Some stories aren't worth hearing
Tuesday 31 October 2023
Monday 30 October 2023
Sunday 29 October 2023
Saturday 28 October 2023
Friday 27 October 2023
Thursday 26 October 2023
Kenshi is special
We tend to overlook some of the weirder and less 'mainsteam' games that float around the recesses of the gaming ecosystem, as though if we peered too deep off the cobbled road we risk tumbling off into the untamed wilds of the indie market. But it is within these little niche hideaways that some of the most striking and memorable gaming experiences lie in wait, just begging to snatch chunks of your freetime out from under you in an errant unfocused second. Such is the way with Rimworld which I, regrettably, appear to have picked up again. (Goodbye Weekend) And such is also the case for a game which goes criminally underappreciated across the modern gaming landscape- the RTS survival roleplaying simulator game- Kenshi.
I've spoken at times about Kenshi before, but that little bit here or there was hardly enough to satiate my burning fascination with the kind of game that is totally happy shoving it's players within a slave camp and leaving them to just... figure that whole thing out. See that's the thing with Kenshi, it values it's role as a 'simulator' for this long fallen vaguely Bushido-inspired techno-rustic world above all else. Above the fantasy of roleplaying as some sort of post-world samurai or robotic-skeleton assassin. On one hand is the expectation that the player should 'earn' their right to wield all that power and status, but on the other is just the reality that in this world few people can manage to even stumble upright, let along become master of their destiny. There's a frank realism to this stark view of game design which taints the world of Kenshi in a style you rarely see from competent games.
Kenshi's setting alone is something I've lauded endlessly for how stark and creative it is. A post apocalypse is as common a setting as one could hope for, and with endless iterations on the idea by the likes of Fallout, Mad Max, RAGE, World War Z, The Last of Us, Lisa The Painful, Horizon Zero Dawn, I Am Alive and on and on. Coming up with something that feels unique admits all of that requires either genius or derangement, and I'm not sure where the Kenshi creator's lie on that spectrum. Ugly insectoid-like hive-worshipping humanoids, robotic-bodied 'Skeletons', exoskeletal 'Shek'- all stretched across a world even more unyielding than your typical From Software game world. It isn't a tapestry waiting to be pulled apart and studied, it's more like a rubbed-away stencil from the neolithic era requiring half guess work as actual examination in order to interpret. In some ways it's a genuine shame how reticent the Kenshi world is to show itself of, but I guess that's kind of part of the charm of the world too.
Because Kenshi is not an amusement park. It's not some holiday destination wonderland escapist dream. Even the 'worst' fictional worlds designed to be unappealing for the modern man, such as Cyberpunk 2077 carry the wonderment of the 'other', a veritable exotic dish of curious tastes and succulent flavours which draws in the wierdos like me. Kenshi isn't like that. It tastes like a tough boot rubbed in desert dirt. Its world is an unyielding dust bowl camped on the vague ruins of seemingly despotic warhound civilisations that ground themselves into dust millennia beforehand. It's various post-society societies run on cannibalism, xenophobic warfare and slavery. Mutant monstrosities roam the wastes picking flesh from the bones of those dumb enough not to cower within the sandstone walls of the last bastions of sentient life. If it weren't so matter-of-fact, Kenshi's world would be a circle of hell in itself.
Of course, the fact that the world is Kenshi's most loyal influence does come at the cost of some of it's gameplay coherence, and the fact that Kenshi is rarely discussed in conversations about the most interesting indie games of all time probably comes from the fact that few are willing to put up with the game's frustrating eccentricities. The RTS gameplay structure is a bizarre fit for an open world survival post apocalyptic game, particularly with the strange half-committal towards micromanagement that the team decided to go for. All the tutorials are text boxes that stubbornly refuse to explain anything substantially. Difficulty scalling is practically non-existent once you leave the middle settlements and step out into the badlands. There's no actual systems in place for taking on jobs or simulating your own life- you kind of need to 'Frankenstein' together an living from the basic gameplay cycle of scavving and selling- but stick through it all and the game will simply refuse to let you forget about it.
Maybe it's part of the time investment required to get into Kenshi which makes the game such a head worm for those that get into it, because as much as you'd expect an unforgiving world to spit you out, instead it won't let go. When I think back at the several days (actual days) I spent grinding one of my characters to be competent at melee fighting (not even proficient) I can't help but shudder in slight terror. But darn it if we don't 'earn' victory in those wasteland scuffles and the paltry odd loot we get as reward- because in the after world it's small trinkets like that which sell for a pittance that we live for. In the world of Kenshi, that is everything. And when you build a world full of barbaric standards of life and living, and a player becomes invested in that world, it becomes pretty easy to get locked into that addictive gameplay loop.
For the past few years Lo-Fi games have been threatening to take everything they've learned from Kenshi and put it into a prequel follow-up game tentatively known as 'Kenshi 2', which would take place in an era when the civilisations that were were not quite as run down as they are by the current game. Unfortunately with bi-yearly updates the product is looking about as tangible as Silksong. (although I guess we've actually got gameplay for Silksong, Kenshi 2 is a ghost.) But I can't help but shake the wonderment of what a game like Kenshi would look like in a second go around, with a firmer grasp of design and perhaps even a bit more intelligent world building to flesh out the blanks and perhaps give a bit more purpose to those blood-spider infested ruins, or the giant automatic space death laser which regularly eradicates parts of the map.
Kenshi is a special and extremely niche title with an extremely bizarre RPG RTS gameplay system which not enough players are brave enough to give a shot. Lovers of the post apocalyptic and the bizarre may find themselves curious, but without genuine dedication to getting involved with the game it's hard to break through to it's heart. But those who take the time, who see Kenshi for what it is, know they've come across a special little nugget of something that no one in the polished side of the industry would dare create. Something rusty and ugly and malformed, something genuine and organic and memorable. Kenshi is a game unlike any other that exists in the world, and given the absolute over saturation of games out there- I'd consider that high praise all of it's own.
Wednesday 25 October 2023
Seems I spoke too soon.
There's nary a less sure bet than labelling the worst or best of something to come out any given year, unless you're calling Baldur's Gate 3 the best of the year because come on: in this industry who really has the gumption to try and match it? And yet still I thought pretty set in my ways about the fact that Gollum earnt that spot through blood, sweat and pixels: toiling in the mines to create the worst gameplay loop, the least engaging narrative, the shoddiest visuals paired with the choppiest experience. Gollum took a concept that made people raise their eyebrows and proved even the grandest sceptic wrong with just how pointless of an idea the game was. As sad as I am about the fate of the development studio being shut down, as I believe more indie developers settling into niches is an overall boon for the industry as a whole, I also can't disguise the fact that Gollum was fundamentally atrocious at a core level. Surely there would be no-one to match up!
"No. There is another!"
Initially I called it deeply unfair to compare the messy and ugly presentation of the advertised 'Skull Island: Rise of Kong' game with Gollum for the sheer fact that they appear to be vastly different sizes of productions. Gollum was created with the aplomb and expectation of a AAA product, irregardless of the actual provided resources to live up to that expectation, whereas Skull Island looked bargain bin from the word go. But now that both games are out and we've seen them to their extent, I'm starting to really compare and contrast as strongly as I can and I don't think it's a 'recency bias' thing anymore- there might be a genuine claim on the title of 'worst of 2023' by 'Rise of Kong' which Gollum might not be able to win out on. At the very least, we can credit both these games for making Forspoken look like a sparkling masterpiece of this year by comparison. I would say we owe that game an apology... but no. I'm not apologising.
First off I want to dispel the 'excuse' that either of these titles are 'movie tie-in games'. Back in the day we used to have games that were developed to tie-in with movie releases that, in hindsight, were destined to be poor due to the fact that game design takes a lot longer than your average movie production, so their inevitable deadlines were impossible for any development team to effectively work with. Movie tie-in games gained a reputation for mediocrity with an inbuilt sympathy for that fact- neither of which should apply for these two games. Gollum was not based on any movie, nor beholden to the release of any other piece of Lord of the Rings literature. Right from the outset the team were very clear how they based their inspiration purely on the book and how the game was independent of even the recent Amazon show, their failures are their own. And Kong? There isn't even a movie called 'Skull Island: Rise of Kong'! The connections are tenuous at best.
When it comes to the actual gameplay loop of Kong, I find myself at odds. Whereas Kong's dinosaur slapping is objectively awful to low-budget mobile game standards, it was at least envisioned to be somewhat entertaining. Gollum's fetch quest chains are a step more competent, but that just comes with the added knowledge that some developer with knowledge of what they were doing intentionally designed some of the well-known most boring content imaginable. What is worse, to fail thanks to general ineptitude or to fail when you really honestly should have known better all along? I suppose for effect it would be the former, but the latter stings harder. Potential wasted is a more potent poison in my mind I guess.
Graphically Kong takes the cake. Gollum might look ugly as sin, with horrendous 2D PNG cardboard cutout background models, but at least there's the semblance of assets and some vague idea of artistic planning there. Kong is a scam in that regard. (And most regards, for that matter.) It's environments are awash with hideous colour combinations that look like a low-cost Star Trek set in it's worst eras, the maps are completely unhinged jumbles of nothing- as though put together by toddlers- and just about every asset is considerably worse than what can be found for free on any half-decent Asset store. I would not be surprised if you told me the creators of this game were teenagers who had never touched design before, but I'm told this is actually the same team behind the recent 'Avatar' game so... wow, some people are just born thieves.
There is no story to speak off beyond the initial narration, and altogether it's shocking to see something so pathetic at an actual $38 price point. It would be shocking to see this game at any price point, they should honestly pay us for having to deal with all that trash! It's galling to think that the actual Kong movie tie-in, Peter Jackson's King Kong, blows this one out of the water in content, competency and visual fidelity. It's no masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it's like night and day compared to 'Skull Island'. And when did that game release? 2005. 18 Years ago. What kind of world do we live in when that is even a comparison that can be made? One where some psychotic executive out there is obsessed with keeping Gamemill afloat.
How is this a mostly negative game? Because misery loves an audience and the sheer spectacle of what Kong is will be enough to drag in the curious heads who'll pump enough pity purchases to recoup the $10 spent on development. This is why I'm all for those indie companies that get started up by ex big studio devs, because when you allow talentless nobodies to vomit their work out for the public to see it gives a bad name to independent companies the world over. Gamemill are an embarrassment, some call them the modern day LJN. And honestly... yeah, that's what they are. 'Ludicrously Juvenile Neanderthals', utterly and bewilderingly incapable of providing decent output to the licences they somehow keep acquiring. You know what? The conspiracy side of me is saying that these idiots are actually industry plants designed to make the paltry offerings of Ubisoft and it's ilk look somehow worth it. Nice try, but crap compared to crap is still crap, Mirage!
Tuesday 24 October 2023
Monday 23 October 2023
The degradation of budget-quality
Featuring: Ubisoft!
There has been a movement in recent years that has increasingly lambasted the extent to which video game budgets have soared relative to their output. Just as all newer forms of art have aped the generational evolution of those that came before at an accelerated pace, so has gaming managed to do the Hollywood jump to painful exorbitant budgets supporting ungainly huge production teams in but a fraction of the time it took Hollywood to do the very same. And you wanna hear the most insane part? It hasn't helped the quality of these games. At least not unilaterally. We have received a smattering of some of the most ambitious and high concept games ever received, but also total trainwreck abominations on the other side! How it that possible with so many more profressionals on board with bigger budgets and better technology? What has gotten lost along the way?
More budget has been the name of the game in the industry since time began. Every game was squeezed out in as finished a state as possible back in the waking morning hours of game design and there isn't a developer out there from those ages that didn't wish they had a bigger team or an extra six months or a little bit more to add to the recipe. Oftentimes game design from this era is more a dialogue of compromise than of 'unfettered exploration into the fundamentals of gaming'. I would say it was around about the time of LA Noire and Destiny when that really began to shift. (Of course it was a gradual rise, but those two stand out as tent pole productions) LA Noire cost a, staggering at the time, 50 million dollars to put together, such a price point ultimately led to the death of the talented team who put it together. And years later- 140 million to make Destiny. Since then it seems like prices have only risen.
And of course with bigger budgets means bigger teams. Because if a solid team of closely working developers can slap together a great game then twice as many developers can make twice as good of a game, right? Of course that's not how it works, there's so many little nuances that go into the team dynamics and collaborations and communication- sometimes bigger teams end up being a nuisance when trying to make a dedicated and focused game. Just look at Telltale and their huge swelling size for what should have been intimate story-based games, which led to clashing ideas, breakdown in hierarchy and ultimately a flooding of costs that the team couldn't possible pay off as they singlehandedly oversaturated a market they were pretty much solely feeding. As I said, shades of nuance.
But even when things don't fall apart to such a spectacular degree that entire companies are being folded, sometimes there's a lack of heart in the finished product that is tangible in all these little ways. One franchise which has become a poster child of this is Ubisoft's golden boy Assassin's Creed, which has managed to squeeze itself into a nearly bi-yearly franchise at this point with seven games in development at the same time. Yet ask anyone and they'll point to the many cracks in the machine that makes modern Assassin's Creed feel less advanced than even Assassin's Creed 2 used to. Just take a look at those cutscenes! Narrative set pieces, character dialogues, key aspects of the story- they seem so stiff and wooden the longer these games go on, and compared to the lively and energetic cutscenes of ages past- one has to wonder what went wrong.
And that is only a symptom of a general degradation of quality towards a steadily less engaging series. Stories stop being as provocative and winding, strange design ideas that try different things you don't see in other games fail to make it off the cutting roof floor- all the neat little quirks that make games so passion fuelled and individual are squeezed out in order to make a product as mathematically inclined to be as 'successful' as possible. And naturally that is a terrible way to get to gripes with what it is people love about gaming to begin with. Ubisoft titles are bigger and more expensive then ever before, but regarded less and less as genuine quality products within the industry as years go by. The more money that gets involved the less risky people are inclined to be.
So is that it then? Is that the secret formula? As budgets soar that money has to come from investors, and those investors maintain a tight grip on their gamble to try and ensure as definite profits as they can in an industry that yearns for risky gambles. The best game of this year was not one of those 'try to cater to everyone' style mash-up mess pots of a game, it was a game that was bold and so supremely insanely risky that pretty much everyone's job would have been on the line had it bombed. There was no coming back for Baldur's Gate 3 when it shipped, and the overwhelming success was so anomalous that the industry rushed forth to beg people not to impressed with it's quality- because passion is the outlier in the design-recipe these days.
Hideo Kojima once said something very interesting about game design, namely that one of the hardest parts of the entire process is getting started and explaining your ideas to everyone else. Creating an image of something that doesn't exist in the mind of someone else is a real challenge of communication and mutual understanding, and the more rungs in the ladder between the creative mind of the creative hand- the more that vision becomes difficult to translate. Giant teams lack the focus of small teams for that very reason, the more heads you throw in the kitchen the more egos and individual ideas creep up- that which might be a boon in a small project become unmanageable in a giant project with half a thousand employees. You can't really effectively brainstorm with 500 people on zoom.
Finally I think something we tend to forget as the world becomes more convenient and opportunity more abundant, is that some of the greatest innovations are borne through tribulation. The formula for Sonic's immaculate running had to be wrangled out of uncooperative software in order to feel just right- and it became a compromise between the dream and possibility. Compromise can engender refinement, it's like Hegelian Dialectics. (That was a joke- disturbed amateurish psychologists, no need to mount a crusade.) Which I guess is just my long winded-ass way of saying: throwing money at a problem does not automatically resolve. At least, not in the world of game design. Much as companies like EA and Ubisoft desperately wish it would.
Sunday 22 October 2023
Saturday 21 October 2023
Friday 20 October 2023
Thursday 19 October 2023
Wednesday 18 October 2023
Tuesday 17 October 2023
Monday 16 October 2023
Yakuza 6: The Song of Life Review
Little Baby Iwami
Alas all good times must eventually come to an end and the endless journeys of Kiryu across the Yakuza world meet their finale with this, the very last Yakuza game, if we consider 'Like a Dragon' as a turning point for the franchise, which I am choosing to do. It feels like such a big step from where I started, as a nobody totally blown away by a prequel game, chasing the direct narrative sequel to that game for nigh on five years now. You probably know by now that 0 impressed me to no end, from it's gameplay to it's surprisingly complex narrative, and that has been a standard I've compared the entire franchise to entry after entry. Although as the Kiwami games were remakes of games written back when video game narrative were an afterthought, and the original 1-5 released before 0; this has been my first opportunity to see if RGG is truly a studio that only get better with every release.
'Yakuza 6: Song of Life' was marketed as the very last game in the franchise to star Kiryu Kazuma, the franchise holder for so many years; but just like when Hideo Kojima tells informs you about his imminent retirement or some other such gibberish, you can take that promise with a grain of iceberg-sized salt. Still, with the idea that this was going to be the bookend of one of the longest serving video game icons in modern gaming history there was a decent degree of expectation floating above the door of Yakuza 6 when everyone entered. How would Kiryu's journey be made to feel satisfying? Will the story touch on the right level of drama and conspiracy to do his end justice? How will Kiryu finally go out? And who is that Baby the man is lugging around in all the images?
Now of course, having kept decently abreast of this franchise I love so much I did not go in quite as blind as your average player. I knew the baby to be Haruto, son of Haruka- and I knew the narrative would largely revolve around tracking down the cause of a car accident that Haruka was subject to. What I perhaps did not expect was for these two plot-threads to be the spearhead of the game in it's journey across Japan as it's narrative blossomed into, admittedly, one of the most crazily impressive threads I've witnessed out of a franchise which is somewhat renowned for it's webs of conspiracy. But we'll get to that all in due time. First we need to get to the brassiest of brass tacks when it comes to the man of the hour; how does it feel to step back into the shoes of Kiryu?
So we return once more to the Dragon Engine, for the second time since Kiwami 2- and with that comes an increase in refinement and in bugs. I swear I hardly remember more than a few odd quirks of animation when playing Kiwami 2, on a pathetically underpowered rig too! Here I am, much stronger equipment, watching the physics on defeated enemies just die every other fight- maybe I turned the frames up too high, I can't make sense of it. But at least I can finally relate to all those memes about the insanity of the Dragon Engine making bodies float up into heaven or exploding rooms full of objects for no reason. I've pretty much seen it all at this point, and it is pretty annoying truth be told. Still, it looks very smooth and the game enters and exits combat without a second of delay, which is magic to a man who had to endure the Remastered games over the past year.
But there is one larger problem with the Dragon Engine games, isn't there? One of my biggest complaints about Kiwami 2 was the horrendously limited moveset for Kiryu now that the new engine controls had removed styles and style-switching altogether, the games after Kiwami 1 perfected it! Kiwami 2 Kiryu has only the bare basic 'Dragon of Dojima' fight set spruced up only with charge strikes, environmental heat actions, improvised weapons and the Tiger Drop. And I am so very sad to inform you we're right back to the dark ages with Yakuza 6. Yes, Kiryu has totally forgot all the cool ways he once knew how to fight in and as such 3/4ths of the gameplay options are gone compared to the offerings of 0 and Kiwami 1. There's very little situational gameplay choice beyond 'get the enemy to connect with your fists' and the bigger boss fights are limited in the ways they can test you when there's only really one play style to cater for. (6's bosses have nothing on 0's.)
And yet I won't condemn the new combat quite as much as with Kiwami 2 because there have actually been some slight improvements. Most notably being the Heat system, which when activated now kind of acts like an 'every style' fury mode reminiscent of the old styles. You have the sweeping crowd control potential of 'Beast', the flurry speed of 'Rush' and the beatdown potency of 'Brawler'; whilst still retaining the basic benefits of the 'Dragon'. It makes 'Heat' mode actually worth bringing out and often for the way it changes up what Kiryu has open to him, albeit at the consequence of making him bizarrely invincible until the Heat runs out. It's not what I want, but it's a compromise. I can work with compromise. Mostly.
Still beyond the technical, the Dragon Engine is a spectacular looker, down to the stich weave of Kiryu's blazer there's a height of fidelity I've yearned an entire year to experience again, not least of all for the fully voiced cutscenes for every character, even side quest characters. (I'd forgotten Yakuza ever got big enough to be able to do something as crazy as that!) Of course, this new level of fidelity excellence is used to great effect in the brand new sleepy rural-town stomping grounds of Inaba. Huh? I said that wrong? So I did- I mean the cozy small-town vibe of Moiroh. Huh? Again? Dang, I guess it is somewhere else, huh? Despite the feeling it made me feel, we're not actually in either of those legendary small town Japanese locales from fiction, but rather the very real Onomichi located in the Hiroshima Prefecture- very far away from the skyrise haunts of Kamurocho.
With this shift to the more personable small streets and close knit communities comes a refocus of Kiryu's story into that of connection with who he has tried to become and who he has always been underneath it all. I think this might be the first game since Yakuza 1 where Kiryu finally admits to being a Yakuza first and foremost under all of his play at 'distancing himself' from the syndicate. Albeit, his version of the Yakuza is some sort of honour-bound brotherhood of justice seekers that seems increasingly ludicrous the longer this franchise trucks on revealing how anomalous his convictions are amidst his, very criminal, organisation- but we love Kiryu's brand of Yakuza-ing the same way we love Luffy's brand of Pirate-ing. They are both fundamentally wrong about what it is that they do, but that moral misunderstanding is what makes the pair so loveable.
Of course, this refocusing is needed in a narrative that so heavily relies on the importance of familial connection, particularly as Kiryu scours the world searching for the father of his adoptive daughter's son presumably so he can beat him to an inch of his life for impregnating a 19 year old. But how did this come to happen in the first place? Well, actually that was kind of Kiryu's fault if you think about it. You see, Yakuza 6 starts with an wrapping up on the finale of 5 with the surprise arresting of Kiryu for pretty much no reason considering he literally doesn't commit a single crime in that game beyond, at best, excessive self defence. Kiryu chooses to go to prison for 3 years in order to erase the recent surge of publicity which Haruka has become subject to ever since her very public retirement from Idol work and simultaneous announcement of her ties to the countries most notorious Yakuza member.
Now the reason I'm going into such detail about this is because I need you to understand how moronic the beginning of this story is. Kiryu is worried that the press are going to go after Haruka, and so volunteers to abandon her for 3 years forcing the teenager to face the brunt of the gutter press all by herself! His reasoning, stupid as it is- he thinks he needs to 'atone' for the crimes he didn't commit so that he can "Make sure (she is) never ashamed to call (him) family again." Which is insane because guess what- she never was! Hell, she shouted out their familial ties on national television to which Kiryu himself acknowledged was an extreme act of affirmation and pride. He literally thinks nothing through and this entire game would have been avoided if Kiryu just learnt how to not jump on other people's swords for literally no reason. K be tripping sometimes, I swear...
So in Kiryu's absence Haruka found herself assailed by the press all alone and ends up running away from the Morning Glory orphanage (Who actually looks after those children? With the adults constantly in jail and the head girl either off touring or in hiding- how do these kids feed themselves?) in order to 'protect the kids', because I guess Kiryu's example of "running away fixes problems" has started to rub off. Three years on and it's up to Kiryu to unravel the mystery of where Haruka ended up, why she was discovered as the victim of a hit and run- oh, and to discover the father of Haruka's son so that Kiryu can punch them through a plate-glass door. You know, your typical Yakuza-ing affair just as we all expect it.
Along the way Kiryu comes into contact with a plethora of side stories which, coming off the back of both Yakuza 5 and 0, are finally fully back to the level of excellence I expected from when I first touched this series. See, even when the actual objective itself is simply running around Kamurocho fetching items for a little girl, the genuine heart behind the character writing imbues the moment with a special touch of magic. I'm of course talking about the insanely sweet mission 'Haruka's Biggest Fan', but the same can be said of all of Kiryu's side stories. 'I, Hoiji' is another one I particularly liked for it's bizarre sci-fi dystopian twist. And then there's the mission that introduced me to Yakuza 6's particular brand of entry specific minigame.
Live Chat, huh? I'm not sure what I expected. Yakuza 6 marks Kiryu's introduction to the concept of an Internet Cafe- in the year 2016- and what does he do with it? He uses it to watch actual-human cam girls and be a very active member of the chat as they tease and slowly strip. I'm no stranger to sexual minigames in Yakuza titles, they're usually some of the most standout moments! (I'll always hold close the memories of Telephone Club from Yakuza 0.) There is an ineffable aura of awkwardness when the girls are FMV, however, particularly when they are stripping for Kiryu's 'helpful' chat interactions, which he types with crab hands like an actual pensioner, such as "YES! YES! YES! YES!" and "IT'S GROWING!" followed by the objectively bad recovery: "MY DESIRE!". For such a tacit 'gentlemen', Kiryu really slips into the 'old pervert' role seamlessly, doesn't he? 
The best of the new minigames, however, start when Kiryu lands in the sleepy town of Inaba- I mean Morioh- I mean Onomichi. Majima's construction from Kiwami 2 has been replaced with the lightly more complicated 'Clan Creator' mode which pits Kiryu in a tactical role as an army builder breaking through enemy defences with construction strike groups whilst building up his own 'clan' which kind of feels like the Yakuza family he never started under the Tojo. He even calls them 'Kiryu Clan', like he's an OG 'Lil Pump' fan or something. (As though Lil Pump fans are real...) Clan Creator is one of those surprisingly overdeveloped minigames that this franchise loves so much, albeit one that is a little bit shockingly easy even at it's highest levels. There seems to be a slight bit of online event based connectivity tied to this mode, so perhaps the actual challenges were relegated to timed and distributed events that stopped being circulated years ago- but the main questline was embarrassingly easy to push through for me.
I'm not sure I can extend that same gratis to the Baseball minigame, however. Not because it's not as committed or full throttle as the clan creator, but maybe because it is that committed. Kiryu is expected to manage an amateur baseball team to the fullest extent of that charge. Meaning he has to track down and schmooze potential players, arrange each member with their optimal field position and batting order, and then take part himself three times a match. It's... a lot for someone who has no interest in the sport. No amount of tutorial (Which they don't bother to give) can really ease you into the breadth of those roles and once you start hitting the actually challenging matches there's little else to do except look up a guide from someone who actually knows Baseball. (And I thought the Baseball stuff would tone down after Shinada took his early retirement...)
The expected Hostess minigame is back to the boring 'wine and dine' girls version, instead of the 'Cabaret Mogul' game of 0 and Kiwami 2 which stole our hearts. And there's also a 'making friends at the bar' minigame which does a, at this point not so surprising, job of fleshing out the lives of the community that makes up Onomichi- giving depth to the tight knit town and Kiryu a place within them. (Which he'll no doubt forget about in subsequent games when he never returns, the knave!) And Karoke is back, obviously, bringing with it two new absolute bangers. 'Today is a Diamond' is one of my favourite beach-style new songs and the female-led 'Like a Butterfly' is brilliant for Kiryu's overly enthusiastic contributions alone. ("FLY LIKE A BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY!"- Kiryu sang calmly.)
Of the new main cast I'm excited to say that just about all of them stand out as memorable and worthy additions to Kiryu's journey! I never liked Rikiya and the small-time Ryudo family that Kiryu gets involved with in Yakuza 3 for being too one dimensional and underdeveloped, which why it's so interesting how when they pull of the exact same premise for Yakuza 6, with Nagumo and the Hirose family- I felt so endeared to them throughout. I think Yakuza 6 just did a better job building up the family and the people within it with genuine personalities and tied narrative stakes, along with the fact that their Patriarch, Toru Hirose played by the actually world famous 'Takeshi Kitano', is hilarious and spellbinding in the same fantastic performance. (So glad that Kuroda-san managed to convince Kitano to get over his video game prejudice for this role, the game wouldn't be the same without him.)
Someya is the new 'Young Tojo upstart' character for this franchise, borrowing his premise from Yakuza 3's Mine, further solidifying this game as a remake of Yakuza 3. (Which I support, 3 was the franchise at it's worst) And once again, Someya has a little more human in him than Mine, although to be fair- Mine is literally written to be a man squeezed dry of all human personability through his trials and tribulations to become 'successful' in spite of his rough beginnings- for which Kiryu has to 'beat' humanity back into him. Someya is more instantly detestable with some curiously subjective beats in his later story that aren't designed to utterly 'redeem' him per se (hard to redeem some of his past acts) but rather enriches who he is. There's also Joon-Gi Han, a fabulous and memorable Korean club owner that entwines himself in the narrative and just happens to look curiously like one of the front cover characters of 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon', but he can't possible because... I'll need to look into this.
In the late story, Yakuza 6's narrative blossoms into an impressively laid out conspiracy plot that entirely leap frogs it's Yakuza 3's equivalent. Whereas that game's version of 'conspiracy' was vague ramblings about 'arms dealing' tied back to that damn 10 billion yen from the first game that this franchise took forever to move on from, as explained in one of the most mind numbingly static 'exposition' scenes in fiction; Yakuza 6 brings the drama! There's an interesting conspiracy, with genuinely impactful consequences that is revealed with the appropriate level of pomp and spectacle needed for it to sink appropriately in. It's only a shame we don't get multiple character perspectives as we did back in 0, but with the number of side characters and ancillary villain narratives the game was juggling I can forgive the team for that.
From the outset Yakuza 6 billed itself as the final bowing out of Kiryu Kazama as a protagonist for the franchise and in that effort I will admit they did a spectacular job drawing from all the best parts of his life and focusing on what makes him who he is. We get to see the man who will do anything for his family, the consummately noble Yakuza whom I suspect hasn't actually done any real Yakuza-ing since the opening cutscene of 0, the ineffable gentlemen who wins the hearts and minds of literally everyone who stands in a room with him for too long (the guy is a Mindflayer or something, I swear...) and the occasional raging pervert who manages to woo the socks off of every woman in the adult entertainment industry through sheer force of will.
What I've touched on are all the greatest aspects of the Yakuza 6 package, because that is what has shined for me the most. On the otherend all I have are gripes, such as the 'Trouble Mission' mechanic adapted from Tanimura's Yakuza 4 police scanner, is just as disruptive and annoying as it quickly became in that game. The RIZAPP minigame asks a lot of time investment out of the player for a mere workout minigame- food hunting across the city is a huge time sink. That one chapter you have to deal with crying Haruto made me get over the wonder of childbirth in under two minutes, screw that minigame, and screw Death Stranding for stealing it. And this game easily has the least climatic Amon battle, made so by the fact that this is the only time Amon has featured a single health bar. But all those gripes are overshadowed by the fantastic moments- the great 'New Generation versus Old' standoff battles with Someya, observing the three-way battle for Kiyomi's largely disinterested heart from the thirsty side cast, and fighting street thugs whilst dressed as the big headed Onimichi mascot. (Or crying ugly tears at the conclusion to the Onimichi Mascot side questline. They didn't need to go that direction with it!)
In the end we are left with an emotional and grand exit for our lead protagonist as the curtains close to black, before we're greeted with so many post credit cutscenes that for a moment I thought we were going to get a 'Phantom Pain' style reveal of a whole second half of the game suddenly unlocked. If there's one gripe I have with the ending, it's that this franchise cannot help itself but to spoil it's own cliffhangers, just as they did back in Kiwami 2. At least the moment they chose to leave on, post post credits, was enough of a heart tugger for me to somely nod and admit it would have been a fine way to close Yakuza. Were it actually the end. Which obviously it isn't. This franchise will never die and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Summary
I've had my ups and downs with the Yakuza franchise, mostly ups with the exception of Yakuza 3, and it's actually with a surprise that I recount how it's heights were it's chronological beginning and finale. (Literally all that holds back Yakuza 4 is the time it was released, if that game got a Kiwami re-release it would easily jump to being the best of the franchise.) Yakuza 6 proves, deftly, the theory that RGG is a studio that manage to improve, noticeably, with each and every entry despite how rapidly they pump out these titles; and they do kick them out quickly. Yakuza 6 has grace, emotion, humour, grandiosity, pathos, heartbreak and even a potential tear jerker moment here or there. Nothing quite got me like that Niskiyama moment from 0, but some of those final few cutscenes have me struggling. This isn't just a recommendation, it's a demand that you play this game if you have any interest in quality action games at all. It's just sublime, memorable and would have been the perfect swansong if this franchise hadn't blown up to such a point that to stop here would have been plain silly. With that behind me, all I have to do is lay down the arbitrary mark of an A+ Grade- one of the best games that I've played, easily. If I didn't have 7 looming on the horizon I would probably have stuck around to complete every single last side activity this game had to offer. (Except, maybe, it's increadibly challenging 'Puyo Puyo' arcade) But as it happens 'Song of Life' just ignited my passion to jump forward and finally get my hands on the the next caretaker of the franchise, see how things are like on the Ichiban side of the fence for a change.
Sunday 15 October 2023
Saturday 14 October 2023
Friday 13 October 2023
Thursday 12 October 2023
Wednesday 11 October 2023
Tuesday 10 October 2023
Monday 9 October 2023
Sunday 8 October 2023
Saturday 7 October 2023
Friday 6 October 2023
Dragon's Dogma 2 feels familiar... and that's a good thing!
I can't rightly voice how long I've been waiting for a follow-up to my personal 'most underrated RPG of all time' Dragon's Dogma. A game it felt like literally no one in the world had played except for me, yet one I couldn't help but fall madly in love with each time I played it for the style it possessed that no one seemed interested in replicating! The monster climbing mechanics with body part crippling, the Pawn swapping systems with dynamically learning and teaching AI moments, the sense of on-the-ground adventure in the vast swathes of travelling you were required to do, the supremely weird yet bizarrely memorable characters who under any other team would have all been classic RPG stereotypes but under the Dragon's Dogma team feel almost like winking homages both exaggerated and subverted. It teemed with possibility, life, intrigue... and all that snubbed because of a little game called Skyrim.
But times have changed! Bethesda have pretty much proven outright that they no longer have that magic spark to change the gaming landscape anymore and everyone's on the look out for the next swords-and-sorcery RPG to keep us satiated. In steps Dragon's Dogma 2, swept on wings of fury, claiming their rightly place as the it thing... at some point. We still don't have a release window and that slightly bothers me. We've gotten far too many 'forever in development' games for my liking. Still, at least Dragon's Dogma 2 is no longer an odd rumour that would pop up ever year or so hinting at the desire to 'get back to it' from the original director. We need wait no longer, gameplay and footage is here to consume! And with that we come across the big elephant in the room: It looks exactly like the first game.
Not in terms of graphical parity, mind you. Dragon's Dogma 2 is running on the latest iteration of Capcom's gorgeous RE engine, which has bedazzled the world year after year powering the stellar Resident Evil Remake series. (plus 7 and 8, obviously.) Of course liberties had to be taken on the complexity of character models, (I suspect Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't have the budget to so much as consider facial capture tech) it all still looks good. No complaints there. What I mean to imply is that Dragon's Dogma feels like the same principal of game that the first one perpetrated. Muddy green European country beset by grandiose, if crumbling, stone edifices- vast swathes of untouched fields populated only by wayfarers and dynamic beasts. It feels like the first game but more, more alive. And that's exactly what I wanted.
Dragon's Dogma always felt like it was meant to be one of those 'sandbox style' open world games where the world doesn't care about you. Everything reinforces that from the sheer scale of the giant boss creatures, the relative stinginess of the economy, the scale of the home hubs, even the rudimentary individual relationship system wherein you built friendships (and even love interests) on a one-to-one basis rather than by becoming the celebrated hero of the world. But at the time it was beholden to tech constraints. Still, there were hoards of monsters that would spawn in the brush and attack travellers, they just happened to be the exact same creatures that spawned in the exact same places everytime you went anywhere. (Until you entered the end-game world state, of course.) That seems like a dream Capcom's DD team are finally ready to capitalise on.
As we're still in the era of only talking strictly about what was shown off in the demo footage, there's not a lot that people on the game can talk about beyond ideas they wanted to explore. For one we've heard that a point of inspiration was Grand Theft Auto 5 and the way that game made every NPC feel like they are going about their daily lives. With a map 4 times the size of the first game it's important that Dragon's Dogma 2 put a bit of effort into feeding that illusion, and that hints back to the idea of a breathing open world that I think this game is going for. Already we've seen footage showing Griffins just raiding the countryside, which were more flagship encounters in the original game that stole the show. If those majestic creatures are more of a dynamic occurrence now, that just makes me wonder what the show stealers are going to be!
One word I always come back to when it comes to Dragon's Dogma, and which is starting to populate my thoughts on my favourite games, is 'robust'. I love an engine that will allow me to bend it's rules without breaking. Being able to throw an ally at an airborne beast so they can grab ahold of it felt great in the original game and we're already seeing examples of that being built upon for Dragon's Dogma 2. That one shot of the Troll having it's balance blown out from under it, forcing the monster to fall back over a mountain gap and wildly grab the otherside of the ravine, creating a makeshift bridge for the characters to scale, is just wild levels of creative ingenuity in gameplay- I just pray that's merely a taste of what's to come in the whole game.
And then there's jank. Dragon's Dogma is far from the smoothest running video game you've ever played in your life, in fact- it's a bit of a jittery ride. AI can be confused to the point where your own team can be an impediment to success, monsters sometimes stumble off of tall buildings to their own demise. The game is silly, but in the most endearing possible way. All that roughness is very much part of the identity we very much want to see replicated, and according to the preliminary impressions it's sounding like the game is every bit as adorably off-kilter as we need it to be. Not enough to ruin the experience, but enough to colour the gameplay in a way that's memorable. Because if there's one thing that can be said about Dragon's Dogma, it sure is memorable!
Dragon's Dogma is one of those games where what we love about it only requires magnification in order to satisfy the fanbase, and as long as narrative cues were taken more from 'Dark Arisen' than from the base game of the original, I have no doubt that 2 will finally scoop off the recognition this budding franchise has been lacking. You know, unless they do a 'Horizon' and surprise release the game during a zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion or something else equally as moronic. There's magic in what Dragon's Dogma did, and that magic was alive along enough to bounce around Capcom for 10 years without abating, and I can't wait to load that up on my console once again. You know, as soon as we get a darn release date! (What is it with modern games slipping back into the 'no release date' meta? It's starting to get on my nerves!)
Thursday 5 October 2023
Yakuza 5 Remastered Review
Get that shirt off. Time to prove ya still got what it takes!
I'm finally back after all this time to put the 'wrap up' on this, my longest running exploration into a franchise of games that seems to multiply everytime I put it down. At least from here on out I can cease my bizarre journey of backtracking and move onward to newer games, better graphics, more sensible combat improvements and less loading screens! (Oh god, the loading screens!) And Yakuza 5 is an interesting send off to the original slate of games because quite unlike those that came before and even those that came after, I think this game alone might be the very first that hit me, repeatedly, with the odd sense that everything on offer was just too much. I know, right? "Who doesn't want more game?" And to try and define that myself, it's best I get somewhat into the game and break it down piece by piece for the benefit of all.
RGG clearly set out trying to recapture that special magic which made Yakuza 4 such instant fire in a bottle- namely the four-way narrative which allowed for a mystery to be weaved between four smaller tales, players to have control of four different characters with their own progression paths and themes to be further reinforced between 4 character arcs. Unfortunately this cannot just be a direct sequel to everything that Yakuza 4 built thanks to the scandal around Tanimura. The actor behind the character, Hiroki Narimiya, found himself wrapped up in ultimately fake charges of drug possession that ended up in his reputation becoming so tarnished that RGG pulled his likeness and voice from the game. Now technically this alone was not the reason for Tanimura not being included in Yakuza 5 (the scandal happened after the release of 0) but it did mean that we'd never get our 4 heroes in the same room ever again and that does kind of weigh over this entire game with all the slight references to Tanimura scattered here and there.
But Yakuza 5 has a tendency to go that 'one step beyond' with everything it does, so not only do we have 4 protagonists this time, but they also explore, drum roll please, 4 totally distinct cities! That's right, Yakuza went from having only two locations (Kamarucho and Sotenbori) that they jumped between over and over, to having dozens set all over Japan! From a tiny rural hunting village placed deep in the snowy mountains to a totally fresh (if slightly cramped) city district in a whole new city: Nagoya! (New to the franchise, I mean. RGG didn't travel back in time to 1610 in order to found the real-life city of Nagoya just to set one of their more bizarre storylines there. I think. Actually, that does seem like the kind of thing Toshihiro Nagoshi would do. Remember: He came up with idea of 'Super Monkey Ball'. Weird guy.)
Our four protagonists have their stories split across 4 acts consisting of four chapters, and when I tell you they touch on vastly distinct narrative threads that sometimes fray as the story desperately tries to pull them together- know I'm not exaggerating. In the late game there are times when characters are summarising recontextualising twists of such rippling magnitude that I literally had to pause the cutscene and go for a walk whilst I tried to figure out what that even meant for the dozens of characters and major events I already had stacked on top of each other up in my noggin. It's all a bit of a mess if I'm being honest. But for scope, Yakuza 5 might just be the most ambitious 'Like a Dragon' game I've experienced to this date. But let's go chapter by chapter, shall we?
Kiryu
First off, we get to actually start with my boy Kiryu this time, so I don't have to spend the first three quarters of the game wondering around like a lost child at the supermarket pulling on stranger's shirts and asking after my Yakuza mother-figure. (Instead I just spent the sixty odd hours between his act and the final act growing as restless as a Meth-head outside Vince Gilligan's house. I assume he has Meth, you don't make two shows and a movie based around something you don't have a vested stake in.) Kiryu is familiar territory and a fine reintroduction to everything we love about Yakuza- that fine straight up single-target-with-versatility brawler fighting style which starts off effective and becomes more fun as you improve it. Ah, to whack fools about the face as the Dragon himself- does life hold any more violent a pleasure?
And yet, right off the bat I do have to knock some points off for a non-cohesive narrative. As the great theme and lesson of Yakuza 4 affirmed- there's nothing worse in life than not being in control of your destiny for a single second. Did you mother cook you breakfast? Unacceptable! Throw that crap back in her face and hunt your meal like a damned Yakuza! (Real Yakuza subscribe to the 'Eat-what-you-kill' grindset!) So if that is the case, and Kiryu looked damn ready to stop running away from his place in the Tojo Clan and perhaps even start his own family or, you know, contribute in the slightest to the organisation who raised him- why in the heck has he cut all ties from them and is posing as a Taxi Driver in the middle of Fukuoka called, lemme check my notes, 'Tachi Susuki'? He gave himself one of the most common names in all of Japan to go undercover? Great naming conventions, RGG, what's next- you gonna name a character Ichiban or something? Sheesh...
Of course, this ties back in Haruka and a sacrifice of his identity that Kiryu needs to make in order to ensure she can follow her dreams to become, shifting through my notes again, a pop idol... huh? You mean, like when she had that one substory relating to idols back in Yakuza... I think it was 3? That one chance encounter really had an effect on her, huh? And that's her 'dream' now? Well I guess that means it takes precedence over 'taking control of your destiny' because the theme of this game is 'Dreams' and we're going to drill that into your skull until you're in danger of brain leakage! Look, I'm swear I'm not going to break down every plot point, (We'd be here until the heat death of the next universe over if I did.) I just want to set the foundation of what I consider to be a messy plot in a franchise that is already verging on being too convoluted for it's own good. The more I truck along the franchise, the more I totally understand the need to refresh the story like they did with 7. Looking forward to that one... even if his name is 'Ichiban'...
Now the first actual gameplay point I want to bring up is actually on the progression systems. Because of the truncated chapter structure, Yakuza 5 features a rather free-form approach to combat training wherein you meet one relevant trainer, and immediately unlock their entire questlines to be squeezed in during your exploration of your 4 chapter romp before you get kicked off to the next character. It's actually quite nice to get access to improvements as early as possible. (Provided you can actually beat the training challenges, which are not easy.) As for the EXP based levelling this game brings us- crap! The stat increase bars from Yakuza 3 are back! Actually it's a mix of spirit orbs and random stat and ability improvements that you can't predict. A little better than 3, but you're still building a character practically blind. (I'm so glad they figured this out so much better in 0.)
Also, joy of joys- technology has reached the point where fights can be started without cutscenes, such as in Yakuza 0! Most still do have cutscenes, because god and RGG hate us, but you don't need to wait for one to exit combat- which makes street fights so much more bearable! There's also been an AI overhaul for the street trash to make their fights feel more interesting, such as the ability to call for back up, group on you or even run away screaming out of the battle if you freak them out by horrifically maiming their childhood friends brutally enough. ("I love being the goddamn Yakuza-man!") And yet... there's yet to be devised any method for avoiding or escaping said fights, so they still feel like tall-grass encounters in late-game Pokémon- deeply annoying. But on the plus side, we've got a lot of really great environmental heat action takedowns this time around which makes the street brawls a bit meatier to get into- so you take some you give some, I guess. Oh, and there's also a new 'Climax heat mode' to spruce combat up a bit in different ways depending on the character being controlled. Everyone gets a unique super-move that gets charged up, but Kiryu specifically has a new 'rage state' he can enter which kind of acts like his 'Devil Trigger', to borrow DMC parlance. Not only does he become 'suped up' but all of his basic attacks come with brand new animations! And he can basically teleport whilst raged. Not really sure why that last ability is a thing. Yakuza gets weird when you let it out of the collar for a bit.
Now playing Yakuza as it's evolved over the past decade before the fifth entry, you're probably stamping your feet and asking "Where is the distractingly over detailed Taxi driving meta-game with dozens of customer deliveries, Taxi cab modifications and a self-contained side-narrative involving high-way drift races... in that same taxi?" And I too have shared in your pain for that one crucial omission to the Yakuza fantasy. But fret not brothers, because finally in Yakuza 5 you have all of that, and it's every bit as concerningly in-depth and devised with meaningful gameplay loops as you've been... wanting? There's Taxi XP to unlock new custom parts and colours, Taxi points to buy those parts and a musical track for the racing portions that sounds right out of the Initial D OST. So... celebrations? (It's actually pretty fun, I'm not gonna lie. I kind of wish the Taxi was capable of reversing, however. That's a bit of an oversight.)
The Taxi side quest narrative also comes with a surprising amount of character and depth to it's participants despite every one of them being side characters who will absolutely never make an appearance again. Heck, the various personalities of the Taxi office alone are worth getting to know! Wada is the old soul that everyone can see comfortable geniality within, Kiyokawa is the starstruck newbie eager to jump into his own legend and Muramatsu is the straight edged 'stick in the mud' ruining everyone's fun. The chief is kindhearted and fatherly and the receptionist, Hirakawa, acts selectively oblivious with flashes of intuition. They sound like a tight knit pirate crew but they're completely missable side characters in this ten ton game of SEGA's- it's nuts!
That is easily the most developed minigame of the Kiryu chapter, but it's far from the only one. Also back is the chase minigame that the past two Yakuza games have loved, only here it's much more forgiving and quicker paced. It's still a headache and a half to have to deal with, however, and I wish it didn't exist. What else? Oh yeah, there's a whole dang Ramen making minigame to get involved in as well. A whole mini-browser-style game they cobbled together for a side story. I swear, RGG put more work into bringing their little snippets of Japan alive than the entire CDPR team could ever even consider when it comes to Cyberpunk. Imagine any other game with as many distractions as Yakuza has! I guess that's just why we love it, eh?
This time around the side stories that we go on are erring towards the more interesting and deliberate end, with some of the stories being downright tear jerkers once you let them go all the way. 'Another Haruka' in particular straight punched me in the gut. It reminded me of the love I had for these side stories from the first time I played Yakuza 0- true condensed nuggets of emotionally charged gold. And then there's the cooking side stories. I understand that celebrity tie-ins are cool, but when I don't know the celebrity because he's a Japanese chef, and the missions he imparts is simply 'Go to every restaurant in the area and tell me about them', I get real tired of the shitck in about 5 minutes. So what a pleasure it is to know that he shows up for every chapter to annoy all the characters! Wonderful!
There's also the Victory Road meta-plotline which plays out chapter to chapter wherein each hero is beset by random encounters that add up to a colosseum tournament for all the best fighters in the world. It's a cool way to tie in the colosseum to the narrative, but it necessitates the hunting down and beating of a dozen 'contestants' across each city, which is itself a headache when these contestants dress almost identically to street punks! Running into random encounters thinking you're progressing Victory Road only to be locked into a street-side gang rush is about enough to make me want to cave in my own skull with a claw hammer. But if I did that I wouldn't be able to maintain the requisite quantum-physics level concentration to keep up with the plot of the first act alone.
You see, Kiryu has gone to ground in order to protect Haruka but Sixth Tojo clan Chairman Daigo Dojima has come to see Kiryu to ask for his advice because he came all this way to see him, actually he came to Furuoka to seal a partnership with the local Yamagasa family but he thought he might as well take a detour to see his old pal K, but then he also decides to go missing for some reason which you have to investigate but you're also being attacked by people who think Kiryu knows where Dojima is despite the fact they've not been seen together for two years and Aoyama of the Omi clan is hunting them whilst also trying to sabotage the plan and maybe commit a double assassination but maybe not because Kiryu decides to come out of Yakuza retirement again in order to stop him, only to learn that there's even more layers to the various vying factions here and maybe a shadowy puppet master playing with all of them and Watase is just a villainous Majima. They didn't even make him act different, he's just bad-guy Majima!
Did you get all that? Because I didn't. But at least in tradtional Yakuza fashion there's the illusion of some sort of narrative conclusion by the end of the act, although it does of course end on a cliffhanger which doesn't get picked up on ever because this game needs to introduce every new character from scratch as if you've never seen them before in your life. But at least the mystery of a missing Diago is enough to start with. Great.
Saejima
Would you believe me if I told you that Saejima has his own massively complex side story just like Kiryu's taxi minigame? Would you then also follow if I were to say that it's a giant hunting-themed side game in the snowy mountains wherein Saejima learns how to brave inhospitable conditions in order to protect a small town from a enraged giant bear who threatens it? We're talking a minigame built all around survival, exploring a blizzard wildness that slowly chips away at your health whilst shooting down Deers and rabbits for pelts that you sell for upgrade materials. It, again, feels like a whole indie side project tacked onto this game, only somehow this one feels even more insane for how far removed it is from Saejima's main questline- to discover the secret behind... who killed Majima! (Oh goodness, how could one of the franchise's few characters who shows up in every game just die off-screen like that? What a crazy twist!)
Saejima's act is actually bursting with sections that, even coming to grips with this franchise like I am, I would never have expected to see in a Yakuza game. There's a Modern Warfare 2 style snowspeeder chase section, a fist fight with a bear, a imaginary dream city tour which goes on far too long but presents a fascinating concept of interactive exposition that I'd love to see explored in another game at some point. There's a First-Person-Shooter reminiscent snowball fight minigame, a scene where Saejima runs away from children whilst dressed as Santa Claus and... actually that's about it. But at least Saejima can go to hostess clubs and attend Karaoke this time around; I can finally feel whole whilst in his shoes..
For the impressive completeness of his in-depth hunting/survival minigame alone I think Saejima's chapter is a standout in an already cluttered game. But he also enjoys the least overly convoluted plotline out of the four protagonists, and he gets the chance to beat on Makoto Tokita (the absolutely unbearable student from Yakuza 4) for good measure. Good stuff, and a needed dose of familiarity given what Yakuza has next up it's sleeve.
Haruka/Akiyama
No, you misread nothing. Part 3 of this story is shared with Akiyama and Haruka. You know, Kiryu's adoptive step-daughter who used to chase 'Uncle Kaz' around town making him gamble, sing and otherwise embarrass herself for her twisted sense of amusement? She's both an idol and playable now. (Feel old yet?) Honestly, Akiyama is kind of just a tag along for a section of the narrative which is largely guided by Haruka on her journey to prove herself as the breakout pop idol star of the production company Dyna Chair, whom she feels deeply indebted to despite the fact that her manager, Mirei Park, literally blackmailed Kiryu out of her life and Haruka to become a Idol in the first place. But that's water under the bridge, as it were, she's supposed to be a mother-figure now, or something. I guess it helps that she even wears her hair the same as Yumi (That's Haruka's mother, if you've understandably forgotten) did back in Yakuza 1. That's called 'Dramatic narrative repetition', I think...
One credit I have to give Yakuza 5 is for taking the perspective of the franchise far outside of it's comfort zone in order to explore the distinctly novel view of the idol industry, or even the sex industry through the eyes of the 4th protagonist. (Or 5th, if we accept Haruka as a protagonist all of her own.) These really allow the range of characters we meet to expand out, not that Yakuza ever had trouble throwing colourful cast mates at us; still, learning what drives a woman of sheer determination like Park-san, a simple show-business organiser, is somewhat striking in the ways it resembles some of the most notable Yakuza members we've met over the years. Of course, the stakes and avenue are so distinct which is what allows for a greater range of narrative- it takes balls to get as risky as this game does.
Haruka also has some of the most heartfelt and sweet substories, through which you really get to see the imprint of the noble ideals of Kiryu stamped upon her over their many years together. Some of them are also just about Haruka learning to make friends with people her age, considering she spent all her years following a giant Yakuza man or raising tiny kids in lieu of said-'giant Yakuza man'. And yet she does have the worst minigame of the entire game in the comedy side story which is practically impossible to do unless you're a fluent Japanese speaker as it requires rapid and apt responses to lead in lines that just isn't possible when you need time to read the translated transcript and the responses and then select it- maybe the one serious moment where localisation dropped the ball in my entire Yakuza journey. (I can forgive them actively changing some of Akiyama's racier Yakuza 4 dialogue, but this was just frustrating.) Fittingly enough Haruka's metagame is managing her Idol career by attending talk shows, and guesting in quiz shows about Sotenbori, as well as conducting hand-shake meet'n'greets and performing shows for local businesses- all of which come with some form of minigame attached. Unfortunately the narrative of the metagame- based around a slew of completive dance competitions, is largely divorced from the core idol work and can easily be missed in a non-attentive playthrough.
Akiyama steps into the story about halfway through Act 3 and he brings with him that deviously "Black Leg" Sanji-coded kick-centric fighting style, now coloured up with a limited-time ability to literally kick so much he suspends himself in the air for about 7 seconds of flurry strikes and a sweet little guitar battle track which is my favourite of the game. As a side-protagonist, Akiyama's purpose for being here is pretty much just to be the money-lender and a stand-in guardian for Haruka in the meanwhile, and I can't help but shake the impression he was brought in simply because the developers thought fans would riot if there was a full 4 chapters without face-beatings. But I ain't gonna complain, Akiyama is the freakin' GOAT and I'll die on that hill!
That damned man has so much charisma it just makes me wanna reach through the screen and pinch his little rugged grown-man cheeks! Even if we get to see Akiyama further cement his legacy as the only character in a franchise full of compulsive smokers who suffers the ill effects of smoking. (At least until 'Infinite Wealth' releases...) Even when he's tacked on top of someone else's story Akiyama manages to steal the show with his suave laid-back persona and his deeply moralistic centre. We even get a few of his brilliant Sky Finance Substories where he meets potential debtors, all wonderful experiences to express Akiyama's uniquely interesting philosophy on the role of money in a deeply capitalistic world. If there was ever a full Akiyama spin-off, I'd buy it. Twice.
This chapter's narrative veers more towards the confused again, introducing new plotpoints that seem to have nothing to do with what we were already following, all up until they hit us with the shocker that kind of feels a little insulting in the way they neatly slip it into an important main character's past and just pretends he never mentioned it. To anyone. Seriously though, it was around Act 3 I was starting to get suspicions that the game wasn't going to manage to tie everything together in a clean manner... not least of all because every act starts from zero and has to build itself up from scratch!
Shinada
And new-comer Shinada rounds out the pack with such an insanely specifically themed personal narrative that I honestly think he was only invented because one of the key creative leads of Yakuza 5 was an obsessive baseball fanatic. Shinada is a smut-article journalist living on the bring of poverty in Nagoya, up to his eyes in debt to literally everyone whilst he mooches off his last 'good will' sneeking free meals and free 'sessions' with his favourite soap-land girl 'Milky-Chan', on the sly. He a little perverted, but just the appropriate enough amount not to be the franchise creep. He's more hopeless lover-boy, at least on the very surface- and it's not long before we start getting into the true heart of this new wild card.
Because you see, Shinada is actually a former Baseball prodigy who has his big break 15 years back, but is now living on the edge of financial destitution whilst borrowing money from shady Yakuza-looking types. That baseball past is still painfully hanging over Shinada, however, and when he gets the chance to pay away all of his debts in return for solving the mystery of what went wrong all those years ago he jumps on the chance to clear his name and take back his life. A pretty serious sounding set-up, but Shinada is still lovably affable to be around. Which I suppose is somewhat necessary to make the story of a broken man one bad week around from street living not increadibly depressing.
Of course, with Baseball being such a big part of his life you'd naturally assume that forms a large part of his fighting style, which might naturally lead you assume he plays something like Yakuza 0 Majima, who had an entire style dedicated to his use of Bat-play in combat. But you'd be wrong. In actuality, Shinada fights more like a grappler in a swinger, in a manner I'd associate more with American Football or Rugy than Baseball. His signature move is to tackle the midriff of his foes and slam them against walls for big damage, and he utterly refuses to use a Baseball Bat in combat because he respects the sport too much to degrade a symbol representing it. I'm not joking, if you pick up a Baseball bat he undergoes a lengthy animation which sees him regard it sadly and then set it aside gently for fear of harming the thing. I just want to know why he tackles, it's been bugging me all week now- did the gameplay designers just forget what Baseball was? 
Shinada's metagame is based around his visits to the local swing centre and becoming something of a local celebrity for the quality of his Batting game, of course by a public who have no idea of his secret big-time Baseballing past. The Batting minigame has been overhauled just for Shinada to be an RPG timing minigame that demands focus and reflexes in order to catch a ball at the right moment to score a homerun. As you become better, train and purchase second-hand batting equipment you'll unlock bigger margins of error in timing and the ability to slow-down time using your Heat. (However I found the slow down mechanic to be deeply temperamental and sometimes scuppered an otherwise perfect Homerun for seemingly no reason whatsoever. I recommend ignoring it.)
Seeing as how Yakuza 4's Akiyama narrative revolved around the idea of what one does with an abundance of wealth, it's clever to explore the opposite end of that with Shinada and what a challenge a life without means can be. (They even have almost opposite trajectories from one another going from a place of considerable fortune to rock bottom and vice versa. Although Akiyama also has his prologue of being a banker and losing that, but I'm trying to make connections- stop ruining them!) Shinada's is a pretty down-to-earth character such that he almost feels the most human out a cast of otherwise icons. He's fending off a small group of citizen-turned bad whilst Kiryu is facing off against twin rocket launchers vanguarding a small army of Yakuza- the scale variance is near laughable: but I enjoy the perspective variance.
Shinada's storyline focuses heavily on conspiracy and secrets, an as such feels the most satisfying to dig into because we're far enough along in the story for events to start revealing themselves instead of just rising to more annoying cliffhangers before passing things on to the next rube in procession. However the mystery of his Baseball misfortunes is seeped in such heavy Baseball jargon that I literally had to back off and look up definitions just to follow things. I'd never heard of 'Sign Stealing' before this game, and that's a huge element of the story they kind of just expect you to know about when they throw it about. There's some genuine Baseball passion deep in the writing of Shinada's narrative, and it alone almost confuses the otherwise traditionally Yakuza-styled narrative irreparably. Still, when you stick it out and take the take to learn what everything means, you get rewarded with one of the most insanely powerful batter versus swinger showdowns outside of a sport movie ever. I don't know how they did it, but for brief fleeting moment I cared immensely about a sport. RGG do strange things to my chemicals, I'll tell you what. 
Final Part
The last act attempts to bring everyone together to Tokyo, Kamurocho, in order smash every conspiracy plotline together into one and as I've alluded several times already- the results are rough. Everytime a character sat down to summarise events for the other I felt the need to pull out a pen and paper to try and follow along with the four separate stories worth of character, events, factions and motivations. On one hand it creates a vastly rich canvass of story to shift through, but on the otherhand it means you see a name you can barely remember and attribute it to the wrong character and loose track of everything because then the twists start. Oh, the twists! You might remember me lambasting the narrative of Yakuza 2 for overusing the whole "Aha! You did this thing but that was part of my plan the whole time!" twist set-up- well I'm afraid that's literally the entirety of the Final Part but on steroids.
There was effort put in to try and recapture the magic of Yakuza 4's converging narratives at one point. That tingly moment when everyone met on the rooftop of Millennium Tower and had their four way standoff against the various badguys... and then switched up to fight other people's badguys for some reason. (Still don't understand why they did that.) Unfortunately, the story kind of trips over itself this time around. They couldn't find a feasible excuse to get everyone up on the same rooftop so we only get Kiryu and Saejima, and they couldn't give them a good enough foe to fight so we're left with one of the most pathetic excuses to fight since Yakuza 4's "I'm pretty sure you're not the bad guy, but I'm going to fight you anyway." This time around it's "I think the bad guy brought all of us up here in hopes that we'd literally all kill each other. Somehow. He literally expects us to all punch each other to death in the same moment. And if we don't do that, he'll never show his face, so we need to do that in order to make him show up!" I'm not kidding, that is literally the reasoning. It's so stupid...
Yakuza 5 manages to keep it's final villain a secret until the penultimate chapter, but if you didn't immediately guess who it was the second they shambled into the narrative back in Act 1 with pathetically little explanation as to who they are and what they wanted, then you're a far more trusting man then I. Although, even I couldn't have predicted how embarrassingly cartoonish the bad guy would be, both in his motivation and conduct. First off, and I have to spoil his name and motivations in order to make fun of them so skip to the next paragraph if you want to spare yourself: what the heck is Kurosawa's problem? He's basically just upset that there's less thuggish Yakuza out there and is planning a mass conspiracy/assassination plot in order to clean the Yakuza of niceness? Aren't there like, 30,000 men in the Tojo clan? Do you think he profiled every one of them to find any he considers idealistically objectionable? I think that's an objectively poor villain motivation, imma just say it.
What's more, everything changes when the twists attack! Now a twist is a useful tool for recontextualising exposition and unveiling hidden motivations and plot-threads. Typically you have a twist which effects a certain aspect of the plot so that the audience doesn't feel like the time developing everything else was utterly wasted. Now obviously Yakuza 5 doesn't care about stuff like, the audiences time, they designed 4 ludicrously in-depth meta-games for all the acts: if you've made it this far your time must be worthless! So they twice pull out twists that utterly destroys all previously built context and totally shatters seemingly established motivations. The second of which, the one they leave on, I think genuinely doesn't make sense. If the main villains plan was, indeed, what they pretend it was at the end of this game- his actions throughout the story must be damn-near schizophrenic! Why the hell try and destroy Madarame's Clan if- AH! There's no point getting into it, we'll be here all year. The point I think is worth bringing up though, is that when the final boss of the game is revealed they are asked the question "What are you doing here?", to which the answer is "I don't really know myself." If the final boss doesn't even know why he's the final boss, how the hell is the audience supposed to?
When it's all said and done, the real tragedy of Yakuza 5 is the smothering of the true intentions of the final boss, to feed his repressed homosexual urges. Twice he forces rippling muscled men to rip off their shirts and grapple sweatily for his amusement. He even gets impatient the second time as everyone stays clothed for too long and urges them to undress at literal gunpoint. Then he stands there smiling like an Otaku at Comic Con, grinning dumbly as he forces half-naked men to slap each other around whilst standing around awkwardly. Someone needs to guide my man out of the closet, poor fellow got himself lost down there!
Summary
I've never really thought of Yakuza games as being safe slacker style games, but they do have a certain style and cadence they stick to. Yakuza 5 is a trailblazer that attempted to be more ambitious then most every other game in the franchise through sheer amount of distinct gameplay ideas alone. The number of minigames unique just to Yakuza 5 is so mindboggling I didn't even have time to try all of them. (I wanted to try Chicken Chasing, but I had already crossed the 100 hour mark!) But under the weight of all that content the usually slim and sleek body of the game contorted and squashed. I wouldn't say I dislike Yakuza 5, I just think it stumbles over itself too much to be ignored. It's still every bit as fun as you'd expect a Yakuza game to be in content, it's just longtoothed to the point of becoming ungainly in it's latter hours. Still, I would recommend this game just for the variety of gameplay experiences alone. And slap a respectable -B Grade, as befitting my arbitrary reviewing scale's demands. From here on out it's Dragon Engine powered games ahoy, as move into the modern age of Yakuza and pray it's less annoying than Kiwami 2 was. Time to wrap up the story of Kiryu once and for all, because 6 is absolutely his last game and there's no way he'd make a return in literally the very next after they promised 6 would be his finale! They wouldn't do that to us. That would just be disrespectful. And Yakuza is all about being respectful. Just like Sensei Logan Paul said before deciding to film a body in the suicide forest. Or like Kojima literally everytime he makes any game ever before immediately jumping on the sequel. It's the final one guys, I don't know what to tell ya. That's it. Fintio. All she wrote. The fat lady sung. Tata. Farewell. Auf wiedersehen. Adieu. Adieu to Kiryu, because he is done. He's out. No more Kiryu guys. Not again. New franchise, new hero. Right? Tell me I'm right. PLEASE TELL ME I'M RIGHT!
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