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Wait so Legend difficulty in Yakuza Zero boots you all the way back to the last save point if you die but it still lets you brute-force your way through boss fights by spamming healing items? Suddenly I'm a lot less interested in this mode than I was going into it, I got all the way to the first Kuze fight before finding that out. Game was very good though. I think I'll probably skip 1-6 and go straight to YLAD because the early games don't seem as good. Oh, also a dumb mechanics question: I must be stupid or something but I can't figure out how to unlock Tatsu's unlockable skills. Do I have to leave one of the dummies standing until all of the money boxes are smashed or something? All she gives me is some of her own-brand soda instead of monke lessons.
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Nov 18, 2023 04:52
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The story is what really grabbed me in Zero. For the first two-thirds of the game it is very straightforward and compelling: there's an empty lot that acts as a clear focus and motivation for everybody's actions throughout the whole story, there are two seemingly-unrelated perspective characters (although the connection quickly becomes obvious long before it is "officially" revealed), and there is a small cast of central players with understandable interests that are both conflicting and overlapping. Things do get a little bit silly towards the end once Sera and Nishitani show up but for the most part the plot stays on the rails and events happen for plausible reasons other than "okay and now the writers want this particular set-piece to take place". I watched some plot summaries of the first few games in the main series and they seem a lot messier and a lot less compelling so idk I'm not really feeling it. It also sucks that Rena and Shimano get killed off early in the series too, because they seemed like interesting characters. I'd rather jump in and see what Ichiban's deal is instead, especially since there's a new game coming out soon that ties their two plot lines together, and there's no way I'm going to be caught up by the time that comes out. The combat is not fantastic but it is pretty good, and it's quite fun when you play under a self-imposed rule of not healing mid-battle. Which is why I'm a bit disappointed that there isn't an actual game mode explicitly designed around it.
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Nov 18, 2023 18:02
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 man what the gently caress is that Samantha sidequest in Yakuza Zero "I'm pimping this human trafficking victim but actually I'm in love with her so it's okay" gently caress offffffffffffff
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Dec 3, 2023 03:26
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Yeah that scene was really bizarre
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Dec 6, 2023 21:43
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 Got pretty lucky against Isobe I think  I'll take it!
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Dec 15, 2023 05:51
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trapped in Cabaret Club Czar send help
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Dec 16, 2023 18:00
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Whew, finally finished Cabaret Club Czar in Zero. A shame that the writers seem to have been blackout drunk when they wrote the conclusion to that storyline after all that buildup but I suppose you can't have everything. I'm going to miss my dear sweet cabbage-o's. That whole mini-game is surprisingly compelling, although it's a shame that there never seem to be any actual negative consequences for screwing up. It felt really tense in many places even though there wasn't actually anything on the line. Also I absolutely hated doing the dating sim sections even if they do make the Platinum girls a little bit more three-dimensional.
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Dec 22, 2023 04:21
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I finished my second playthrough of Zero and jumped straight into 7. I don't know anything about it going in other than the fact that you play as funny afro man and the combat is turn based. If I wanted to watch a useless fuckup embarass himself and screw up even the simplest tasks that his superiors give him then I'd turn off my monitor Looking forward to seeing where this goes
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Dec 29, 2023 02:15
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Excitedly telling my shareholders that our top-100 publicly-traded(?) Yokohama enterprise made a whopping $100,000 in profit this last [UNSPECIFIED TIME UNIT] The numbers are a lot more sober after Zero I tell you what, the first time I got into a fight and the opponent dropped a whopping 45 cents was grim. Also these drat ungrateful employees don't step up their game but keep threatening to walk unless I give them a raise! Earn your increased keep you reprobates, I'm not made of money!  I want my nice cozy cabaret club back.
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Jan 3, 2024 03:47
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Btw is it just my system or are the karaoke inputs in Y7 really really late? as in you have to hit them really late. It's quite off-putting.
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Jan 3, 2024 04:41
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Me trying to roll for Isobe's banner but I keep pulling Ume and Chizu dupes
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Jan 4, 2024 21:41
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lol New Game Plus is a dlc and the base game is $70 Not buying any video game until it's $60 or less anyway, simple as. See you all in nine months or whatever.
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Jan 5, 2024 00:28
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I was going to make a smarmy comment hoping that the people itt do the honorable thing and insist on paying the full Japanese price of $100, but it turns out that 9860 JPY is about 68 dollars at the moment. drat, Japan's taking a kicking huh.
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Jan 5, 2024 02:40
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Just reached the start of Yakuza 7 Chapter 10 and drat the combat difficulty is kind of all over the place huh. Most of the fights I can just auto-attack my way through, then I wandered into Crappy Chinatown and pretty much got chased out with my tail between my legs. Did some sidequests, main story quests and such and it was smooth sailing, got some better weapons and armor along the way. Then went to Nice Chinatown and nearly got my rear end beat again, but after levelling up and progressing further I could walk around a lot more freely. Everybody gangsta til the walls start speaking Mandarin, apparently. Then got to the end of Chapter 9 and poo poo, that escalated quickly, main guy whips out a 9mm and KOs two of my party members in like three turns. Had to frantically spam Hang Up and my heaviest recovery items and barely made it out alive. Was also a fun surprise when Eri went from unexpected optional party member to oh poo poo guess you're a frontliner in this boss fight and I haven't ever used you before
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Jan 7, 2024 02:09
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Jesus christ that was a lot of exposition up until now. Also uhh, Matriarch? Is that the dominatrix job or something?
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Jan 7, 2024 03:09
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Estel posted:I'm also playing Yakuza 7, without spoiling anything you want to be as close as possible to level 50 by chapter 12 so don't skip fights. In chapter 12 a place where you can grind levels will open but if you don't skip fights in the streets you won't have to grind that much. Thanks for the heads up
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Jan 7, 2024 16:05
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Yakuza 7 Start of Ch11: So first I get K-Pop Boy and now Crappy Majima joins up out of nowhere? When do I get Song Hi? I want the hot crimelord lady. Does she even join at all? Don't answer that. Gotta say I'm having a blast with the story so far, I think I might like it even more than Y0. Just wish I wasn't sick as poo poo at the moment so that I could appreciate it properly.
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Jan 7, 2024 22:15
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Not a big fan of this thing in Y7 where I have to grind out 3 million yen to progress the story
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Jan 10, 2024 03:31
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Y:LAD Ch12 Huh well looks like we're heading to reunite with a certain fried duck liker and the chapter title is A Yakuza's Demise or somesuch. Boy I Sure Don't Like Where This Is Going!
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Jan 11, 2024 02:07
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Arist posted:I have heard anecdotally that having a dub tends to cause games to sell better, but it's still kind of weird seeing that here because Gaiden feels more related to the Kiryu games that are sub-only than the Ichiban/Yagami games which do have dubs. Like, I get it if they're just playing it as a prelude to Infinite Wealth (which I'm probably going to play dubbed, gently caress it), but it still feels weird. I thought you played these games in Japanese
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Jan 12, 2024 22:16
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Y:LAD Ch 12 Everybody was building it up as some sort of super awesome moment but it mostly just came off as a confused mess. Feels like a bit of a letdown. And what the gently caress was that "real, super brutal battle"?? It was like two groups of dudes that each get almost oneshot by Nanba's Kiwami attack! I mean yeah obviously the tag team boss fight before that was an absolute shitshow that I only barely survived at Lv 47 but tonally it's just all over the place. Also I really hate grinding and that chapter took probably as long as all of the other chapters up until this point put together. I already do tedious repetitive chores to make meaningless numbers go up every day as it is, but I want to leave that behind when I log off at 5 PM.
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Jan 13, 2024 02:29
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Oh yeah, also it's a really small thing but any time some heavy plot stuff happens in Y:LAD it immediately sends you to bed without giving control, so pretty often you'll wake up, get control, and immediately be day-drinking to get your bond level conversations unlocked. Seems like a little bit of free activity time at the end of a lot of these chapters would be more thematically appropriate, even if you're locked inside the bar while doing so.
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Jan 13, 2024 04:49
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I just hope the "main" minigame is better than the business management thing in YLAD because I hate it. It has been said that stress and anxiety arises from the feeling that a person is not in control of their own life, and that just sums up this stupid minigame in a nutshell. None of your staff get any better beyond growing an additional pixel here or there on their ability bars, and none of the buildings give you any of the information that you need to make an informed purchasing decision. You might buy a really profitable-looking business only to discover that it is immediately tent-poled on Memorability and unless you have an employee with an absolutely ridiculous score in that stat then that building is never going to grow. Conversely you might pick up a crappy sweet shop with seven development levels that grows like absolutely gangbusters and scaling it up only requires an incredibly modest increase in Customer Service for each level. And none of that even matters anyway because the only thing that you need to have in order to actually make progress is a squad of four expert bullshitters for the shareholder meeting because idk there isn't even any concept of turning a profit anywhere in this minigame, just sucking shareholders off. I can't decide if that makes it incredibly contrived or depressingly realistic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo Sapozhnik fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jan 13, 2024 |
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Jan 13, 2024 20:10
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So yeah I think Chapter 12 was the turning point where I soured on Y:LAD. I'm at the point where you return to Kamurocho and it seems like we're wrapping up for the obligatory Shirtless Fistfight In The Millennium Tower finale. I saw the twist about Ichiban and Masato's parentage coming from a ways off but didn't expect it to be explained in such a contrived and idiotic way. The part where Mabuchi was plotting to gently caress up Ijinchou's power balance and how that whole one-sided bank note factored into it all was really compelling and reminded me of Zero's Empty Lot struggle. The part where you're fighting against an evil sneering politician (who admittedly at least has some interesting backstory) and his three lackeys of doom is a lot less so. The fanservice Majima and Kiryuu fights are huge pains in the rear end as well because of all the grinding that they require, and there's no "difficulty" as such with this sort of turn based combat system, just brainless grinding. There isn't really even any sort of tank role as far as I know (maybe some of the other jobs that I never tried?) and buffs/debuffs seem to hardly do anything, so even for a JRPG it's really brainless. Maybe I just needed to grind ten levels in every single job and investigate how they all fit together but you can see how that might not be very appealing. None of the non-default jobs that I dabbled with really set my world on fire, beyond Idol being a decent multipurpose support role and Hostess having ice attacks. The party member characters are kind of boring as well. Adachi has beef with Horinouchi, but that guy has gone basically unmentioned for the entire story. Nanba had that whole thing with his brother so that he could betray Ichiban at a critical moment and then the whole thing is immediately resolved and forgotten about. Saeko just kind of suddenly pops into existence in the party out of nowhere, to the point where I was expecting her to be the one to pull a sudden betrayal out of nowhere but no, she just exists and has no identity beyond "self-declared surrogate mother for her little sister, who resents her constant meddling." Jungi Han I guess is important to the plot of all those other middle installments that I didn't play but it's not even Jungi Han, just some random nobody who served as his body double. And Chou(?) is, uhh... a guy who exists? I guess? And still simps for his former subordinate because Mabuchi is a lot more motivated than he is? Like Eri is about as interesting as any of these clowns and she doesn't exist at all outside of the business games and being an optional party member. I don't feel any sort of camaraderie or joint investment in the story from any of these people, it's just Ichiban and some party members who may as well be robots. The point where I went down to the Kamurocho underground to grind in preparation for the final battle(s), since I didn't want a repeat of the wretched Majima and Kiryuu fights, and then spent about seven minutes plinking down some sandwich board dipshit who resists every kind of attack except Electric and yields a pittance of Exp is the point where I decided I don't even really want to push through any more. At the very least I'm going to put it down for a while.
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Jan 14, 2024 20:54
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Pushed through to the ending of Y:LAD since I was literally at the final gauntlet's doorstep and all. Final area had good music but the final non-perfunctory boss fight was a real chore and the ending was kind of unsatisfying as well. It didn't really succeed at making me care about these characters or their connections to each other in the end. I guess I'll do Gaiden and 8 at some point but I'm not in a huge hurry right now. e: I can't believe the first trailer for this game spoiled basically the entire story lol. I didn't see it until I'd almost finished the game but this really seems to be a thing with Sega. Perfect dodging every spoiler for this game wasn't even worth it in the end, didn't care much for the second half of the story. Sapozhnik fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 07:23
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Okay I slept on it and drat, I have Opinions about the end of Y:LAD, because it really left a nasty taste in my mouth. To cut down what was a way-too-long rant, I just don't like how it spends the last half hour of the game asking me to feel sorry for a butthurt right wing manchild that the entire game has spent building up as an irredeemable piece of poo poo. I understand that you're not going to get a particularly nuanced engagement with these sorts of topics in a game series that romanticizes organized crime groups that engage in loan-sharking and human trafficking in real life, but I feel like Y:LAD was particularly egregious about it because it is a personal story about a very lovely person rather than merely having Yakuza groups as a general systemic backdrop of the setting. The point in the midgame where Hamako's girls all get rounded up and deported after the early game beat us around the head with the details of their desperate situations was the point at which Masato became irredeemable, but we don't spend any more time feeling sorry for the sex workers that he deported because in the end they're just set dressing for the purposes of story telling aesthetics, and engaging any further with them is just not good aesthetics. It's weird too, because even in the middle of his big responsibility-dodging pity party he clearly misses the entire reason why his girlfriend from the start of the game in the end wanted nothing to do with him (that is, him being a weird awkward nerd throwing daddy's money around and clearly making everybody around him uncomfortable). He'd rather blow his brains out than take any responsibility or endure any more butthurt. Oh and also Kume is every bit as rotten as Masato is, but Kume is an ugly little snivelling goblin that the audience is meant to hate, but Masato is an intelligent and well-spoken pretty boy who the story wants us to agree with, that he is just misunderstood and, you know, you can sympathize with the reasons for his incredibly destructive temper tantrum just a little bit, right?
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Jan 15, 2024 19:13
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ImpAtom posted:I don't believe the story is ever saying that you, the audience, are supposed to sympathize with him. Kasuga cares about him because Kasuga is a friendship elemental who wants to give everyone possible a chance and he is important to Kasuga because he is Kasuga's basically-brother and he wants an ending for him that isn't him dying. He's a bad person but Kasuga is pretty strongly defined by seeing bad people and going "You are a piece of poo poo but that doesn't mean I won't try to help you not be a piece of poo poo." Kasuga should befriend Kume and set him on the right path then. Short kings need love too. Sure Kume stabbed Kasuga's brother to death but everybody makes some regrettable lapses in judgement every once in a while. The bones of the plot are actually perfectly fine and they could have done something really good with it, they just needed to add another character like Nanoha, but have this character work for Hamako instead of Nonomiya. Interact with her regularly, talk about her family situation, have her hang out in a location that they player frequently visits. Then after the sanctuary sweep she's just, gone. Your final conversation with her was something arbitrary and insignificant. Have some flashbacks of Kasuga and co hanging out with her. Then at the end have Kasuga face down Masato and say that hey, he loves Masato like a brother, he wishes things had gone differently, but what you have done cannot be forgiven and you have to for once in your life face up to it and take responsibility. That would have been fantastic and it involves hardly any changes to the story. Sapozhnik fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 19:32
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Wait how did I play through that entire game without knowing that you could just summon an Uber from anywhere from your smartphone ayfkm
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Jan 15, 2024 21:36
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Spicy red hot take while I can still safely read this thread: Yakuza Zero should have been a reboot instead of a prequel because all of its one-off characters (or reinterpretations of people who get killed in Y1) are so much more interesting than anybody in (what I have seen of) the rest of the series so far. I get that it was supposed to be a tribute to the existing series' established canon but I feel like it ended up being a victim of its own success. Fans of long-running series don't want to admit it but when there's a breakout new entry that brings in a bunch of new fans then there's usually a good reason why the series wasn't very popular before that entry came out. No more Tachibana or Nishiki or Sagawa or Shimano but hey we get to follow loving... Haruka and Date around for like five games, hooray. Apparently Saejima and Akiyama are interesting characters too, maybe I'll get around to playing their games some day but it doesn't really feel worth it.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:18
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Sapozhnik posted:lol New Game Plus is a dlc and the base game is $70 Alright gently caress it whatever, I'm in. I'll make an exception just this once. I want to go along for the ride day 1 even though I've hardly played any of the other games in this series yet.
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Jan 24, 2024 00:39
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Matriarch in Y7 seemed pretty cool but I'm not a big fan of DLC that screws up game balance. It wasn't even very cleanly integrated since you don't get weapons for the two DLC classes until fairly late in the game I think. I didn't get them in the end. On the other hand reclassing Saeko or Eri into a naginata-wielding badass would have been stylish as heck so maybe I should have. Looks like this time around you get some goofy sports jobs instead? Ehh.
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Jan 24, 2024 02:36
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Hopefully in IW your party members won't constantly run in front of and across your path while you're walking somewhere
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Jan 24, 2024 03:26
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Story objective: Ship Shinjobi's package ASAP Hmm I think I'll go play Mahjong for six hours
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Jan 25, 2024 16:53
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Is it just me or is the walking animation a bit jerky? Kind of turns my stomach a bit. The game claims that it is running with a 60 fps frame limit and my GPU should be able to handle that.
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Jan 26, 2024 02:18
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The deluge of QoL updates are pretty great, although they'll make it a little hard to go back to 7. Just the fact that everybody regenerates MP now and not just "mages" is a killer feature.
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Jan 26, 2024 15:59
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Auto-advance can be turned off now, but on the other hand the "floaty" subtitles disappear if you hit pause, which is kind of annoying. Not helped by the fact that Ichiban has a lot of internal monologues during those sections at the start of the game and they flash by real quick.
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Jan 26, 2024 19:41
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Lakbay posted:I skipped 7 because reviews said it was boiler plate JRPG combat and a little grindy and I picked up 8 because of the glowing reviews and this Ichiban guy is a cool dude I'd tell you to put down 8 and go play 7 now but well the intro and recap spoiled pretty much all the major plot beats of that game. Still, it follows on very directly from 7 so it's worth doing nonetheless. If for no other reason than 8's QoL stuff is going to feel rather painful to do without in 7. Also the date stuff is kind of dumb and cringe but 8 seems to start off a fair bit quicker than 7 did, there's already some rather meaty plot happenings by the end of Chapter 1 whereas in 7 you're still deep in the past establishing various peoples' backstories at that point.
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Jan 27, 2024 03:08
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In this game you play as an unusually large puppy named Kasuga Ichiban
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Jan 27, 2024 05:19
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Ch 1 and 2 I really like how they organically hooked into stuff that happens into the middle of 7 instead of pulling any Rubber Bullets nonsense. Arakawa spent his entire life from start to finish getting utterly poo poo on to a degree that would actually be comical if it weren't so sad, and Sawashiro is still a selfish piece of poo poo rear end in a top hat. But yeah I can see why Kazama and Arakawa are never going to be protags for this series because unlike our dumbass nice boy protagonists they absolutely did kill the poo poo out of a bunch of people. Also either they fixed the timing on Karaoke or just blew out the timing windows to a ridiculous degree, because I have played exactly one Karaoke track so far (Hell Stew) and got 100% on it first try. It still feels like you have to hit very late but maybe that's a Linux thing. Anyway time to
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Jan 27, 2024 21:18
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 20:42 |
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Oh yeah, I tried the dating app's free trial and got catfished. Then I got annoyed and tried again and actually got a date. And well that was weird and awkward but OK. Don't think I'm doing that again. But anyway back to the topic of Like A Dragon 8
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Jan 28, 2024 06:46
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