Yakuza Kiwami: More of the Same

Let’s not waste anytime and get right into this. The short version is that Kiwami is the updated remake of the original Yakuza on PS2 with new cutscenes and functioning off Yakuza 0’s engine down to the gameplay, graphics, combat, sound effects, it’s basically just more Yakuza 0 only that the characters got new looks. Aside from some changes to how upgrading works, Yakuza Kiwami is more or less Yakuza 0.5 with the added Majima Everywhere system.

Yakuza 0: The Foundation of Legends

After an enjoyable experience with Sleeping Dogs, I felt that the western game developers missed their mark with the GTA formula as I felt that Sleeping Dogs itself, being a part of the True Crime series, felt like a better GTA V than GTA V itself. I was a massive fan of the GTAIII era of GTA and came out of GTA IV with high, especially with the DLC involved, enjoyment but just could not get into GTA V and it’s plot was a lot less compelling than IV’s and its level of satire looped back with itself and felt so mean-spirited without that much merit. When a friend told me that Sleeping Dogs was good but Yakuza was even better, I was skeptical but excited at the prospect for an even better experience, but it would be around a year before I would have the chance to pick up the bundle for Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1, and Kiwami 2. For the longest time, I was one of those people who wrote off the franchise as just the “Japanese GTA” and now I sincerely come to loathe that phrase.

Nioh: Changing up the Formula

As the fire faded away with Bloodborne’s acclaimed DLC and in the limbo of Dark Souls 3’s final DLC to close the long-running saga, the month of February 2017 was when the Souls-like subgenre of games fully blossomed into the scene with Nioh. Back then, I was debating on getting it to stave off the month-long wait I had left for the Ringed City DLC but decided against it and decided to fully dive into the Trails of series instead. Nioh escaped my mind for quite some time but I did hear some reviews praising the different approach to combat but as well has having a few more bosses that felt a lot more “unfair” compared to the likes of Dark Souls’ calculated difficulty. I thought about buying it for a time but then Ghosts of Tsushima and Sekiro muddled my opinion of samurai-souls games for a while so it wouldn’t be until it went up for free that I finally had no excuse but to try it for myself.

Titanfall 2: Standby

It’s not every decade I decide to play an FPS game.

But having mechs be front and center is probably one of the few ways to get me to do it.

Darksiders 3: Rise from the Ashes

Let’s get the ball rolling.

Finally getting through some of these write-ups I’ve been talking about for months and Darksiders 3 is first up on the list. Well, more than DS3, I also talk about 1 and 2 a bit as well since my enjoyment of it is derived off the series as a whole.

Delayed Ramblings about Devil May Cry V Part 2: Family Matters

Welcome back to the second part of my ramblings on DMC5, this time, about the story and how it was handled. Now, for most non-fans or for people just viewing the fandom from the outside, plot seems like a relatively minor thing in the DMC series. To be fair, there is some merit to that since action games don’t tend to have all too great of a plot and it isn’t really until 3 that the series’ story really started to shine in any way. While DMC1 laid the ground work of the series’ universe with Mundus, Sparda, Dante’s past, and his fixation with his late mother, it was 3 that let the groundwork develop even further by multiplying the  depths of Dante’s character.

Delayed Ramblings about Devil May Cry V Part 1: The Technical Stuff

So it turned out Jojo’s hour long episode is NEXT week so I am now compelled to post DMC5 exactly in the middle of these seasonal anime posts because I got nothing else at the moment. The following intro blurb, as reiterated by the last sentence, was written way back.

Perhaps it’s my judgmental bias really kicking in but from the looks of it, many people that I’m seeing talking about DMC5 don’t seem to have kept up with the series, be it gameplay or storywise, for the longest time. Granted, DMC4 was literally 11 years ago and DMC4:SE was just 4 years ago but in the age of streaming reactions and bandwagoning, it’s tough to believe some of these people actually know what they’re talking about. This translates to, people who only follow hypetrains are annoying and I’m particular about showing genuine excitement.

Speaking as a guy who’s played everything in the series minus fully playing DMC2 and DmC out of morbid curiosities, I have a couple of things to say about Capcom’s recent redemption arc with the 11-year awaited DMC5 being its latest entry into the return of Capcom.

And lord jesus, I wrote that intro around April and here we are.