Recent reviews by Khorm

Probably my second favourite main Yakuza game after 0.

What I like:
- Story is focused on a single main character and delivers a much better narrative,
- Almost everything is voiced over,
- Combat moved to dragon engine and feels more fluid and responsive,
- mini games are more streamlined and fit more into the story,
- Snack Bar was great,
- Major leap in terms of graphical fidelity

What I do not like:
- Kyriu desperately lacks super armor and can get easily interrupted and floored by even the weakest schmucks that die to a firm stare.
- Super Sayan Blue mode is a massive disappointment and a downgrade from Yakuza 5. It is extremely short and gets easily staggered often leading up to whole heat going to complete waste. On top of that they now locked majority of heat moves behind that which boggles the mind given how niche and generally useless it is.
- While Clan Creator is somewhat fun, its story and main characters are completely disconnected from main story and only serve to break immersion by ... making zero sense whatsoever. I could not care less about any of them and just started to skip all cutscenes later on... a shame since someone did put effort to write and voice dialogues.

*Edited* Nope did nto last another hour, horrible game, avoid at all costs.

5 Hours in. Mind you, I have played Kakarot first so in comparison:
- possibly the worst controls scheme ever put into an action game. Would drop it after 10 mins if I was not here for Dragonball...
- graphics cannot hold a candle to Kakarot
- story seems to be nonexistent, like there is complete lack of narrative as to why are you even here? Maybe it is assuming nobody who haven't played 1 would ever touch this?
- DLC bonanza,

Better than 3 and 4, but still has not resolved old annoyances and created some new to fill gaps left by ones they did fix.

**Updated review** - switched to not-recommended (would be neutral but if steam has no such option, negative it is *shrugs*):

Sadly as I continue to play, the crawlies come out of the woodwork more and more. I am in part 4 now:
- After so many years they still cannot make a hard and fair encounters. Stronger enemies aren't really stronger they just cheat more. Super armour, uninterruptable moves, ungrabbable, immune to heat actions, cheap instant counters and wayyyyy too obvious input reading. Ayanokoji perfectly performing his Tonfa Tiger Drop every time you press an attack but are not in range is just hilarious to watch.
- It is WAY too long, at this point I don't even remember what was the story in act 1, and I am still nto even in final part....
- Yakuza was always full of minigames. More often than not, they were anything but fun, yet also optional, so I have ignored them and everybody was happy. Well this ends in Yakuza 5, now if you want to finish substories/training you are forced into all that trash. Guess I am not finishing substories now cause no way I am wasting my time catching a Merlin, I still have nightmares from Y4...

*End of update*


Encounter rate is absolutely mental in first part. You can sometimes see up to 3 standing within 5 meters next to each other.
Small fry enemies on random encounters block way too much, their attacks will interrupt/stun you and they are now much more aggressive and attack all at once. They can now also call for reinforcements.
The restaurants now also seem to be placed far between as if trying to force you into more encounters while you try to just heal/buff before major fight.
All of this drags the already ridiculous amount of random encounters even more and can get frustrating really fast.

Graphically it feels like quite a leap from 3/4 but there is some oddity when moving around, as if the controller is to sensitive. I don't know if just felt janky when I started.

Taxi stuff was kind off fun, except maybe some really bad AI for pedestrians at times.

Grade: B-

"Lets make a game where we pretend players can play as a dictator but, but if they try, we will PUNISH them HARD".

As long as you know your place (on your knees and meeting every request of your owners *cough* citizens *cough*) the game will be nice to you. Pretty fun economy with a lot of chains and options.

Just never forget "presidente", you are here to serve and grovel, not to dictate. Just try and step out of line, and you will seen infinite streams of rebels, setting everything on fire and destroying your trained and equipped military as if they were made out of straw.

They need to get rid of the goals/rewards for scanning all of planets minerals/flora/fauna, it' nothing but pure frustration and killed this game for me after spending HOURS and not being able to find even one if missing things.

Grade:
(If you are a fan of Dragonball): B+
(Otherwise): D-

2nd edit - The more I play this game the worse it becomes..., once the DB hype runs out, the combat quickly goes from awful, to annoying, frustrating and infuriating, especially against multiple opponents.
Fights very quickly devolve away from DBZ fantasy into dodging like a coward until a small window open when you can do one attack of some kind and then go back to avoiding fighting again,


Cons [Combat]:
- a mosquito sneeze is enough to interrupt a Super Sayan God....,
- game actively punishes you for trying to do melee combat,
- enemies constantly abuse super armor,
- multiple enemies will keep you interrupted and chain stunlock you often,
- game is obsessed in putting you versus multiple opponents while denying you your own team mates,

Cons [Combat mechanics]
- multi hit moves poorly connect with enemies and will often miss,
- "guided" Ki moves don't work properly,
- some special attacks work with combos some do not - game wont indicate this until you try out,
- blocking is next to worthless as it will be broken and open you to damage while stunned,
- enemies can magically perfect dodge your attacks,


Cons [Skill/RPG System]:
- skills/upgrades are gated by story progression and level,
- game allows you to waste time unlocking certain skills but then blocks you from being able to use them until arbitrary points in the story,
- random encounters give barely any experience but game is constantly trying to force you into them, often one after abother,
- food stats gains are some sort of a troll attempt, you gain 1000 HP when your chaarcter is sitting on milions,

Other Cons:
- big explosions/clouds of dust /terrain obscuring your vision while enemies keep beating you up,
- open world is pretty but filled with nothing interesting,
- side quest add some flavor but are only voiced by "grunts" and are rather boring,


Pros:
- You can go Super Sayan and punch Frieza in his ugly mug,
- can visit many locations from DB Universe and meet almost all of the characters,
- decent graphics - characters recreated well to match anime,
- 1 vs 1 battles are Ok.

Grade A+

A more story driven survival game, while you do have considerable space for building the amount of elements is actually limited. You need to progress the story/explore to unlock more and while you can build cool bases in cool places that is not where the game really shines. The game has exceptional atmosphere, and can be quite tense while you are exploring deep and dark places with limited light supply and managing oxygen.

Grade B+
Pretty fun hack and slash. Cool lore. Tight controls. Good performance. Support massive amounts of builds with dual class system.

The bad:
- Horrendous navigation for side tasks to the point as if someone actively tried to sabotage this game - Quest markers do not show on mini map/map, quest destinations only show when you are literary next to them and often are wrong. Quest descriptions half the time give next to no direction. Pretty much half the side quests/bounties I am forced to google on where to go.
- It is very hard to find upgrades. While the game supports a lot of builds it does so via damage types boost stats. E.g a build that is a Physical/Lightning damage needs items which boosts those damage types, everything else is trash. Items tend to have 2-3 types on then out of 16 different types. This ends in a lot of situations like "Oh look at this uber sword that dropped! *Looks at the stats* MINUS 4000 dps..... yeah fun.
- No Bows
- F**k Skelleton Key dungeons and whoever invented this piece of garbage.

HW1 - made in HW2 engine is a bugged mess (ships getting stuck, ships disappearing, ships refuse to remain docked) - save yourself frustration dont play this.
HW2 - haven't tried as HW1 experience completely put me off from touching this.

Grade: A+

Phenomenal game with good replay value and some of best quality writing out there. Just be sure to save a lot as I have ran into some game breaking bugs that will soft lock you without a prior save.

Some critique :
- there are some alternate ways of reaching certain objectives depending on what stats you have, but at the same time they push your character into something you may not want him to be. Example in order to get into one area there is a physical, agile and intellect way, but the intellect way forces you to essentially become major racist. Why cannot we have a smart way in while not accepting this idiocy? Bluff, Lie, Debunk? Anything? This is so shallow and disappointing. Had to in the end rely on different way which completely did not fit my character.
- game has one check that always fails no matter if you beat it or not - this was a letdown and could be handled better, considering game mechanics run on whole premise of allowing you to progress even if you fail some checks.