed Arakawa? Was it the real Tendo, or was it Mirror Face?
I didn’t really care for the cameos, especially Kiryu. And that was the worst boss fight, not so mention that it didn’t make any sense to the plot.
Is there a Yakuza game which isn’t? They all seem to be about twice as long as they should be. There was some pretty egregious padding on this one, though, notably that first trip underground.
Zero was long, but it was also wonderful. Kiwamis 1 & 2 were much shorter. LaD is too long, and drags on because of the incessant and boring fight encounters and tedious boss fights at the end.
So I finshed Like a Dragon yesterday, and it was an amazing experience. That said, I might not play another one, at least not any time soon. This was my first JRPG, and I was NOT mentally prepared for the particular type of grind found in these games. Eventually it began to feel like work, and I just wanted to finish it. That’s not a knock on the game, but on me, as I just might not be suited to this type of game.
Glad I played it though. It’s a tremendous achievement in gameplay and storytelling. It’s just maybe a bit too much for me.
Most JRPGs don’t have as many LONG cut scenes as this game has, or stuff to do, plus this could have done with 50% less street-level thug battles.
I took a break from it because after playing for a really long time, I realized I still had a ways to go and the random not-random battles were getting to me, and every time I thought I could play for 30 minutes or so, I’d get into some 15 minute long cut scene.
But don’t let that keep you away from other JRPGs. In others like Dragon Quest, battles are shorter and cut scenes aren’t as frequent or long.
DQ is a series that stays pretty close to its roots, so you’re not going to see wild swings in mechanics or quality from one game to the next.
IV is a nice, snappy representation of the classic era that Yakuza is drawing from, and it plays great on phone, which is a really good fit for a series that can tend to feel repetitive.
XI is a nice modern, refined option that looks great and is on Game Pass.
Agree, the series is pretty consistent throughout, with some minor refinements along the way.
DQ IV to XI are ALL such fantastic games that it’s hard to pick a standout.
IV is interesting in how you play several chapters as individual characters who then get together for the final chapter(s) as a party. (And I just realized that Octopath traveler kind of borrows from this idea).
V has a great story and you play through several generations in a family.
VIII added voice acting for the first time, had a great
cel-shaded cartoony look, and a great cast.
XI went for a more MMORPG style with a more open world and ton of basic fetch/kill quests. This one is only available on DS/3DS.
I didn’t get too far in VII but I hear it’s one of the longest games in the series.
All of these are available on the DS/3DS and 1 - 3 are in a Switch collection. I played those on the GBA ages ago, 1 and 2 are very short, simple early JRPGs but still fun to play. 3 was fantastic but tried to replay it recently on Switch and had way too many random battles, way more than I remembered on the GBA.
I think you’re conflating IX (which was on DS), X (which was an MMO that never got released in English), and XI (which went back to the traditional style and is on all current platforms)
Welp thanks to your input, and a bunch of research, I just got DQ XI on the Switch, as it was on sale and many say it’s the best place to start. Thanks y’all.
I dropped off after chapter 12, maybe? I enjoyed everything, but other games popped up. Same thing happened to me with Yakuza Zero and One.
The only Yakuza game I actually finished, I did it this year: Fist of the North Star - Games - Quarter To Three Forums. It’s much shorter than Y7 or Y0. The combat is worse than Y0, but hey, you can do the famous at-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-waaaaa-TA! It just doesn’t get old.
I played some of this on Game Pass (I want to say it was summer of last year–geez has it been that long?) and enjoyed what I played of it, but man, that length/grind put me off after a while.
This is on sale for $18 on Xbox and Win10 this week. $28 for the Legendary edition, but I think that just has a bunch of nonsense cosmetic stuff.
I know it’s still on Game Pass, so I should probably play a little further to make sure I actually want to own it before I pull the trigger, even at $18.
