Topic: Yakuza 6 and Yakuza Series on Gamepass

@ralphdibny Yeah that's actually one of the positive things the developer did with the remastered versions of Yakuza 3, 4 and 5, i.e. they rewrote a lot of things in the game. Not to mention they restored deleted content, such as substories. Good thing we've got to experience these versions and not the original PS3 ones that were apparently subpar.

I finished Yakuza 3 tonight. Absolutely loved it by the end. I think it is my favourite story so far, not sure if I prefer 0 or not now. This one had me in tears at certain moments (probably obvious which moment if you've played it). I think I did something like 101 or 102 sub stories, 20 hitman missions and about 50 hours gametime in total (probably a lot of just leaving it idle while I get distracted looking at my phone 😅)

I think it's clear that out of the four I've played that Kiwami 2 is the best "game" in terms of mechanics and how it's evolved. 3 is the worse "game" in terms of those same criteria.

In terms of quality of story and substories though (particularly ones that add depth/dimension to characters and plot points in the main story), I'd rank 3 and 0 at the top, Kiwami 2 in second place (Majima saga helps but I do love the moody intensity of the ryuji goda storyline) and Kiwami 1 way down the bottom. The rest of the games have been leagues ahead of it in my opinion.

I really loved the Okinawan Yakuza in this game, Rikiya, Mikio and Nakahara were just so brilliant. I loved their heel status and face turn in the flashback chapters near the beginning. It got me to love them before all the emotional stuff later on. It was a well crafted story, I think.

@ralphdibny Congrats mate! I'm going to be honest for a moment now, I've been hesitant in expressing my true opinion of Yakuza 3 because so many people dislike the game due to it being a PS3 title that comes off as underwhelming after the PS4 titles. However, I thought the story and the characters were honest-to-goodness phenomenal in Yakuza 3. I loved the tropical setting, the more relaxing nature of taking care of an orphanage and tending to the children's problems. And yeah, the fact that Kiryu becomes an "aniki" in this game to Rikiya was a great feeling. This to me is what Yakuza should be about. Even though Kiryu isn't a Yakuza anymore, he can still build great relationships with other Yakuza families and still feel like he's a part of them. The whole "part of a family" concept is what makes these games wonderful. Sadly you don't see much of that in Yakuza 4 and 5 but it returns in Yakuza 6 and that's why it's my second favourite Yakuza game after 0. In other words, Yakuza 3 isn't the last Yakuza game where you will hear people call Kiryu "aniki".

@LtSarge there is a lot to like about Yakuza 3. I quite liked that "tamed" Majima was so despondent in his role. You can tell he hated it so much and was just acting by the numbers to fulfil his responsibility. The return of the mad dog at the Diet building was just awesome!

I went ahead and bought Dead Souls on the PS3 store because it was £15.99 and will be the next Yakuza game I play after 4. Trying to resist the urge to start 4 though so I can finish Psychonauts 😅

@ralphdibny I find it awesome that you've developed such a strong fondness for this series now! I'm also impressed that you still haven't been burned out on these games, lol. At this rate you'll be done with the Kiryu saga in no time.

But yeah, considering how much you're enjoying this series now I think it's definitely worth playing Dead Souls as I mentioned a while back.

@LtSarge 😅 I know, I'm such a heathen! Definitely hooked on it now with 4 games in the tank so far. I hope Judgment PS4 gets a decent sale soonish for <£10 or an Xbox one port gets announced and added to game pass before that time.

I might be able to borrow judgment off a mate but I'm pretty sure that he has the ps5 version of it so it don't think it'll work on PS4. I'll have to check

@ralphdibny Good thing there are so many games for you to play then! I've actually been thinking about this recently but if Microsoft were to acquire SEGA, I think adding the Yakuza developer to their portfolio would be absolutely huge. Not only because this would mean more Japanese games on Xbox but also that we'd be getting yearly releases of these franchises day one on Game Pass. That would be absolutely insane!

We talked about how developers don't really release that many games these days but if there's one developer that's constantly pumping out new titles, it's the Yakuza studio. Just looking back at the past couple of years, we saw Yakuza 0 and Kiwami in 2017, Yakuza 6, Kiwami 2 and Fist of the North Star in 2018, Judgment in 2019, Yakuza: Like a Dragon in 2020 and Lost Judgment is coming out this year. Having a studio that can pump out so many games would be a huge get for Microsoft since they want as many first-party exclusives on Game Pass as possible.

Also, I think it's a good thing the developer decided to change the formula for the Yakuza series to a turn-based RPG while letting Judgment carry on with the traditional brawler formula. Because otherwise these yearly releases would surely tire out these franchises as they would feel too similar. They definitely thought ahead with this, which is good. Hopefully they'll be able to introduce even more IPs similar to Yakuza that can be part of their rotation.

@LtSarge I mean yeah, I don't know, maybe? Sorry I don't really have an opinion on who MS should acquire or necessarily on who should win the perceived console war. These things tend to swing back and forth at the start and in the middle of generations. After a successful PS2, PS3 flopped out the gate so lategame PS3 and the PS4 had to be better. Likewise after a successful 360, Xbox One flopped out the gate so they had to do a lot to get back positive popular opinion. Personal failure and success of a rival drives people to do better and I'm sure this generation will be no different. I don't really want any single company to have a monopoly because I guarantee that either company would be charging big money for games if they didn't have a competitor to undercut them.

Sorry I don't really engage in these topics because you are obviously quite passionate about it and I am just not terribly fussed. You and I have a lot of common ground though in terms of the games we enjoy so we do have plenty to talk about. I just don't really want to get into the business side of things, the technical side of things (except stuff that I actually own or am looking to buy) and general speculation on these two topics. I just like playing the games to be honest, whatever console they are on! Sorry buddy, I hope that's OK.

@ralphdibny Sorry if it came out wrong, but I didn't want to talk about acquisitions. I just wanted to bring up how great it would be for the developer to release their games day one on Game Pass. Aren't you playing these games through Game Pass? That was kinda my point that we would be able to enjoy their future games day and date with Game Pass instead of having to wait e.g. eight months for a game to be added on the service (which is the amount of time it took for Like a Dragon to come out on the service).

If you don't want to continue this topic, then it's totally fine. We'll just leave it at that, don't worry about it!

@LtSarge yeah that's cool, I sorta answered both this post and your post in the backlog thread at the same time here 😅. I normally swerve threads when they go this way because I just don't have a horse in the race, so to speak. I don't really find it gratifying to try and convince strangers to think in a different way. There's a few threads here that are just no-go areas for me. But I thought I'd explain my tactical ignorance as I thought I might be being rude by not answering in either thread.

I do agree that I would like to see more games (including the Yakuza series) come to Game Pass day one because I currently have a subscription to that service. I'm not that fussed if MS acquired Sega either way. It's hard to tell if it would be a good thing for Sega because they are a bit all over the place anyway and MS don't really seem to interfere with their studios except to inject more cash. Equally, if it was as part of a larger spate of acquisitions then I don't want MS to rule the world 😅. Amazon has basically destroyed (as much as they innovated in the early days) what was good about online shopping and I don't want gaming to go the same way. Hell, even between Google and Apple, they've seemed to mess up and stagnate the smartphone industry. They have a 2 steps forward, one step back approach that keeps people buying because they reintroduce old removed features into newer models/updates.

But yeah, probably just best to talk about Yakuza in this thread 😅