Recent reviews by Hirvi

this ♥♥♥♥ peak right here

Just finished this game yesterday, after a good 3 years I've finally caught up with the mainline Yakuza/Like a Dragon storyline. I am so excited for what's next in the coming years, and of course, doing the spinoff games in the meantime. This game was great and I hate the fact that I went and spoiled some of the juicy parts while the game was fresh out of the oven (A terrible habit of mine when it comes to media) and I was still dabbling with the earlier entries, nevertheless I enjoyed the story a lot. Just, don't be like me yanno?

For anyone new who's looking to get into the franchise, this one is a great entry point, and a great game to stand in its own right. While I still recommend trying out Yakuza 0 first for example (You'll come to appreciate some things a lot more, and yknow it's also just a lot cheaper in case you're curious about the franchise as a whole), it is by no means absolutely necessary. While this is now a full on JRPG, it's very much a Yakuza game through and through, it's engaging, at times very silly, and at other times very heartwarming, and at other other times very emotional. You got your silly moves, bizarre sidequests, a plethora of minigames and your virtual Japan to walk on through.

I'll talk about the combat from my perspective, since I reckon a lot of people are having mixed feelings about it coming into this game from the previous ones. Coming into this one myself, I didn't actually have any doubts at all. All my friends were enjoying this game to bits, and I already knew how much great stuff this studio has brought to me, so I ended up welcoming the change of pace. I think it started out kinda rough, but once I started getting more moves, more party members and having the job system on my hands, I started to enjoy it a lot more. Kind of a standard JRPG feel in that, and I'm sure that's what they were going for, as the same can be seen in a lot of aspects of the game. The combat itself in action is flashy and goofy, you will have a lot of moves at your disposal, and there's a lot of cool and memorable summons as well, you could tell they had a lot of fun making it and put a lot of love into each and every attack.

That feel, however includes those negative aspects too, such as difficulty spikes and grinding sessions. Towards the end the game throws quite a bit of grindwalls at you, though if you're the type of guy who feasts on most if not all of the side activities and tidbits and that, it might not be a problem. Personally, I don't like to spend too much of my time with them as I'm going through the main story so when enemies suddenly started to be like 15 levels above me, and some bosses had some insane difficulty spikes, I started to really hate my time with the combat, finding it more of a nuisance than anything. There's also some balance issues with your own moves, like with one character a move that costs you around 6 MP would be stronger than any other move they have, and I didn't really get it until the very last stages of the game, going off busting moves that cost me 35-50 MP and burning my small meter away prior. The random encounter rates were also a huge pain in the ass lmao, in Yakuza games I really like to just take my time exploring the city, but in this one I felt like I had to be running around at all times since I would encounter a pack of goons at every damn block. During the late game stages this was especially annoying, since the amount of exp and money the encounters give you is next to nothing. Luckily you can obtain an accessory that disables the random encounters later on, but I seriously hope they tone it down on the next entry, and make it feel more rewarding. In the previous entries I didn't mind them at all (except for maybe Yakuza 5), since you could just beat them up in a matter of 15 seconds and they weren't even nearly as disruptive. Overall, I think they did a nice job for a first time, and while in retrospect these JRPG tropes among a lot of other tropes I haven't mentioned are funny and neat to think about in context, I found them to be more frustrating as I was playing. I hope that LAD8 handles these things in a much better way, so that the game would feel fun through and throughout, for a guy who just wants to see what's gonna go down story wise first and foremost.

The story itself was fantastic. Lots of twists and turns, each making you want to see what's next, with a lot of emotional weight at different stages. The characters, your party members, your in game buds were so well written too, each feeling so very human and the story handled different subjects revolving around them very well. But man, Ichiban. I wasn't sure of how to take this guy having been watching Kiryu for a couple of years, but all my worries have been washed away. His actor (I played with the japanese audio) did a tremendous job, whatever the guy did or felt, felt so real to me, SO many kudos to him. As a lot of other reviews say, we all need a Ichiban Kasuga in our lives. The guy's a goofball, a ray of optimism and positiveness, and a trooper. Everytime I saw his dumb smile on his face on screen whenever he's goofing off or referencing Dragon Quest, I'd have the biggest smile on my face too. That's not to say that he's always just goofing off, ♥♥♥♥ gets real at times and boy does it feel real. Always fun to follow his adventures and misadventures, he absolutely dominates the screen everytime he's at it. He's a great friend to everyone around him, he's precious, and boy I can't wait to see more of him in the future.

Gonna end my wall of text here, after being obsessed with this game for the past few weeks I felt like I had to gush about it in some way or another. Very much recommend to anyone, and for a series fan who's about to take this entry on, kick back and enjoy. Though if you absolutely despise turn-based combat then you might wanna reconsider, but I think the characters and the story carries it a lot. Just... know that you're gonna be in for some classic JRPG bs, mostly the grindwalls that I mentioned later on in the game. You got this though, keep being awesome and I hope you're having a great day, I shall now proceed on to shutting my mouth and ending this ""review"" here lmao

It's going to have rollback soon

Thanks ArcSys <3

Hop on Melty

Quite the positive surprise, at first I thought that this was going to be some kind of a bland VRChat clone, but it turned out to be plenty of fun with a pack of friends with its big variety of gamemodes. Definitely a must-play for anyone that owns a VR headset.

Fantastic

I think that Killing Floor 2 is a genuinely fun game
...but I also think that 10$ DLC weapons are wack.

Hoo boy, I've been craving for a new skateboarding game, seriously. While this one isn't even near to its completion, I'm really enjoying my time with it.

Session is an unique one, even though you may think it's very similar to Skate on your first glance.
Instead of flicking one stick to control the board, you use both of your sticks as the skater's feet.
At first it feels quite difficult, but you'll get the hang of it.

Even the simplest tricks feel really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ satisfying to land, the environment is very fun to skate that board in, etc. There's a lot of good stuff into it, for a game that only has one map as of yet!

If you like skateboarding games, I recommend giving this one a go.

fish

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go
A little high, little low
Anyway the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me, to me
Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away
Mama, ooo
Didn't mean to make you cry
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on, as if nothing really matters
Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body's aching all the time
Goodbye everybody I've got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, ooo (anyway the wind blows)
I don't want to die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all
I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning very very frightening me
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo Figaro - magnifico
But I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me
He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity
Easy come easy go will you let me go
Bismillah! No we will not let you go - let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go - let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go let me go
Will not let you go let me go (never)
Never let you go let me go
Never let me go ooo
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me
For me
For me
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die
Oh baby, can't do this to me baby
Just gotta get out just gotta get right outta here
Ooh yeah, ooh yeah
Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters nothing really matters to me
Anyway the wind blows