Recent reviews by PumpyTrunks

Played through the series; every entry I've played (0-4) up to this point have been absolutely top notch until now. It took me three tries to finish this entry in the series because I just could not get through it.

Kiryu's part is alright, but right as it starts getting interesting you're whisked away into Saejima's section which consists of a prison break (again), boring sequences in his 'imagination' where you go round the city doing pointless things in his head with a horrible blue filter over everything, and after breaking out you have to painstakingly hunt deer in the wilderness rather than actually playing an interesting story.

Then, Haruka's section is also horrendous, you get thrown into 'teenage girl becomes a pop star simulator' with dancing minigames as the primary gameplay and... it is just not enjoyable. You have to watch a young girl go to dance recitals and dance about the screen which is not exactly what I feel like sitting through, and while the story becomes mildly more interesting than Saejima's here I could not wait to actually get into some decent Yakuza gameplay which we still haven't seen much of until this point, bar Kiryu and a tiny bit of the last section of Saejima. During this section I was getting worried somebody might walk in and wonder what on Earth I was playing since the dancing stuff looks like it's targeted towards little girls if you don't get the context it's a Yakuza game. But hey, I suppose there's only one manlier thing than shirtless dudes beating each other up and that's watching your daughter achieve her dreams (not that I have any experience lol).

Akiyama and then especially Shinada's section do bring it back a bit, but it's too little too late and the only chapters of the whole game I found myself actually enjoying to a similar degree as the rest of the series were the very final one or two. Even then, the circumstances and writing surrounding everyone coming together for this part of the story are not great. The overall story was also much weaker than the rest of the series.

Overall, this is the only game in the series so far that I have a negative opinion of coming out of it. and I was honestly glad to finish it. I'm happy to finally break the curse of being stuck here as I'm playing them in order, and now I can get back to the good things about this franchise in the next entries. I do hear the side content is good though, but I ended up skipping most of it in favour of putting the overall game behind me and experiencing the side content of a better entry to the series. If you don't fancy hunting deer in the snow or watching a teenage girl sing pop songs for hours, skip this entry.

Everything about this game up to the end of Act 2 is amazing. The characters, story and turn-based combat are all brilliant and this game is absolutely one of my favourites of all time. But, the "postgame" content of Act 3 (which is really just - the end of the game) does drop the ball a bit in terms of what made the main portion of the game so good. The combat is still fun but I found that the third act, while a decent conclusion, was a lot less satisfying, a lot more repetitive and I think the game would have been a much more well-rounded experience if it would have ended at the end of Act 2 instead. The character development and story does take a hit at the end, and I felt a lot less compelled to finish it as a result. Overall though, it was still worth finishing and there are still a lot of positives about the final act too, and the game as a whole is a near-perfect turn-based JRPG. There's not much grinding, and where there is it actually feels fun as you can optimise it through hunting for and fighting metal slimes for large amounts of XP. Highly recommend, even to those who haven't played many or any turn-based RPGs before.

- Create a army of Ancient Romans multiple times the population of Ancient Rome to attack the US military
- Watch in awe as they all get mowed down by their guns
- Start to get bored because the sheer scale of battle takes forever
- Nuke the ♥♥♥♥ out of the Romans instead and watch thousands of corpses get ragdolled to the other side of the map
- Somehow all of this runs consistently well
- 10/10 experience

The only rhythm game that is more fun when you suck at it.
10/10