I did not like playing the recent Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii game but I did enjoy playing Yakuza Kiwami 2 so I'm capable of enjoying the series. RGG puts out so many games that it starts to wonder if all of them are made equal. Case and point Yakuza Ishin.
This particular game is considered a mixed bag but I decided to play for myself and it is such a mess. It falls into things that other RGG games avoided...for the most part. There are crazy amounts of filler here. In between Not Kiryu super slow base movement speed and him needing to catch his breath after a minute and how much side quests get shoved down your throats. Much of Ishin's chapters could be much shorter if these two things were removed. When I was forced to do a side quest because I wanted to buy some healing items, I stopped playing the game there since I can tell my time is being wasted.The game is also running to the same buildings over and over again wouldn't be so bad if your base movement speed wasn't so slow.
The combat is where things get really bizarre. I play Yakuza games on normal and I got stumped on the first boss fight. I am like, "why the fuck am I struggling in a Yakuza game?" The horde fights are fine but the bosses are some next level bullshit. It's esstentially a game of getting out of their line of sight and attacking from behind them while they are doing their combo attack since when they are doing it, they are locked in the animation. The thing is and what's bullshit is that they have craploads of HP AND they can level your health bar quickly. On top of that, they can stagger Kiryu like no tomorrow. If one of their attacks connect, it's stagger central then you got to wait for him to get up afterwards.
It just exposes that Yakuza's combat is infuriating whenever the player isn't being favoured. I've discovered that it's better NOT to use the lock on system and the evade command and just runaway when a boss is going to combo you THEN attack them from behind. So just hit and run bullshit. Thankfully easy mode mitigates this from what I played thus far. I never thought I would ever need to rely on the series difficulty system of lowering to easy but only for specific fights but here we are.
The story is also a mess. It takes too long for the plot to move forward. One minute Not Kiryu is looking for the murderer of his father figure and deduces that members of the Shinengumi a specific fighting style. Not Kiryu loses sight on this very quickly and he almost forgets his own revenge quest.
What broke the story for me was Not Kiryu's refusal to kill. It's annoying when canon Kiryu does this but it's even more bizzare here. He's infiltrating a band of murders and assassins and he's actively budding heads with the captains and is unable to kill someone even if it means he could blow his cover. It gets ridiculous where I lose suspension of disbelief. I officially zoned out when at multiple points Not Kiryu SHOULD'VE killed someone but the plot finds external ways for a person to get killed off like someone else killing the guy the former was supposed to kill. As if someone else killing a person instead of you suddenly makes morally upstanding. It annoyed me that he names himself Hajime Saito because I'd take the Rurouni Kenshin version's philosophy of "slay evil immediately" over whatever Not Kiryu is trying to do.
I eventually gave up after a few hours. I'm only writing this because I played it long enough to form solid impressions on the game. I did really want to beat this. Guess I'll just replay 0 and Kiwami 1 and play Kiwami 3 and stop there.
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