On Yakuza 8
This is an old cohost post, the only one I actually made. Vale Cohost.
I've finally wrapped yakuza 8 (like a dragon: infinite wealth) and wanted to jot down some thoughts. More beneath the fold.
combat
the turned-based rpg combat system is improved on yak7, but retains a lot of the same issues, primarily that there is a lot of positioning-based and timing-based attacks but much of that simply isn't in your control - characters will roam around of their own volition, stand up from being downed etc. Most annoyingly, stuff can happen between you selecting an option and it actually playing out, sometimes because you're trapped in an animation, sometimes because... who knows, stuff just happens, enemies get knocked out of range by a random object, etc. Thankfully it's a lot easier, probably in order to 'balance' this out, but this mostly just means you can steamroll through basically everything.
there is an increased emphasis on pinballing enemies into allies or other enemies or into walls etc, and as you level up your bonds with your friends you have loads of follow up actions and this feels pretty great. there isn't that many interesting decisions to make though because of the aforementioned issues, but it feels good to do
I think there's still insufficient differentiation between characters and to some extent jobs. for the most part i'm swapping jobs purely to hoover up the stat bonuses and to a very limited extent specific moves. But often the only thing that feels like it matters is whether each character has an ability knockback, a grapple and potentially an AOE. elemental spread doesn't seem that important (there doesn't feel like much difference between weaknesses/normal/resist) and buffing and debuffing, the status effects that don't involve missing a turn etc, all of these don't have the sting of something like SMT or Pokemon.
altogether i just feel like the systems don't hang elegantly together in any way really
like it's fun how there's a button to just autocomplete fights if you outlevel them - but then why let you get into them in the first place? you still have to load in/load out of the fight interface, so it's still a pain to wander around
aesthetic
the visual and sound design continues to be incredible in line with RGG team's general ethos, though I do think there is a bit of a disconnect for the move animation design (a lot of them come down to 'hit a guy', but that might be a consequence of the pseudo-urban fantasy setting) and with the supers, which are often a bit oddly lacking in impact even when they're patently ridiculous (though this might also be because they don't feel like they do that much damage either)
I love that RGG knows how to deploy its budget effectively, with multiple 'levels' of cutscene and appropriate budget to match depending on 'importance'. its simplistic sometimes but it's effective and that's what you want
something i don't see commented on that much is how diverse and cool the crowd tech is, like not only are there loads and loads of (non-interacterable admittedly) NPCs everywhere but the diversity of body type, race, even little things you don't think about like having multiple relatively believable child NPC models, people with prams, really big dudes and ladies walking around... it's really great. if only they didn't loop the same sounds FX on top of themselves when you walk nearby sometimes...
music, sound, etc is incredible. i actually feel like the OST is standing out even more than usual as being really quite incredible though will have to go through the OST later to double check
minigames
sujimon is interesting but there's some UX/UI stuff I would love to see improved, but that's pretty standard for the minigames. I really do like the odd feeling of having a full open world 3D city to wander around and then challenge people though, and having it interact with the (other) JRPG fighting side works for me.
i'm actually surprised at how much i like dondoko island. I think putting a management layer on top of animal crossing (eg giving it a goal) actually really helps me find a purpose in it. the combat absolutely sucks but being able to sort of craft your own pseudo-city/theme park world is actually brilliant and a sterling use of asset reuse. it's a pity the actual gamefeel of running around and hitting trees and such is kind of meh.
unfortunately I think splitting substories across hawaii and japan was a bit of a miss, obviously kiryu has his whole thing going on but kamurocho especially felt very empty after I did the paltry amount of content there was there. oddly i also found myself missing the 'waving at people to make bars go up' thing in japan, even though it wasn't really that built out in hawaii at all even. kamurcho doesn't even have any party chats in it i think.
story
- pretty unfocused. love the party members and kiryu's whole deal, ichiban is an enjoyable dumbass as usual, but neither villain (or any of the minor parties except yamai and maybe danny dae kim, who is completely wasted) works for me in the slightest. by the end i was actively looking at my phone during a lot of motive rant scenes instead of being interested. dude i don't know you, i don't care. main villain dude was more a vehicle for kiryu to express some (admittedly more interesting) stuff than an actual character
- let's not even go into ichiban's side of the story, his villain is almost completely a non-entity and his personal connection with a different villain just kind of magically wraps up in the ending cutscene (admittedly the direction is incredible so it's easier to overlook)
wrap
in general - and I don't know whether the judgment games will change this - i feel like RGG get about 40% of the way there in terms of game design (maybe even less in terms of story) and then lock it down and just throw asset generation and animation resources at the game and let that carry the game to the end (this is largely how I perceive their brawlers too, which often feel like they're half-baked). i think tbh this works for the team - their output is insane and consistent - but it does make you wonder what a yakuza game that had real thought put into the game design would look like.
it's still a good time generally though. there's never been a 'boys are back in town' as good as this one
honestly i might get the dlc just for more hanging out with the crew shennanigans, though i need to give it a rest for a while