[Yakuza] Punch Detective Simulator 2018

[Delthazar]

Looks like they melted the original face to get the new face.

https://twitter.com/RGGStudio/status/11 ... 4155707392

[Delthazar]

someone just bought a foil Majima card I put up on the Steam marketplace ages ago for about a buck fifty. kinda wild that people actually buy foil cards and spend more than a few cents on 'em but here I am, a dollar fifty richer

[Delthazar]

Okay so Judgment. This game owns? Like a lot, more than I expected. I'm only about three chapters in still, keep getting distracted by sidequests, but the tone and pacing of the main story is perfect.

This is the best game from this studio since Yakuza 0. A large part of that is the effectiveness of its story beats. Judgment hits a lot of very similar highs. It's like putting on an old pair of shoes. Kiwami and Kiwami 2 especially is no slouch, but I rarely got that same feeling from them, beyond bits and pieces of their post-PS2 original material. But here with Judgment, it's effortless, seamless.

I agree with Alex on this week's Beastcast: I'd love to see what other amazing things the Yakuza team could do in this setting that ain't more Yakuza sequels, good as they tend to be, Judgment proves the sky is the limit.

[John Layfield]

I'm not entirely sold on Judgment's combat (and tbf combat was never Yakuza's strongest point either) but besides that, I'm all in, baby!

[John Layfield]

Also no karaoke? Is Takuya Kimura too big to sing fake badly for my pleasure? >:'(

UPDATE: The pinball is fucking RIGGED

[John Layfield]

Spoiler for BASELESS PREDICTION I'M MAKING AT CHAPTER 5 :

Junior lawyer Hoshino-kun is the Mole. This is entirely an Adachi Gambit guess (though I first encountered it in DS visual novel Lux-Pain): a harmless assistant has to be the villain.

[Delthazar]

christ I'm still two chapters behind you. in general, the chapters have felt a lot longer than the Yakuza standard, right? It's kinda neat. Wonder if they can sustain it for the duration or if it'll eventually feel sloggy. But then again maybe I've just been emphasizing side cases too much.

I'm not entirely sold on Judgment's combat (and tbf combat was never Yakuza's strongest point either) but besides that, I'm all in, baby!

It's a little wild how different it feels, and all they really did was create like 90% of a new moveset for Yagami, they even kept a couple of Kiryu's heat actions. But Yagami just flies compared to Kiryu most of the time, even a stat-maxed Kiryu, and that gives the combat a much different cadence despite running on the same framework.

I definitely appreciate having the two styles, though. It's reflective enough of Yakuza 0/Kiwami's style swapping without going all-in. It might not have completely sold me either yet but I think that might just be the more limited pool of EX moves compared to Kiryu's ridiculously deep list of heat actions. But in a way, that makes sense, given Yagami's improvised technique. He ain't no dragon, he's just a detective who can handle himself.

Also no karaoke? Is Takuya Kimura too big to sing fake badly for my pleasure? >:'(

UPDATE: The pinball is fucking RIGGED

smash cut to a Unity logo in the middle of the game will never not be the weirdest thing.

I miss karaoke but maybe that's a potential DLC hook since enough folks have pointed out its absence. I've maybe been missing pool a little more, maybe just 'cause it was also absent in Kiwami 2, so it's been a minute since I got to go hustlin'. (Vincent closed, replaced by a gravure photo studio? Fuck!)

[John Layfield]

Yeah, because of how different so much of this feels, the stuff that feels Very Yakuza, like some heat actions or even some animations around the world, can be pretty jarring.

This song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E06xeOdUxfY
came up at one point and I was fricking floored. It might be the only reused song actually, outside of ambient tracks in stores and such.

The speed of battle is a very good point. It's not so noticeable in random battles, but bigger fights feel better to me. I'm not just looking at a boss health bar and going "Christ".

[Delthazar]

Yeah, they've scaled back the fight gimmicks a lot compared to the Kiwamis, probably back closer to where they were with Yakuza 0, which fits nicely within the goldilocks zone, I think. Encounters both random and story-based feel balanced more towards speed and ease of movement than length and that's exactly where I want it in a system like this. They ain't gonna pull a Snake Eater "The End" any time soon with combat like this, so they don't need twelve health bars on auto-healing bosses with near-perfect blocks.

The frequency of random street fights feels a lot better too. There's not literally a new group of goons waiting on every corner like in the previous three or four Yakuza games. Not even when story events and side cases mix up the goon composition. Yagami can run from the Champion District to Theater Square and only get in like, one fight, 50% of the time, instead of several. It's pretty nice, and the game has tons of other ways to keep your SP flowing, so you're not really missing those random fights, either.

Ha, I totally spotted that Yakuza 0 substory track last night, I think in the side case about the singer. It's weird that they kept it considering how they also made a lot of new soundalikes for other side events.

The best ambient music reuse is the Yakuza 0 weaponsmith track playing on the radio in Cafe Alps or whatever, sometimes I'll loiter around an extra moment just for that.

[John Layfield]

Shimano boss fight in Kiwami 1 was... a chore.

Yeah it feels like on normal difficulty you can pretty much engage with the battle system as little or as much as you want. You can mash or try out new stuff at your leisure.

There are some Yakuzisms that I'm not super thrilled about returning. The main one being "technically main plot quests that are just side-quests really". I know you gotta sprinkle some in to let you know about some optional location or minigame but, man.

For me, the shining star of the game so far is it's narrative and most of its pacing, excluding the above whine. The cast is good and the game just has an energy and vibe that makes me feel like the developers were super passionate about it. I hope it does super well.

[Delthazar]

Shimano boss fight in Kiwami 1 was... a chore.

ten minutes of avoiding the same grapple and getting through on nothing but chip damage

that gunkata idiot somewhere in the midgame was also really bad but I can't remember if I hated that one for gameplay raisins or just 'cause he looked like he stepped out of every bad action movie from the early 00s. fuckin' Boondock Saints over there

[John Layfield]

Man, we didn't talk enough about how early 2000s action movie Yakuza 1/Kiwami was. Damn ending credits music is fucking Amazing Grace.

[Delthazar]

only thing more 00s than that would've been a breakbeat remix of Amazing Grace

*insert Ryan Davis' trance noises*

[Delthazar]

Partway through Chapter 4. Judgment is probably my GOTY pick for the moment, but it's not without its little quirks and odd choices.

Spoiler :

main story: hey, we need you to talk to Shinitani about this yakuza shooting business, he's probably in danger, it's pretty important

also main story: oh uhh looks like Shinitani stepped out of the office for a smoke or something, so how about you kill time looking into this missing cake? or is this divorce case more your style? shit, why not both?

...I liked the cake bit, mostly because Saori owns, but I really don't think I needed the divorce case stuffed in there also. I wonder if these tangents were always part of the plan for the main story progression, or if they started life as optional side cases and were moved into the main story to even out chapter lengths. At least they deal with the main story characters in Genda's crew, and deepen those characters a little, so that's something, but they definitely feel like weird interruptions. Weirder even than the (much shorter) onboarding they always do for the really big minigame stuff.

since I mentioned Saori, this game sure has a weird DLC strategy. there's a bunch of packs up on PSN for like 10 dollars a shot, all of them full of things I don't need or would never use, but also each pack has one or two cool features buried at the bottom of their descriptions that I'd totally love to have, just... not for $10 each. I really don't need bonus costumes for the girlfriends, but I'd love to hang out with Saori in town. I don't really need more office decor, but shit, filling my office with cats sounds amazing. Goddamnit.

[Delthazar]

Spoiler for BASELESS PREDICTION I'M MAKING AT CHAPTER 5 :

Junior lawyer Hoshino-kun is the Mole. This is entirely an Adachi Gambit guess (though I first encountered it in DS visual novel Lux-Pain): a harmless assistant has to be the villain.

Spoiler :

yeah, he's totally got that look. Jester also feels slightly off to me for some raisin, like maybe he was asking too many questions, digging too deep. he's also one of like only three characters who know Yagami's at the ADDC, so even if he's not the Mole, he could've tipped off the fuzz

Since we're talking Chapter 5, I wasn't expecting a big long playable flashback chapter. Glad it didn't involve buying a ring at a pawn shop this time.

I totally jumped at the Emi reveal, thinking she was Makoto. That's a really similar model.

Prediction at early Chapter 6: Shintani had early Alzheimer's symptoms, explaining the call with Shono. But that might make this whole section a weird red herring so ehh maybe not.

[John Layfield]

You're beginning to pass me out now, just because festival week was such a killer I had no time to sit down for a length session with Judgment.

[Delthazar]

Deeper in Chapter 6, probably getting close to 7

Spoiler :

Judgment has my favourite raid sequence since Yakuza 0. I kicked a grenade back at a group of goons, before that I interrupted a different group of yakuza in the middle of a dance rehearsal, and I'm currently closing this out with a huge fight that somehow started with a runway walk. Somewhere in there was a great quip about Japanese gun laws.

I keep hoping to trigger a tag team EX Action with Yagami and Jester but maybe there isn't one? The Yagami/Kaito combo attack is great though. I think I like these raids even more when you've got a couple allies with you. It's just pure chaos in here, beautiful chaos.

Once the combat clicks it clicks hard. Going ham on all these goons with crane style, lotta sprints into kicks, switching to tiger style for bigger targets, feels pretty great now that I've pumped a ton of SP into upgrades and skills.

this is all very good.

[Delthazar]

I'll wait 'til I'm through this section and yer caught up before I post another couple 'graphs under tags but holy shit Chapter 7 pulls something I really wanted/never knew I wanted/really didn't expect and it's kinda amazing.

There was also a piece at Polygon or Kotaku about a brief sequence in here which has some really solid localization insights, I'll post that later too.

[Delthazar]

here it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAIae9XCETY

the Yakuza 3 remaster is out today, the rest will roll out over the next several months, with a full physical collection at the end on February 11th. which looks nice, so maybe I'll wait and grab that, especially 'cause I very nearly played Kiwami 1, Kiwami 2, and Judgment back-to-back-to-back, so I should take some downtime before I burn out.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/8/20/20814 ... e-date-ps4

[Delthazar]

so by now you may have heard that Yakuza is going turn-based with Yakuza 7, which kinda-sorta takes it from "a JRPG with brawler combat" to "a JRPG"

there's no gameplay in this trailer, I'll post it anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9_L2TA0IEY

there's gameplay in this screenshot though



more here

https://kotaku.com/yakuza-7-announced-h ... 1837689271

Yakuza 0 and Judgment are already perfect entry points to this universe for new players. I wonder if Yakuza 7 will be right up there too, given it's the start of a new protagonist's story with totally new and wildly different core gameplay. Losing the brawler combat of the previous games for a turn-based system might be exactly what a lotta folks needed to take the plunge on this series.

aside: there's a lot of weird unnecessary elitism on twitter re: "ugh play any other RPG but Persona GAWD" directed towards people comparing the Yakuza 7 battle screenshot to Persona 5 and it kinda pisses me off a bit

1) just let people like what they like, popular or niche, who cares

2) the HUD is really similar so those comparisons should be immediately obvious and expected

3) srsly look at the HUD

4) it's the HUD

[Delthazar]

Maybe going full turn-based and therefore getting things like summon attacks was the best decision they ever made

https://twitter.com/SyrenneMcN/status/1 ... 69344?s=20