Recent reviews by Team Ąqua Grunt

I've played the game before and only bought it to support the series, don't mind the low hour playtime.

I think the game is enjoyable, but it's also a fair share worse than the one that came before it.

Characters are alright. Some are gimmicks for the sake of the story, which i really dislike, but the cast is genuinely well crafted. Bonus points for turning an insignificant NPC from the first game into someone important this game - it speaks of some foresight from story design's perspective.

Speaking of the story... look, I know Uchikoshi is an incredibly ambitious storyteller and when he hits he knocks it out of the park. 999? Amazingly made. First Somnium Files? Story absorbs the hell out of you. As far as this game goes... I admire the ambition and the scale of the story, but it simply didn't work out well. The more distance away from the game, the more holes pop up and the more you notice how some things were adjusted to fit the twist - it doesn't feel organic. Anything from Date missing, existence of Mizuki's sister, complete impossibility of at least one masked woman appearance... there's a ton of it that I already forgot. Story's premise and stakes feel much weaker since the game doesn't rely on personally going after your protagonist(s). It also just... doesn't exactly do anything with first game's events. The quiz at the start feels slightly pretentious because of that.
I think the game has a very... interesting golden ending however.

The music had a lot less moments of "wow, this is stunning". Don't get me wrong, it's still a great soundtrack, but first game really knocked it out of the park. One of the best tracks plays only once in the entire game as well, and it's near the start.

Now, it's not all bad - i think what this game does better is Somniums themselves. Compared to previous entry, the puzzles are a lot more coherent and the rooms have a lot of hidden depths and symbolism that makes a lot of sense either right away or in hindsight. Second one you do especially becomes probably one of the most disgusting and terrifying as the story progresses.

I still recommend the game, because it's still Somnium Files. I hope the franchise continues to make great games and outdoes the first one.

i think the game is honestly amazing. Great vibes, a lot of room for creativity when it comes to how you play, incredibly addicting.

i do hope it will get some balance changes though - i think right now it's too easy, even as i do ascensions it takes me like 1 run to complete said ascension.
the amount of upgrade points you get per run feels too high and some classes have much better powers than others (builder for instance)

also hope for either more floors to explore or an endless mode.

"This is a great game, just not a good yakuza game" part 2
I love the franchise to pieces and I wish it was the best it could be, but god being a fan of it is frustrating nowadays.

Long story short, if you like good games, ones that let you progress at your own pace, are wacky in a good way with a lot of really great moments, scenery, music - it's for you. Provided you like RPGs that is. Gameplay has been vastly improved over last RPG entry. Nobody can deny that the game is good and will give you a lot of bang for your buck, whether you're into tourist aspect, camaderie aspect or just storytelling of the franchise. Even the most lackluster yakuza story is a great story by triple A standards.
If you're a Yakuza fan, there's a bunch of things that were incredibly frustrating or disappointing to witness. Some story elements, some things that weren't changed but definitely should have been and a bunch of missed opportunities to maybe right some wrongs that previous games neglected.

I'll start with some positive things that I really appreciate about this title, including some that i could say about pretty much every game in the franchise:

- Characters. They're always done extremely well, and this game is no exception. Yamai, Chitose, Tomizawa, Bryce, even lesser characters like freaking Gondawara of all people being actually a really great guy with a wholesome moment.
- Music. They just never really miss. The credits theme was outright gorgeous.
- General vibe. It's a yakuza game. Obviously just having a good time in whatever city you roam is practically guaranteed. There's many ways to interact with your own party and learn more about them as characters. The bond bingo boards were a good shout in that regard.
- Remembering the franchise. For the most part, the whole "Bucket list" thing was honestly just wonderful. While the trailer already gave away some of the characters from the past that you get to see, the others were a very pleasant surprise, especially Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 6 reps. This is also a major step up in terms of how such thing was done in the past games.
- Gameplay improvements. I maintain this franchise isn't one for RPG combat, and if you really wanted to force it into mainline series there are better ways to do it, but the system that they have now is certainly much better than the one from the previous game. Moving to line up skills, balancing of said skills, difficulty curve all have vastly improved, so for instance you don't have to grind to have a chance against a boss.

Now that that's done, let's start with the low hanging fruit.

NG+ being locked behind DLC is absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and everyone should be very much up in arms about it. It's a feature that was already in the standard game, but was stripped away for extra cash. I understand wanting extra money for a pretty expansive product, but have the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ decency to feature actual extra stuff worth paying for instead of something that should've been packaged to the base product.

Story at times is absolute garbage. Please, for the love of god, Yokoyama, never touch omnipresent, all-knowing factions again. Daidoji is an absolute joke. From just the stuff we got to see happen in game - Hanawa being frozen in place when Eiji is outed as a rat and engaging in hand to hand combat afterwards instead of taking Akane and Lani to the back of their hideout the moment something is wrong. Daidoji attacking Date for letting Kiryu look or listen to people of his past for "breaking the oath" when said oath was broken already when the world found out Kiryu was actually alive and well with video footage. Like the incompetence is just astounding, these things took me away from the game outright, stuff was on par with rubber bullets.

The combat. Look, it's better, it's an improvement over what it was in last mainline entry and in any other franchise it would be great, but it just does not work in terms of what Yakuza was. Brawler installments were always a good mix of building tension and letting you release that tension, whoever the bad guy was you could do some brutal maneuvers against them that i hope nobody had a chance to feel in real life. Sure, as time went on there were some outliers in this, like Akiyama's air combos or Majima's shadow clones in his fight, but they were still used sparingly or were otherwise intertwined with actual grounded stuff. You just don't get that with the RPG system - shooting ink from a squid, swinging a giant fish - none fit the game's aesthetic for anything more than a one time gag (though in all honesty it's even infected brawler games, like the agent gadgets in Gaiden, the card superpowers in Ishin Kiwami and flying cutlasses and whatnot in the upcoming Pirate venture). It being turn-based doesn't help - until you make your move opponents are going to be shuffling about and yelling stuff, but are forbidden from attacking you. I would be a lot more open to the idea of combat style shift from brawler if it was more like FF VI for instance, where your opponents do move while you're taking your time waiting or thinking about next course of action. Granted, with DQ being the inspiration and the thing Ichiban's schizophrenia sees it's wishful thinking to expect adjustments that would heavily deviate from the original formula, but a man can dream.

The game is also plagued by missed opportunities. Now, i'm not going to bash the studio for not getting more voice actors from past games to do stuff in this game, i know voice acting work in Japan is serious business and the fact they got Yamadera to voice Akiyama again was probably pricey enough as is. Instead, I'm going to focus on both voiced and unvoiced content that we got.
Memoirs were great for the most part. A lot of characters were mentioned that I didn't even expect to see brought up again, but there were a plenty that were missing - Bacchus or Miss Tatsu, especially considering we did return to our Yakuza 0 combat styles, Mikio from Yakuza 3 (who helped with orphanage a ton - you'd think they'd mention him a lot more), Watase and any single person aside from Hanawa from Gaiden. The last part is especially odd with how he pretty much owes Tsuruno's funds his life at that point in time and how stellar storytelling was with Shishido for his final fight.
Something that sort of relates to memoirs, but should be done more IMO are more passive mentions of characters - whether it's some radio talk show mentioning last Shinada game or police banner PSA to report to Tanimura regarding any problem in the Little Asia area, stuff like that. One moment in chapter 8 where Tsukumo and Sugiura make an appearance with 0 voice lines was a sweet nod and we really could use more of those.
We now have some dynamic intros that involve characters other than Ichi fighting which is appreciated, but everyone disappearing for substories is something i thought would be fixed with the new release and it's disappointing that we didn't get there. It wasn't a problem when it was Kiryu alone trying to fix issues or solve problems, but now that you have a team you fight with you'd expect them to chime in, offer help or insist the group takes on some issue in particular, especially considering Ichi, who knows only the most basic of basics of English language, is in Hawaii, so you'd have his local companions act as translators for instance, or letting them take care of it all.

I really, really hope to see some of what i mentioned in future releases, but hope is also what I had for prior titles. Still, I will love this franchise for everything that it does so well. We can meme about asset reusing all we want, but this franchise is probably the best case for it, the most justified one for it.

The recent change that removed first freeroll for everyone made it a much worse experience, but the community around it of people unwilling to argue against this change, being dismissive of arguments presented against it and making fun of the situation is even worse. There isn't much there now that makes the game distinct from other autobattlers.

this is very obviously not baldur's gate 3 level of game, but it's still very, very fun, even with voice acting being very early 2000s resident evil levels at times and dialogue animations sometimes remind me of TES Oblivion

combat feels really, really good. absolutely in love with its quality.

the only big negative that i can see is locking races and classes behind dlc, but honestly, with this being so far the only thing they released, i'd say it's still worth paying for at least some of them and support honest work. there's plenty of love put into the game.

i'm glad something is here to pick up paper mario spirit. This one does it well, the cast of characters is good and plays well off one another, gameplay is fun (although i hate how your new abilities are just "oh hey that reminds me i can do this!" during story) and with hard mode it's just the right amount of challenge imo.

i hope we'll see more games like this one, could use different setting or something while evolving upon mechanics and story progression a bit.

I honestly don't know where to begin.

It's not a perfect story. It has a couple of headscratchers and some really glaring holes in logic, mostly ones that involve your ability to inspect things. Uchikoshi kinda expects the player to know Zero Escape trilogy prior to this and the game feels like a bit more polished and slightly less serious version of Zero Time Dilemma (or at least more self-aware)

But the bits that shine really do shine. The great parts of the story are just stunningly great. Ota's route and the good ending had me bawl my eyes out. The characters are all memorable and the music is wonderful, you would think Shinji Hosoe is back for that game, but nope. It's Keisuke Ito of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Yakuza 3 and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night fame.

I think this VN made my life better and was a small step towards helping with depression.

you genuinely don't need another autobattler in your life with this game being a thing

the dev team is insanely talented and it shows with the overall balance

I think this is, at least for now, the best visual novel in the whole Science Adventure series... provided you played Chaos;Head. Its whole story adds a lot of weight and reason to the story of Chaos;Child.

Characters: It's a step up from Chaos;Head in that every character in the game feels vital and the experience would be a lot worse had any of them been missing, that's pretty much only a hit on Daisuke, with some of my favorite characters... honestly of all time. Shinjo being a very reasonable human being with a heart in the right place, despite not being able to comprehend a lot of what's happening he's aware of consequences and just does his best and Wakui jesus christ i want to see more of him in next games in the science adventure series, insane antagonist, absurdly overpowered but it's also kind of what makes him fun to topple over.

Story: There's a plenty of terrifying twists in the story, which in hindsight realize how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up things really are. I don't even want to put anything in spoilers for this, because i know it's tempting to click and see what's behind. It's better experienced first hand.

Music: Takeshi ♥♥♥'s compositions are some of my favorites in video game franchise. His calm, peaceful tracks are gorgeous and contain what feels to be a secondary meaning to them, his serious pieces really carry a lot of weight and Chaos;Child is very much a proof of all that. One of the first tracks you hear, REVIVED SHIBUYA -another-, being my favorite track in the game.

Side notes: Get a patch made by zero committee. Fixes some translations and eases you a bit into the visual novel, whether you play it standalone or after Chaos;Head.
If you want to stay with these characters for longer and like bleeding from the nose area, there is an archived video translation of Chaos;Child Love Chu Chu, a sort-of-sequel that's mostly fanservice (kinda like what Robotics;Notes DaSH is to Robotics;Notes, except that has more sequel material). Chaos;Head also has its LCC, but whether there is a video of its playthrough in English or not I can't say.
Chaos;Head NoAH (Chaos;Head with extra content, like characters' routes) is almost fully translated to english. If you want to experience this chunk of Science Adventure series in its fullest, it's best to wait for that to come out, though I still recommend checking out Chaos;Head. Its interface isn't what you might be used to from Steins;Gate, but it's still perfectly playable.

Well, no matter how I look at it, I can't not recommend this game.


I hate it because it's a frustrating experience from a Yakuza series fan on many levels. Pretty much every great aspect of it is frustrating, considering it took them 8 bloody entries and a couple of spin-offs.

Speaking of spin-offs, let's start with this one. In 2011 the world has received this nice little game called Yakuza: Dead Souls. A spin-off title featuring some of the most liked characters in the series, including somehow still alive Ryuji with a bloody Machine Gun for an arm. It had almost all of the things one would expect from a Yakuza title - recognizable locations, familiar characters, fun and serious distractions, including some of the best karaoke in the series (seriously, you are missing out if you haven't checked out at least the karaoke), great graphics at the time, quality soundtrack - you name it, it was there. Except for the battle system. That was replaced with a third person shooter. It was despised on release. Its release to the west doomed further localizations. It wasn't until Yakuza 0 when we have gotten all that back.

I bring up Dead Souls because this game is similar. Has everything but the combat of a Yakuza game. In some aspects it's worse (at this point seeing Kiryu, Majima, Saejima and Daigo almost lost all of its charm), in some it's better (amazing humor, stellar story, refreshing cast of characters, YOKOHAMA). What eludes me is why this game receives all of the glitter? Why now people are all happy with a spin-off? Oh wait, that isn't a spin-off, right. Its Japanese title is Yakuza 7: The Whereabouts of Light and Shadow, or something along these lines. That's another aspect of it that I can't digest. Release Judge Eyes/Judgment with the familiar combat, but a separate story, as a spin-off, but a turn-based RPG as a mainline game.

Make no mistake. The combat itself is fun. For the first RPG of RGG (technically second because RGG Online is a thing in Japan), this is some solid work. I was sceptical of the job system, as I was afraid of potential grind to get jobs to the right levels to even do something in the battle, but my fears were proven wrong. It's also one of the fastest turn-based RPGs I've played in my life. Had this been in a spin-off I wouldn't write this next paragraph.

This flow sucks. Brawler combat entries had a really nice dynamic to them - very fast-paced, at times mindless, combat was intertwined with a much calmer, serious story and substories. But this? Like hell. The story comes from a similar place, as it pulls on your heartstrings, gives you some fun laughs and cool moments along the way, but to break all the tension or let you unleash all the gathered rage towards some of these fictional characters, you get to play... a turn-based game. Imagine finally, after several years, getting an opportunity to enact revenge on a school bully, but it's via a chess match. That's the kind of vibe i'm getting from this combination. And I get it - we see things from Ichiban's point of view and he's a big Dragon Quest fan, but at the same time do I need to see it this way? When I play as Kiryu, the unstoppable force, the Dragon of Dojima, legend of Kamurocho, I don't plow through every enemy on my way with one punch because that's what he sees. The fights are much more even, can take minutes to beat and require your attention and action. Unlike in this game, where from Ichi's point of view all of his opponents are these honorable and patient fighters just shuffling about and talking ♥♥♥♥, but not taking any consequencial action until you and your friends do your thing first. It's off-putting and even less realistic than the kinda stuff you could do in older titles. Speaking of that... You know how most of the heat actions in the series prior to Yakuza 7 at least are grounded in reality? There are videos of people attempting and showcasing moves from these games. If you were to look at a fight in a vacuum, there's not a whole wrong with the combat aside from everyone tanking way too many slashes, stabs, shots and whathaveyou, which from gameplay's perspective is understandable. This game however? Kicking back a flung baseball bat. Taking one of the opponents with you and performing a literal Spin Dash. SUMMONING A THUNDER. If brawler combat generated these over the top fights, then this game is an acid trip simulator.

Had the game either been a spin-off or kept old combat, I would be a lot happier with all of these developments as well:

I adore the fact that we're not controlling this machine of a man anymore, but rather just a group of friends, whose cumulative strength hardly matches that of the legends we fought with and against in the past. It's a really refreshing perspective. Wish it was there earlier and not for the first turn-based entry in the series. Imagine just switching between allies in Brawler combat, wouldn't that be something?

Drink links replacing chats with hostesses and cabaret club girls are also a welcome addition, despite it giving the Atlus scent from a mile away. I'd much rather get to know more about friends of the main character than girls only there for entertainment and eyecandy. Wish it was there earlier.

Substories bringing you allies that can temporarily aid you in combat, kinda! Wish they were there earli- oh fine you get the idea. How about nitpicks that plague the franchise in general but still aren't fixed or the new stuff that needs some polish instead...

Some of the characters' writing or use is veeeeery far-fetched. Oh Lau Ka Long had a cousin. Oh, Joon-gi Han has a body double. Kashiwagi somehow survived being assassinated by an attack heli. Kiryu waltzing out in his trademark clothes after being officially dead, even if still alive - imagine disguising yourself or something. I'm sure there's more of this stuff in the game and I just went for the lowest hanging fruits.

It is a shame that the returns are only limited to characters whose voice actors are, I would assume, available at almost all times. Nick could be replaced by Akiyama with a few very minor tweaks and nobody would really notice. It would be cool to see one of the orphanage kids joining the party because they don't believe Kiryu is dead. A tiny substory with characters like Shinada, Tanimura, Mikio, one of the Hiroshima boys, Sayama, idk Miss Tatsu? would go a long way, instead of using the same few every game (Pocket Circuit Fighter, patriarch Gondawara, Ono Michio all quickly come to mind). Hell, I'd be down with even a single mention in written text.

You travel with a party of up to 4 people, but you do your substories all by your lonesome. Big missed opportunity there honestly for some sort of a refresh to the formula. Same goes for some story cutscenes too, like the cinematic for the fight with Tendo especially feels off.

The last one is probably (speculation here) due to the game originally being made in normal system and, after the april fools RPG screen got people talking and laughing, was remade to the game you see today.

If you read to the end, thanks. I'm sorry I can't talk about all of the good things that the game did without some snark, but a) that's already been done by a lot of people in the reviews section and b) i feel like my voice is unique enough in all this to make the my five cents worth throwing. I want to state once again that the game is really fantastic and if you love RPGs, turn-based RPGs and Yakuza franchise - hell, if you're new to any of these things even - you'll find something to like in this game. It's very much worth the praise it gets as a game, it's a really well made one. Just rubs me the wrong way, even if I liked it.