Yakuza

Oh btw the fishing mechanics in Y3 are truly cursed, I was wrestling a tuna out of the deep sea for like five straight minutes at one point and that was after I got good at it.

i get why Hawaii makes sense and i'm sure it'll get an excellent Like a Dragon spin put on it, i'm just less excited for wandering around there because i'm a sad weeb

ooh, as if by magic

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth / PlayStation 5 / Sega / 2024 pic.twitter.com/8yqF3bUhYE

— Cool Box Art (@CoolBoxArt) October 4, 2023

They’ll probably do at least one Japanese city tbf and you’ll be able to travel there instantly just like you can from Okinawa to Tokyo in 3. I’ve really enjoyed each new locale introduced tbh, they do a great job of making them feel distinct and memorable.

oh and my boy Joel was telling me last night the antagonist in Infinite Wealth is some kind of vtuber so let the lols begin

yeah they've said there will be some Japanese locations too

I looked up infinite wealth on Wikipedia and I’m not sure about those plot points mentioned lads
https://i.postimg.cc/tThnrwBP/IMG-6958.jpg

i'm gonna have to play Like a Dragon again before this drops in a futile effort to remember all the plots twists i'll inevitably keep forgetting

- chocolate business
- the power of friendship
- coin locker baby
- sticky tissue disposal
- failed punch perm

They were missing the classic Yakuza trope “secretly Chinese” but more then made up for it with HE COULD WALK ALL ALONG

they nearly went with "secretly Korean" tho iirc

also in every Yakuza ever: "the bad and hated Omi Alliance"

Yeah Secretly Korean is up there but I think Secretly Chinese has more lineage. Did you ever watch classic C4 series Utopia? If so the reveal that Anya isn’t Russian in the last episode of s1 made me SHRIEK irl. I’m such a sucker for these sloppy plot points.

i haven't seen it but i read the spoiler anyway :D

- ambiguously gay
- unambiguously gay, actually played entirely seriously (this applies to antagonists in at least two games)
- does Kiryu know how to use his dick? He seems very naive
- cut to shot outside love hotel yes

xp it’s pure magic, she’s this minor helpless Russian woman in the other episodes and then in e6 she drops the accent in a key scene and is actually a posh English woman - history’s true villains as we know - and there’s absolutely no hint of it beforehand and it’s incredible

tbh i'm still not certain what Kiryu gets up to in those love hotels

pulls out his hanafuda deck

gotta think that's the most likely option

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50NuiQGcrZc

^^love that.

Yakuza 4 atm, akiyama-san is my main man. Feels even cheesier than normal but I’m all about it. Majima up to some dirty. Not a whiff of the dragon of Dojima yet but we all know he’s on his way. Millions falling from the millennium towers. One of the worst hostess mini games of the series. All in all, I love every part of it.

Bout to find out what this Saejima guy is all about.

Damn saejima really up to no good either. What an intro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50NuiQGcrZc

I kind of want this to become a neverending youtube meme a la steamed hams

LMAO love it

I’m playing the new Kiryu game. Yakuza 6 spoilers: Even though Kiryu faked his own death at the end of Y6 people everywhere you go immediately recognise him, which isn’t surprising since he looks exactly the same bar a pair of glasses. Good that the Clark Kent trope doesn’t apply in Japan?
Very good so far, call backs to a lot of plot points from other series and games, koi-koi remains a great time drain when you’re too numb to do anything else.

ah shit it's out? i'm deep in baldur's gate.

Gamepass too. Trying to speed through 4-6 rn to get to it while it's hot

it's on my wishlist but given current circs i'm more likely to end up playing Infinite Wealth before i get round to this one

wow I couldn't imagine doing that, Yakuza is so much about getting lost in the world and just hanging out

xpost

ah shit it's out? i'm deep in baldur's gate.

i will never stop trying to hit on cabaret hostesses

there was some dodgy live action footage in Inshin as well

I haven’t actually finished that cos I went from Ishin to Mario Wonder, I’m terrible for that kind of shit, but I will do so

Oh god yeah there's the Mario too. Too many games!

Yeah I did finish that, btw I really enjoy glasses Kiryu being hilariously reminiscent of glasses Kiryu in 0

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F-O_Ofna8AA92Ei?format=jpg&name=900x900

He still comes out with the same dumb shit he always does but he’s got glasses

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyIOQ1PWAAAgCk_?format=jpg&name=large

wow I couldn't imagine doing that, Yakuza is so much about getting lost in the world and just hanging out

xpost

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 13 November 2023 20:38 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've kind of accepted I'm playing these games "wrong" but I'm okay with it. Yakuza to me is pure pulp and screaming KIRYU-SAN at your screen whenever Kiryu does literally anything. I'm in it for the vibes, but I'm just not a minigame guy.

This is also turning into somewhat of a Nov/Dec tradition to plow through a couple while listening to end of year music lists. did 0 and kiwami 1 chrissy 2021, kiwami 2 and 3 2022, so gotta keep the pattern going!

New Kiryu game feels so...empty, so far.

How far in are you?

Very early days, I'm at the homeless camp.

It’s a little bit light feeling comparatively. But I’m not finished yet.

For all its wackiness, the two most hilarious things in Infinite Wealth for me are:

Kasuga sing shouting the instrumental melody line to Chi-chan's city pop song on karaoke

and

The little shot of Kasuga sitting down when you play mahjong with your crew, holding on the hopeful, oblivious grin of a guy who is def about to get completely fleeced.

i know it's reused from the previous game, but i love the animation that plays when kasuga fails a vocational school exam. such a likeable character, ichiban #1!

I'm playing them all in chronological order, to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and to refresh myself on who the fuck everyone is.

One thing about Kiwami 2 is Majima is basically being a gentrifier? Taking a park that belonged to the homeless and building some expensive apartments in there. Where did the homeless people go??

supercut of Kiryu soulfully saying the names of different characters after they've dropped some bombshell

Intercut with him growling the villainses names into the night sky when they've just done something villainous

All leading into a heartfelt karaoke performance

There is also this kind of thing where some important-to-the-plot location/ mysterious property developer etc is described to Kiryu for the first time and he very thoughtfully repeats it back so the player doesn't miss it

...Tachibana...Real Estate...? 🤔

Haha yes.

Having (re)played through the main series (currently at Like A Dragon), one thing I find very interesting is how consistently it is about mob justice, moral crusades, social media call outs without ever falling into anti-cancel culture screeds or reactionary beliefs - the victims of this stuff in Yakuza are sex workers or ex-criminals trying to make a honest living. I'm sure the cultural difference from the West plays a part but it's not like Japan hasn't had its metoo moments. Anyway kinda cool, there are occasional leftist attempts to point out that say ppl trying to ban drag queen storytime is cancel culture but usually in a "by your logic" way, this series just shows reactionaries using these tools and doesn't get into both sides-ism. I was really worried when I heard about the premise of Infinite Wealth and it turned out to be along these lines too.

I’d need to sit down and think about it across the games but the games have been progressive in their views in some ways and in others…not. But I do recall that they did talk about retooling some of the earlier games stuff re trans women and sex workers. I think the overall vibe of the series is that it’s the shadow world & iirc the yakuza in Japan have long been disproportionally comprised of people from various minority groups in the country. Not sure how true this is but it makes a lot of sense with how so many characters in the series are from minority backgrounds:

According to a 2006 speech by Mitsuhiro Suganuma, a former officer of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, around 60 percent of yakuza members come from burakumin, the descendants of a feudal outcast class and approximately 30 percent of them are Japanese-born Koreans, and only 10 percent are from non-burakumin Japanese and Chinese ethnic groups.