[Yakuza] Punch Detective Simulator 2018

[Delthazar]

yo I know Kiwami Means Extreme or whatever but giving most/all enemies above a certain level the same ability to dodge or block 75%+ of my offense and also three or four life bars and also multiple self-heals is maybe a bit more Kiwami Means Extreme than I'm really looking for

so that's something that really keeps Yakuza 0 on top of the org chart for me personally. Its combat never felt particularly grindy or attrition-y like Kiwami can, especially in the late game. I wonder how much of that is Kiwami and how much is a weakness of the source material, though. there are definitely fights in here that feel 2005 as fuck. like that gunkata goofball from a few chapters ago? fuck outta here with your Matrix trenchcoat ass.

heh, that guy and all the NPC fashion all really nail the 00s-ness of the original game, though. in a way that isn't really intentional like the 80s-ness in Yakuza 0 'cause this time it's actually a remake of a game from the 00s and all that. an accidental period piece by way of adaption vs. an intentional period piece by way of prequel. so it's all poofy jackets and midriffs for days in 2005's Kamurocho. fuck, that decade sucked.

anyway, yeah, I'm at the end here, just the Millennium Tower and a few substories left: the two cabaret club things, the last two Komaki things, and the final unlock I'll probably never do, assuming it's anything like the final substory fights in Yakuza 0.

[John Layfield]

yo I know Kiwami Means Extreme or whatever but giving most/all enemies above a certain level the same ability to dodge or block 75%+ of my offense and also three or four life bars and also multiple self-heals is maybe a bit more Kiwami Means Extreme than I'm really looking for

so that's something that really keeps Yakuza 0 on top of the org chart for me personally. Its combat never felt particularly grindy or attrition-y like Kiwami can, especially in the late game. I wonder how much of that is Kiwami and how much is a weakness of the source material, though.

Oh you're gonna LOVE the final fights then.

Kiwami suffers also because it's stapling the original Yakuza stuff onto the 0 engine in a slightly haphazard way. Its extreme faithfulness is both a boon and a curse. Kiwami 2 on the other hand, feels a lot more polished, perhaps because they got to use the sparkly new Yakuza 6 engine for it.

[Delthazar]

dunno if the final fights can feel like more of a slog than the S(SS)-Rank Majima encounters (who's now up to five life bars, what?) but I guess I'll find out.

I was just about to give up on the Coliseum forever 'til I unlocked the Breakout stage, which is nicely exploitable. Just spam a couple combos pushing yer opponents up to the glass wall, shatter one with a kick, and watch the clumsy oafs stagger backwards into the hole, usually within like 30 seconds. Wouldn't have pulled together the points to finish Komaki's stuff without this cheese.

also props to the casino right across from the Coliseum for giving out Toughness Infinities for a pittance of like 90 chips versus the Coliseum itself only letting them go for an astronomical 7,000 points.

[John Layfield]

You're showing a lot more dedication to Kiwami than I did. I think by B-rank Majima, I focused purely on plot for the most part. I'd almost want you to stream this now just so I can see this content.

[Delthazar]

Heh, ain't much left at this point, just three or four more Dragon of Dojima unlocks which I may or may not bother with and the remaining few ranks for the two hostesses. (Plus I have no way of streaming from my PS4, at least not without sacrificing all my OBS stuff and just running with whatever the PS4's streaming interface gives you. None of my mics would do the trick there either. Hmm.)

I did finally cave and turned the difficulty down to Easy, which removes most of the block/dodge spam from the enemy AI. Or at least for Majima anyway, it hasn't been nearly as frustrating in story fights. Excessive life bars don't matter much now that most of my combos actually land and do more than chip damage.

But now it feels probably too easy, so... a little more granularity would be nice. Lategame Kiwami on Normal feels closer to my idea of Hard, while on Easy it's nearly breezy enough to remind me Uncharted on Explorer or Horizon on Story difficulty. It's a weird curve.

[John Layfield]

The basic Beast mode combo, the one that ends in the clothesline, will get you through Normal with a minimum of difficulty. It's just the damage sponge that's tiring. Yakuza's battle system is fine, overall, but it's not designed for long, epic fights on its own.

[Delthazar]

0 was smart to pepper in scene changes or QTEs or quick cutscenes into some of its longer battles to keep the pacing nice and brisk, and, uh, the extra bag of tricks Kiwami gives to its boss- or near-boss enemies also doesn't help, at least not on Normal or above. I think that's a change they really didn't need to make.

Beast is handy 'cause it lets Kiryu brute force his way through enemy attack animations that would otherwise stun or combo-lock him, plus it's got a nice wide sweeping radius, so he doesn't necessarily have to worry about positioning, but half the time it's still only doing chip damage or breaking an enemy block without anything left in the combo to land a proper hit, and by the time I can restart the combo again, the block's back up, or whoosh, enemy insta-dodge to my flank, and I then have to spend ten seconds guarding 'til I can try again.

...basically, lategame Kiwami on Normal, at least against a high rank Majima, feels kinda like the first Kuze fight in 0 on repeat, only this time it's not an understandable earlygame lack of tools that's the problem, rather none of yer tools do a whole lot. On Easy though, heh, one heat action from Kiryu will completely wreck an entire health bar on an SSS-Rank Majima and his success rate on blocks and dodges is in the toilet, so these fights all last about 30 seconds instead of... five+ minutes?

[Delthazar]

Anyway, Rina's really cool and it'd be neat to see her again someday. I've got one more Yui thing left, then it's just settling up with Majima and hitting the Tower. The randomization on the Majima appearances could drag that part out a while but if I get lucky I could probably solve the game tape tonight.

[Delthazar]

Judgement is headed our way Summer 2019 and it'll have an English voice track.

e: specifically, we're getting dual-audio and dual-subtitles, too. Just in case anyone got the wrong idea about us only getting the dub over here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZIFSfdUjW4

[Delthazar]

here's a cool deep-dive on Judgement stuff that I can't pretend to really understand without a better knowledge of Japanese celebrity culture

https://kotaku.com/segas-new-ps4-game-s ... 1831093626

I've always liked how the Yakuza team models characters after their voice actors though.

https://twitter.com/SUPERSONIC4k/status ... 1242220544

[Delthazar]

Judgement is out in Japan and people are playing it! A lot of it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tGmIezms_w

[Delthazar]

oh, and Yakuza 0 is the headliner for the next Humble Monthly package

https://www.humblebundle.com/monthly

Yak 0 for like 12 bones feels like you're actually owing Sega money. The Division + whatever else is coming in that bundle is just gravy.

[Delthazar]

https://twitter.com/yakuzagame/status/1 ... 8765290496

Waypoint and others have seen it at Sega events and their enthusiasm makes it feel like it'll be one of the best games of the year.

[Delthazar]

Yo this Judgement cocaine story is buckwild.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/13/18263 ... ine-arrest

I can't believe it'd also affect the western version, but if they've already taken the Japanese original off shelves/digital marketplaces and fuckin' scrubbed their social media, christ, who knows

[John Layfield]

Justice is blind, indeed.

I wonder what they can ever do? Recast the part and re-release it? That worked for the Yakuza 4 remaster in Japan under a near identical crime but that was replacing the dude who was in the original version and had been busted for cocaine in the interim; not literally pulling a game and changing it so drastically. They'd have to cast and record, model and mocap a new dude, and fast.

Just quietly re-up it in a few weeks/months? That seems what we'd expect in the west but we wouldn't pull the game in the first place for this so I don't know if that's all that likely.

Just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Judgement off in Japan as a lost cause and go all in on the western release to make up for it? That'd be the freakiest outcome.

[Delthazar]

Watch Judgement come out in the west as planned and on schedule, become a major hit, and eventually trickle back to Japan as a weird niche, kinda like the weird niche Yakuza was when it started over here. Whatever happens, Japanese anti-drug culture is wild.

Square Enix is also removing the same dude from the Japanese version of Kingdom Hearts 3. That'll be much easier for them though 'cause it's just voice work, while Yakuza's tradition of modeling characters after their voice/mocap actors creates a fairly uniquely challenging hurdle for 'em.

...considering how many wrestlers play themselves in Yakuza games they've really dodged some legal bullets, huh (unless Japanese wrestlers are far more straight 'n' narrow than their western counterparts)

[Delthazar]

phew

https://twitter.com/RGGStudio/status/11 ... 3207416832

the erasure of a whole dude from a game will always feel weird to us westerners, weirder still that he's being scrubbed from the western release and not just the Japanese original, but they ain't cancelling the game and the previously announced release date is holding, so all's well (?) that ends... well? unless yer Pierre Taki of course

(can we read the tea leaves with regards to how much his character matters if Sega's able to fully replace his voice and model without delaying the western release? probably not, but who knows)

[Delthazar]

Kiwami 2 has been rated for the PC by the ESRB, which probably means an official announcement is nigh.

Interesting if they're porting that over before Y6. I guess it makes story sense for new players on the PC side to play 'em in order, but who knows how far off the 3/4/5 remasters might be if we don't even have 'em on the western PS4 yet. They wouldn't really hold off on the Yakuza 6 PC port that long, right?

[John Layfield]

Maybe Kiwami 2 is the guinea pig for converting the Yakuza 6 engine to PC so that 6 can be optimised or whatevs?

The bizarre delay of the 3-5 remasters, considering that one of the main raisins the developers cited for doing them was for the reignited interest in the series in the west, is still puzzling.

[Delthazar]

Since it's April 1 in Japan, here's Yakuza with a turn-based JRPG battle system

https://youtu.be/BDkWKDg7Px8

[Delthazar]

re: the PS3 remasters though, I wonder if there's a chance they just dump 'em all on Steam and the western PS4 in a single package for 50 bones or something. That'd be one raisin to hold off 'til all three are done I guess.

[Delthazar]

Kiwami 2 has been rated for the PC by the ESRB, which probably means an official announcement is nigh.

a PEGI rating has also appeared so I gotta imagine this is a lock.

I wonder what the price point will be like on PC. Steam players got 0/K1 for about $20 USD, equivalent to the new Playstation Hits prices on PS4, so if Kiwami 2 launches at the non-discounted $50 like the PS4 version I can just imagine the usual whining in the Steam comments.

(chaos option: launch on Epic instead )

[Delthazar]

Boom, Kiwami 2 will launch on Steam on May 9th, which is surprisingly soon. And it'll be like $40 CAD, which is about $15 cheaper than the PS4 version. Preorders get all the DLC for free. Nice.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/0 ... announced/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULDccp-vKhs

I wonder if the PS4 original will drop its price to match. That's kinda what 0/K1 did, by means of Playstation Hits, but I dunno if it's too soon for that with Kiwami 2.

[John Layfield]

Kiwami 2 was very good, far better than Kiwami 1, which wasn't bad by any means. Using the Yakuza 6 engine freshened it up too, along with the better story. Also, cabaret club and Majima construction, bb.

EDIT: If anyone says Majima Construction in YK2 is a rip of the Y6 version, they're wrong. YK2 is tower defense, while Y6 is tower attack, I guess. Cabaret is the same basic idea though, which is good because Cabaret Club is beautiful and doesn't need an overhaul.

[Delthazar]

Can't wait for that shiny new Dragon Engine cabaret club. I must've put dozens of hours into the Yakuza 0 version and I'm totally ready to do it again in Kiwami 2.