F4LL0UT: Just beat Yakuza 6: The Song of Life on PS4. As I've noticed thanks to this very thread that makes it the fifth Yakuza game I have beaten this year and the seventh one in total. Yes, my brain is complete mush at this point.

So, all in all I loved it. I always suspected that it would be one of the best in the series since it's fairly recent and not held back by being a remake. Not as good as Yakuza 0 but probably in my top 3, somewhere between Kiwami and Kiwami 2.

I won't say too much about the story as 1. barely anyone here knows the series well enough to care and 2. those who care surely don't want any spoilers from such a heavily story-driven series. Without saying too much: this story starts out with something extremely personal and that in itself makes this one of the most engaging games in the series. There's of course once again some highly convoluted yakuza plot that Kiryu gets involuntarily drawn into but at its core the story is about something that anyone who cares about the main characters will also immediately care about.

Famously this is the conclusion of Kiryu's story. I assumed that would mean that it would be a celebration of all the popular characters and locations in the series. I was wrong. Oddly enough most mainstays of the series are barely featured here and some do not appear at all (it pains me to say that Majima is virtually absent here). Instead much of the game takes place in a new location, Onimichu, and the plot largely revolves around a whole bunch of new characters. The good news is that this new cast is very interesting and likeable and luckily their story ties very nicely into the aforementioned highly personal plot. Even though I was a bit disappointed by the absence of some of my old favourites, I think that Yakuza 6 has one of the best plots in the series and I enjoyed it immensely.

Besides that: this was the first game in the series developed specifically for PS4, so in terms of technology and also many mechanics it's quite a huge leap over Yakuza 3-5 (and to a slightly lesser degree 0 and Kiwami). Now, the odd thing is that I already knew Yakuza 6's technology and mechanics from Kiwami 2 but playing Kiwami 2 I had not quite recognised how big a leap it was - probably because Kiwami 2 stuck with a bunch of standards from the original Yakuza 2 on the PS2. Yakuza 6 looks much better and has better animations and physics and seamless connections between locations and so on - albeit at the cost of 30 FPS only, even on the PS4 Pro. That made the action feel a bit "floaty" and the controls a bit unresponsive to me at first but I actually got used to it after a few hours and I appreciated what I got in return. Yakuza 6's Kamurocho is just so much more gorgeous and alive than anything in the earlier games.

Another thing is that the game was downscaled a lot but all in all I feel that it was for the better. You only play as Kiryu here and his set of attacks is quite small but more meaningful and combat feels a bit more "organised" here - importantly the set of heat actions is heavily reduced here and you won't inevitably get a chance to use those every couple of punches. Likewise, access to healing items has been heavily restricted (I haven't found a single shop that carries the most powerful ones). As a result I felt that I had to put a lot more effort into actually fighting enemies here - just spamming consumables and destroying enemies with heat actions non-stop was not an option here. A major improvement is also that the lock-on of enemies was heavily nerfed and Kiryu's was improved - as a result the game doesn't suffer from the often annoying issue of the series that there is no way to get behind enemies while they can do so just fine. I'm not sure I'd say that all of this makes Yakuza 6's combat the best in the series but it certainly feels more polished than in most entries in the series. Oh yeah, and I think it's the only series where you can't equip any weapons (only pick up ones that are lying around) which I did not mind at all as I found the equippable weapons weird and unfitting all along.

Finally, the optional stuff: shockingly this is the one game in the series (at least up to 6) that is fully voiced. Substories finally barely differ in style or production value from the main story stuff. I kinda always wanted that in a Yakuza game and while it's pretty neat I also kinda miss how it was before. I actually always loved how the substories offered a very different mood and pace than the main storyline and the voiced dialogue ironically isn't nearly as expressive and funny as the terribly produced optional stuff from the earlier games - so I'm honestly not sure that I'd rate this as an improvement all in all. And generally the substories are actually quite mundane here. I guess it kinda works better with the mood of the main story but the truth is that I always appreciated the comic relief that the substories gave me - that's largely gone here.

Besides that there's a whole bunch of minigames with stories here. There's a new fishing game in the form of a rail shooter, there's the Clan Creator which is practically a small RTS (and plays very much like the Majima Construction thing in Kiwami 2, albeit a bit less refined), there's a weird thing where you make friends in a pub by drinking with them and finally there's a pretty advanced baseball management game here which I left for after the main story as it's a tad complicated and I don't know jack about baseball. And of course there's a ton of smaller stuff, be it classics like picking up girls in a cabaret club, playing SEGA classics in an arcade and all sorts of gambling games as well as new stuff like a workout minigame and the ability to participate in live chat with cute girls in live motion video. There's also a whole lot of other things, some of which I probably haven't even discovered yet. Bottom line: it's probably one of the most extensive Yakuza games in terms of side activities. I beat the game in "only" 36 hours but I'm sure that I can get at least a dozen more hours out of this game without getting bored.

Anyway, I really like Yakuza 6. It isn't all that I expected but it's a bunch of other cool things that I did not expected. I feel that the game isn't quite the big ending to Kiryu's saga that I was hoping for but it's hell of a good Yakuza game nonetheless.

That's seven games down, four more to go including spin-offs (and another three if they ever decide to finally translate the three Yakuza games that remain Japanese-only).

kalirion: FYI you double-pasted into your post.

xa_chan: Kingdom of Amalur Re-Reckoning + Teeth of Naros + Kel the Dead

AT LAST!!!!
I don't know how many times I started the original game from scrach, after enthusiastically playing it and gradually losing interest in it for more recent games...

NuffCatnip: 'Finished' Baldurs Gate III, as in played through the content that we got so far. I've had a lot of fun playing the game, even through the harder encounters, one level up really makes a difference in this game btw. :D
Excited for the upcoming patches and content. If they keep it up, it's going to be great!

NuffCatnip: I'll have to get back to that game in the near future, I played through a bit of the main quest only to get lost in the many side quests. At least I 100%ed the two DLCs, I liked Teeth of Naros less personally, but it was still enjoyable. The combat gets repetitive fast, but it's still a blast to play. Thanks for having mentioned the game. :)