Topic: Yakuza - OT

Couldn't find a Yakuza thread using search. It almost certainly has to exist, but with the weird moderation over the years and such it's hard to say.

Anyway, been playing Yakuza Like A Dragon. Was really motivated to play another of these after probably over a year without Kamurocho... and my below average experience with Judgment.

Yakuza 7 is more the direction I want the series to go. So far the fighting isn't that interesting, but satisfying enough, like the previous games. The setting is great and the new main character is exactly what the series needed. I love how it mixes silliness with a serious tone, and the writing so far seems to be better than previous games.

Even though so far the writing is good, there has been a lot of it. Probably 10 hours in and I'm still awaiting the moment I'm finally allowed to really free roam the streets.

@Kidfried I created one years ago which I did find with the search. It was eventually archieved because the thread died.

Yakuza like a dragon was my first ever Yakuza game and oh boy how it surprised me. Never really was into the Japanese type of games (nowadays that's the most i play lol), and took a gamble with Yakuza like a dragon after seeing gameplay and rave reviews. It's as you say a rollercoaster of emotions. From silly side quests where you are rolling on the floor laughing to an emotional gripping story, which can give you a smile on your face or a tear in your eyes. That combined with the huge amount of side content there is to do, gotta love that management sim game and karaoke to name a few.

After Like a Dragon i played 0 - 6 and it became my favorite game series by far. Only mistake i made is playing 3 to 6 in a row. The games are great but you shouldn't really play 2 games in a row, then it can feel the sameish pretty fast.

I can't wait for Yakuza 8, which will be more of Yakuza 7. That will be an instant pre order, no matter what. None of their games i tried were a miss.

Really enjoying Like a Dragon thanks to PS+. Only play 1 or 2 hrs most days so it will certainly take a good while to finish the game.

Not played any of the other yakuza games before, so may give them a go in the future if 7 continues to be fun. Releasing so many in one month on PS+ seemed a bit overkill though, feels like a series I'd need a break from between games.

Like a Dragon is great; I just finished it! Combat does get a lot better the more you play; it's definitely one of my favorite modern JRPGs.
I'm finishing up Judgement now and will move on to Lost Judgement.

I gotta say, I do not particularly enjoy combat too much in Judgement. Enemies are way too defensive, they block way too much instead of attacking and bouncing off enemies feels horrible. It makes Crane style feel so...so bad when not in EX. The story makes up for it, I think. It's fantastic, maybe a bit melodramatic at times, but I think it's pretty great.

I've heard Lost Judgement fixes the issues I have with combat, and I hope it's true. I picked up the game and Season Pass for half off. Looking forward to playing it! Gonna be a Ryo Ga Gotoku month for me.

@Constable_What Lost Judgement is in almost every aspect better than judgment. Some people say Judment has a better story, but in terms of combat and side content Lost Judgement does a way better job. Judgment had very few side content stuff compared to other Yakuza games and Lost Judgement certainly improves on that. There is just so much to do, i easily spent 150 hours in LJ just having fun with mini games (you dont have to play that long of course, its optional).

@Kidfried I recently completed LaD and really enjoyed it too.

I liked the combat but did find myself just sticking it onto auto with skills turned off for a lot of fights. It gets even more interesting once you can start playing around with different classes too.

Ichiban is great though and I think having a crew with you for most of the game keeps it more interesting as well. And the story is one of the best in the series and has plenty of twists and turns to come for you!

I do agree that it has a particularly lengthy tutorial/early game game though which can get a bit frustrating when you just want to be running around doing your own thing.

In still in the early chapters, so this might still change, but so far the battle system has been quite awful.

1) One of the telltale signs of bad RPGs in my opinion if there is a big difference between each level. For the player that often means that grinding becomes hugely important, instead of making the right decisions during battle.
2) The game doesn't really hand me a lot of different ways to approach a battle. So battles are all alike.
3) Dying means respawning at the same place, but with hardly any health, meaning you have to find somewhere to restore (or use your items). Respawning at a save point or a restaurant would have made way more sense.
4) There's a lot the game doesn't seem to explain well. I mean, sure that could be on purpose in a game like Elden Ring, but this is a game which after 15 hours of play still feels like I'm doing a tutorial.
5) Not being able to escape BECAUSE you have low health has always seem to me like a design flaw in any game. Whether or not you can escape from a group should depend on our skill level.

I love all the non gameplay aspects of the game, but combat so far is a downer. (Many of my favorite games are turn based JRPGs, so it's not that.)

@Kidfried I didn’t find combat too tricky in the game other than for very early on where it was often best to avoid fights or “cheat” and save before a fight so you could reload if you got overwhelmed. Most of the game I found it was the other way around and 95% of battles were almost pointless.

It also takes a while to get interesting in combat as levelling up is quite slow so new moves aren’t unlocked quickly. Unlocking the different classes makes a huge difference, as does expanding your party through the story.

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but better than creating a new one, I guess.

I started Yakuza 3 remastered recently and I'm now tooling around in Kamurocho and the random encounters are starting to get on my nerves a little bit.

It's been a good while since I played 0 and the Kiwamis, but I seem to remember that there was a way to mitigate the amount of random encounters in those, somehow. An equippable item, or something?

Anyone know if there's a similar mechanic in Y3 remastered?

@FuriousMachine You're in for a rough ride with Yakuza 3. The combat is dreadful and it's aged quite poorly. This is one that I would recommend blasting through on easy for the story beats. I don't think you can get an item to kill random encounters until late in the game, from memory.

@johncalmc Yeah, was afraid of that. I started it on normal and already I'm getting frustrated with some fights... and I'm too far in now to start over on easy, so I think I'll just power through and hope that I won't end up resenting the game as a result.

@FuriousMachine Only real tip for random encounters is just to walk to avoid them as opposed to running. I think there are items that also make the encounters less likely, but I am unsure when you get them or what specifically as I have never sought them out (I do believe there are shoes that make you quieter when running to make it easier to avoid encounters).

@MS7000 good tip, thanks I'll google a bit later and see if I can pin down where to get an item like that; hopefully I can acquire it relatively quickly

@FuriousMachine You can also see which enemies are going to start a fight with you based on how they're stood and what they look like, and once you recognise that you can avoid them by running around their gaze.

@johncalmc I guess, but some of the streets are annoyingly crowded and so I would really have to take it slow to be able to identify and avoid in time... and my main gripe with these encounters is that they slow me down in the first place.

Though, I guess it would be worth it to slow down and avoid an encounter as opposed to fighting and then maybe having to reroute to refill health or items in order to be in peak condition for when I reach my destination.

I do love the Yakuza games, but every now and then they frustrate a bit. This one more so than the others (the men in black are particularly annoying, IMO)

So, after googling it seems that the item you get for gathering all 100 locker keys will allow you to avoid random encounters. As far as I can tell, there is still quite some time until I can return to Okinawa, so I won't be able to verify that in a hurry

@johncalmc @MS7000, thank you both for your tips. After you told me I could identify the assailants beforehand and I started actively looking, I realized that they were more easily identified than I initially thought, so now I've managed to cut down on the frustration quite significantly (I didn't realize that they were always standing still; I thought they were moving with the crowds, so I thought spotting them would be difficult without slowing down to a crawl. Very happy to have been mistaken)

@FuriousMachine I've been playing it myself recently so it's all pretty fresh, and I know how frustrating it is getting into a fight because the combat is terrible in that one!

@johncalmc Absolutely! Been googling and found a couple of tips for mitigating blockhappy opponents (Komaki moves seems to be a decent antidote for most, so now I'm training like mad ) and now being able to avoid a chunk of the random battles (which aren't to bad combat-wise, just time consuming) I think I'm good to power through whatever it throws my way

Reviving this one more time for the benefit of Those Who Come After:

Opening all 100 lockers will indeed gift you with the Beads of Good Fortune, which eliminates random encounters. You'll have to play until chapter 11 for the very last key to be available, so there will be plenty of encounters to suffer through before you get there. Also, remember that you need to track down Bob U to get the beads and after equipping them you need to "regenerate" the encounters by entering and exiting an area that triggers a loading screen. Works like a charm once all that is done, though.

And with that, I'll let this thread slumber again