Thursday, December 15, 2016

Ryu ga Gotoku / Yakuza 6 review


Finally finished Ryu ga Gotoku 6 and I'm still gathering my thoughts. With The Last Guardian and RGG6 being released two days apart, this has been a week of gaming heaven for me.


THINGS I LIKED

+The new bunch of characters are very enjoyable and I really liked them a lot. I thought I would hate it since Akiyama, Majima and Saejima play very minor roles here but the personalities of the characters shone through.


+ The acting is great. Special mention to Miyasako Hiroyuki who plays Nagumo. he plays the classic hot headed guy who comes to call Kiryu aniki and provides plenty of comic relief as well as cool moments and he does it well.

+ Shout out to Oguri Shun, the kid who got bullied in GTO who gets to stand toe to toe with Kiryu.

+ New engine with seamless transitions from inside buildings to outside.

+ Fully voiced all the way! (If only the kyabakura missions in RGG 0 were fully voiced)

+ Regular enemies actually block and do decent damage, at least on hard.

+ No more three battle styles like in the previous games which I didn't like. I actually like the ultimate heat mode which makes it 1 and a half battle styles. Kiryu spends all his heat and has limited time in this mode which gives him access to new heat moves including the very important knee bash.


+ Its very easy to get experience points to get all the moves unlike previous games.

+ Its the shortest and most efficient Ryu ga Gotoku game ever clocking at only 50+ hours. I totally approve because they usually take over 100 hours. However, I did abandon the kyabakura and clan creator.

+ The snack missions are very, very fun and its the new kyabakura. Its a combination of regular side stories with customers, getting friendly with the mama and being able to karaoke and darts at the same venue. They should have added the girls to the snacks and gotten rid of kyabakura altogether. I have spent a lot of time at snacks and getting along with the regulars is as important as the women.


+ Kiryu being a super sukebe on the internet chat. Its repetitive though but the funniest part is actually not Kiryu's reactions or his ojisan typing but rather sometimes other people in the chat say some very funny lines. My favourite being which do you like more, dogs, cats or me?

+ While the main secret was very meh for me, they managed to tie the storylines together thematically.

+ As per usual, a lot of memorable sub stories that make fun of plenty of things that are relevant in today's Japanese society from mascots to auto cleaning machines to kids being raised to speak English.

+ Virtua Fighter 5 Final Tuned!!!!!!


+ Ability to take selfies. I hate selfies in real life but its fun in game. :)


MEH

= Game runs at 30fps with occasional slowdown. Personally I would keep the old 60fps engine.

= Kiryu needed a couple of extra heat moves.

= Bad guys being more evil than powerful which is why I love RGG2. They could have taken advantage of the fact that Kiryu is way past his prime.

= Unable to turn off auto save.

= Maki Yoko is not a good voice actor cause the game was unable to get her minute facial expressions in. It doesn't help that her character is underwritten but she needed to be slightly more expressive in her voice.

= Haruka doesn't sound grown up. I still see her as the little girl I meat in the first Ryu ga Gotoku. sniff. sniff.

= Haruka's lack of chemistry with the dad.

=  Repetitiveness of internet chatting.


THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE

- The way Beat Takeshi just murmurs his lines. Luckily we have subtitles but I just can't stand how he doesn't enunciate properly.

- The secret of Hiroshima turned out to be very outrageous and the exposition for the bloody secret was way too long which bored me. It must have taken at least 15 minutes. All the while I was praying that they would not do a stupid ending like in RGG Ishin which spoiled the whole game for me.

- But the bicycle is the ultimate overpowered mob clearing weapon with super armour and a huge hitbox.

- The only thing I don't like about the ultimate head mode is that it auto picks up weapons.

- RGG6 has the worst kyabakura system in the whole series. Its like the writers got bored and made it a card drawing question game. This is the first RGG game where I did not finish all the kyabakura missions.The girls are horribly boring and the dialogue put me to sleep.

- Clan mission is a waste of time dumbed down RTS mini game that doesn't make sense in terms of story and I think they created DLC for the stupid thing.


SUMMARY

Not the best Ryu ga Gotoku game but it certainly a reasonably satisfying conclusion to the Kiryu saga. You could say I'm more happy they didn't stuff it up. I look forward to the remake of RGG2 with the new engine and if they can get it running on the PS4 Pro with 60fps, I would certainly  upgrade.

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