Yakuza series

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Re: Yakuza series

Postby Haruto » Tue May 08, 2018 11:23 pm

south carmain wrote: I remember enjoying that movie, and to be fair it's pretty difficult to translate a 20+ hour story in to 2 hours. That being said it's probably been a decade since I last saw it so it's probably not as good as I remember.

So apparently up until Yakuza 6 they were using the PS2 engine to make the games. No wonder they felt so restricted despite last gen's capabilities.

Not true at all. They made a new engine for Yakuza 3. They used that engine until Kiwami.
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby south carmain » Tue May 08, 2018 11:42 pm

Haruto wrote:
south carmain wrote: I remember enjoying that movie, and to be fair it's pretty difficult to translate a 20+ hour story in to 2 hours. That being said it's probably been a decade since I last saw it so it's probably not as good as I remember.

So apparently up until Yakuza 6 they were using the PS2 engine to make the games. No wonder they felt so restricted despite last gen's capabilities.

Not true at all. They made a new engine for Yakuza 3. They used that engine until Kiwami.

Daisuke Sato appears to disagree
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby Haruto » Wed May 09, 2018 12:17 am

News to me. Then again up until Advanced Warfare CoD franchise was using an ID tech engine from about the year 2000 just modded. Rocket league looks like it could be unreal 4 despite being Unreal 3.
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby OL » Wed May 09, 2018 2:09 am

:-s
I think that's a mistranslation or a typo or something. Can't be sure about 3, 4, Dead Souls, and Kenzan (though it seems obvious enough), but at the very least Y5 was definitely running on a new engine. I remember distinctly having discussions about the changes the new engine brought to the table at the time. It's the whole reason 5 is able to show so many people walking around in crowds, while the earlier games had a little more trouble with that, and also why 5 is a little buggier in its visuals than earlier games (new engine, less polished).

It's entirely possible that he just meant they've been able to import elements from earlier engines as the series progressed (random NPC models and whatnot), and that Y6 is simply the first to use all entirely new, redeveloped content. But yeah, they've definitely gone through engine changes in the past, that's for damn sure.
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby south carmain » Wed May 09, 2018 2:15 am

OL wrote: :-s
I think that's a mistranslation or a typo or something. Can't be sure about 3, 4, Dead Souls, and Kenzan (though it seems obvious enough), but at the very least Y5 was definitely running on a new engine. I remember distinctly having discussions about the changes the new engine brought to the table at the time. It's the whole reason 5 is able to show so many people walking around in crowds, while the earlier games had a little more trouble with that, and also why 5 is a little buggier in its visuals than earlier games (new engine, less polished).

It's entirely possible that he just meant they've been able to import elements from earlier engines as the series progressed (random NPC models and whatnot), and that Y6 is simply the first to use all entirely new, redeveloped content. But yeah, they've definitely gone through engine changes in the past, that's for damn sure.

He seemed pretty intent on passing the message that the engine change was a big deal though because it's the first time they can actually make it from the ground up as they want it to be. In this case how they can finally make the game seamless which has nothing to do with imported assets.
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby MJMW » Wed May 09, 2018 4:26 am

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Re: Yakuza series

Postby Your Boy Leroy » Wed May 09, 2018 9:30 am

I'm a fan of Miike's work. He's one of the few directors who gets me interested anytime his name is attached to a project, so I'm familiar with his style and body of work. I can usually find something redeeming in the weaker stuff he's done, and I wouldn't say that I hated his Yakuza film. The style was great, as were the performances. I guess as a fan of both Miike and the Yakuza series, I was expecting a lot more than what we ended up getting. On the plus side though, it was the trailer of this film that helped me discover the awesomeness of Crazy Ken Band. If I remember correctly, the movie may have come out just before Yakuza 2 was released in the west on PS2.

I know that Yakuza 0 and Kiwami both used the same engine that Yakuza 5 had. I always assumed that a new engine was made for Yakuza 3, but if the the PS2 engine really was used for all of the games up until Yakuza 6, then they really got their money's worth out of it. Milked the shit out of it.
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby Truck_1_0_1_ » Thu May 10, 2018 1:48 pm

Your Boy Leroy wrote: I just beat Yakuza 6 over the weekend, and I really enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

I guess a lot of this has to do with the Dragon Engine. The game is absolutely gorgeous and new animations and physics really sell it. I'll admit, I barely touched the Japanese version when I got it last year, mostly due to the combat. But really, once you upgrade it enough, it might be my favorite combat system of the whole series, not to mention in video games in general. Yeah, it may lack the variety presented in Yakuza 0 and Kiwami (0 being my previous favorite combat system), but it just felt so satisfying, and it looks terrific in motion. Maybe that's what the developers were leaning toward when making their tweaks to the fighting; they wanted something a bit more cinematic, something that didn't just rely on one-button heat actions that turn into mini-cutscenes.

The character performances were excellent across the board. I was really looking forward to Beat Takeshi's role in this, and I was surprised that his character was almost like opposite of what he's known for in his own yakuza films. It seemed to kind of reflect his TV personality a bit more, where he's usually goofing off. He really was my favorite character in this, and I found myself pushing forward in the game just to see a bit more of him. The rest of the characters were great too. The small-time yakuza group in Hiroshima and Kiryu's relationships with them reminded me of a similar group in Okinawa from Yakuza 3.

What disappointed me the most was the story. I won't go into spoilers here, but man, I thought it fell apart towards later chapters where a "secret" was introduced, only to be revealed as the typical Yakuza series bullshit. The final boss battle was set-up well, but the boss himself really wasn't. It was almost ridiculous. The ending also felt like a cop out.

All in all though, fantastic game. Not necessarily a fitting end for Kiryu, but the journey there was really fun.

*Forgot to mention that playing through this has made me THIS MORE EXCITED for Yakuza Kiwami 2.


Thanks for the kudos. I'm glad people are enjoying it and not thrashing it to death.

And thanks for saying that, "you thought," the story fell apart at the end, because most-people criticizing the story are subjectively thrashing it apart, but doing so objectively and people are avoiding it as a result.

I'm familiar with the Japanese WWII mindset, especially with WHY the reveal is so huge and integral
and that's why the story is superb; it requires a bit of knowledge of history, but things made so much more sense, once the reveal happened.

As for the final boss, I still think Kuze is a cop out as well; guy sits back and literally says 3 lines of dialogue (it was more, I know) for 12 chapters, then all of a sudden he becomes this huge mastermind, with his hand in every pocket and the TRUE evil. It is 2 and 4 (more 2) all over again; twists only work well if they make sense, but flip-flopping and emerging at the last second, are just gimmicks and poor writing, IMO.

6 set up the final boss well indeed and I thought he was a middling final boss; not as poor as Munakata, but not as good as Ryuji or Mine. Still, the addition of the Triads, the Haruka part and the Hiroshima bits, make 6's story absolutely brilliant, I feel.

Still place it 4th best in the series, after 0 and before Ishin!.

OL wrote: :-s
I think that's a mistranslation or a typo or something. Can't be sure about 3, 4, Dead Souls, and Kenzan (though it seems obvious enough), but at the very least Y5 was definitely running on a new engine. I remember distinctly having discussions about the changes the new engine brought to the table at the time. It's the whole reason 5 is able to show so many people walking around in crowds, while the earlier games had a little more trouble with that, and also why 5 is a little buggier in its visuals than earlier games (new engine, less polished).

It's entirely possible that he just meant they've been able to import elements from earlier engines as the series progressed (random NPC models and whatnot), and that Y6 is simply the first to use all entirely new, redeveloped content. But yeah, they've definitely gone through engine changes in the past, that's for damn sure.


They 100% used a new engine for 5, 100%. As you mentioned, at the time, they were announcing everywhere that the cities would look much better as a result and all that jazz.

I'm loving the subjectivity NOT being passed off as objectivity ITT, btw!
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby OL » Sat May 12, 2018 3:09 am

Finally finished Yakuza 5. Once I forged past all the idol bullshit, it was smooth enough sailing.
Not just that, but this fucker Tatsuo Shinada?
Without a doubt, one of my favorite characters in the whole series. His whole scenario is pretty great. I suppose it's not exactly the most action-packed part of the series, but I think the story for him was pretty great all around, and his side-activities are a lot of fun. I felt at first like it was a stretch to introduce an ex-ballplayer as one of the protagonists, but the story totally sells it. The whole concept of
him being "sacrificed" to bring attention to the game-fixing racket, in turn driving the yakuza out of Nagoya
makes total sense. Not just that, but it's genuinely clever too. On its own, Shinada's chapter could totally work as its own little short story.
But then you move on to the "Finale" part of the game, where they try desperately to tie all of these disparate stories (Kazuma, Saejima, Haruka/Akiyama, Shinada) together, and the whole thing once again completely falls apart. All the shock "twists" are extremely forced and silly. The ultimate mastermind of everything is barely memorable, and practically nothing in his plan makes any sense. And then the final boss turns out to be...
some guy. Seriously, just some fucking guy. Yeah, I know he appears a couple times earlier in the story, but in the grand scheme of things he's an absolute nobody.
Weirdly, the final fight itself is actually really cool; incredibly over-the-top, sure, but it's got some really nice staging to it, some great choreography in the heat actions. But then the reality of who it's against sets in, and afterward it's just kind of like... eh.
As a whole, it's just a really poor, unfulfilling story. Overly-complicated, long-in-the-tooth, almost nonsensical in some respects. Like I said, individually Shinada's story works well, but the grander plot covering the whole game is just... junk.
I will say, I basically enjoyed playing Kazuma's chapter, I basically enjoyed playing Saejima's chapter, and I loved Shinada's whole deal.
But as a whole?
The game is an absolute mess.
And they totally ruined the end of the final fight by cutting in Haruka's shitty little performance or whatever. God, I cringed. So hard.

So yeah, this is easily -- very, very easily -- my least-favorite game in the series. Even counting Dead Souls.
That's not to call it a terrible game, necessarily; there's some cool gameplay in places, some interesting mechanics and ideas here and there. But in the end it feels a helluva lot like the devs somehow forgot what the series should actually be. It's bigger than earlier games, yeah, but that don't equal "better."
We're really lucky that they corrected themselves afterward by creating Yakuza Zero. Absolutely incredible leap in quality there.
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby south carmain » Sat May 12, 2018 3:41 am

With everything it had to offer, Yakuza 5 is definitely the Yakuza game I got the most for my money from. However, if you were to ask me at this point what the story was about or anything about the ending I wouldn't be able to answer, so it definitely wasn't really memorable. I do remember that Daigo had style in that game though :lol:

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Re: Yakuza series

Postby Crimson Ryan » Mon May 14, 2018 5:15 pm

Just need to finish off a playthrough on Legend difficulty and I'll have the Yakuza 6 Platinum trophy for my collection.
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby OL » Thu May 17, 2018 10:15 pm

Started the game, but I'm nowhere near what one might consider "far"; I'm hours in, and I'm still at the "find Akiyama" stage of the opening chapter. :lol:
The reason being that everything feels so open and atmospheric now, that I find myself just wandering, exploring the interiors of buildings, and trying to do fun stuff in fights. It's hard to push myself forward, because it's so easy to just get lost messing around.
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Re: Yakuza series

Postby Haruto » Thu May 17, 2018 11:32 pm

^ I hope you find the cat cafe. Oh, and while not story related and won't say any more than this. Make note of every fire extinguisher. Seriously.

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Re: Yakuza series

Postby OL » Fri May 18, 2018 4:07 am

^^Funny, just today I can across one, got a prompt to activate it, and all it said was "(fire extinguisher)."
Figured it was something that would come into play later on, but it's good to know I should remember them.

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Re: Yakuza series

Postby Truck_1_0_1_ » Fri May 18, 2018 10:34 am

OL wrote: ^^Funny, just today I can across one, got a prompt to activate it, and all it said was "(fire extinguisher)."
Figured it was something that would come into play later on, but it's good to know I should remember them.


Indeed; they are paramount for getting a Platinum and some good bonuses.

I'm glad you're enjoying it!

The Cat Café is nothing at this stage of the game; start finding cats on the street and THEN the café will have a purpose.

I beat Kiwami 2 Wednesday afternoon and man, I still don't see how people love the game's plot so much; for those that can't stand Haruka's part in 5, I don't know how ANYONE can stand the blubbering, wailing mess of Kaoru, at the end of 2 (especially for a, "tough woman," who, "fights and brings down Yakuza)."

Objectively, it just isn't written as well as other titles...

Anyways, I'm beating my dead horse.

The game is just as solid and polished as 6 and just as fun from a gameplay standpoint; the new engine is just fantastic and it is, IMO, the best evolution to the series thus far, even better than the jump from PS2 to PS3. Adding Virtual On as a minigame was a great addition and replaying VF2 is always welcome as well, seeing as its probably the best in the series (I feel it is, anyways).

For those complaining about the cuts in 6 making it a shorter game, well Kiwami 2 is just as short, despite it being 4 MORE chapters than 6 and even heavier from a cutscene standpoint, IIRC. I beat it in 69 hours, only falling short of 10 completion items (literally only Mahjong {as I don't have the time to sit there} and Haruka's wishes, as I couldn't get any of them to work) and missing out on the trophies for maximising Heat Actions (I was only missing one; Haruka's that she gives to you), total upgrades, completion list and the Legendary trophy; all would've probably taken me an extra 2 hours or so.

I platinumed 6 in 66+ hours (or was it 65+? Can't remember) so at only 2-5 hours more, one can see that it is far from being a, "much larger game," than a game that was supposedly heavily cut and rushed. Majima's story took me just over an hour too (and almost half of that was cutscenes), so that isn't a grand addition either.

Soundtrack is worse than the original, I find (which wasn't that great anyways, outside of CKB, "As a Man, As a Brother," and a few in-game tracks), but the graphics are just clean and polished as they were on 6, so that's far from a bad thing. CKB does not return indeed, at any point of the game, but Autotune masters SiM provide the two ending songs; while not brilliant, for my tastes, they aren't bad and musically, both tracks are awesome (lyrically and vocally, they aren't as stellar).


All in all, I place it behind Kurohyo 2 and ahead of Kiwami, on my personal choice for BEST games in the series (as for favourites, it slides right down to 3rd last, ahead of it's predecessor and 4).

5>3>0>6>Ishin!>Kurohyo 2: Ashura Hen>Kiwami 2>Kiwami>Kenzan!>2>4>1>Kurohyo: Shinso>Dead Souls

Just started Hokuto ga Gotoku and it is a ton of fun, thus far. First few chapters are VERY short and flesh out the story more: now in Chapter 3, I'm able to explore and do the usual Yakuza/Ryu ga Gotoku things.
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