Yakuza 7

https://kotaku.com/yakuza-7-announced-has-jrpg-battles-1837689271

Well. Apparently it is a JRPG now! I'm a bit surprised haha!

Very bad news. This is not a spin-off, this is a main Yakuza so they shouldn't have changed its genre.

Even more surprising, they showed it in April as an April Fools Joke. Probably to gauge interest and prepare. I wouldn't mind this kind of stuff in a spin-off (like Judgment, North Star etc.). But to do it for a new generation of players on the first big named title with a new protagonist titled Yakuza 7 (Yakuza: Like a Dragon in the west), yeah. I don't see it. Brave move, but not one I personally support. Now I really hope they keep Judgment around.

Well that’s unexpected. I agree with a lot of others saying the series was a little stale but this is quite the change.

I'm all for creative people trying new things, so this is very interesting. I'll probably still give this a go as i've really enjoyed the story and characters of the Yakuza games i've played, but this could go badly for Sega. The only turn-based system i've really enjoyed is the one in the Persona series. I'm hoping i'll have finished all of the other games by the time this one is localised.

They should do cover shooter and platformer next.

Birdman wrote:They should do cover shooter and platformer next.

Hopefully after those we can have a "Yakuza Drift" arcade racer! They should do it like Outrun 2 but with more gang violence.

I wasn't up for Castlevania becoming a GoW ripoff and I still hate how GoW is just a cheap Dark Souls ripoff with TLoU narrative. Even if this game turns out good and I feel like the gameplay can get old over 6 games + spinoffs I'm just not up for it, directors need to keep these massive acid direction changes to spinoffs or brand new IPs.

There's god know how many RPGs out there but next to none brawlers that have a big budget like Yakuza does, I can feel the pain of all the people disgruntled over this change because I've been through this with different IPs so I can relate to them even if I'm not the biggest fan of how Yakuza plays overall.

It is mostly that. I'm really up for people trying new stuff, but I dislike them doing that in the safety of an established IP. If Ubisoft wants to make a shooter, go ahead, but don't use the Splinter Cell name. Same here.

With luck Judgment will get sequels with the old style. But I'm even more scared of the following:

The director noted this is just a test, and that if people aren't too happy with it, that Yakuza 8 will have Action Combat again. This worries me even more. Yakuza 7 is the first in a new series with new protagonist, new city, new everything. A lot of people are going to jump on board here, including a lot of JRPG fans (I personally know 5 people alone that are interested now).
Imagine Yakuza 8 hits, they are excited, and it is action again... the series will be in trouble.

It looks so weird seeing Yakuza 7's models and animations be used for a Turn Based RPG.

Anyone scared that this was not a joke?

What is the general opinion on this direction?

My theory is, Yakuza has gotten somewhat mainstream lately, at least compared to the ps3 days. Absolutely 0 "game critics" understand, or like the combat. By making it turn based, every brain dead journo can now play the game without frustration, and see the wacky fun stories that appeal to everyone.
Boom, better review scores and they hope, more sales.

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I'm totally against it. Casuals and JRPG fans are their target audience, I'm more disappointed than angry right now.

I am waiting to see if it is possible to play EX hard mode on a new game playthrough before I pull the trigger on this. I can't play any more easy JRPGs that don't have difficulty select, they are so mind numbingly boring.

I picked this up and I am almost done with playthrough 1. You can do EX hard on NG+, apparantly it scales well so hopefully there is difficulty.

If anyone wants to know mechanics specifics or anything let me know. It is decent, there is a lot of party flexibility with the job system, though I find most of the jobs to be trash.

You can just guard every move so there is an action component.

The game is turn based but has real time elements, when you knock someone down, you have a small window to fallow up with an attack that becomes an automatic critical.

It has the dragon engine chaos with all of the items in the stage being weapons that can get kicked at people. So just telling some one to attack is still a dice roll as to what will actually happen sometimes.

That's about it, pretty standard. I wouldn't play this game for the combat if it wasn't a yakuza title, but the story is solid imo.

So far I'm in the same boat as you, interested in the story, but not the gameplay. Hence why I haven't picked it up yet. I know some spoilers, like "the big spoiler", but still want to give it a shot in the future. Though Judge Eyes will probably come first for me.

How's the difficulty? Is there any reason to use certain abilities or is it just an easy JRPG?

>difficulty

It was only difficult on one end fight, i was 15 levels too low out of nowhere, even though I breezed through everything up to that. Felt like a cheap shot gotcha moment.
Did some grinding up about 7 levels and it was not too bad.
Apparently EX hard is hard even at max level so hoping that the combat gets more interesting there, I have just been speeding through my first run.

There are a lot of status effects but I haven't messed with them much. I basically attack up everyone, defense down everyone, and hit them with my biggest nuke abilities. You can get mana refills easy so I just use the super spells constantly.
A lot of the bosses are absolute tanks as far as HP.

Really the most interesting thing is being able to perfect guard every move. The last boss I fought had a follow up if you didn't perfect guard the first hit. Wish they expanded on that more.
They could have had skills that turned perfect guards into tiger drops or something. There is a lot of room for a better rpg if they try again. This feels like a half abortion of a beat em up and an rpg because of the dev change mid way.

> Judge Eyes

I stopped playng about 1/4th through. A combination of bad framerate and the boring detective stuff. Need to get back to it, combat was ok. Wish there was a pc port.

Hit a second boss that was 10 levels higher than me. I haven't been skipping fights and have done both optional dungeons. Feels very unfair that this is the "difficulty". This feels very lazy imo.


Edit:
There is a later game boss that will 1 hit KO you if you do not perfect guard the attack. For Ichiban this means game over. At first I found this to be absolute horseshit. But I like it now and I think more stuff like this would have gone a long way. It really blurs the line between action game and rpg like i have never seen.

Got word from a pal about this.
It's on my list but not high. I just don't like Yakuza really and the characters look awful.

This guy no damaged the game, which is just crazy to think of for an rpg. Apparently evasion and accuracy stat buffs are very powerful, I completely avoided them on my run so that is the go to buffs to break the game.

Bought this today.

To note though he's playing NG+, so he's a level 99 character group against regular level foes from my understanding. He does note that there's a Chinese player that actually no-damaged most of the game on a regular playthrough, named Doctor W: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT_TVO-vo5S8O4gNEy-DrmQ

Just started this. Well, technically I'm continuing from the hour I put in when I bought it.

Pretty fun game. Just after the homeless guy and fired detective join.

Some interesting stuff here.
Like how if you go to attack an enemy and there's a closer one, they can actually intercept you and cancel your turn.

The homeless guy's fire breath can hit others nearby, but positions aren't fixed so you need to keep an eye on where everyone is.

Shit!

Came across a group about 3 or 4 levels above me and barely walked away. Missed half the perfect guards but even when I didn't these guys did nasty damage.

Game is still on my list too, always loved Yakuza but was hesitant to pick this game up due to the sudden shift in genre. You like it so far?

Yeah I like it.

It doesn't really matter that I was never a Yakuza fan. I just take it as another decent turn based RPG.

Feel done with this.

Got to post game and did the first tower.
Sick of stuff being locked behind minigames though. Everything feels like a chore now. Getting money with that stupid business thing, upgrading. It sucks.

Combat was decent but in the tower brainwash just stopped working. Hate it when statuses just stop working the stronger enemies get.

Burn, cold and poison are the same thing. Just a poison that exploits a weakness and even then do so little they're never worth focusing on.

In the end how did you enjoy the title though, recommended?

In the end I didn't enjoy it for the reasons above. Others might not care about these.