izigame.me

After having getting all the trophies for all the other games in the past 2 years, I was obviously very excited for this title. And I was right to be !
First of all, concerning the fighting. I liked the gameplay of Y7 already, but the improvement here is huge. Being able to move, having combos systems with knockbacks, more damage if you are close to an opponent; there is an entire new strategic feeling to it, I really enjoy it.
I still believe though, like Y7, it's not perfect in the sense that it feels you can bruteforce most things; you can ignore anything about magic, about weaknesses, about a lot of things like this and you'll still be fine. That makes a very enjoyable game most of the time, but a lack of fair challenge.
The side content is overall very good, and wow, there's a lot to do. you have access to a lot of classic minigames and more, and a few new minigames that are sometimes pretty cool (crazy delivery) and other times... questionable (Sicko Snap) .
Ichiban has all the actual substories, Kiryu has none, which is a dissapointment to me. But although Ichiban has "only" 52 substories, they are all pretty good in terms of content, they are long, with actual background or interest to them, etc. I rather have 52 well worked ones than 80 mediocre ones. Then you have stuff like Sujimon, which to me is uninteresting and unfortunately a bit too omnipresent, especially given how little I cared about it. It's funny 2 minutes, then you feel like it's an elaborated joke that went too far.
Dondoko island, though, is pretty cool, it feels another game inside the game, which got me hooked, and again impressed me that they went and created a completely alternate experience with a different fighting system, different HUD, different vibe overall, like, they really put in the effort in it and it's mindless and enjoyable.
Other than that, Kiryu's Bucket List had me very hyped, but... I don't know. In some ways I feel like it fell short on a few elements. Making it a side story means that pretty much any character appearing in it will not have any importance in the story, because otherwise it wouldnt make sense for people that haven't played the side story. And, that, pretty much sucks, in my opinion. I would much rather have had Kiryu be forced to do these Life Links as part of the story, if that could make the characters in it even slightly more relevant.
Kiryu gets to actually meet only 1 of them, and for all the other ones he is just listening in on a conversation they have about him. I don't say it's absolutely uninteresting, but it feels like a big wasted potential. Going into the game, I wanted really more, an actual farewell from Kiryu to all the people that he met throughout the games. He pretty much got to say goodbye only to one.
I wish they worked on Kiryu's part as much as they worked on Ichiban's. We can see they know their stuff and the game is made by people who love the entire series, not just LAD fans. but unfortunately, it feels as though they've been told "hey remember that it's Like a Dragon, not Yakuza"
The story in itself is good, makes sense, doesn't get too complicated, and really has no big flaw. One thing that I enjoyed was that it really was direct continuation of Y7, and it could be seen from start to finish, a lot of references are made to Y7, what happened in it, etc, it really feels like they are actually living in that world and that everything that happened then is important. In the past, I felt like this series wasn't very good at this specific point, so I'm glad that here they made that effort. They kind of try to do that with Kiryu too, but I feel like they are somehow way better at remembering random stuff that Kiryu did, like, pitching in at a ramen restaurant, than actually remembering story events of even Gaiden, somehow. Which feels really really weird at times.
The antagonists are okay, they are really not top of the shelf like some previous past titles, but are both coherent with their motivations and identified early enough in the game for you to antagonize them properly.
Although I noticed this game has this issue of characters being wayyyyyy too willing to speak or to help just because they lost a fight. Happens a few times, there is even a character that risks his life and even dies for you, for absolutely no reason other than "Damn, you defeated me, now I have to help you" But like 7 I'd say for some reason even when a bit of stupid stuff like this happens, there's enough good stuff coming later on for you to quickly get over it.
The strongest point of the game to me has to be the characters though. Compared to Y7 where I feel like a few characters kind of followed the group and were basically not much more than just a companion that has one line of dialog every 2 minutes, I feel like here they managed to make each of them pretty important, give them an arc, more personnality, and generally you're just happy to see them. It's very very satisfying to see how they behave, they improved a LOT on that point. Even with Date, of course. It's the game where he shines the most, and you gotta love that.
Also the character Yamai is really great. I really didn't expect them to make him even remotely relevant, but he ended up being the better made antagonist in the game and had a very interesting side arc.
A quick note about the OST, I don't think it's a bad one, but we have been getting used to some fantastic ones in the past from this series, and I feel like this one falls short a bit, unfortunately, I have very little themes in mind that struck me as great ones.
The last thing I'll say though, is that unfortunately, that game didn't give me the closure I wanted. I went into it thinking "it's Kiryu's last game"and feeling like we are going to get a great Finale for the Dragon of Dojima, and I really can't say that it was the case. Regardless I'm still very excited for any next thing the devs are gonna come up with next.