Agreed. I get that it’s not as enjoyable as the Ezio trilogy, but it’s still fantastic on its own.
On a semi-related note, since it’s about AC, but after having finally watched a clip of Valhalla yesterday, with both versions of Eivor (male and female), I can conclude that, it really doesn’t matter whether you play them as a woman or as a man; their voice sounds terrible either way.
Finished Yakuza 3. Mixed feelings. I was really struggling with the game, and after 4 chapters, decided to mod my save file to easy difficulty, which makes the game a bit of a cake walk. Weird on normal difficulty regular fights are pretty easy but once you start fighting bosses, it seems like they can block so many of your attacks and you’re doing pitiful damage against them. I’m not that good at fighting games which is probably part of it but Y3 does seem unusually obnoxious. But really, I’m into Yakuza for the story more than anything, and Y3’s plot is… OK. Definetly a downgrade from the first 2, but I am enjoying how Yakuza continues to build upon its story and lore. It gives an advantage that even when you have a weaker plot, it feels like you are at least being rewarded by having more stuff built around the setting and characters.
I’m a couple hours into Yakuza 4. Very interested to see how Y4 and Y5 unfold since I know those are the games that have multiple playable characters.
Jeez if you think that is weird wait until they become a Persona-like RPG. Actually I think you will like the Like A Dragon games, they seem more up your alley.
Yeah I am very excited to eventually hit 7 and 8, I think gameplay wise I will be far invested in them. Not to say I’m not enjoying the games I’ve played so far, but it’s not really my thing. But as it stands, I’ve ended up deciding to play all the major games in order so will be a while til I reach the newer ones.
Leaker Midori has said that Sega plans to try to make Persona and Like a Dragon into annual franchises. Not a full on numbered title each year but some sortof release each year, so who knows, maybe Like a Dragon can kill the time before 9 by returning to more classic Yakuza gameplay.
Honestly burnout hit me so hard I went from playing 3 to skipping to Like A Dragon. I wound up playing 6 but didn’t feel the need to play the multi-protag ones. But that is just me though.
I probably won’t play all of them at once. Will do 4, see how I feel afterwards, maybe move onto something else for the time being before returning to 5. It probably helps that I am tending to skim a lot of the side content. I want to do as many sub stories as possible, but otherwise just not really touching the mini-games or collectables etc.
Again, just very interested to see how 4 and 5 go with the mutliple protagonists.
That sounds like a good idea.
I wouldn´t consider myself great at fighting games (well, Yakuza, since I don´t play any other) either (though I have improved compared to when I started with Y0 and YK1), but Y3 is “affectionately” referred to in the Yakuza community as “Blockuza”, which should tell you how most people feel about the combat in that game. Personally, I don´t have such a pejorative view of it, but will absolutely admit that it has probably the weakest combat out of all the main entries now, though the bulk of that sentiment is due to the fact that the original Y1 and Y2 have basically been “replaced” by the Kiwami remakes, thus making Y3 the “oldest” entry and essentially devaluating the improvements and development it brought into the series after the first two. I haven´t played them myself (yet), but I wish Sega would finally stop being such a bunch of cun*s and stopped ignoring their existence and re-released them on modern platforms (people can bitch about the MGS Master Collection´s quality all they want, but at least Konami cared enough to release those games, even if just for the moolah).
Anyways, back to the combat - yeah, bosses in Y3 block a lot, and you really need to get upgrades asap (which sadly isn´t always possible, especially early on) to use different tactics against them. That or spam one particular combo which seems to be able to break their defence. But yeah, don´t feel bad about lowering the difficulty on this particular one.
It´s always interesting to read how people feel about the individual stories/games in the series, and I´m rather curious where you´ll place it once you finish Y4 and Y5 (which have really convoluted storylines). Y3 seems to be either very high or very low for most people. Personally, it´s one of my favourites, both story-wise and in general (I will absolutely admit a huge part of that is due to my love of Okinawa and I wish it would make a comeback as a location), despite its undeniable flaws.
Yakuza continuing to build up on its story and lore can be a mixed bag, especially when they start introducing stuff for the sake of one game, only to never mention it again, ignore it or just outright retcon it 
(still, it´s great fun and I love it too)
Like I mentioned, those get really convoluted. I mean Y4 starts out well enough but falls apart in the last section due to some very questionable story decisions which were probably made because someone on the writing team apparently really liked a certain overrated American movie from that time which was a remake of a certain underrated Hong Kong movie… I also couldn´t help but feel that Kiryu as a playable character was just forced in last minute. But despite the story, it´s actually one of my favourites gameplay-wise. Y5 on the other hand… well, let´s just say I still have mixed feelings after the first playthrough.
Also, in case you´re playing these on PC, you should absolutely consider using the restored content mods (at least) for Y4-Y6.
Coming back to what I mentioned earlier - fuck, Sega, if you wanna go down the hellhole of annual releases, at least give us ports of OG Y1 and Y2 first!!! (and then Dead Souls and Kenzan, though apparently the latter wouldn´t fly with today´s audiences much)
I highly recommend taking at least a short break between 4 and 5. I played them back to back last year and regretted it. Even if you´re in it mainly/just for the story (which was what kept me going), Y5 is fucking loooong. And not the good kind of long, but the “this stuff absolutely didn´t have to be there” kind of long. Seriously, I mean all the Yakuza games demand a lot of your time due to the long cutscenes and conversations (and long battles), but Y5´s pacing is just god-awful. I think it contributed a lot to my mixed feelings about it.
The substories can vary in quality between games, but generally at least the ones not “locked” behind certain minigames should be easy/worth doing. I particularly recommmend doing the Y4 ones, as they add a lot to the characters´ backgrounds (well, Akiyama, Saejima, and Tanimura at least).
EDIT: One tip for Y4. Before you go for the finale (the final fight), make sure to get the whole Sacred Tree Armour set and equip it for Tanimura. Don´t ask, just do it.
Just finished Assassins Creed Freedom Cry – it was on sale on Steam for like 6$ so I thought ehhh why not, just for a tiny taste again of AC Pirate stuff.
It was okay. Extremely short tho. (basically a mini side-story expansion for 4, made into a standalone purchase).
The story was… okay, but it was again short, and events moved really really quickly. Also this is like, 10-years post AC4 I think it says, so I have barely any context for Adewale’s character, and the game itself has virtually no tutorial about how the Post-AC3 combat/stealth mechanics work… Ah well.
There were lots of collectibles and areas to visit via sailing… Zero clue why someone would do this since there’s no reward I can find online for that. There are a few extra weapon upgrades you can find by visiting specific islands though.
The ship combat was fun, mostly. It helps that your ship is pretty beefy and strong at the start and it doesn’t take long at all before you can make yourself pretty overpowered with cannons.
The travelling with the ship, I still found extremely tedious. Just… engage “travel mode”, and watch your ship kind of travel faster along the water, with little input needed from yourself. The sound design is also pretty muted. Not much rushing waves to listen to, or even some original soundtrack. It’s weirdly quiet.
Oh dear god this new Hold-R2-Only movement system is freaky. AC4/FC doesn’t have many areas to really test your parkour pathing or prowess, but what little I’ve seen here, it makes me a little worried for how I might enjoy AC3 when I get to it. It’s very clearly a janky, automated step-down from the Classic gameplay. At least they kept the manual jump button! (Though it serves almost zero purpose).
The one absolute highest point in this tiny game was the “sinking slave ship” mission. It was extremely emotionally charged and brutally depressing,
seeing the enemies deliberately sink and kill a whole boat of slaves rather than let them get freed by Adewale.
And well… a lot of them still died, trapped, drowned, sinking into the ocean with no escape. Yikes. I’ll remember that mission for a while…
It was also reallly buggy. Way, way more than the Ezio games I played. (I only ever encountered one with those old games, and that was in Revelations.)
Lots of combat animations would get stuck in a wall, and the character would start to become extremely jittery, like they’re being pulled apart at the seams.
Also there was one fast travel point that was totally broken, spawning me 50feet up in the air above the town, and I’d have nowhere to go but plummet to my death.
Ah yes, the “let´s make this absolutely appropriate DLC a standalone thing so we can charge more for it” move. I´m glad I bought it back when it was still a DLC…
I wouldn´t be able to tell you the story even if you tortured me. Anyways, to an extent I think you might be better off not having played AC4 yet, cause Adewalé was easily one of the best characters (in an already great roster) there who made a great contrast to Edward. I really liked him (and was sad when he disappeared for story reasons) and was looking forward to Freedom Cry, but boy was I disappointed. Not only is he really dull there (and I´m not even gonna talk about Rogue), but they made it even worse by spamming you with the “free slaves” side stuff. Don´t get me wrong, I really liked that they focused on that within the story, but fuck me, you couldn´t walk ten steps in this “game” without the UI bombing you with a “help the fleeing slaves / free slaves from auction / free slaves from ship / etc.” side quest.
You probably won´t that much in this regard. AC3´s Boston and New York are underwhelming to say the least when it comes to parkour (worse than AC4, since that one at least has Havana which is pretty good and gorgeous), not to mention they are bland architecturally. What killed it most for me though was the Frontier. Not what I would call fun traversal.
Okay, so, Thursday night I ordered the PSVR2, deciding that yeah, for everything I’ve researched, its a great device for people new to VR or who might not have the PC resources to take advantage of higher-quality experiences on that platform (with even more expensive rigs/devices)
The madlads at Amazon sent it within one day, it arrived sometime yesterday afternoon.
So, I set up and tried some of the psVR2 machine last night.
Setup took about 30 mins for me (plus 15-20mins to charge controllers) especially to figure out the angle the headset needs to sit on my head, lens spacing for optimal clarity, etc. But it works well enough once you find the admittedly tiny “sweet spot”.
I only managed to spend about 30 mins doing the VR tutorial for Resident Evil 8, but ooooh boy it’s neat! (I am apparently not immune to motion sickness after a while)
Pretty good quality textures. Cool 3d effect.
All your weapons are on your person, since there’s no d-pad! (Guns at hip, butt, back, ammo on front pouch, knife on arm)
Also, gun firing has to be aligned with your dominant eye, and reloads are by default all manual. Weird needing to punp a shotgun after every shot or re-chamber on a bolt-action rifle. Pretty neat!
And there’s such a cool feeling seeing a 3D environment around you, and digital hands to control! 
Even the Main Menu is VR-supported!
(Unfortunately the VR Mode doesn’t support trophies/achievements, but I guess that’s incentive to replay the game in special third-person mode one day…)
These pictures don’t have any of the same effect as the “Wow!” I felt at first (I think it’s a flat-conversion of my Right Dominant Eye visual) but yeah it’s pretty cool.
Also fuuuuuck, the OLED displays and their blackest-black display are really gonna make dark environments super spooky.
In this image, (ya cant see it here) I was stunned at how the paper I was holding casted a shadow on my -arm- if held above it.
You know what must be done ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡° )
People with mods on PC are a little too crazy and horny 
Niiiiice dude.
Pro tip for motion sickness: I’ve found it really valuable to close my eyes when the horizon line changes. Going up stairs, jumping down ledges etc.
Back and forward doesn’t bother me but up and down makes me a bit barfy if I haven’t been playing a while.
Also snapturning. I can’t handle smooth turning. Hope you’ll enjoy the headset!
This afternoon, I started RE8 proper.
Oooh boy, this thing is FREAKY freaky. It looks really nice, it’s cool how they handle the cutscenes with a full 360º view (but control ripped from you. Weird to be standing, when Ethan dives on the floor in a cutscene.)
I also only managed to play about 30 mins today. I am not immune to VR motion sickness it seems.
A lot of that time was spent walking around the prologue house and seeing all the cute details.
I half expected the baby to jumpscare me, since she’s tethered to my left shoulder, it’s cool but also freaky at times.
Then, once you get into the main snowy, mountainous area of the game, oooh boy, SPOOK CENTRAL.
Thanks to the VR’s OLED screens, black is pure black. And since you have to walk through a dark forest at night, then an old clearly-lived-in cabin at night. It’s terrifying.
I juuuust got to a eerily quiet village out in the daytime just before I started feeling queasy and needed to stop.
Playing RE8 for the first time entirely in VR is either gonna turn out okay, or will be the worst decision of my life 
You can use the knife as a throwable weapon/projectile in RE8 VR… 
Always annoying when that kind of thing happens. In Sega’s own wheelhouse it would be nice for them to bother re-releasing Persona 1 and 2 at some point. Not to mention there is a small mountain of Sonic games still stuck on original hardware.
At the time of writing, I’ve finished 4 and have started 5, currently just started the second chapter/playable character of 5. In terms of main plot, I would probably put Y3 last, and would actually struggle to rank YK1, YK2, and Y4, since they all have a lot of elements I really like.
Yakuza 3 spoilers:
I actually like the orphanage and Okinawa. It’s a different setting and gives Kiryu something really different to do. OK, maybe giving Kiryu 8 kids to look after in addition to Haruka is probably too much, maybe it would of been smarted to consolidate some of the kids, like maybe just have 2 girls and 2 boys instead so they would be more fleshed out, but otherwise, I like this. The Okinawa yakuza and there own problems are quite interesting too. I think it starts to fall apart a bit when they head to Kamurocho. Date, Majima, and The Florist feel like they’re suffering from the Dragon Ball problem of being legacy characters who turn up but don’t really have anything interesting to do aside from what they are known for. I think the plot just completely falls apart when Kiryu and Date meet up with the politician at the Diet who gives a massive info dump. I don’t care about Black Monday, or really that much about the politics of Okinawa. (Even if I do sympathise a little, especially since Okinawa being threated by a military base or new resort by an elite based somewhere else is something that is applicable to parts of Scotland.) Mine is an alright villian, if anything I wish he got more screentime. Hamazaki disappearing from the plot only to appear right at the end is very strange, I know he comes back in Y4, so don’t know if that was always the plan but still it is rather odd. The mystery about the Kazama look a like is a bit of a let down too, both in that it just turns out to be his twin brother, and the mystery of how he travels so quickly from Tokyo to Okinawa turns out to be that he just took a very fast plane. I still like a lot of the game, but it does feel a bit tired, with how they handle Kiryu. With 4 and 5 having multiple protagonists, 0 being a prequel, and 6 being Kiryu’s finale, I can see the writers perhaps struggling to know what to do with Kiryu at this point, and perhaps wanting to move on from him.
Yeah, seen a few examples of that already, but it is cool when they do deep cut references. Y4 substories especially seemed to have a ton of callbacks to past Yakuza games, like the colour gangs from Y1, it’s enjoyable when playing the series in order makes you feel rewarded.
Yeah, Y4 definetly gets convoluted by the end, and I think once everything is revealed, it doesn’t feel like it quite fits together. I understand the main plot points and motivations but it really doesn’t fit together quite nicely as it really should do. Definetly a slower game too, some cutscenes do like to take their time, and Y5 it feels like the pacing is starting to get borderline glacial. Still though, I enjoyed Y4, I enjoyed the new playable characters and their stories. Yeah, Kiryu feels a bit forced in, but otherwise, I think Y4 is a fun time. No idea what movies you’re referring to be honest though.
I’ve tried to get the restored content mod for Y5 but couldn’t figure out how to make it work with the game. I don’t know how to mod games really I’m afraid, I struggle with computing outside of the basics.
Yeah, I’ve started Y5. Probably not a smart move but after Y4, I was very curious to see where things would go from here, especially with again using multiple characters. If I do get tired from it, I can always take a break midway through. I’m actually enjoying Y5 so far, even if it is rather slow and you can just feel that it is going to be a long plot. I ended up doing the whole race mission storyline and all of the taxi side quests, which I thought were nice diversions. Weird for Yakuza to do realistic taxi driving, reminds me of Test Drive Unlimited.
I think Y4 has the best batting average of substories so far, I really enjoyed most of them. Y1-Y3 have some good or interesting substories, but alot of them did feel a bit generic. I feel like there’s like a ton of substories from those games that have Kiryu encountering various scammers.
Took your advice. Was actually good because it meant having to do some side stuff, like the whole Nair side quest series. I ended up playing Y4 on normal difficulty, and was very surprised at just how easy the game was, outside of some spikes of difficulty, usually when starting as a new playable character who starts at level 1. I only had 2 continues in the whole game, and I think both wern’t from being killed in fights but rather from failing stuff like QTEs. So I got the armor you suggested, went into the final area and holy shit, Tanimura’s final boss is such a leap in difficulty from the other 3 final bosses and anything else in the game. I could probably cheese it if I took nothing but healing items with me, but Jesus, thank god for that armor to make it more bearable. What an annoying piss poor fight to end the game on, my god.
I had a suggested video on YouTube a few days ago. Downloaded the game and am currently playing…
Castlevania: ReVamped.
I really like it so far! Had it crash a few times, but getting back to where you were isn’t too bad, especially with a warp system. You can buy cards that buff your weapons and some abilities. According to my stats, I’m about 52% complete.
I’ve been from time to time playing CoD, Elden Ring & Tf2 but have been mitigating my time playing CoD cause of how much anger it boils on me
After 5+ Restarts
70+ Hour Playthrough
From December 2023 - June 2024
Baldurs Gate 3 has rolled its credits and I’ve saved the Forgotten Realms from the Illithid.
Rejected my past as a child of bhall and sought redemption.
Most importantly, had intercourse a total of four times with unique individuals all in one playthrough.
Me (Center), Hathor “My Friend” (Left), Sven “Other Friend” (Right)
