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[kanshoutokoreviews]

messy non-proof checked review of yakuza 1 ps2 let's go So I'm just gonna make a simple review on my most recent game that wasn't resident evil survivor because that game was too short for me to dedicate this sudden burst of energy, Yakuza 1

for background, I played Yakuza 0 over the course of 3 years, I thought it was like, alright? I didn't like the story or the gameplay, but I loved the character interactions, and that's where the strength of Yakuza is to me

this was before I realized that remakes are the devil and that I should probably play everything release date ( that will be explained in a future post ) , which is why I started with 0, but after that I went to Yakuza 1 on the PS2, I tried to play it with japanese dub but unfortunately there was no option for that so I just had to bear with the result

it had resident evil fixed cameras, which I absolutely love resident evil and fixed cameras so I don't mind actually, but what I did mind that the combat was uh…. not flowing well, your animations lasted too long, and bosses would randomly get invulnerability frames while you were attacking them resulting into a near guaranteed hit, maybe there's something I'm missing here but it was just eh

I have to say the english dub wasn't actually as bad as people made it out to be….. for the first half of the game, then the second half came by and it genuinely felt like the budget ran out so the voice actors were just saying whatever, a lot of the lines in the game though are iconic for how bad they are, you can consider it like resident evil 1 on the PS1 in a sense, sure it's bad but resident evil has always been a rollercoaster of emotions, you're walking through the mansion in horror ( well I didn't think the game was scary but I think they were intending it to be scary ) only to randomly find a note that reads "Fever gone but itchy. Hungry and eat doggy food. Itchy itchy Scott came. Ugly face so killed him. Tasty."

but the issue with that is that the cutscenes felt like part of the goofy relief from the tense moments, whereas in yakuza ps2, these WERE the tense moments, that's when the voice acting had to be good, from the little I've played of Yakuza 2, the voice acting in japanese while on average better, still has its issues, Daigo Dojima is constantly emoting in a way that makes me feel like his lines should have more emotion, which is sad because I fucking love how Daigo sounds, he's this sexy bad boy who distances himself from others, but the issue is that there's just no emotion behind the lines during moments where there is implied to be emotion through the animations

Is it fair to judge a game over a poor localization? I don't think so, but it is still something to take into consideration as this is still how many people played the game before kiwami 1 way, way, way later.

but honestly I am someone who can overlook many production errors, so I judged the writing as is and honestly? it was pretty damn engaging, I feel like if I spent more time thinking on it I could find plenty holes in it, but it's a pretty cool story about Yakuza doing Yakuza things, I will complain that as having played Yakuza 0 ( something that the OG ps2 game has no fault over ), I expected a lot of the characters there to be more relevant, only to be shocked as Nishiki, Shintaro ( called Fuma for some reason in the PS2 ) and Shimano all fucking die by the end of the game, even Kashiwagi which I assumed to be more relevant barely had any screentime, this is definitely my fault and not the games fault, this would be like playing kingdom hearts birth by sleep and complaining that you barely see any of aqua terra and ventus in the games after. prequels while they can be made as an entrypoint, in the case of yakuza, 0 was pretty bad in this regard as it made my expectations for characters too high

I will say though, Kiryu felt like he changed a lot pre and post prison, almost like 10 years in the joint made him a fucking pussy

….sorry I had to

so the gameplay is lame, the story and character interactions are better here even if the voice acting sucks in english, there are substories but they're not as deep as substories in 0 which is annoying to me, but again you can't judge a game by what it's sequel did better, that's like judging metal gear 1 for not being as good as metal gear solid 5 or 3,

oh yeah the story I didn't even talk about it!

I am a sucker for the type of story that they went with, brothers to enemies, fighting for their own beliefs and goals, a battle built on jealousy and envy and miscommunication, some Vergil vs Dante type shit, I just wish Nishiki had more screentime ( which kiwami 1 allegedly does???? that's cool, still a remake though ), the story excited me in that confrontation with jingu, where Kiryu becomes the fourth chariman of the tojo clan, the emotions that the story wanted to convey were always felt, and treating it as a completely emotional experience, this rocks, and I hope to see more of this.

also I would like to complain that kiwami soundtrack just feels like it misses the point several times, and electrifies what doesn't need to be electrified do I reccomend this game to anyone?

well unfortunately as much as I am an absolute hater of remakes, kiwami 1 and 2 added story elements that are considered canon for future entires as I hear from my friends, so playing the original PS2 is more so being done as a history lesson and not as a reasonable way to play the series nowadays, I played it because I wanted to compare it to the remakes so I can have better ammunition for why remakes suck ( but honestly a new development in my way of thinking has made playing the remakes unnecessary for that ), also there's the unfortunate part that I am not actually a big enjoyer of the series so far, I'm just playing it so I can reach yakuza 7 because the turn based gameplay appeals to me, like yakuza 1 definitely boosted my opininon in comparison to yakuza 0, but I still need to keep going, from what I've done of yakuza 2 so far I think I'm gonna end up hating this franchise with how repetitive the brawling is getting.

then again there are a lot of people who are into the yakuza series so my reccomendation is honestly? if you wanna be the cool kid who knows the difference between remakes, start with this one, even though it won't have the extra cutscenes that kiwami will have, I still think that knowing the series roots can bring you a greater appreciation for how it evolves, and also considering that you will have less of an evolution jumpscare when you go from kiwami 2 to 3 remastered.

If you like Japanese honor-code stories, you'll probably enjoy your time with yakuza…. just stock up on staminan royales.

[kanshoutokoreviews]

For my 0 followers curious when the next review

I got too fucking philosophical with what constitutes a good game and now I refuse to write another review until I fully have that down, it can't be populist appeal otherwise a game that had no advertisement due to lack of financial funding would be considered a worse game in comparison to something like Minecraft or GTA 6, even if said game could be really great, so I need to discover something that can define what a good game is even if a personal meaning to myself in the end, at least something that would make a reader understand where I'm coming from even if they like/hate it while i hate/like it

[kanshoutokoreviews]

I would like to apologize to my loyal fans about the previous review, I had wrongly stated that SMT DDS 1 & 2 both use magatamas, when they use mantras

Mistake will not occur again, I apologize once more.

[kanshoutokoreviews]

Kinda started this on a whim so Idk how to format this so whatever, there'll be a spoiler blockade for both metaphor and digital devil saga 2 when I enter the story but honestly just go and play metaphor refantazio it's a really fun game

I just recently finished Metaphor Refantazio and I have to say having played Digital Devil Saga 2 after it, it helps me appreciate how far atlus has come but also low-key kinda disappointed with how they've regressed in certain aspects

Let's start with the pros: The mantra system came back from DDS ( how I will refer to digital devil saga from now on ), in which you simply picked a certain path to obtain skills by selecting mantras at the cost of money, and could freely change between the mantras at save points

Metaphor overhauls this by letting you change at any time, and having the mantras ( now called archetypes ) change your resistances, while also increasing your stats in the proficiency for that archetype, like giving extra magic if you use the mage archetype

I love this way of dealing with skills, especially the part where the game allows you to change archetypes for your party members, I also like how if you just already decided your party, you can have the excess party members on their maxed out archetype so they can give you archetype XP towards your main party

I love the press turn combat system, I think it's brilliant, I was a bit disappointed that they didn't put as much emphasis on skills that change resistances to make you stronger against your weakness like in digital devil saga but it was kinda overpowered to begin with, I do think that inflicting weaknesses is a bad decision as there's no point to inflict weaknesses when almighty exists, maybe if they removed almighty skills there would be a point to them but I didn't find any use for them really

Buffs and Debuffs/healing didn't seem to have much relevance until the literal last dungeons as I got past most of the game without healing or buffing much, that could be due to me being an "experienced player" however and the fact that I played on normal mode

Speaking of difficulty options, it's interesting how the harder options make enemies get more turns, but also I wish that was something I could toggle off because enemies get a ridiculous amount of turns either way, there's a boss that has 4 turns, and a high CRIT rate move, allowing him to get 8 potential turns, he can then use a move to give himself 8 extra half turns, for a maximum of 8 + 7 ( a turn used to get the half turns ) 15 turns, so adding in the extra turn would lead to 17 whole turns! It's too absurd for me to have even considered so I just played the game on normal

Cooking has been TREMENDOUSLY buffed from what I can gather, I didn't bother with making coffee in persona 5 as I didn't find a point to it really, you can literally cook an item that gives you 4 extra half turns in metaphor from what I've seen other players do ( I assumed the cooking was just as useless as persona 5 coffee so I didn't actually use it ), everything else is the same too and I didn't really feel like going out of my way to get cooking ingredients, I did dabble after getting a follower ( what social links are called ) ability that allows you to cook without spending time but I didn't even use the stuff I cooked most of the time

The social management part has been made easier for better or worse, you no longer need to choose the correct answers really, I was able to do every side quest and confidant ( I'll just call the followers confidants from now on ) on the last day and that's only due to me accidentally having to waste a few extra days because I didn't cook a certain item for a specific quest, if I had better managed my time I probably could've finished with 10 days to spare

The monster design for humans is superb- although it's not really original as they just took Hieronymus Bosch designs 1-1 so I can't really give atlus credit for that, I can still commend them for choosing them out as they are really cool

Now to start with the cons: which are unfortunately the spoiler part as I really hated the story lmao

First of all FIRE THE GODDAMN ANIMATORS ALREADY, I HATE THE ANIME SCENES SO MUCH, THEY LOOK SO BAD COMPARED TO EVERYTHING ELSE

"bro that's people's jobs-" yeah cool their job sucks, get the 3D animators in on this they did a better job and I could see the goddamn models clipping from time to time, you shouldn't let someone whose job is to mop the floor, who doesn't mop the floor, keep his job, and god damn is the 2D animation really bad ( this doesn't include portraits or menu animations those are still gorgeous I'm referring to pre rendered anime scenes )

Anyway

The writing is still atlus tier mid, with the story never going as deep as you'd ever assume, and always baiting the reader

For example: the main character is the prince's friend, and he is part of the most minority race in the world completely overrun by racism and tribal tensions, you are trying to assist your good pal to get on the throne by undoing his curse first, but across the way, plot details occur that make it impossible to undo the curse, due to magically enforced democracy occuring so you end up having to run as a candidate to then give the prince his spot on the throne

Sounds a bit icky to us but different perspectives and whatever and we are to assume that due to the more historical setting, they never knew democracy so this is just perfectly fine to them

I thought during near the endgame that, our character had been training his royal virtues this entire time, he got the support of the people, he is the one that is chosen by the masses, surely there's gonna be some conflict between the main character and the pri-

LMAO YOU THOUGHT

THE MAIN CHARACTER IS ACTUALLY THE PRINCE

WILL OF THE MASSES? MAGICALLY ENFORCED DEMOCRACY? NAH WE JUST GONNA HAVE THE ONE WHOSE BIRTHRIGHT TO BE KING BECOME KING

The grander plot was the most interesting part of the story, especially how the game asks for you, the player, to give your name, and then there was a big theme going on with reality and fiction that I wanted to know how it was going to revolve around, especially how whenever you died the screen would say "Fiction is Dead", I thought for sure there would be some meta fourth wall breaking things going on- nope it was just used for online functionality probably, I played the game offline so I wouldn't know

The main villain is a Griffith copy in every way possible that I will refuse to refer to him as anything other than Griffith for the rest of this review because atlus knows what they did when they were designing this character

Also the main characters are actually just straight up bullies, they have the power of the archetype, the only people in the entire world to have that power, and they just... Use it on your average guard???? Like fr??? Like I get this is a matter of life and death but little girl furby who was just out here tryna sell her big ass vehicles got hit with the UNFILTERED RAY OF GOD for daring to fight the main character

Everyone else needs to use a magic staff which according to game logic can only use one spell at a time (or at least that's how the staffs that you can buy work others can use more than one) and also required more magic, your archetypes can use MORE magic, require LESS effort, and can give PERMANENT ENHANCEMENTS OUTSIDE OF THE ARCHETYPE USAGE and also depending on the archetype can just STRAIGHT UP FLY???? ( I may have misunderstood something with the flying part )

Like in persona or digital devil saga 1 and 2, whenever you fought enemies, they would be other shadows so it would be equal footing, whenever you fought humans, 99% of the time they would have the ability to use personas/turn into demons

But in metaphor refantazio? HOHOHO NO! Only the before the final boss can use an archetype, everyone else is just a regular ass human which is absolutely crazy, it feels like genuine bullying dealing with everyone, like I would consider the easier difficulty ( ignoring devourer of stars ) an intentional choice if it weren't for the devs voicing lines that clearly meant that they didn't intend for me to OTK the enemy boss by having injured dialogue

Speaking of gameplay cons, I didn't have to grind for most of the game really until I reached the optional boss devourer of stars, he would always critically strike me and the ailments were such a pain in the ass that I grinded my entire party to be immune to critical strikes and ailments by leveling up a certain archetype lineage, that took such long amount of time I went from level 50 something to about 70, I wish there was a way to turn off the party XP, I was able to do that in bravely default iirc and it let me grind out my characters to get specific skills without worrying about overleveling

But then again I think this just really sucked, I knew exactly how to beat the boss, I just needed a few specific skills, I don't know how to fix this issue as you kinda need a way to limit the player from having access to everything right off the bat, but also having to grind for sooo long just to get a few skills is a bit unreasonable,

An idea I have is maybe make it so you get everything by buying the archetype, and design the skills less as a linear progression of like Light, Medium, then Heavy arrack, and instead give unique properties to them ( besides elements! Persona 5 had an interesting idea with technical attacks albeit twas a bit broken ) so that even if you have the skills unlocked it won't really change much as you aren't getting access to some "severe damage" skills and instead are maybe getting access to "3-5 wind damage with a chance of stealing money", damage this way would instead be scaled by the respective offensive stat which would probably lead to minmaxed builds being a bit more broken, but metaphor kinda already solved that by instead of giving you several skill points to allocate, you only got one skill point to allocate

Devourer of stars was a boss I had a love hate relationship with, he reminded me of Library of Ruina where you would prepare your characters by editing their passive attributes to deal with whatever enemy you're about to face, but the problem is that the grind to get to that in metaphor was absurd, and also the reward was too good, after I was immune to critical strikes and ailments the boss was just done for, it would probably be better to instead have the "evade" things as the passives you could input ( although that has its problem of still being an RNG-fest that would, when benefitting the player, cheat the boss out of 2 turns per whiff )

So while I do feel more bosses should be like the devourer of stars, I do think that the grind was absurd ( and almighty attacks should either be removed or reworked because you can either waste your time with one time weaknesses or do a really strong almighty attack that doesn't need much to prepare )

Also there were issues with translations I assume? Like for example the Charge/Concentrate skills were claimed to be only usable once per battle but were usable many times, meanwhile a secret skill at the end which was claimed to be usable once per battle could actually only be used once per battle.

I also may have missed a tutorial because I don't recall a single place mentioning that physical magic skills like one of the skills you get super late for the main character on the prince archetype can scale with either magic or strength, I kept leveling up my strength after being a magic whore the entire run just to be able to use the almighty physical skill he gets at the end not knowing it scales with magic too

I rattled on enough about gameplay let's go back to the story

The story is balls but specifically in the confidants I swear they just go and follow the same formula as every other fucking persona game

The hulkenberg confidant in specific feels very similar to the ryuji confidant, I just wish they had more creativity with the confidants and unironically less stakes, I already have my stakes in the main story, can't I just get to know the character outside of that? Like personally know them, not hear their tragic backstory about how they were a human experiment, but genuinely just talk to them as people, go hang out at the fucking tavern, actually have back and forth communication-

Oh yeah I held on this for too long

So basically, our good main character Will, is a silent protagonist, who was given a voice actor

But kanshoutoko I hear you say! How can you be a silent protagonist while having a voice actor?

Even though Will has a few lines here and there, the game still suffers from "you're our leader!" While proceeding to let someone else plan everything out and say everything, it's gotten to the point where your first party member is the one giving speeches in your fucking place like chat- this just sucks, why did you even give him a voice actor, why did you go the political debate/democracy route if you're not gonna have the main character act like a true Democratic candidate

You can go to do debates in game which basically amount to

Candidate: I think we should all worship shoes! They are very cool!

Main Character: Shoes are to be worn!

Audience: he said shoes are to be worn? Does that mean that he intends to "wear" down the corrupt church? Is he going to save the world from this endless corruption? I trust this man to be our king!

This is an exaggeration but it very much feels like the crowd is the one making up your speech because atlus refuses to let the main character actually speak more than one sentence at a time except for the ending I guess, but beyond that, you have for example this fucking fairy Gallica, who acts as the Morgana of this game, completely removing the main characters thoughts, which I absolutely hate, her only use in the plot was 2 things

1. Play the main character music and that is not a joke

2. Spy on the enemy that one time

You may claim that Junah/Grius recognized Gallica but honestly there are a million ways that Junah and Grius could've joined the party or recognized Will as someone on the side of the Prince, I only listed out those 2 as those are the essential tasks that nobody else could've done, but even if I'm generous and add the recognition, that's still only 4 things in this very large JRPG, her existence only hampers and doesn't add anything.

Also there was supposedly a racism plotline between the party members but the story immediately forgot about it and only brought it up for one line near the end

The game feels like a continuous "Oh my God something is gonna happen?!!????" And then nothing happens gg go fuck yourself

I want to reiterate I still like the game and am feeling very frustrated after finishing that I was done and kept seeking a similar feeling which is why I played DDS2 right after, at a certain point you already expect with atlus the bad story telling but it wasn't always this way?

Like don't get me wrong DDS1 and 2 are really badly written for reasons that you assume to be intentional but really aren't, but if you excuse the fact that they were incredibly rushed, the game took some risks by having you for example play through an entire dungeon without your main character, constantly having to use party members you may not be used to using ( which is shitty considering there is no innate party share ), it may not have been well implemented but there certainly was a risk

Meanwhile metaphor has to somehow be an even safer game than persona 4, their literal safest game yet, like you really made a whole new IP just to take the safest route in every single decision when making the game?

All in all Metaphor is still my favorite game made by atlus so far, but atlus can do so much more story wise I feel, and gameplay wise I feel like they are getting close to getting a "perfection" of the formula, I have hopes for them gameplay wise but I have given up on them making an interesting story with interesting characters, doesn't mean I still won't complain about it but it is something to not have hopes for at this point

Anyway I hope whoever reads this liked this, there's honestly more to say but I wrote this before going to bed so yeah, expect infrequent releases as I still need to finish something to review it ( and I'm not reviewing something I played a while ago out of memory )

[cutepetsuwu]

These two heard you might be having a bad day and got really concerned. https://ift.tt/38N2VV2

[bidoctor]

Dazed being my entertainment during this lockdown

[catasters]

[hobbbitor]

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.  wizard  .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.