Yakuza

I broke down and got a British buddy to preorder one & mail it to me; for some reason GAME was being an ass and wouldn't let me place a preorder. all worth it for STEELBOOK~ though.

^^^ this just showed up! if anyone else in this stupid country gave a fuck about this magnificent series I would be a bragging-ass jamescobo right about now

Oh yeah? if this series is so good then why doesn't anyone I know lend me a PS3 so I can play this game ;_;

if it makes you happy james you can mad brag to me b/c I am jealous of your Yakuza 4 haves. I will acquire it soon. What extra content is in the "Kuro" edition?

the same DLC available on the NA release. I'm not going to lie, I got it pretty much just for the steelbook because that thing looks fucking BOSS. price ended up being around $60 w/ shipping (i.e. approximately what I would have paid for the non-steelbook NA version) so I just said fuck it.

speaking of steelbooks I really wish I could find a copy of the Vanquish steelbook SE but I only ever see Xbox copies turn up on ebay

started a new game of Yakuza 3 over the weekend and completely lost it at the guy who picks a fight with you over his cat; "GET AWAY FROM MY PUSSY-WUSSY" is almost certainly the greatest line in a video game since "I peacocked your mom"

HD

having never really played any of these (a few mins, maybe, of whichever one was released for free on ps plus for ps3 a few months ago... 0 maybe?) but i just picked up Kiwami because the remake of the 1st game seems like as good a place as any to start. excited to report back with my joy as it unfolds.

Do that

last night i got my first chance to play this game for more than a few mins at a time and boy is it fun and full of memorable stuff. the point where i was like "ok i'm gonna like this" is when i got my heat meter up (which allows kinda finishing moves), grabbed a bicycle, and smashed it over a guy's head, causing me to cackle uncontrollably. the finishers are fucking hilarious. i stuck an orange in a guy's mouth and stepped on his head. i spent like 10 seconds pouring a full kettle of hot water on a dude. and that's before the weird non-combat shit, like meeting a 40-year old circuit racing fan and agreeing to help ihm find a protege or something. this is fucking delightful

It’s such a great series. Currently playing 6 and finally know how to play mahjong Japanese style, so completely obsessed with that. I don’t know what I’ll do when Kiwami 2 comes out in August - finally play Dead Souls? Nah. People are always like “play Sleeping Dogs” but there’s not really that much in common afaict - Yakuza series is all about the fun and/or weird.

There are some amazing heat moves - personally a fan of the pliers and the portable heater. 5 has the best bike heat move ever.

or the fact that there's inexplicably like 30 real liquors in this game you can drink and the bartender talks about how they all taste. kiryu had a laphroaig 10 year yesterday and he told me about its signature smoky taste

xp sleeping dogs is very good but not at all the same imo. doesn't have that weird undercurrent of "is this kusoge?" - it is very much trying to be john woo presents grand theft auto, and succeeds to a limited extent. much more driving as i remember for example. it has its own charm but it's a different kind of charm.

I’m sure I drink more whiskey than I used to because of those delicious descriptions! The games are so full of product placement, including some real shops and restaurants, but it adds to the feeling of authenticity which I suppose is an odd thing to value in a series where you can fight bears and pirate ghosts. There are also guest actors, although none are amazing as Beat Takeshi (in 6).

The minigames are incredible and varied - it’s so easy to just ignore the main story til you feel like returning to it and just spend ages doing karaoke/koi koi/running your cabaret club.

i'm excited to dig into that stuff! also in yakuza 6 there's a bunch of new japan wrestlers so i'm very excited to play *checks notes* the five OTHER games i need to before i get to that one

Yeah there’s a lot of good stuff in there for fans - needless to say, you can fight them all (as well as recruiting them for your own gang)

i'm excited to dig into that stuff! also in yakuza 6 there's a bunch of new japan wrestlers so i'm very excited to play *checks notes* the five OTHER games i need to before i get to that one

― challops trap house (Will M.)

I good and bad news for you, Will:

Good: kiwami is regarded as one of the weakest entry in the series, understandable as it's only a slgightly improved remake of 1, so you're probably in for a treat

Bad: these are loooong games and fatigue might set in rather easily if you try to marathon, I suggest going straight for 6 or whichever you prefer otherwise you might not see the end of it this decade

I'm now partway through 5, at one time one of the playable characters escapes from prison and watches a "have you seen this man?" newscast in a giant screen in the city he's hiding: "Better lay low", he says; 15 minutes later he's fist-fighting a bear in a shopping mall as part of a sidequest.

oh knowing me i won't get to 6 by 2020 but i'm ok with that!

omg this game has bear fighting i cant wait

I started 0 last night and got to the first karaoke part and decided to hang it up for the night. I was hoping that it would have auto-saved, but nope. Oh well, two fights and one rhythm game isn't too much to re-do, thankfully the cutscenes are skippable -- they ARE well-written, though!

I lost a bunch of progress in 0 because opening the item box before I saved crashed the game. Save often

Kiwami adds auto-save and lets you save from the pause menu but is seemingly a much more annoying game in most other ways

I miss non-insane Majima

kiwami 2 adds a "majima mode" where you get a couple of ohurs playing through a mini-story with him, and while he's "crazy" he's like... less... silly. and it ties a nice bow on stuff from a previous game. majima is great

extremely looking forward to Judgment, their new not-quite-yakuza game

finished 0 last night (my wife & my son stayed up with me until 3am doing so, good parenting no?). I think it's the first time I'm gonna do a new game+? or at least the other post-game mode. I barely cracked either of the businesses, and also barely developed the combat trees, and I want to. also I want to spend more time with Majima, maybe we will get married.

yeah i couldn't really get into the management minigames, i was more about the batting cage and bowling

Judgment english release on June 25!

I want to get into the management minigames. I haven't been bowling yet! I only went to the batting cages a couple of times, it was fun but I forgot to go back. I did do a lot of claw games though

The property empire stuff is quite compulsive, and completing the early stages of it is a prerequisite for getting the Very Special Manager from the bowling alley. You also get to do some job interviews

I like the calm satisfaction with which Kiryu says "rank up"

The hostess management stuff felt kind of enh yeah no

You may already know but "premium adventure" using the save file from the end of the game is what lets you do side quests at your leisure with your existing skills, ability to change clothes/location and the story marked as done

I just went back to my pre-last mission save, made loads of property empire progress and overwrote the premium adventure save on that file, which meant I had to then do the grueling final mission again to re-get premium adventure

ha we are loving the training sessions with Yuki in the club. haven't gotten other hostesses yet, so really there's a lot of game left.

Yes, maybe I should just do a premium adventure reload for now. might still do a ng+ later.

the good thing about the hostess game is that when you play it, you get money

the bad thing about the real estate game is that no matter how much money you make, you pour it all back into the game for a loooong time (until you're really conquering the shit out of it, then it pays dividends)

rly makes u think

This sounds like a game I need to get. Is it Yakuza 0 that you guys are taking about?

yes it's Yakuza 0 & it is dope

I am going to need to make a lot of dough to unlock all the fighting abilities so I'm gonna have to make it in the businesses. or maybe in mr moneybags' betting arena, if that's actually a thing?

I lost track of time last night, the main story is pretty grim but the side quests are admirably goofy. Mechanically fun to play too, so who needs GYA?

I assume you all are playing on ps4? I see there’s a pc version

I'm on PS4 (and GYA should be GTA).

i played it on pc and the port is fine if you have a gamepad. no difference other than some basic graphics options

I played on PC. Don't think there's too much difference other than image quality/unlocked framerate. Should be easy enough to get cheap on either

The main story's relative grittiness and the goofball absurdity of the side quests seems like an essential part of the appeal of this series

it often feels like the main stories frequently pull back from depicting really grisly happenings though; lots of spuriously survived gunshot wounds and the protagonists suspiciously avoiding ever doing that much bad stuff to innocents despite being yakuza

Female characters conveniently losing their agency as a result of a litany of traumatic things being done to them does seem to be a bit of a crutch tho

xp

Lol this is the fourth time I’m trying to reply to this thread but I keep getting a POST error so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m really excited for Judgement cos I played the whole Yakuza series in two years and miss them! I hope it has all my favourite time wasters like mahjong.

Everyone I know who plays this series is female and yeah, the way they portray a lot of female characters isn’t great. Writers are aware there’s a decent sized female fan base and they said in a recent interview that this had made them reconsider some of the substories in the older games that are getting remade soon, so.

xp this is not untrue however the series does kill off/fuck up quite a few characters over the years.

Having been to Kabukicho, it’s amazing how like it Kamurocho is.

Although having said that re female characters, I definitely loved how the hostesses were written in 0 and Majima’s protective feelings towards them (!) And I loved the hostesses in Kiwami 2 and 6 as well, they are definitely a lot better written.

the series is effectively a jrpg in terms of structure and writing hence some of the above e.g. not depicting grisly happenings. the final act of 0 especially throws off all pretense and is basically just a bunch of anime showdowns

Yeah but when you’re Majima fighting to that song though...nice. The hilariously mid noughties stuff they left in Kiwami 2 is great though.

the other comedic juxtaposition i love besides main story vs side quests is how the games make a big deal about kiryu never having killed anyone and yet practically every one of the heat attack animations looks fatal

The guys he shoots in the car on the way back? Totally fine! Same ridiculous conceit as this basically: http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=030716

everyone otm on female representation though I was impressed with the agency Makoto had as a disabled character

from what I've heard yakuza team is pretty receptive to feedback from sega USA about representation, unlike e.g. atlus, so that's why the recent games are trending a bit more positive with that. i think they removed some transphobic side quests from the yakuza 3 remaster too

I picked 0 up again after getting back from Dotonbori and was all excited that they even had the little green mascot guy on the neon billboard by the bridge etc

I 100% love all of the scenery-chewing Yakuza movie guys portraying the big players in the Tojo clan in 0, just unkind, granite-faced men snarling kore wa nan desu ka at ~upstarts in impossibly gruff, spiteful voices, fantastic stuff

Is the fashion in 0 anachronistic? The only things that read '80s for me are the cars.

idk if the fashion is anachronistic as much as it is fantastical, like based on the movies of the time (or later movies that depict the time). there's definitely plenty of pictures of e.g. takeshi kitano wearing stuff similar to kiryu or nishiki from his stuff, lots of super loud shirts with big collars and suits in many different colours.

it's only one example and not a good one but look at these dudes in this movie poster (ignore the two in the foreground)

the movie btw is 'The Monster Bus' starring Riki Takeuchi (Amano from Y0) as "likeable but obnoxious punk bus driver who comes to the aid of a beautiful woman in possession of stolen diamonds." Never seen it or even heard of it until today (was looking up the actors who played the three main bad old men) but I guess now I gotta find it.