...wait is chicken racing the equivalent of Pocket Circuit in this one
Nah, you just place bets on races, it's just gambling
But the way the odds are set, if you pick a chicken and cover their ENTIRE spread (e.g., go to the "Dividend" menu and pick every single option with that chicken in the lead on every single screen), you spend ~7k tags and win ~50k if you get it right.
It's slightly tedious and requires enough initial buy-in to get those starting 7k tags, but it's an easy way to bust the game's economy completely open
I want to give a warning against 100% this, at least without cheats.
This doesn't become apparent until endgame, but the crafting has been made even more time consuming than before.
Some estimates elsewhere put it on 60-80h to fill out just the crafting header. And that consists of hoping for drops, and then save scumming for craft rng for hours.
I didn't really want to sink a lot of effort into this trooper card business so I just put all the DLC troopers on, but I wonder if they're all that useful. the health bonus is nice, but their abilities take for-fucking-ever to charge up, and I wonder if I'm better off with cards without crazy powers but that I can use more regularly
Edit: I have just realized I've been assigning them wrong, and there is a "corporal" slot they need to be in for their passive to be active, which is why I wasn't seeing the supposed charge speed boost in effect
Beat chapter 7 and this story is really pulling me in.
Just wish they would stop putting boss fights in small indoor environments. I'm fighting the camera as much as I'm fighting a boss.
Yeah I'm actually trying to figure that out. Is there a button to make you face your opponent automatically? Did I miss that tooltip or does it just not exist
Beat chapter 7 and this story is really pulling me in.
Just wish they would stop putting boss fights in small indoor environments. I'm fighting the camera as much as I'm fighting a boss.
Yeah I'm actually trying to figure that out. Is there a button to make you face your opponent automatically? Did I miss that tooltip or does it just not exist
You can hold R1 to kinda lock on to a target. You'll strafe around while facing the target, but it's not a true lock on and they can still dodge your attacks and get behind you.
I've been doing the Battle Dungeons, and it turns out the introduction of armored enemies is the first thing to at all impact the viability of "shoot everyone." Now one has to use a sword to remove everyone's armor, and then shoot everyone.
Also some dude hanging out by the river let me upgrade one of my swords without having to upgrade the blacksmith a bunch of times, and now I have a life-steal sword, and now all the battle dungeons are WAAAAAY easier.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
"Run or they'll think you did it!"
"Uh, why? The killer clearly wouldn't stick around or be screaming out, and I have witnesses to confirm I didn't do it."
"It worked for Lone Wolf and Cub, I guess."
Managed to make a decent amount of tags on Koi Koi. Got the difficulty unlocked up through Master and just set to to go for 12 rounds at the highest buy in.
edit: not like chicken money, but 2k or so a tournament.
So far I'm just making friends and solving random side stories as you do. Have just cleared Chapter 4 and I suppose now I ought to actually do some revenge mystery work.
Wait...farm. Never mind.
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
The hardest part of chicken races is figuring out how to parse the chicken status screen.
Just look for one with a up arrow for condition and the most double circles in stats.
What are the stats on the chickens? Fuck if I know but you want them.
@H0b0man Yeah. I read the instructions for placing bets on chickens at least three times, and my eyes just started glazing over when it comes to understanding all of the various symbols.
I doubt they could have made such a seemingly simple side-activity more obtuse if they had tried. I haven't won any bets at all yet. And they could maybe have tried to vary up the commentary a bit more, it's very repetitive.
I think I really enjoyed pocket racers in the previous games a lot more, it was certainly more interactive, as I thought/assumed chicken racing might be, at least from the gameplay trailers I watched before Ishin was released.
Well, the chapter 11 boss fight glitched into one of the worst boss fights in the Yakuza series, bar none.
Fighting the Shogun, he has two stances; swordsman, where he's a pretty normal close quarters elite enemy, and ninja, where he holds out his sword as a passive poke and throws knives at you that stun.
The problem is, except for the first knife toss in the fight, the game glitched out so the knives stayed perfectly still where he launched them from, and he likes to punish getting knife staggered with a trooper-card like flame Kamehameha that will just one shot you with repeated 400-damage hits unless it luckily knocks you away.
He also doesn't really like to leave Ninja stance except to fire that move, and it's unpunishable by melee attacks even if you dodge around, which is really hard when he is accidentally surrounded by a cloud of knives floating at a standstill. And Ninja stance neither counts as being a sword or a gun enemy for the purpose of heat moves, leaving you with few heat moves to activate against him. So it's effectively impossible to ever melee attack the boss except when he briefly is in swordman's stance, and even then he's probably surrounded by a cloud of death knives.
But wait, his ranged attack doesn't work, and as I said, his giant and very slow beam is punishable by ranged attacks, so the fairly climactic battle isn't just cheesable by spamming gunshots at him like many fights are, it's actually almost impossible to even take damage doing it and the only way to meaningfully hurt him for 80% of the fight. Truly awful and underwhelming.
Overall, I'd say that I think Ishin is definitely one of the lesser Yakuza games. Still a Yakuza game, so still pretty good, but on the lower tier in a lot of respects.
The core combat definitely feels like a step back to Yakuza janky, but is also wildly unbalanced, especially with Trooper cards thrown into the mix. Multiple damage buff trooper cards can let you hit absurdly hard, brawler is so absurdly weak that the one time they force you into a late game brawler fight they tune the boss enemies down to early-game trash mob health levels, gunman is hilarious but stupidly unbalanced whether you go for a high powered gun or the ultra rapid fire gun that basically shoots as fast as you can press the attack button, etc. Swordsman and Wild Dancer style feel the most "real", but even then they're pretty glitchy and every weapon tree feels like it has core features gated super late in the tree, which is just awkward. Oh, and at some point I got an ability in gunman style that seems to make me respond to any hit by dodging, activating invincibility, and shooting, so I take a little damage but it feels like I'm literally glitching into some counter move that is supposed to be harder to activate?
The core mystery plot is pretty good, but it feels rushed, especially in the later chapters (which may be due to a lack of sidestories), which leads to a lot of character beats not really landing very well at all. At one point, there's two big climactic events in a row, one of which feels like it should lock you into the endgame and totally change the game, and it just... gets ignored, basically, and lets you free roam for a bit before leading into the real climax? Really baffling pacing there. There's also a big problem where a lot of the plot happens at Ryoma in a way that feels unearned, with multiple major events happening wholly offscreen, and at least one of those events also feels like it was done in a way that completely negated a bunch of time spent on foreshadowing a certain character's importance.
The side stories have their moments to shine and are often very, very funny, but the bonds with characters feel very grindy and very tacked on a lot of the time, and while it might not be uncommon for the Yakuza series it seems like a lot more of the sidestories and especially character bonds have no explanation besides "this guy is being weird" and/or no meaningful reward attached to them. Also, this game's "collect a bunch of doodads around town" long-form substory has you picking up items on the ground that look equivalent to prize tickets, which are the most tedious thing in the world. Plus, the side story timing/balance seemed wildly out of wack with the game, with me being 95% substory complete by like the halfway point of the story; usually they put at least a couple of late-game substories so you can actually feel like you're taking a breather when the lategame plot calls for it.
The battle dungeon is also pretty mid, feeling extremely grindy with wildly too many enemies tuned with wildly too much health as a substitute for difficulty, especially because trash enemies basically can't even launch attacks while you're going around in wild dancer mode and you can negate big groups of enemies by abusing the camera and corner locking one guy. Combine that with a very high number of missions and completely boring environments, along with some annoying glitches where enemies armor doesn't display properly, and... eh, definitely my least favorite random activity where you use JPEGs of series mascots to achieve some task.
The minigames are just OK. The standout is the fan dancing, which is a pretty good rhythm game and the gimmick of having to use both the left and right buttons separately makes it pretty tough. Udon Simon Says and Woodchopping are fine and frantic but very simple, the brothel games are bad and tacked together and take too long, the cannon minigame is just a worse baseball, the scarecrow fight arena has a couple of good puzzles but is 90% a stat check, chicken races are an OK addition to gambling and all the other gambling minigames are as expected, and Another Life farming would be good if it wasn't so, so tedious; having to go through multiple loading screens to loop farming, fishing, cooking, and sending out orders is mind numbingly tedious even if all of those are individually OK, and the reliance on getting certain specific types of fish or making like a couple dozen home cooked meals for substory completion sucks a lot of the fun out of it. Karoake is pretty good and has some of the toughest songs ever, which is nice, except that toughest song is the softcore porn one which makes repeated plays feel a bit skeevy (luckily, I got 92 on my second try).
Actually putting all my thoughts together, I'd say that it's not just one of the lesser Yakuza games, but probably the worst I've played (again, still pretty good), because absolutely no aspect of it really carries things; almost every Yakuza game has at least some area where it really shines and you can recommend it on that basis, but I don't think I could really recommend Ishin above other Yakuza games on any front except "it's hilarious to blast samurai with a gun". Even the fact it's a self-contained narrative is kind of sabotaged because a big part of the appeal is "hey this character is basically this other Yakuza character but in the 1800s!"
I'm only in Chapter 5 but I think what's disappointing me most about this game is it's honestly just not ridiculous enough. Obviously one set piece in Chapter 2 delivered but otherwise this game just... takes itself way too seriously for a Yakuza game. These games always strike that balance of serious drama and absurd cartoonish nonsense but it feels like instead of the usual model where everything's either on a 1 or a 10 and there's no middle ground, everything in Ishin is like a soggy 4. It's like, I don't know... watching Muppets do Shakespeare or something--yeah, that sounds like it would actually be fun and hilarious to see but then after two hours of it the charm is lost.
I don't know if I'd say it's the worst Yakuza game--3 was a legitimate slog to get through--but nothing stands out so far. These are usually games where I will pull up YouTube clips in the middle of a bar conversation to explain to friends why they absolutely need to play this game, right now. This time around... nothing. I hope that changes but based on what I'm reading in the thread so far I'm not optimistic.
I think the biggest issue I have with the game are the substories.
You can tell that this was the first game they added the friendship mechanic because holy shit do they over use it. So many of the substories are just unlocking a friendship.
Not only that but some of the friendships are real grindy (looking at you vegetable boy) and many don't have much in the way of payoff, either narratively or materially. A couple will have an event towards the end of the friendship, but others are just a short conversation and then you're done.
I think the 'give me a ton of healing items' friendships are the worst.
There's at least two of them!
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I feel like Judgment started that friendship trend, and boy can I do without it, it feels like padding the game out.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
edited March 2023
I’m still pretty early but so far besides feeling like a PS3 game this actually feels like one of the strongest entries to me. Like if they remade it to control like a modern game and have a modern UI and added dubs I’d currently put it right behind 7.
It’s got what I would call the best feeling progression in the whole series to me. And that does a lot to make everything in a game like this feel better. Been some really fun mini games and due to the virtue system it makes them all feel much more meaningful and better integrated into the game than basically every game besides the Judgment games and 7. I’m actually playing through things like karaoke and fan dancing. And it’s just the right amount of them to be done to complete the friendships without feeling annoying.
And the story seems interesting so far but I’m definitely just missing things because the subs so that’s gonna be a tougher time for me.
Still plenty of time for things to shuffle around but the overall package so far is only put behind 7 and the two Judgment games. And if fully modernized would probably just be behind 7. I’m actually kinda surprised seeing how much better the progression is than the few mainline entries that came after this.
I feel like Judgment started that friendship trend, and boy can I do without it, it feels like padding the game out.
0 had the friendships as well, and this was originally made right before 0. Where they clearly refined it somewhat (though even there I still think they're a grind that doesn't add much)
I'm unclear what you mean by "progression" in this context, Stacey. Are you talking about the skill ups? Personally, I found it extremely awkward that a lot of what feels like standard stuff was either not unlocked (downed enemy heat moves) or were gated by trainers and being far deeper in the skill tree than you would reasonably be when unlocked (dodge attacks and ground recoveries). I'm fine with Tiger Drop and Sword Tiger Drop being put absurdly late in the tree but a lot of the progression felt like I was unlocking basic, T1 upgrades even lategame with a ton of filler, in comparison to like Last Judgment where I was constantly getting new attack strings or contextual normals.
I ate an engineer
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I'm unclear what you mean by "progression" in this context, Stacey. Are you talking about the skill ups? Personally, I found it extremely awkward that a lot of what feels like standard stuff was either not unlocked (downed enemy heat moves) or were gated by trainers and being far deeper in the skill tree than you would reasonably be when unlocked (dodge attacks and ground recoveries). I'm fine with Tiger Drop and Sword Tiger Drop being put absurdly late in the tree but a lot of the progression felt like I was unlocking basic, T1 upgrades even lategame with a ton of filler, in comparison to like Last Judgment where I was constantly getting new attack strings or contextual normals.
Yea I’m referring to the skills and level up system. Between actually getting XP for battles, skill trees constantly adding new things, reasons to dip into other skill trees that aren’t your main focus. It feels really good from both the growth aspect and making decisions aspect.
Along with the whole limit breaking aspect seeming that it will keep progression going as long as I’m playing instead of the usual late game “what useless skills do I want to unlock now?” Routine haha.
Again I’m still early but, unless I’m mistaken by how the limit breaking system works, i don’t think anything will be coming in “too late” (imo)because late game should just be going back through the tree powering stuff up?
Yeah, you aren't limit breaking anything unless you're doing dozens of hours of back end grinding after already clearing all substories and all dungeon missions. You might have some skills limit broken for Amon, maybe. The EXP well dries up around midgame and you very slowly progress towards stuff like "can recover after being knocked down" from there. The progression is some of the worst I've seen in a Yakuza.
I'm unclear what you mean by "progression" in this context, Stacey. Are you talking about the skill ups? Personally, I found it extremely awkward that a lot of what feels like standard stuff was either not unlocked (downed enemy heat moves) or were gated by trainers and being far deeper in the skill tree than you would reasonably be when unlocked (dodge attacks and ground recoveries). I'm fine with Tiger Drop and Sword Tiger Drop being put absurdly late in the tree but a lot of the progression felt like I was unlocking basic, T1 upgrades even lategame with a ton of filler, in comparison to like Last Judgment where I was constantly getting new attack strings or contextual normals.
Yea I’m referring to the skills and level up system. Between actually getting XP for battles, skill trees constantly adding new things, reasons to dip into other skill trees that aren’t your main focus. It feels really good from both the growth aspect and making decisions aspect.
Along with the whole limit breaking aspect seeming that it will keep progression going as long as I’m playing instead of the usual late game “what useless skills do I want to unlock now?” Routine haha.
Again I’m still early but, unless I’m mistaken by how the limit breaking system works, i don’t think anything will be coming in “too late” (imo)because late game should just be going back through the tree powering stuff up?
I actually found the game to have one of the most frustrating leveling systems, because they're capped in ways that require absurd amounts of grinding.
Like, each class has a cap of 25 class orbs. I'm not gonna go look up their terminology, I hope my broad references work. Anyway, 25 is enough to fill out about half of a given wheel. The rest you fill with the neutral, standard-level orbs. I didn't realize the class cap was so low, so I spread my neutral orbs around, trying to keep classes at about the same level, the way I tend to prefer to play Yakuza. I like mixing styles up, it's part of the fun for me.
But as I was still in mid-game, I started hitting class caps, and progress came to a screeching halt. In order to "uncap" a given class, it has to be completely filled. Every single ability, including locked ones that can only be unlocked through tedious bullshit like the scarecrow chateau. And since I could no longer generate class orbs, I had to just... Level up. The conversion rate on Virtue to XP is fucking lousy (10,000 Virtue buys you 3,000 in XP), so trying to get around "just go grind in the battle dungeons" isn't super viable.
It feels almost like the only way to ensure a steady drip of abilities is to only use one stance at a time, and that's just not how I play Yakuza.
The first half of the game felt like how you described, and I was really enjoying it, but GOD does it run into a sheer cliffface of grind. By the time credits hit I had only uncapped Wild Dancer (let alone refilling it once uncapped, good god), and there is a 0.0% chance of me ever going back to the game knowing how much grind awaits me.
If you are smart and dunk all your generic orbs into specific styles, I think a generally "do all substories and most of the combat side stuff" playthrough can uncap two styles and get most of the generic combat buffs to heat and health from the other two trees, but you absolutely cannot even get close to skill complete and there are massive traps like ever learning to use secondary weapons or wasting points in special ammo (unless you are doing specific cheese).
Yeah, you aren't limit breaking anything unless you're doing dozens of hours of back end grinding after already clearing all substories and all dungeon missions. You might have some skills limit broken for Amon, maybe. The EXP well dries up around midgame and you very slowly progress towards stuff like "can recover after being knocked down" from there. The progression is some of the worst I've seen in a Yakuza.
I didn't even realize Amon was in this fuckin' thing! I 100%ed the sidestories, as is my custom, and when he didn't pop I thought, "Oh, weird, wonder why they didn't do him."
Do you have to uncap all four or something? Christ, that's gotta be just dozens of hours of mindlessly running the same dungeons, that sounds miserable.
Yeah, you aren't limit breaking anything unless you're doing dozens of hours of back end grinding after already clearing all substories and all dungeon missions. You might have some skills limit broken for Amon, maybe. The EXP well dries up around midgame and you very slowly progress towards stuff like "can recover after being knocked down" from there. The progression is some of the worst I've seen in a Yakuza.
I didn't even realize Amon was in this fuckin' thing! I 100%ed the sidestories, as is my custom, and when he didn't pop I thought, "Oh, weird, wonder why they didn't do him."
Do you have to uncap all four or something? Christ, that's gotta be just dozens of hours of mindlessly running the same dungeons, that sounds miserable.
Amon
Do all the substories and battle dungeon levels. Once you've done both of those talk to the battle dungeon guy and there should be an option to refight the boss from the last battle dungeon. That's the Amon fight.
Yeah, you aren't limit breaking anything unless you're doing dozens of hours of back end grinding after already clearing all substories and all dungeon missions. You might have some skills limit broken for Amon, maybe. The EXP well dries up around midgame and you very slowly progress towards stuff like "can recover after being knocked down" from there. The progression is some of the worst I've seen in a Yakuza.
I didn't even realize Amon was in this fuckin' thing! I 100%ed the sidestories, as is my custom, and when he didn't pop I thought, "Oh, weird, wonder why they didn't do him."
Do you have to uncap all four or something? Christ, that's gotta be just dozens of hours of mindlessly running the same dungeons, that sounds miserable.
Amon
Do all the substories and battle dungeon levels. Once you've done both of those talk to the battle dungeon guy and there should be an option to refight the boss from the last battle dungeon. That's the Amon fight.
That's the first Amon fight, but the next is right after that.
I also never fight Amon because he usually requires being "find the random minor object 100 times" substory complete which I usually pass on, but that isn't even the major grind in this game, it's just cheesing fights with gunman to farm random drops for literally dozens of hours for useless swords!
Yeah, you aren't limit breaking anything unless you're doing dozens of hours of back end grinding after already clearing all substories and all dungeon missions. You might have some skills limit broken for Amon, maybe. The EXP well dries up around midgame and you very slowly progress towards stuff like "can recover after being knocked down" from there. The progression is some of the worst I've seen in a Yakuza.
I didn't even realize Amon was in this fuckin' thing! I 100%ed the sidestories, as is my custom, and when he didn't pop I thought, "Oh, weird, wonder why they didn't do him."
Do you have to uncap all four or something? Christ, that's gotta be just dozens of hours of mindlessly running the same dungeons, that sounds miserable.
Amon
Do all the substories and battle dungeon levels. Once you've done both of those talk to the battle dungeon guy and there should be an option to refight the boss from the last battle dungeon. That's the Amon fight.
Ahh, I see
I did the first two tiers of the Battle Dungeon, but the layouts never get more interesting and the enemies become increasingly spongey and I stopped gaining abilities, so they took longer and longer to complete for less and less payoff. I petered out early in the last tier.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Well things could certainly take a turn as I progress! That all sounds like it may get more annoying later. I can only speak to what I’ve played so far.
Yeah, you aren't limit breaking anything unless you're doing dozens of hours of back end grinding after already clearing all substories and all dungeon missions. You might have some skills limit broken for Amon, maybe. The EXP well dries up around midgame and you very slowly progress towards stuff like "can recover after being knocked down" from there. The progression is some of the worst I've seen in a Yakuza.
The recovery skill also being available only on the worst style is a real ding, too
Yeah, you aren't limit breaking anything unless you're doing dozens of hours of back end grinding after already clearing all substories and all dungeon missions. You might have some skills limit broken for Amon, maybe. The EXP well dries up around midgame and you very slowly progress towards stuff like "can recover after being knocked down" from there. The progression is some of the worst I've seen in a Yakuza.
The recovery skill also being available only on the worst style is a real ding, too
Don't worry that one absolutely sucks, it heals like half as much as a common trooper card or the second tier medicine in exchange for all your heat, and I think it puts you in a can-be-damaged-but-not-staggered state so you can easily get chucked for all 300 health you recovered anyway! If you ever need it, you're 99% better off just using a guaranteed and safe heat move like swordsman dashing towards the enemy and getting a full combo in to end the fight faster.
I don't mean to pile on a game I largely enjoyed (even if it would be near the bottom of my personal Yakuza rankings), but man the Revelations system sucks. Deep in the reward tree for various minigames and/or trainers (or, in one case, one merchant in a room full of a dozen merchants, all of whom only barter rare items), there'll be a random skill book. This gives you a hint about context-specific actions you have to repeat in fights (with no signal at all if you've done the action, or any indication of how many times you have left), and then you need to trigger the Heat action in a different combat context, and then you unlock the skill that you still have to fill with a standard orb.
And some of the actions you have to perform are so finnicky and weird that executing them once is kind of a pain. Like one of the Gunman revelations requires you to do that running jump shot attack, but starting it close enough to an enemy that your knee hits the enemy when you jump. It's baffling and obtuse and more than a little janky. Not great, Bob!
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And I popped like Steve Austin's music had started playing
Nah, you just place bets on races, it's just gambling
But the way the odds are set, if you pick a chicken and cover their ENTIRE spread (e.g., go to the "Dividend" menu and pick every single option with that chicken in the lead on every single screen), you spend ~7k tags and win ~50k if you get it right.
It's slightly tedious and requires enough initial buy-in to get those starting 7k tags, but it's an easy way to bust the game's economy completely open
...I hear
Just look for one with a up arrow for condition and the most double circles in stats.
What are the stats on the chickens? Fuck if I know but you want them.
Just wish they would stop putting boss fights in small indoor environments. I'm fighting the camera as much as I'm fighting a boss.
This doesn't become apparent until endgame, but the crafting has been made even more time consuming than before.
Some estimates elsewhere put it on 60-80h to fill out just the crafting header. And that consists of hoping for drops, and then save scumming for craft rng for hours.
Edit: I have just realized I've been assigning them wrong, and there is a "corporal" slot they need to be in for their passive to be active, which is why I wasn't seeing the supposed charge speed boost in effect
Best under-utilized side character?
BEST under-utilized side character.
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
Yeah I'm actually trying to figure that out. Is there a button to make you face your opponent automatically? Did I miss that tooltip or does it just not exist
You can hold R1 to kinda lock on to a target. You'll strafe around while facing the target, but it's not a true lock on and they can still dodge your attacks and get behind you.
Also some dude hanging out by the river let me upgrade one of my swords without having to upgrade the blacksmith a bunch of times, and now I have a life-steal sword, and now all the battle dungeons are WAAAAAY easier.
"Uh, why? The killer clearly wouldn't stick around or be screaming out, and I have witnesses to confirm I didn't do it."
"It worked for Lone Wolf and Cub, I guess."
edit: not like chicken money, but 2k or so a tournament.
Right after I posted this I won big. The method works
*HATE*
the sound NPC's make when eating in Ishin.
That is not the sound of crunchy veggies being eaten, game! It sounds like something... wrong... is happening.
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
So far I'm just making friends and solving random side stories as you do. Have just cleared Chapter 4 and I suppose now I ought to actually do some revenge mystery work.
Wait...farm. Never mind.
I doubt they could have made such a seemingly simple side-activity more obtuse if they had tried. I haven't won any bets at all yet. And they could maybe have tried to vary up the commentary a bit more, it's very repetitive.
I think I really enjoyed pocket racers in the previous games a lot more, it was certainly more interactive, as I thought/assumed chicken racing might be, at least from the gameplay trailers I watched before Ishin was released.
The problem is, except for the first knife toss in the fight, the game glitched out so the knives stayed perfectly still where he launched them from, and he likes to punish getting knife staggered with a trooper-card like flame Kamehameha that will just one shot you with repeated 400-damage hits unless it luckily knocks you away.
He also doesn't really like to leave Ninja stance except to fire that move, and it's unpunishable by melee attacks even if you dodge around, which is really hard when he is accidentally surrounded by a cloud of knives floating at a standstill. And Ninja stance neither counts as being a sword or a gun enemy for the purpose of heat moves, leaving you with few heat moves to activate against him. So it's effectively impossible to ever melee attack the boss except when he briefly is in swordman's stance, and even then he's probably surrounded by a cloud of death knives.
But wait, his ranged attack doesn't work, and as I said, his giant and very slow beam is punishable by ranged attacks, so the fairly climactic battle isn't just cheesable by spamming gunshots at him like many fights are, it's actually almost impossible to even take damage doing it and the only way to meaningfully hurt him for 80% of the fight. Truly awful and underwhelming.
The core combat definitely feels like a step back to Yakuza janky, but is also wildly unbalanced, especially with Trooper cards thrown into the mix. Multiple damage buff trooper cards can let you hit absurdly hard, brawler is so absurdly weak that the one time they force you into a late game brawler fight they tune the boss enemies down to early-game trash mob health levels, gunman is hilarious but stupidly unbalanced whether you go for a high powered gun or the ultra rapid fire gun that basically shoots as fast as you can press the attack button, etc. Swordsman and Wild Dancer style feel the most "real", but even then they're pretty glitchy and every weapon tree feels like it has core features gated super late in the tree, which is just awkward. Oh, and at some point I got an ability in gunman style that seems to make me respond to any hit by dodging, activating invincibility, and shooting, so I take a little damage but it feels like I'm literally glitching into some counter move that is supposed to be harder to activate?
The core mystery plot is pretty good, but it feels rushed, especially in the later chapters (which may be due to a lack of sidestories), which leads to a lot of character beats not really landing very well at all. At one point, there's two big climactic events in a row, one of which feels like it should lock you into the endgame and totally change the game, and it just... gets ignored, basically, and lets you free roam for a bit before leading into the real climax? Really baffling pacing there. There's also a big problem where a lot of the plot happens at Ryoma in a way that feels unearned, with multiple major events happening wholly offscreen, and at least one of those events also feels like it was done in a way that completely negated a bunch of time spent on foreshadowing a certain character's importance.
The side stories have their moments to shine and are often very, very funny, but the bonds with characters feel very grindy and very tacked on a lot of the time, and while it might not be uncommon for the Yakuza series it seems like a lot more of the sidestories and especially character bonds have no explanation besides "this guy is being weird" and/or no meaningful reward attached to them. Also, this game's "collect a bunch of doodads around town" long-form substory has you picking up items on the ground that look equivalent to prize tickets, which are the most tedious thing in the world. Plus, the side story timing/balance seemed wildly out of wack with the game, with me being 95% substory complete by like the halfway point of the story; usually they put at least a couple of late-game substories so you can actually feel like you're taking a breather when the lategame plot calls for it.
The battle dungeon is also pretty mid, feeling extremely grindy with wildly too many enemies tuned with wildly too much health as a substitute for difficulty, especially because trash enemies basically can't even launch attacks while you're going around in wild dancer mode and you can negate big groups of enemies by abusing the camera and corner locking one guy. Combine that with a very high number of missions and completely boring environments, along with some annoying glitches where enemies armor doesn't display properly, and... eh, definitely my least favorite random activity where you use JPEGs of series mascots to achieve some task.
The minigames are just OK. The standout is the fan dancing, which is a pretty good rhythm game and the gimmick of having to use both the left and right buttons separately makes it pretty tough. Udon Simon Says and Woodchopping are fine and frantic but very simple, the brothel games are bad and tacked together and take too long, the cannon minigame is just a worse baseball, the scarecrow fight arena has a couple of good puzzles but is 90% a stat check, chicken races are an OK addition to gambling and all the other gambling minigames are as expected, and Another Life farming would be good if it wasn't so, so tedious; having to go through multiple loading screens to loop farming, fishing, cooking, and sending out orders is mind numbingly tedious even if all of those are individually OK, and the reliance on getting certain specific types of fish or making like a couple dozen home cooked meals for substory completion sucks a lot of the fun out of it. Karoake is pretty good and has some of the toughest songs ever, which is nice, except that toughest song is the softcore porn one which makes repeated plays feel a bit skeevy (luckily, I got 92 on my second try).
Actually putting all my thoughts together, I'd say that it's not just one of the lesser Yakuza games, but probably the worst I've played (again, still pretty good), because absolutely no aspect of it really carries things; almost every Yakuza game has at least some area where it really shines and you can recommend it on that basis, but I don't think I could really recommend Ishin above other Yakuza games on any front except "it's hilarious to blast samurai with a gun". Even the fact it's a self-contained narrative is kind of sabotaged because a big part of the appeal is "hey this character is basically this other Yakuza character but in the 1800s!"
I don't know if I'd say it's the worst Yakuza game--3 was a legitimate slog to get through--but nothing stands out so far. These are usually games where I will pull up YouTube clips in the middle of a bar conversation to explain to friends why they absolutely need to play this game, right now. This time around... nothing. I hope that changes but based on what I'm reading in the thread so far I'm not optimistic.
You can tell that this was the first game they added the friendship mechanic because holy shit do they over use it. So many of the substories are just unlocking a friendship.
Not only that but some of the friendships are real grindy (looking at you vegetable boy) and many don't have much in the way of payoff, either narratively or materially. A couple will have an event towards the end of the friendship, but others are just a short conversation and then you're done.
There's at least two of them!
It’s got what I would call the best feeling progression in the whole series to me. And that does a lot to make everything in a game like this feel better. Been some really fun mini games and due to the virtue system it makes them all feel much more meaningful and better integrated into the game than basically every game besides the Judgment games and 7. I’m actually playing through things like karaoke and fan dancing. And it’s just the right amount of them to be done to complete the friendships without feeling annoying.
And the story seems interesting so far but I’m definitely just missing things because the subs so that’s gonna be a tougher time for me.
Still plenty of time for things to shuffle around but the overall package so far is only put behind 7 and the two Judgment games. And if fully modernized would probably just be behind 7. I’m actually kinda surprised seeing how much better the progression is than the few mainline entries that came after this.
0 had the friendships as well, and this was originally made right before 0. Where they clearly refined it somewhat (though even there I still think they're a grind that doesn't add much)
Yea I’m referring to the skills and level up system. Between actually getting XP for battles, skill trees constantly adding new things, reasons to dip into other skill trees that aren’t your main focus. It feels really good from both the growth aspect and making decisions aspect.
Along with the whole limit breaking aspect seeming that it will keep progression going as long as I’m playing instead of the usual late game “what useless skills do I want to unlock now?” Routine haha.
Again I’m still early but, unless I’m mistaken by how the limit breaking system works, i don’t think anything will be coming in “too late” (imo)because late game should just be going back through the tree powering stuff up?
I actually found the game to have one of the most frustrating leveling systems, because they're capped in ways that require absurd amounts of grinding.
Like, each class has a cap of 25 class orbs. I'm not gonna go look up their terminology, I hope my broad references work. Anyway, 25 is enough to fill out about half of a given wheel. The rest you fill with the neutral, standard-level orbs. I didn't realize the class cap was so low, so I spread my neutral orbs around, trying to keep classes at about the same level, the way I tend to prefer to play Yakuza. I like mixing styles up, it's part of the fun for me.
But as I was still in mid-game, I started hitting class caps, and progress came to a screeching halt. In order to "uncap" a given class, it has to be completely filled. Every single ability, including locked ones that can only be unlocked through tedious bullshit like the scarecrow chateau. And since I could no longer generate class orbs, I had to just... Level up. The conversion rate on Virtue to XP is fucking lousy (10,000 Virtue buys you 3,000 in XP), so trying to get around "just go grind in the battle dungeons" isn't super viable.
It feels almost like the only way to ensure a steady drip of abilities is to only use one stance at a time, and that's just not how I play Yakuza.
The first half of the game felt like how you described, and I was really enjoying it, but GOD does it run into a sheer cliffface of grind. By the time credits hit I had only uncapped Wild Dancer (let alone refilling it once uncapped, good god), and there is a 0.0% chance of me ever going back to the game knowing how much grind awaits me.
If you are smart and dunk all your generic orbs into specific styles, I think a generally "do all substories and most of the combat side stuff" playthrough can uncap two styles and get most of the generic combat buffs to heat and health from the other two trees, but you absolutely cannot even get close to skill complete and there are massive traps like ever learning to use secondary weapons or wasting points in special ammo (unless you are doing specific cheese).
I didn't even realize Amon was in this fuckin' thing! I 100%ed the sidestories, as is my custom, and when he didn't pop I thought, "Oh, weird, wonder why they didn't do him."
Do you have to uncap all four or something? Christ, that's gotta be just dozens of hours of mindlessly running the same dungeons, that sounds miserable.
Amon
That's the first Amon fight, but the next is right after that.
Ahh, I see
I did the first two tiers of the Battle Dungeon, but the layouts never get more interesting and the enemies become increasingly spongey and I stopped gaining abilities, so they took longer and longer to complete for less and less payoff. I petered out early in the last tier.
The recovery skill also being available only on the worst style is a real ding, too
Don't worry that one absolutely sucks, it heals like half as much as a common trooper card or the second tier medicine in exchange for all your heat, and I think it puts you in a can-be-damaged-but-not-staggered state so you can easily get chucked for all 300 health you recovered anyway! If you ever need it, you're 99% better off just using a guaranteed and safe heat move like swordsman dashing towards the enemy and getting a full combo in to end the fight faster.
And some of the actions you have to perform are so finnicky and weird that executing them once is kind of a pain. Like one of the Gunman revelations requires you to do that running jump shot attack, but starting it close enough to an enemy that your knee hits the enemy when you jump. It's baffling and obtuse and more than a little janky. Not great, Bob!