Recent reviews by Zloth

Great game! The 'teenage romance' aspect is weak at first, but once they get done dancing around in a pond, the story improves quite a bit. Combat is fun and engaging. I never bothered with X-2, the ending for X was too good to spoil with a sequel.

Short & sweet time loop mystery. The mouse wheel works pretty badly for switching weapons/flashlight, be sure to use the number keys. The price seems high to me, but the game goes on sale frequently.

Good game, but you have to be careful with the open world. You'll go through several big areas in this game and, if you try to do everything in every one of them before moving on, you'll likely get burned out before the end and the pacing will be a mess.

Check with Chadley and see what tasks give what materias, do the ones that will give you the materia you want, do the stuff that sounds fun, then move on. Don't think you're going to need all there is to get later on! You can win with ho-hum materia load-outs, plus there are plenty of opportunities to go back and do the things you missed. You might even find some of those materia in a vending machine or store later on.

Kudos to the game for the dynamic difficulty level! It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to keep the game fun throughout.

Good for long enough to be worth it on sale. Eventually, you start running through the same levels over again, only backwards, but you'll have gotten $2 worth of fun out of the game long before that point.

MP3 files only and, for some reason, they don't have the artist, title, track number, etc. included in the MP3 information.

But it's a LOT of great music that I can play in my car or while I work, so it gets an easy up vote from me.

MP3 files only and, for some reason, they don't have the artist, title, track number, etc. included in the MP3 information.

But it's a lot of great music to bring back memories, so I'll give it an up vote even if I'm rolling my eyes while I do it.

One of the best stories ever told in a computer game! Default keyboard layout is harsh, to say the least, but you get used to it. The music is excellent, too, especially for the time. So where's the soundtrack!? (throws cash at his drink coaster) Rats, wrong kind of Square, I guess.

Quick review - I've got a lot more playing to do before I write a more complete one.

I play 4X games weird. I like to use big galaxies (or worlds or whatever) with just 3 or 4 other empires in them. I also like things to be generally peaceful. Monsters/barbarians with some bigger (but temporary) military challenges are fine, but I enjoy trying to win more on the explore/expand/exploit fronts than extermination. This game appears to be supporting that style of play really well!

Regarding the DLC: don't buy it yet. The base game has PLENTY! See if you like its style of pick-your-automation first, then get the DLC when you know you'll use it.

Thumbs up, but not way up. This game has some serious issues.

The start of the game is slow - really slow. If you bounced off Yakuza 0 because of its slow start, you're going to hate this. The game doesn't open up at all until the start of chapter 3. Even then, it opens up slowly through a couple more chapters.

It's painfully easy at the start and there's no way to change the difficulty. The game does get harder, but it doesn't really get challenging until part way into Chapter 12. Then, suddenly, the difficulty spikes up with a double-boss fight! Once you get past that spike, the bosses feel a lot more like bosses.

You've got a party of 3 other characters. When you get more than three companions, you can start swapping them out mid battle - but not Ichiban. Your main character must be in the party at all times. What's more, if Ichiban goes down, you lose, even if you have items and powers that can raise him back up.

If you do go down, you'll be given the option to try the fight again. However, it will cost you half your cash! The game will autosave when you do this, too, and there's only one autosave slot. You're allowed to save your money in ATM machines, but there are not that many of these around.

I'm also getting tired of the weak PC ports. Yeah, sure, I can see why they would go the cheap route when they weren't sure how the series would sell on PC, but that was a long time back now. Is it really that hard to give us a way to exit the game quickly other than Alt-F4!? Or let the mouse move without selecting everything it passes over??

Finally, the weapon upgrade system is crazy. Some weapons can be upgraded, others can't. How do you know the difference? You buy it and check. Even then, you don't know if the weapon is going to be something you can upgrade once or several times, or what you'll need to do the upgrade with.

But this is still very much a Yakuza game! The main story is a good one (minus one insanely convenient coincidence) and there are plenty and fun side quests, too. The English voice acting is well done, too! I stuck with it right up to where some of the old Yakuza series characters started popping up. After all my hours with those games, having their voices change to English was a bit too much for me.

I was surprised that the new, turn-based battles weren't totally turn based! When a battle starts, enemies typically start out bunched together, but they will wander around and spread out while you're deciding what to do. If you want to start out with an AoE attack, it's best to do it when they are clumped together. Also, if you try to run past an enemy, that enemy will take a swing at you and might even stop your attack, so it's sometimes worth waiting until a path clears out. The resulting battle system was fun and a little bit new!

The way enemies change according to Ichiban's "gamer brain" was also a fun mechanic. Not only is it funny to see criminals turn into 'Fishy Founders' and 'Pompadorks', it also will sometimes hide what it is that you'll be fighting.

The job system is another plus. Each has strengths and weaknesses (some mostly weaknesses) and leveling up each can give some nice stat bonuses. And, of course, you get to dress everybody up differently, which is worth some grins.

Regarding the DLC:

The jobs DLC is worth it now at just $3. You won't be able to use the jobs until about half way through the game, though, so you can definitely wait to see if you like the game before buying.

Some of the Legends costume set is included in the game now.

Now that this is only $3 and can still go on sale, yeah, this is worth it. HOWEVER, you'll get no use out of it until you get at least one companion up to level 20 (going from memory). The initial weapons are weak and you won't be able to buy better until you can afford to blow millions on a new weapon. In other words, you can wait until you're well into the game before buying.

The jobs are not as fleshed out as the main game's jobs. There are fewer outfits and far fewer weapons.