Mister Jack

I'm gonna clarify that by saying it's a good entry point IF you don't plan to play the Kiryu saga. If you want to play the Kiryu saga and just haven't gotten around to it yet then you should do that first.

It did not

Yup, I'm in the same boat. Preordered the PS4 version just now and will eventually upgrade to PS5. It occurs to me that even when I eventually get a new PC, the PS5 hard drive will still be faster and that matters to me more than graphical upgrades.

Definitely return Watch Dogs. Everything I've seen about it suggests it's going to get a huge price drop sooner rather than later. Even then I don't know if it'd be a good idea to buy it.

Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony What the fuck did I just play? No, seriously. This franchise has officially gone off the rails. I could talk about the gameplay tweaks, some of which were sorely needed, but never mind that shit. The real elephant in the room is the story, which is the most important part of a visual novel. That makes it impossible to talk about without spoilers so the non-spoiler stuff I'll say is that for the most part I liked the characters in this entry. With some exceptions I found them overall to be more compelling than a lot of the previous entries' characters. I found fewer of them to be annoying wastes of time, although I did not care for the new Monokub characters. They really serve no purpose other than to be forced comic relief and Monokuma was already doing that on his own. Alright, so with that aside, I just gotta talk about the ending... So yeah, even with the improvements to the gameplay and the cast of compelling characters I would still call this entry the weakest of the three. Even if I put aside my distaste for the ending, there are some real pacing problems. The prologue and the ending drag on for way, way too long and some of the new minigames during trials also last too long and mess up your momentum right when you're on a roll with your deductions. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a bad game. The trials are still fun for the most part and there are cool new mechanics like telling lies to advance your case. I'm just flabberghasted that all of this turned out to be in service to a story that was so fucking stupid.

To the best of my knowledge, yes. They're definitely trying their damndest to give this series mainstream appeal with all this extra effort.

Something else Yakuza related that I noticed recently is that not only do they have both the original Japanese dub and an English dub, but they also did separate lip syncing for both languages. To make it even better, if you choose to play in Japanese with English subtitles you get a different script that sticks more closely to the original dialogue as opposed to the more localized (but still very good) English script. Having more language options like this is fantastic and it should happen way more often than it does.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon Man I have a lot to say about this game. For starters, this has easily become one of my favorite games of the year. A lot of people scoffed when they heard Yakuza would be moving to a turn-based RPG format but it's not a joke. They took it quite seriously and did their best to make a real, respectable RPG. Most Yakuza games take around 20-30 hours to beat the story so I figured this would be a smaller scale RPG but I was dead wrong. By the time the credits rolled I had clocked in 51 hours. This is a full-fledged turn based RPG that deserves to stand among the giants of the genre. There is room for improvement in a possible sequel, but this is a great first effort. Combat is interesting. While it is turn based like what you're probably already familiar with, there are things to consider regarding positioning and timing. There's no battle screen and everyone just fights at whatever location they happen to be standing at, which can be important. If you attack an enemy who is standing near furniture or a trash can or something else like that then your characters will pick up whatever object is in their path and use it as a weapon for extra damage. If you're fighting near a road you can even kick enemies into oncoming traffic if you hit them at the right angle. While you can't manually control where your characters are standing or walking during battle, your position is something to keep in mind when choosing commands, especially since enemies you aren't targeting can knock you out of an attack if you happen to run past them while trying to reach a far off enemy. There's also an interesting mechanic where certain strong attacks can knock enemies down and if you hit them while they're down it's a guaranteed critical. However, despite being a turn based game enemies recover from being knocked down in real time and will only stay down on the ground for a few seconds. You have to follow up quickly to get that damage bonus but that also means sacrificing a chance to heal or use a skill. You have to decide what's more worthwhile and you don't have much time to do it. There's also a job system here and while it's not as deep as something like Final Fantasy it still gives you enough freedom to decide what kind of role you want each party member to play. You can even your cell phone during battle to call in summons for hugely powerful attacks, but each summon costs money and the stronger the summon the more it costs so you'd better not neglect your bank account. The story is great and probably the best in the series since Yakuza 0. Ichiban Kasuga is a wonderful protagonist and more than worthy of picking up where Kiryu left off. Ichiban himself is nothing like Kiryu in terms of personality, strength, or intelligence and this is a good thing because it allows him to have his own identity and not just be Kiryu Jr. The party members are all compelling and fleshed out with stories of their own that are easy to get invested in. The voice actors all give great performances as usual. Even the English dub, which hasn't been done since the PS2 days, is very high quality. I can honestly say that people who choose to play in English would not be missing out or getting an inferior experience. Both the Japanese and English cast really gave it their all. The ending also provided a satisfying, emotional payoff that even got me a little misty eyed at certain points. I don't know if they plan to make a sequel to this game. I would assume so since it's such a big franchise for Sega, but if the creator were to decide he wanted to retire the Yakuza series and move on to something else, the plot of this game would be a good way to wrap up the series. Oh, and it wouldn't be Yakuza without side activities and the activities here might be the best yet. You got your batting cages, golf center, classic Sega arcade games (of which this game has the best selection in the series), battle arena, shogi, mahjong, and karaoke like in other Yakuza games, but there's also an addictive business management side game that can make you filthy rich AND a Mario Kart style go-kart circuit called Dragon Kart, both of which have their own separate storylines! It's just crazy how much effort they put into things that some players might never even touch. That's not even a complete list of everything you can do. I'm deliberately leaving out some things that weren't in the advertising so people can discover it for themselves. This game, like every other Yakuza game, can keep you busy for a long, long time if you let it. I usually try to find things to criticize when giving my thoughts on a game but I really don't have many complaints. The biggest thing I think they could fix for the sequel would be to give you direct control over where your characters move during a fight so you can plan out those environmental attacks more deliberately. I should also mention that while about 75% of the game is fairly forgiving, there is a massive jump in difficulty during that last 25% that will almost certainly require level grinding. Fortunately, right around the time you hit that point the game provides you with a pretty efficient way to level up so it's not the end of the world, but the fact it does that at all shows that they knew exactly how much of a spike there was going to be. I know why they chose to do this but it's still kind of jarring. So yeah, I loved the hell out of this game and even after 51 hours I still have a ton to do. I haven't even beaten Dragon Kart yet! And that's not even getting into the stuff that only opens up after you've beaten the main story. This is the kind of game you can easily play for 100, maybe even 200 hours. It's the perfect quarantine RPG. Oh yes, regarding the whole "is it okay to start here" debate I would say the following. If you have no intention of playing the Kiryu saga and want to jump into this as your first Yakuza game, you should be able to do so without feeling completely lost. While past events in the series are frequently referenced, it isn't mandatory for you to have played the games detailing said events to be able to follow the story of this one. Just accept that they happened and you'll be fine. If, however, you are still working your way through the Kiryu saga then you should be warned that this game WILL spoil the ultimate fates of many characters and storylines. Like a Dragon doesn't exist in a vacuum. Many things that happen in the plot are the consequences of things that happened in earlier games.

Yeah I used to have a bad habit of buying multiple games at once and not playing most of them. I now try to never get more than two at a time at the absolute most unless there's a limited time sale or the game is something that will be going out of print before long.

Can't fuck up the Yakuza without a kickass soundtrack while you do it.

Playing Yakuza: Like a Dragon has made me realize how much I want more JRPGs where the protagonists aren't a bunch of teenagers. I should preface this by saying I'm not against high school heroes in principle. Hell, Persona 5 is one of my favorite JRPGs of all time, but this trope still accounts for what feels like 95% of JRPGs. Yakuza's party members, with a few exceptions, are a bunch of middle aged bums and losers who are in their forties. They're broke, washed up failures. Sometimes they're even homeless. Nobody believes in them and nobody thinks they'll amount to anything, but they're still fighting against the yakuza corruption in Yokohama simply because it's the right thing to do. They're huge underdogs and that makes it really easy to sympathize with and root for them. In fact, these are some of the most well written JRPG party members I've seen in a long time. More of this, please.

Yeah those lawsuits are going nowhere.

There just happens to be a sale for this franchise going on right now. Time to finally finish it.

World of Horror is pretty cool. I guess it counts as a roguelike? Each game lasts between 1-2 hours if you make it to the end and it changes every time so yeah, that seems right. The old school point and click interface isn't especially intuitive and the tutorial isn't as helpful as it probably should be but once you understand what you're doing it's not really a problem. This game takes place in Shiokawa, Japan and has you play as one of many different characters who are investigating supernatural mysteries in order to to stop the revival of an Old God. Which god you're trying to stop can be changed with each playthrough and each god has a different penalty to make it harder. For example, if the Old God of your playthrough is Cthac-Atorasu then you're rendered unable to run from battle. If it's Ithotu then you and enemies will both deal double damage. This game really makes you feel the pressure of the time limit. Every action you do slowly raises something called the doom meter. Resting to regain your HP and sanity also slowly raises it. If the doom meter gets to 100% then the Old God awakens and the world ends so you really can't screw around and waste too many actions. This game is a lot like a tabletop game in the sense that it's all about stat checks. During your investigations at different locations you'll encounter various creepy and supernatural events and if you choose to confront them then the outcome depends on a dice roll. Success can get you experience, heals, or even items while failure means taking a hit to your HP, sanity, or doom meter. You can't just run away from everything either because that's an automatic sanity penalty so you have to pick your battles carefully. To make matters worse, after every mystery the Old God's influence will increasingly corrupt Shiokawa and make it more dangerous, either by taking away valuable resources like the shop and clean water or by perverting the town itself to nerf your stats and add more enemies. Combat was the thing that confused me the most for a while but that really comes down to the tutorial not being thorough enough. It's turn based and on each turn you have 200 "time points" to spend. You can choose various actions between offensive, defensive, support, and spiritual actions, each one taking a certain amount of time to perform. Weapon attacks depend on your corresponding stat. Knife attacks are based on your DEX stat and while the damage done never changes, a higher DEX stat means each swing takes less time to perform. Likewise, using a baseball bat will check your STR stat to determine how many swings per turn you get. Each character excels in a different stat so everyone will be better with different kinds of weapons. So far I have found that the best way to win is to prioritize leveling up whatever your weapon stat is. Things like perception and charisma can be helpful in getting you allies or lowering your doom meter, but extra attacks per turn is just too useful to pass up. Of course, when you level up you also have the option of sacrificing a stat increase for a heal to your HP or sanity instead, and there will inevitably be times when you're hurting so bad that you just can't afford to pass it up, especially during times when your doom meter is high or you can't go back home to rest. It's all about risk vs reward. This game is in early access and it's still in the process of adding new characters, items, mysteries, events, Old Gods, and even mod support. There are some areas that still need improvement. Spiritual actions, the only thing that can hurt ghosts besides throwing salt at them, are way too difficult and unreliable to be useful and need a serious buff. Some of the characters are also borderline useless compared to others and need to be balanced. Thankfully, the devs have acknowledged these issues and are working to fix them. Even in its unfinished state it's a pretty fun game and I look forward to seeing it fully realized.

Bought this because I dig Junji Ito, I dig Cthulhu mythos, and I dig RPGs. It checks a lot of boxes for my personal tastes.

Today is a good day

Actually it takes place after Yakuza 6 and Yakuza 6 changes the story in a way where if he plays Like a Dragon first it will absolutely spoil things for him.

With all the craziness going on I almost totally forgot to preorder this!

Gooood morning, Republicans! Say hello to your next president!

I cannot fucking take this

The stuff about Dominants and Eikons sounds a lot like Naruto. No, actually it sounds exactly like Naruto.

Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part One Ho-lee fuck. Where do I even begin? Well how about the fact that this easily takes the difficulty crown from the base Doom Eternal as the most blisteringly hard FPS game I've ever played. To be honest it's so hard that I got frustrated more than once. It's so hard that I actually think it was a mistake for id to let people buy this as a standalone game without playing Doom Eternal first. If you haven't played Doom Eternal, you do NOT want to start with this. Ancient Gods assumes that you have not only played the base game, but mastered it to a degree that first time players will never be able to grasp. No pussies allowed here. There are only three extra large levels in this expansion, which took me maybe 10 hours to beat on ultraviolence, but at least three of those hours came down to dying over and over. The first fight, the first fucking fight in this DLC took me five tries to get past it and by the time I finished these---I repeat, three levels---I had probably died over a hundred times and you bet your ass I mean that literally. I hate to keep banging this drum but I really cannot overstate how much the difficulty has jumped in this expansion. So what makes it so much harder? For starters the encounters are much, much bigger with swarms of elite enemies, a far greater number of fodder enemies, and arenas that are full of hazards that you're pretty much guaranteed to run into over and over again. The waves are also looooooooong and you get very few checkpoints. Most of the time the game expects you to do the entire thing in one go with no deaths. That alone is tough enough, but the new demons feel specifically designed to give you the finger. The worst of them is an enemy who buffs other demons into minibosses while also removing all their weaknesses and making them immune to freeze grenades. You cannot kill this enemy without killing the buffed demon first, and even after you do that it's only vulnerable to one weapon that kills enemies very slowly, so good luck killing it without getting fucked in the butt in the process. You gotta do it though because otherwise he'll just buff another demon and you have to do it all over again. God damn. And don't even get me started on the final boss. That fight is so overwhelmingly, relentlessly unfair that I would not blame anyone who chooses to accept the super armor when the game offers it to you. Even then you might still get killed over and over. I appreciate the work that went into this expansion. They made a decent amount of content and the level design is pretty well thought out. It adds to the story and lore in cool ways and the new music, while not as good as the base game's music in my personal opinion, is still solid. My only real complaint is just how carried away they got with the challenge. Doom Eternal was pretty damn hard but it always felt fair and balanced. Ancient Gods frequently feels like the game really doesn't want you to finish it and is willing to do whatever it takes to stop you. If you're an absolute masochist, a true glutton for pain and punishment, then I wholeheartedly recommend Ancient Gods. By all means, dive in and enjoy the suffering. If you are just a casual FPS player who wants to relax and shoot stuff, however, then you might want to ask yourself if you're willing to deal with the frustration. Seriously, this game gave me actual adrenaline rushes while playing it. My hands were still shaking when I started typing this post.