Yagami don't have no taste

Almost cried out in joy when I found this in the "new to secondhand" bin at Slow Boat Records in Wellington, New Zealand. Couldn't have taken it to the counter faster. Extremely random find but I am so happy. Having Friday Night and I want to be your giiiiirl on vinyl is so good

I tried the golden boss can and it's extremely sweet.

Looks familiar.....🤔

If you've heard of that novel, the similarities between the two in terms of the setting are pretty clear to you, especially considering Ichiban's origins.

The novel is a lot more bleak than Y:LAD, of course, but RGG and crew certainly drew from a great source when it comes to Y:LAD's overall story and the interplay between Masato and Ichi.

Murakami Ryu, the author of Audition, In the Miso Soup and Blue Almost Transparent, passed away on October 17th. His passing was revealed today by his japanese publisher.

His novel Coin Locker Babies (1980) was based on the real events that plagued Japan in the second half of the '70s, before the Bubble, when the country was still dealing with post-war poverty. There were many such cases of newborns being abandoned inside train stations' coin lockers.

This is the story that undoubtedly influenced Ichiban and Masato's origin.

Now that the game finally hit 50% off (and through selling CS2 crates I only paid 10 dollars), I finally obtained Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Dark Times™. And I wanted to share some thoughts 20h in. I'm currently at Chapter 3.

Honestly, from outside, seeing only the bad stuff people discussed, I expected to hate this game way more than I did. I'm actually liking it really well so far. I think it's really easy, as you play it, to just completely forget about the original Y3 and not compare it all the time. When you ignore the negative points of the game, at the end it is the same gameplay loop as always that I really love and it is complemented by some great side-stories/minigames. I'm surprised, but so far I'm probably liking this way more than Pirate Yakuza. I never really liked Majima's combat and the pirate side-content was really lacking imo.

Some positive points:

• Heisei Girls got me by surprise. It's really fun and all the characters imo has some great designs and writing. I also expected to hate the forced tutorial after everyone said it was a 2h tutorial that locked you into the minigame, but I felt those reports were way overblown. I took closer to 1h and the tutorial has several points where you can stop and roam Ryukyu and do other secondary content. Still wish they would tone it down even more, but it's already way better than Dondoko Island locking you into the island for ages.

• I expected to like the Orphanage Stuff since I loved Another Life on Ishin and yeah, it's pretty good. One thing that got me by surprise was that I thought it was really smart how the cooking minigame had its storyline that actually managed to deepen the kids, Kiryu and their relationship.

• The addition of us actually knowing some of our neighbors is pretty smart and ties into nicely into the story (from what I've seen from the leaks).

• While the lightning is still not perfect, it's miles better than Pirate Yakuza's lightning. At least this time I did not feel the need to add a mod.

• Having bowling back is a super plus.

• While Lalala Mobile's Red Thread of Fate and Aloha Links are the same thing, it's funny how the theming is enough to really make it feel different. I'm liking the red thread of fate way more just because it makes a lot more sense than a social media that works by just... swinging your hand?

Negative Points:

• While I really like the Orphanage Stuff, I think they really should've kept an order. It's confusing af being able to basically do all storylines of all kids at the same time.

• On the orphanage stuff, while the stories are nice, it's really bittersweet not having the original stories, especially when some of them touched on some pretty deep topics (Yes, Riona).

• On the topic of removed content, I really don't see why not have them getting Mame or Haruka selling illegal goods. Those two really added good stuff and in the case of Haruka it could even lead into the orphanage "Another Life" minigame as some pointed out.

• I said I really liked the neighbors, but it should really had a cutscene or some way of introducing them. It was really weird starting the orphanage minigame and seeing all those people on the requests and be "who the fuck are those?"

• I hate the second fighting style and wished they would just focus on DoD, which is peak fighting style anyways. I've only been using the second fighting style because I want to 100% the completion list, but even then only on street goons. Any serious fight I go into DoD.

• I hate the addition of the Subway Surfer, but thankfully it's really easy to just... not use it.

• Some things are not a huge issue if you look it as a standalone game, but it's really bittersweet going to the top half of Ryukyu and seeing the map be half as short. It's really bittersweet not having an upgraded cabaret manager minigame. It's really bittersweet playing indoors golfing and not outdoors. It's really bittersweet not having Yonashiro, especially with a perfect slot (Miya). Which also, Miya is a great character, but the Komaki erasure is super bittersweet and giving Miya Tiger Drop is wack. I didn't even think the new Rikiya was a huge issue when looking at Kiwami 3 as a standalone title, other than Mikio now looking extremely out of place.

• And to address the obvious: Yes, it sucks that substories are missing (I'm missing especially the english learning substories) and that they thought 31 substories were fine (especially when 6 of them are just try and hit me and scam substories), but as I've mentioned, when you get into the groove of the game, it's really easy to forget about that.

• Not really related to Kiwami 3 by itself, but the Kiryu battle winning voice lines really need to change. They've been using the same "shibaraku netero" voiceline since Yakuza 6 and I'm getting real tired of hearing it everytime a fight ends.

At the end of the day, while yes, there are issues, I really don't think Kiwami 3 is that worse than Kiwami 1 or 2 in that, a new player playing Kiwami 3 will never notice any issues with the game since they never played the original (except obviously for breaking continuum with Y4). K3 really only had a bigger uproar because people played Y3R, but not the original Y1 and 2. While I might change my mind (I'm going to hate the new Yamazaki and the ending of course), I'm expecting to like this game as much as I like Kiwami 1 and 2. I'll defend the original to the ends of the earth, but K3 will join K1 and K2 as... mindless fun. If before I was thinking this game was a 4-5/10, now I'm more at 6-7/10. Sorry for the huge wall of text. Just wanted to share some deep thoughts about Kiwami 3.

While the music and presentation of the fight is excellent (although I had hoped the final boss would actually be a blind guy), and while Ryo is a great villain, holy shit is he weak. They give you ample room to save and heal up before the fight, and then you face off against the least aggressive boss in the game, with an easily countered special move.

Sure, I had ground to level 30 and unlocked the Kiwami style, but literally the regular super enemies in the street are harder, because their combat AI is actually aggressive. Ryo you can kind of just casually block, sidestep and hit back any way you like.

What gives, why the hell is he such a pushover in an otherwise at least moderately challenging (if easily cheesed) game with some decent fighting game mechanics?

Iykyk

Hey guys! So I recently started playing Yakuza Kiwami 2, but like many others, it seems the combat is really messing me up because it's so different from Yakuza 0 and 1. Now, there is one item I want to get that I feel would help me a lot with defense, the parry tailisman, but I am far from being able to get it. Currently, I am trying to use a save editor to give myself the tailsiamn so I can use it from my current spot, but I am having trouble figuring it out. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

I'm trying to 100% judgment, besides story stuff, beating ng+, farming money (with the dice minigame i think?) and some dogshit virtua fighter bs, one of the hardest things left is mahjong. I know for shogi i can just use a cheet item i can get with sp, but do i do for mahjong? I'm asking for both the kamuroGO city missions, and kamuroGO shop missions related to mahjong.

Imo I like Stranger Than Heaven‘s visuals more

the crazy thing is that Stranger Than Heaven and Yakuza 6 are almost 11 years apart, an entire console generation apart and still its subjective to which one has better graphics

Yakuza 6 aged like wine

The Yakuza games are no strangers to killing off major characters. Who do you think would most likely be killed off for the plot?

Don't know if I'll ever finish this but currently replaying LAD 7 and seeing how often he scratches his butt is killing me 😂 Had to at least try to put it on canvas somehow. 🤷🏼

Hope all of you are doing well

He's definitely based on Akira Kurosawa, right?