Or, Yakuza 8 to its friends. I figure a good few of us will be playing this for some time to come, so let's have a thread.
After the relatively brief side-story in 'The Man Who Erased His Name', this is the next fully-fledged game in the series. Initial impressions are: "bloody hell, this thing is big". I can't remember exactly how it all played out in 7 time-wise, but this time I'm about 14 hours in, currently in chapter 4... and yet I only have just 3 party members, no access to change jobs/classes, and still with new systems still being piled on top of one another at every turn.
Along with the critical path, there's the usual mass of side missions, a whole new social network to build, and then the range and depth of other ways to occupy your time has gone through the absolute roof, to the point that calling them 'minigames' feels like doing them a disservice. There's Crazy Delivery, which is Deliveroo by way of Crazy Taxi. Sicko Snap is the game's take on Pokémon Snap; an on-rails photography game where you have to document exhibitionists gyrating in their smalls. I just got to the Sujimon game, the game's take on the standard Pokémon format which seems to run incredibly deep, and I know I've still got the entire of "Dondoko Island" (read: Animal Crossing) to come. Arcade games this time include Sega Bass Fishing, Virtua Fighter 3 TB, and Spikeout too.
Story-wise I'm not really sure what to make of it just yet, but I am slightly thrown by what I'd consider to be a fairly major point relative to a key character (that I only got to after about 8 hours!) being one of the things that the team gave away in a presentation of the game months before its release. The key talking point that isn't a secret though is that there is a prominent new location - Hawaii - where things take place. Environments in this series are a big deal, so expanding out like this feels like a major step - there's some artificial barriers up early on, so it's tough to say exactly how big things are, but it is nice to be in a totally different environment that is quite bright and cheery but still has that kind of dense and vibrant feel to it. Also you can go for a swim! Imagine that.
Some minor gripes so far are that combat is improved but still a touch chaotic. It encourages you to play strategically, hitting enemies towards surfaces or other characters, and making the most out of your area of effect attacks, but just as often as not has people nervously shifting about at the last second ruining your plans. It's also pretty easy to land yourself in bad situations - enemies out in the world have colour-coded symbols to help gauge their threat, but that's not much help if you're navigating a tight corner and run straight into a particularly dangerous group. Similarly, missions don't always do a great job of letting you know when you're about to get your head kicked in by someone much stronger than you are. Death isn't too punishing, but the financial loss you feel is a good reminder to make use of the ATMs that are around.
After the relatively brief side-story in 'The Man Who Erased His Name', this is the next fully-fledged game in the series. Initial impressions are: "bloody hell, this thing is big". I can't remember exactly how it all played out in 7 time-wise, but this time I'm about 14 hours in, currently in chapter 4... and yet I only have just 3 party members, no access to change jobs/classes, and still with new systems still being piled on top of one another at every turn.
Along with the critical path, there's the usual mass of side missions, a whole new social network to build, and then the range and depth of other ways to occupy your time has gone through the absolute roof, to the point that calling them 'minigames' feels like doing them a disservice. There's Crazy Delivery, which is Deliveroo by way of Crazy Taxi. Sicko Snap is the game's take on Pokémon Snap; an on-rails photography game where you have to document exhibitionists gyrating in their smalls. I just got to the Sujimon game, the game's take on the standard Pokémon format which seems to run incredibly deep, and I know I've still got the entire of "Dondoko Island" (read: Animal Crossing) to come. Arcade games this time include Sega Bass Fishing, Virtua Fighter 3 TB, and Spikeout too.
Story-wise I'm not really sure what to make of it just yet, but I am slightly thrown by what I'd consider to be a fairly major point relative to a key character (that I only got to after about 8 hours!) being one of the things that the team gave away in a presentation of the game months before its release. The key talking point that isn't a secret though is that there is a prominent new location - Hawaii - where things take place. Environments in this series are a big deal, so expanding out like this feels like a major step - there's some artificial barriers up early on, so it's tough to say exactly how big things are, but it is nice to be in a totally different environment that is quite bright and cheery but still has that kind of dense and vibrant feel to it. Also you can go for a swim! Imagine that.
Some minor gripes so far are that combat is improved but still a touch chaotic. It encourages you to play strategically, hitting enemies towards surfaces or other characters, and making the most out of your area of effect attacks, but just as often as not has people nervously shifting about at the last second ruining your plans. It's also pretty easy to land yourself in bad situations - enemies out in the world have colour-coded symbols to help gauge their threat, but that's not much help if you're navigating a tight corner and run straight into a particularly dangerous group. Similarly, missions don't always do a great job of letting you know when you're about to get your head kicked in by someone much stronger than you are. Death isn't too punishing, but the financial loss you feel is a good reminder to make use of the ATMs that are around.
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