In a way that hopefully comes across less harsh about his opinion on preorders: Please just be mindful when making any kind of purchases and preorders. Whether Pirate Yakuza will be a game we either love or hate, let’s communicate that to the company through our comments, concerns, and especially our wallets
Yeah, it’s kinda sad this guy was yapping this much over a battle mechanic in a game that came out nearly a year ago. You’d think the game kicked his puppy or kidnapped his family or something.
3:38 Okay this might just be me but the agent style stance is not a Muay Thai stance, heck most of his normal attacks aren’t really Muay Thai. I know that the way the hands are positioned and how they are open may seem like a Muay Thai stance like Higashi’s but the fact that both hands are not even on the face makes it not a Muay Thai stance. The stance is more like a Kung fu stance like Yagami’s crane or tiger or the stance Yagami usually takes in cutscenes and most of agent style attacks seem more like Kung Fu moves like those of Bajiquan or Taichi. Edit: Now that I rewatch more of the Agent style attacks, I kinda realise that the Agent style is actually influenced by traditional Karate styles that do these kicks like the spinning back kick and the “kick to the sky” as you call it which is actually a kick from Taido which makes sense when you remember that Kiryu said that he learnt the agent style from reading the manuals which most likely means that he read the moves from a karate scroll that demonstrated how to do the agent style moves. So Agent Style isn’t really based on Muay Thai or Kung Fu but more so on Traditional Karate.
Yeah I heavily agree, Agent has a few good moves outside of the gadgets but aside from that I don’t get why everyone thinks its the speedy/dodgy style when you can’t even dodge cancel out of more than half the finishers and is clunkier to use than Yakuza.
@DillionT of the many things I didn't mention in this video, that's got to be one of the most damning. I still can't believe they made 4 square 3 triangle a launching move, but you're not even allowed to juggle off it in any way. Legend Remix was a total lifesaver for stuff like that
@@maxwellpaynewell5305Yeah, Agent’s finishers are probably the worst designed I’ve ever seen gameplay wise in recent DE, a lot of them are pretty much just single target CC but have way too much commitment to be worth using especially since the gadgets do CC 100 times better. Also the 6 second limit makes Agent worse since it forces you to optimize rejuggling instead of creative expression, leading you to just using Yakuza because of the amount of options it has for launchers.
I could see your argument if Majima Saga Mad Dog style did not exist. Mad Dog was already very much a memed on style in 0 but the Majima Saga took away key aspects of the style that made it at least somewhat unique and fun.
@sippinhotcocoa5934 I wasn't joking about forgetting Ishin Kiwami at the end, but I didn't even remember K2 Mad Dog in time to realize it should've been at least mentioned in some way. It's not quite as spectacularly bad as Agent, in my opinion, since it at least has a somewhat solid foundation in Y0 Mad Dog, but it's definitely a contender for worst
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I'd argue Y0 Mad Dog was already a pretty weak foundation, at the minimum with Agent it's all new stuff and doesn't serve to make a previously good style worse but taking out stuff it had prior. Thankful that Mad Dog is going to shine again in Like a Pirate
I would argue that it's at least defendable with how Y0's combat works. None of the styles are "complete", none of them are like Dragon style where they're objectively just the best part of all of them. Even if the style itself isn't that good, its another option you have access to that can combo into or from other moves and you have a variety of ways to mix it into the other styles. @sippinhotcocoa5934
I feel like I'm the only person who found the Gaiden ending hilarious because I pictured Hanawa helplessly watching Kiryu cry and snot all over his iPad
@m8rs558 on the one hand, I'm relieved that thought never came to me on my first playthrough, it felt good for the game to go out on a well-handled story beat. But on the other hand, I wish I had come to that realization on any of my subsequent ones, because that improves the scene on replay tenfold
One time i saw a meme of Gaiden Kiryu crying over Bambelina's death from Garten of Banban and it's the only thing i will picture in my head when thinkig of that ending
idk man, i love Gaiden (gameplay included) and i think looking cool is one of the strongest part of the series (HEAT ACTIONS). i reckon pirate majima looks cool so it will be cool, good analysis doe
I think what we got with Agent is a skeleton of what they wanted it to be. I think a teched out version of Snake with less technique but more brawn would have been a perfect fit for Joryu. They have the parry animation from 6/K2, and upon a parry you could choose: -Light, as a really strong palm strike, knocking the enemy back a little and stunning him. -Heavy, which would be a big sweep, dealing more damage than a light. -Grab, which can THEN allow you to: -Throw which can just be the snake one, which would tie in really well with the whole submissive arts and efficiency that Agent should strive for. -Heavy, and Joryu could elbow the enemy into the ground which you can also make into a launcher (which agent needs more of) -Light could just be... idk Also during the grab you have access to: -Multiple heat actions (which agent needs more of). -The guard shift during a grab that snake has, which would be AMAZING for a meat shield with how many enemies and guns Joryu faces. You could also add snakes disarming, which would work considering that agent is supposed to be first and foremost efficient, and considering how many deadly weapons Joryu can face in 1 combat encounter, it would come in useful. It just pisses me off that they could have just ripped off snake style, changed the light and heavy attack animations, added the depth of the gadgets (let Spider grab bosses and launch but make if like Yakuza 3 grabs where you have a set limit on how many times you can use it, and make Firefly a sticky bomb instead of a grenade and just remove Hornet) and you would genuinely have one of the best styles in any videogame, ever. Oh, and to balance it out make Dragon do less damage but be faster, and fix like the 50 shortcoming the combat has.
@mtgjuice6333 the simplified grab and lack of a parry really spelled Gaiden's failure as a whole for me. Even if Agent's base combo and finishers were more fun and applicable in one-on-one encounters, the lack of complex options in more advanced combat make it so the best thing the game offers is obscure tech like re-juggling, which isn't accessible enough without learning the combat way beyond what my patience allows for. Those gadget changes would also be appreciated, making them basically useless in boss fights (save for obscure tech or abusing them to melt healthbars) was an incredibly confusing choice
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I forgive LJ Tiger and Crane grabs being ass, cause you have a grab style that is very functional, in the same way I would forgive Dragon grabs being ass if Agent had good grabs. Also, it is so sad to see a style with so much potential being relegated to: - Spam Spider in the comically large crouds that only serve to pad playtime - Use Serpent either as a heat building tool by breaking objects with it, a juggling tool or as a worse version of Spider if you decide to use it as a croud controller - Use Light x2 in heat mode, for an inconsistent launcher that ONLY works if you miss the first attack? WHAT THE FUCK RGG - The other tools/moves are niche either because they suck (non-heatmode cigarettes) or they just dont work well half the time (hornet). My biggest gripe with the game is how they gut any crowd control that Dragon has, while also gutting any 1-on-1 potential that Agent would have. I also hate how they turned Dragon into a bruiser style, with the player basically being forced to tank hits with charged attacks to do any decent damage/launch outside of heat mode. In LJ, if you want to avoid damage, then you can. If you want to hyperarmor through everything of your own free will, go right ahead. But in vanilla Gaiden the gameplay gets so fucking repetitive. If youre in a group fight, switch to Agent, spam Spider or activate extreme heat and spam square, and if you're in a 1v1, switch to Dragon and just tank through everything to get a chance at bypassing the excessive hyperarmor every boss has, and just do repetitive juggles for like 3 minutes.
I really liked Gaiden and Agent style. The only bad things I had to say about Agent were that some of the heat actions were a bit challenging to pull off and the firefly gadget could only be used in very specific situations (and didn't even work properly in EX-heat mode). The drones I liked because it did a good job at distracting/harassing enemies and bosses whilst I was in a pinch. It *did* take me a little bit to warm up to agent style, but I learned how to use it and grew to love it despite it's flaws, like people who enjoy Shinada's combat, or yakuza 3's combat (both of which I like).
@corneliusdoggerton I would be a massive hypocrite if I acted like I don't see the fun in learning a game, even if it's not the best. I love Yakuza 3's combat, and I've spent so long learning its intricacies that I can't help but mentally correct people that express their frustrations with it, even if I could never expect someone to put as much time into it as I have if they didn't start out liking it. What I'd say of Yakuza 3 that I wouldn't of Gaiden is that 3 is a much more consistent game. The challenge it provides is both in how it limits you and how enemies behave, and neither of these things feel too much at odds with each other. With Gaiden, I get the feeling that Agent style wasn't meant to be something you need to put effort into learning, at least not in the same way. Obviously effort garners rewards, but the hyper aggressive enemies, and especially those moves which have weird/inconsistent hitboxes (or none at all), give me the feeling that they just wanted you to mash buttons and get through fights on raw strength and gadget spam. Again, no shade to you for having fun with it or for getting good with it. It's especially impressive to do that with a game and a style like this. I just think that with previous difficult styles, there was a degree of intentionality to their design that is lacking here, or is at least muddled because of Gaiden's generally low production value
11:17 its not very realistic but in-game, the attack usually results in the enemies whiffing you because your hitbox is way lower. Im guessing you missed this because who would keep attacking instead of just dodging? But yeah, thats one thing to point out. It works against enemies like the hang-man relatively well to get some strikes in. About the grabbing, its not explained but the thing with the only grabbing from one position is also tied a bit into the game mechanics. Atleast thats what I heard some commentary gamer say while playing and the footage he showed did look correct but I still havent fact checked it to see if his claims are actually true. basically, certain bosses cant be grabbed from the front. They just throw you down and counter. But if you do it from behind, the enemy AI has to wait a little before countering you and thus you get more time to use a move? something like that. Stuff like the agent style light attack though usually doesnt require as much time to hit and therefore doesnt require grabbing from behind but its useful for other attacks. They scrapped the back-grabs in favor of having better moves I guess. 20:43 I can confidently say that they didnt do it for no reason. There had to be some bugs with the cancelling out of agent attacks via style switch that probably couldnt get fixed fast enough. It doesnt even have to be strictly what I just said but theres never a "for no reason in particular" in game design. Especially when the same developers have already done the same thing but better. agent spider: you left out a very cool part about agent. If you grab a strong enemy with it, the enemy will try to escape and youre supposed to mash the button to pull the enemy in. If you stop mashing and just let the enemy free himself, then kiryu will fall to the floor but not actually take any damage. What is this useful for? The heat action that requires kiryu to be on the ground. agent gadget serpent: you left out some stuff like how the dash into enemy makes them "spin" and stagger allowing you to set up some stuff like an agent grab more easily. Also gaining heat via destroying the objects in your surrounding mechanic. about hornet: you mention that you are locked out of heavy attacks and heat actions because you have to hold down the heavy attack button. Insert some "honest reaction gif" in here tbh because the same applies to serpent and spider but you didnt complain about those. Its only exclusive to firefly that you can kinda use your moveset while the gadget is active (if you count the timer on the bombs as being part of the gadget). Also you left out a thing about hornet. When the enemies try to "swat" the drones away, it actually counts as an attack from the enemy which means you can use stuff like the agent styles extreme heat mode side step attacks or tiger drop. 27:28 this one is actually the worst complaint thus far. You can just block during the animation and kiryu will cancel his firefly animation. And guess what? after blocking, kiryu still has it in his hand. You can use light and heavy attacks to use it like the same way that kiryu would grab a traffic cone in the dragon engine games. And of course if you throw it, you can still get the massive explosion and no-timer. Just block and that fixes this one issue you had. 27:54 "and is flat out not very helpful in most instances" (shows footage of nishitani getting staggered for a few seconds which can be helpful if handed correctly afterwards.) reached like half the hour mark, gonna edit this comment in the future to discuss the rest of the stuff. By the way, im not trying to be mean or something. Most of the points I agree with. I just want to explain some stuff to make the game a more enjoyable experience by handing out some tips.
@kingkaizoku85 tips are absolutely appreciated, and I welcome disagreement as long as it's kept civil. Part of the reason I started this channel in the first place was to foster an environment where people are free to think critically about stuff without worrying about getting told "it isn't that deep." I like when things are that deep, as is probably obvious. That said, I may have misadvertised this as the deepest dive possible, because there is some tech here I was unaware of. Stuff like the spider grab letting you be pulled over and and the hornet swatting animation I did know about, but they provide such specific utility that I didn't feel it was necessary to point them out. That thing with the firefly extreme heat thing is pretty big news to me, though. That will definitely be handy, as I'm about to go through the game on PC to set up save points at significant battles. Thank you very much for keeping with the video despite the disagreements and moments of slight misinformation. I look forward to seeing what else you have to add
It appears that the rest of the video wont be having anything I can talk alot about since its mostly just fair points and un-arguable objective glitches but im at 48:38 right now and in defense of the game, this seems to work well for catching players off guard lmao. Its like the enemy is trying to pull a cheap trick on you or something. Just hillarious to think about. oh wow I genuinely feel bad for how many glitches you encountered. Ive got like 108 hours on the game and its like im watching some really obscure any% speedrun where they just showcase the wildest glitches imaginable. The only things I was aware of, was the heat actions sometimes swapping enemies, the agent style missing and the mortal reversals just failing and sometimes backfiring. Which is still alot but I should consider myself lucky for not having had to deal with stuff like this tbh. Though I guess it does make sense that the tiger drop didnt work in some cases like at around 54:24. The attack just wasnt meant to be tiger dropped I guess. Even if you could do stuff like that in lost judgment, perhaps it wasnt meant to be? hard to tell whether they failed the tiger drop in gaiden, or if they failed it in LJ (the question being which version of the game is intended now? Or did they change their minds?) 54:31 oh something I can comment about again in regards to gameplay. Theres this cool thing you can do with yakuza style if kaito charges up his dropkick. Run really far away. Dont under-estimate his distance. And once youre far away from him, do 2 light attacks with your back facing him and then do the charged reversal attack behind you. I tested this alot. 9 out of 10 times, you will do the stomp from the reversal attack right onto kaito who just lays on the floor there and it looks pretty cool and its a free punish to get a fully charged yakuza attack onto him. The only times I would fail this attack would be because of standing too close and then I just got drop kicked. I might upload some footage some day. I arrived at the start of the conclusions but im not happy with how little I yapped about the combat so I have a little tiny non-important thing to talk about. People say boss daigo is better than playable daigo and he kinda is in some ways. But theres this one thing players dont notice. The like 4 or 5 hit rush combo (I dont remember if its 4 or 5 hits.) the last attack of the rush combo functions just like a normal rush attack would. Atleast for the boss. But the devs were nice enough to give playable daigo a "guard break" on his final rush combo which allows the finisher attack to hit the enemy. I specifically try to pay attention to stuff like this. The playable characters in the coliseum arent always just the enemies but worse in every way. Theyre just, "the enemies but worse in alot of ways". keywords: every and alot. The playable versions have some benefits like kaito has chargeable finishers as example. I havent tested them enough though yet, those are the only things I noticed. also sorry but to avoid seeing too many spoilers about it, im gonna skip over the "dont pre-order the majima pirate game" section. However I can assume that the point was just "It might be like gaiden: terrible", ? anyways, Ill post this comment now and go watch the conclusions. If theres anything worth mentioning about the combat again, ill edit this. Good video, very insightful without just whining about "6 seconds" like most people. You actually touched topics that most people dont.
@kingkaizoku85 I guess if there's anything I can address, it's probably the tiger drop thing. It's less a problem about it being a thing in Lost Judgment, and more about it being a thing in the first Judgment. Before they implemented mortal reversals, you either had to avoid the mortal attack or counter it with a wall attack or a tiger drop. I don't think they kept the wall attack counter, but them keeping the tiger drop thing in Lost Judgment was a good way of not limiting your options despite adding a pretty linear way of countering mortal attacks. A lot of gaiden follows that pattern, something you used to be able to approach from a miriad of ways suddenly becomes a lot more limited. Yakuza having two dodges, Agent not having a counter, not having a parry, so much of this game's combat feels like they just didn't include pretty crucial parts of previous games. As for Majima pirate game, it's less that it looks like Gaiden, more that it looks exactly like Gaiden. The side stuff and especially the way the combat is designed looks like they're making a carbon copy of the game, down to having a live action side mode for no good reason. It's not that I want people not to buy the game, far from it. It looks better the more I see of the combat. But I want people to judge the combat once we can actually see all of it, and especially the story and minigames. People leaning into preorders like they are sends the message that they can be lazy, and I really want them to course correct from where Gaiden and IW have faltered. Pre-orders tell them that they haven't faltered at all Again, thank you very much for watching, and thank you for the deep dive into what I presented here. I appreciate getting to talk with someone who clearly loves this series on a mechanic level as much as I do
to the spider gadget 23:10, you can leave them tied up. you need to be in Extreme heat mode, hold circle on enemys, once they are tied up just cancel into yakuza style and there you go!
@Kevvv890k thank you for that. I was iffy about leaving that in the video just because I wasn't sure if that was possible. But even beyond that, I've managed to let them go without extreme heat and without getting hit, I just have no clue how it's done. Mods make it possible/easier, so that makes me think it is in the game somewhere, it's just not explained
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I havent watched the video yet but im a huge huge combat guy. But not as in combos like all the yakuza no damagers but just efficiency, safety and the most practical thing without doing styling and legend remix and all that. So the spider gadet being able to tie enemies up is one of my favourites things in the early game when there are too many enemies. The extreme heat mode isnt the only way to tie them up. If you do it on an armed enemy, it just instantly disarms them but also ties them up. Atleast thats just from my testing, correct me if you can actually tie enemies up in a different way from these two as well. I dont know if im gonna agree alot with this video or disagree but either way, I think that bad mechanics in a game due to it being rushed or just in general a rough game, that usually forces the player to play a bit smarter rather than brain dead. All of that gets thrown out if you buy too much gear and upgrades though but yeah, those are optional. I enjoy how limited some of the things are. I cant just button mash my way through everything and have to actively think about what I do and prioritize.
@kingkaizoku85 I'm of a somewhat comparable mind about Yakuza combat. Obviously no damages are cool, but for me, I'm all about super aggressive play when possible, and just making it through each fight in the off chance the game is actually difficult. I love Yakuza 3 for having some of the smartest enemies in the series, and I like 6 a lot for being difficult in other ways, even if it is through limiting Kiryu. I never buy strength upgrades if I can help it, I keep my damage output as low as possible. Even with all that said, I still think Agent style falls short, and I think those reasons are present in the video. I'm happy to discuss those points or any counter stuff after you've watched it, if you want. It's refreshing to see a fan of the series that isn't all about the power trip these games can provide
From your words in the basic combat segment, I'd like to think that Kiryu wasn't taught those finishers and instead tried to make his own, thus giving us those... Rather weird moves that don't make sense in a submission style.
@@PurpIexion I did notice in retrospect that each of the finishers end with some sort of a high kick, so that idea may actually have some canonical resonance. Maybe there's some kind of basic pattern that the style is meant to abide by, and those are how Kiryu chose to end them. I tried to stick to the stuff the game itself says, but it often does help the game to connect some of the more distant dots yourself
1:02:04 'Toxic Positivity' is honestly the best way to describe the entire fanbase i love this franchise, many people do. I probably wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for yakuza 0. I played every single game including all of the spin offs but after playing Gaiden and Infinite Wealth all i can think off "Wow.. really..?" I couldn't help but notice that RGG has been falling off. i didn't like Gaidens story i love Shisido (thats it) and i don't even remember whos the final boss in infinite wealth and it opened my eyes STOP MEATRIDING RGG EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME holy shit i thought it was a me problem when i dont like clearly half baked games and then people just staright up eating all this shit up
I'm honestly having a harder and harder time figuring out who these games are for as more come out. My best bet for the moment is people who only want to do the side content, but even if that's the case, Animal Crossing and Pokémon already exist. It leaves me really curious what the breaking point with this series could possibly look like, if people are willing to shill out for these games because they include bad versions of other games you can play instead of the main game
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Yakuza 1 and 2 have actually aged really well in that the fluff is largely kept to a minimum, there's some decent high quality side content but it's not enough to derail the game and you still spend most of your time punching people
@stormysoup1083 for Yakuza 2, I'd definitely say that. But I will say going back to Yakuza 1 is always hampered by going through the couple of chapters entirely dedicated to doing side stuff for Date, the Florist, and Haruka. It's definitely not as bad as Judgment, for example, but it still could definitely have lost a lot of weight and been better for it. Compared to the Kiwami games, though, they're masterclasses in pacing
I saw an interview with Yokoyama, the current producer of the series and this guy legit said they have to release the games as soon as possible before the trends they put in the game dies out (like V tubers and whatnot). And that's INSANE to me, I feel like they should spend more time perfecting the gameplay and story instead of focusing on shit like that
I’m often afraid that we’ll end up like from soft fans, where the game quality suffers as a direct consequence of fans’ unwillingness to criticise. There are huge flaws in the series that are barely addressed and sometimes even praised. I felt like a crazy person when the pirate game was announced. It felt like a weird dream and no one batted an eye. A gaiden game and nothing else. More overly zany and absurd elements standing front and center. This tone will get old FAST, and I hate that all us rgg fans will realise it when it’s too late. The combat especially stood out to me. The grounded yet absurd combat has come to a point where it’s too insane and flashy to feel deliberate or fun to control. I miss the more deliberate street brawl and martial art combat, I loathe the gadgets, shadow clones and now jump button… Yakuza might very well turn to shit and it’s our fault.
@sleepygorilla1341 I wasn't even aware there was a decline in FromSoft games, but I'm more than willing to believe you based on how many times I've heard people defending stuff to do with weird enemy windups in Elden Ring. I'm torn about the problems with tone, on the one hand I absolutely agree that it's gotten stale, but on the other hand I'm not sure how much further they can take it before there's nowhere else they can go with it. I hope they reach that point and find some new direction before the surface level fans who watch Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth All Kiwami Moves compilations instead of playing the games, but I could see it going either way. A big part of why I want to talk about these games is to inspire more critical discourse around the series. Sincere discourse, obviously, I don't want to create a wave of haters that won't fix anything. But if I can inspire anyone who watches these videos to bring critical opinions to greater fan spaces, or even make videos themselves to inspire even more people to voice their disdain with where the series has gone, then I'm going to keep working toward that goal. With Infinite Wealth getting some actual negative reception for the first time in a long time with this series, I think there's a good chance that they'll listen to fans who think about the games they play. If we're loud enough, at least. In my book, this series has already gone to shit. I'm going to do all I can to inspire some positive change, before the "new audience" who likes these messes of games turns into no audience, and we get a Like A Dragon game that is inarguably terrible with nobody to appreciate whatever is left of the series' original charm
I understand where you are coming from, but the combat changing to include weirder aspects has been around since 5 or even 3 if you count some of the heat actions. In my humble opinion, I like what they are doing with the franchise as they are at least acknowledging how silly the plots of the previous games have been and RGG have always been open to criticism and changes as shown with how the games have evolved from the beginning. Personally, I think that if the series was called Like A Dragon in English from the start, those wanting the “serious tone” might not be so pissed because then they wouldn’t have the notion that these games were entirely serious. And honestly, these games are just made to be fun so that’s why most fans just enjoy it.
@@Epicthomas1000 I don't understand the whole "yakuza was never serious" thing. It always had funny and outlandish side content, to contrast the mostly serious tone of the main story, but now a lot of people act like it's just the funny and goofy shenanigans series. To me these games were never "just fun", the out of pocket comedic moments were just the cherry on top. If yakuza didn't take itself serious the entire premise wouldn't work. Yes some of the plots are pretty dumb when you think about it, but the answer to shoddy writing isn't to just give up and say "it's all fun now". That would go against everything the series stands for imo. Also the combat in gaiden and ishin kiwami just sucks big monkey nuts and acting like it's all fun and ok won't fix anything.
@ well to me, the series is built entirely on the characters, doesn’t really matter if the plot is bad (although there are some times when it really needs fixing), as long as the characters are fun to watch or make me feel so freaking sad or angry at them, then the series is doing great. The only reason people are complaining about the wackiness now cuz before the characters were just reacting to the wackiness but now they are taking part in it. Thats probably why I think I and some other will probably love the new Majima game even though others may not because the fact that Majima finally gets to go full on wacky actual Mad Dog in a game is really interesting and I trust RGG will somehow still make it emotional and heartfelt.
Agreed with most, if not all points in the video, though I think a few parts can sound a bit nitpicky (mostly about the moves that don't seem practical for the style) and I assume they wouldn't be very convincing for someone who isn't already on board with the idea that Gaiden as a whole is kinda meh of a game. Personally, I'd probably also cut down the bug compilation and replace it with a short list of everything else that is actually wrong with the game (nonsensical story and character writing, Akame system grind, Coliseum), since that section doesn't really focus on Agent anyway. Speaking more generally, recently I've become kinda concerned with the way Yakuza community treats criticism towards the series. Bigger RUclipsrs covering RGG games seem to downplay anything that isn't microtransactions and most egregious story flops. This is especially disappointing because otherwise I like their videos, but pretending that there's nothing wrong at all with the recent entries and then persuading tens of thousands people who are going to watch their videos of that won't have a positive effect on the future of the series. The rest of the dedicated playerbase seem to hold similar opinions and everyone speaking out against it is usually ridiculed and disregarded (sometimes deserved, sometimes not so much). Gaiden was ultimately a disappointment for me, both story and gameplay-wise, but at least it was a side entry. Just recently I finally beat Infinite Wealth and the story got so bad in the last few chapters that it not only ended up ruining the whole game for me, but also made me very worried about their next games and Majima Gaiden in particular. I actually don't necessarily agree that it will play bad, but the zany tone and atmosphere combined with the aftermath of a nonsense of a story IW had makes my expectations... infinitely low.
@uriziel38 like I said, I've got basically no expectations for story anymore. I've been able to look past the lacking execution of a lot of these games in favor of appreciating some very good ideas, but from 7 forward, the quantity of very good ideas I've seen has dropped way faster than I was expecting. For a supposed series reinvention, there's been basically nothing new besides the gameplay and a worse protagonist (that they quickly sidelined in favor of bringing back every legacy character who's still alive, and some who aren't). Now we've got less than good ideas paired up with the usual shaky execution, and with Pirates In Hawaii presenting what I'd confidently call the first bad idea? Again, I have no expectations. I hope that's enough to save me from being disappointed What I do hope for is that more content creators feel confident voicing their grievances with the games, now that they're almost inarguably in a worse state than they were when series popularity spiked. I'm sick and tired of everyone acting like they're getting paid by RGG to shill out every new game they shit out
@@Hiroakiarai88 it's a bad game with good moments because the main plot entirely relies on a series of coincidences and stupidity but the characters are not meant to be seen as stupid. A single thing done differently would've completely changed the story e.g. what was Munakata's plan had Arai shot him in the head instead?
Mad respect the positive toxicity bit, even when the game was ANNOUNCED I knew it looked like it was trying way too hard to be quirky for majima's sake, but has NO ONE pointed out how bad the lighting looks in the gameplay?
@chairiot that's easily one of my biggest problems with the more recent games, the lighting is consistently awful. Way too much glare and lens flare everywhere, the color tone is completely off all the time, and everyone's skin is completely the wrong color pretty much whenever they go outside. Half the time there's this weird purple tint on people and objects when it's the middle of the day, I genuinely don't get how people can like how they look. I don't get how they went from 6 to this
The inspiration for agent style was aikido and taido. So some of the moves make sense in that context. But I agree with most of the criticism. 29:30 This is an Aikido technique called “Projection no. 17” You cross the opponent’s arms at the elbow and push up on the lower arm and down on the top arm.
@elijahfyffe5176 having finally bitten the bullet and looked into taido, I'm shocked that it's as absurd as it looks in game. But I guess if you give cultures enough time they'll come up with a way to make a martial art out of anything. It's stuff like this that reignites my love for martial arts, so thank you (and the few other people commenting about it) for correcting me on this
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 No problem, I’ve been doing martial arts for just short of a decade and I loved RGG’s implementation of them. But, I also agree that they’ve really messed up with how they put them together recently. I think the issue started with Yakuza 0/K1 messing with how dragon style came about. But at this point it’s no longer the series struggling to make good lore explanations for the styles, but just outright making bad combinations sometimes.
Aside from agent being clunky, bright af and not staying with the theme of an “agent” fighting style, I also hate the general gameplay nerf. Bosses get super armor if they get pressured with too many hits or getting juggled for more than 7 secs, and status effects like stun and agony can only be applied once per enemy. Idk what they were thinking with this system. But hey mods are making this game a lot better now. I just hope rgg gets the combat system right for lad pirate this time. The last thing I want is 7 sec juggles
@issatsumo5054 that's another thing, the whole system of pressuring an enemy with taps doesn't work at all on bosses because the game was designed in such an odd way. It's like they specifically crafted the style and game separately so that there was a zero percent chance of them having any kind of synergy with each other. Like you said, though, mods are improving my experience greatly. I'm excited to see if Yagami or Kaito work in any regard, but for moment, Legend Remix has been my lifesaver. I definitely hope they take the right lessons from Gaiden, but if all they do is replace 7 second juggles with a single air combo like in Yakuza 5, I won't be surprised
the worst style in the series is the unarmed style in kenzan. no finishing blows no finishing holds no komaki tiger drop no quickstep blows the second dodge takes to long but the fact that the only style i can think of that is worse than agent is from a game focused on sword combat is saying something also dishonarble mention to Sumo style from kurohyou 2 for having the slowest punches in the universe
@benpaul7923 honestly, I give that style a pass just because it serves a direct function in Kenzan as a whole. It being so barebones helps disguise Miyamoto's identity as a legendary swordsman when he's in Gion (as does his weird wooden sword style), and like you said, it's basically just a placeholder to incentivize using weapons. You're not really meant to use it. I do wish it at least had as much going on as Shinada's style (minus his insane amount of grab transitions), but for what it's trying to be, it doesn't offend me quite as much as Agent does
Also i wouldn’t say that this style is based on Muay Thai but they just use this stance for some reason. Muay Thai doesn’t rly do sidekicks and jumping stuff mainly bc you would have to be in a “bladed stance” (much more to look like karate) and that means you get sweeped easily from that position in Muay Thai. So yeah, stance does resemble Muay Thai but fighting style itself has a lot of Taido moves. That is a form of karate that we can see characters such a Reina from Tekken 8 use. Trademark move of this style is a rolling on a ground kick. However this agent style also have much more different techniques from other martial arts.
@Geagra I had a slight feeling that the Muay Thai thing was only stance deep, but I was so far into the video that by that point I felt like it would've taken too long to figure out what it actually was. Plus I'm not well enough versed in different styles of karate to pick a specific name like that. Generally speaking, I'm not good at recognizing karate because I grew up calling every martial art karate, but I'm glad someone who knows what they're talking about has shown up to drop some knowledge here
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 no no its ok, im just giving you and the rest of the viewers some insight on things. Im training in Muay Thai and our coach is also a former boxer and just MMA fan. So he tells us a lot about certain things.
Finally, someone isn’t GLAZING Gaiden given how flawed and unenjoyable the game is. The fact Snowiest lumped it in with Lost Judgement as an “underrated masterpiece” made me livid lmao. A bloated, 80gb, broken game that was made in 6 months is being compared to a rich, fleshed out, 50 gb, and FUN game is appalling. Any time my friends ask me about Gaiden, I just tell them to play Yakuza 0 instead. 0 has MORE side activities, less storage, more and a better story, and much more enjoyable combat. You get more worth your buck playing a game from 2015 LMAO ALSO FOR A STYLE FOCUSED ON GRAPPLES AND COUNTERS, HOW DO YOU FUMBLE SO HARD AND NOT ADD A PARRY MOVE TO AGENT??
@Aduubo honestly, that whole video's premise just pissed me off. I don't understand how not constantly talking about how perfect a game is constitutes its status as "underrated." None of those games are perfect, and Lost Judgment stands leagues above both Gaiden and Judgment, at least in my opinion. Its combat is certainly far better than Judgment. And people know that, everyone talks about how great Lost Judgment is. It just doesn't make sense on any measurable scale. And the parry thing still confuses me. There's no reason it shouldn't have one, they could've reused the Y6 or Snake parry and nobody would've complained. The fact that I had to point out that there were things I didn't have time to talk about, and I still keep seeing new things I hadn't even thought of in the comments (parry not included, granted) really goes to show how lacking this style is
Certified hater, it's not bloated at all, it's the shortest and easiest to 100% The other games are dog shit because they use the philosophy "more equals better" imo that's dog shit and half the mini games suck ☠️
@@soilthestillborn4949 “not bloated” yeah tell that to my storage and the 80 gbs the game stole And even cutting out the mini games, LJ and Yakuza 0’s combat are still leagues above Gaiden. Imagine having a juggle limiter when LJ previously didn’t
@@Aduubo Ok, I want to tell you that I disrespectfully disagree with all of your arguments except for 80 Gb. Gaiden wasn't even that bad but the way you described it, it sounds like Gaiden broke into your home and shot your dog or something. This is not even contructive criticism, it's just general distaste. While I can see where you're coming from, I feel bad for your friend as you were just forcing your view on him without giving a chance to see for himself. That's why I do not respect your arguments at all.
Hi just saw the channel for the first time today and this video was pretty good. Gaiden was actually the first game I played in the series, and I thought it was really fun but watching this video reminded me of problems that I had with agent style: mostly the weak feeling it gave off especially in heat mode. At first, I was ready to defend the wire gadget since I actually think it's amazing, but you didn't dislike that one, so I was glad. The jet boot gadget though was really weak, it was fun at times, and it was good for dodging enemies and running from battles, but ramming through enemies felt like a slog. Firefly was way more fun just having a ranged attack that felt like a trap was entertaining but maybe just in a shallow way. One thing that you didn't mention that I personally experienced was how I rarely used more than like 3 heat actions at most, I think the game didn't teach the importance of them very well but maybe that was just my fault as a player. But I do have to criticize the video a bit because I had one major problem and 2 smaller things. Let's start with the smaller stuff. Firstly, when discussing the finishers you primarily focused on their visuals and IRL usefulness which is fine because you discussed how the visuals hindered gameplay, but you barely discussed their in-game application which, if you didn't have much to say then you should have said that. Secondly, I was a little let down by your comment on pirates, you didn't really analyze the gameplay at all and just said "It's the same game as gaiden" which I guess is fair but I myself have been looking at the gameplay a lot and I feel like it has a bit more to offer compared to gaiden. There's jumping which gives a lot of options for the fighting styles and the tools that pirate form has which mix better together with combos (although hook doesn't seem to have the same cool applications as wire but has a more pulling yourself towards the enemy and pulling enemies down from the air). Also, mad dog style it pretty different here it doesn't seem to be reusing animation from zero/kiwami 2 not to mention it's obvious mix with brawler which seems like it's move set is pretty complete. Overall, the combat seems like it's doing creative stuff however It does seem like majima might have the mind of his own problem that heat mode agent style had. Either way I don't really pre order games I just buy them when I have the money so its whatever. Time for the big major problem I have with this video... The non scripted sections. They were so long and redundant and annoying to listen to that I after the first one and half of the second one I skipped them any time they showed up. The first one was okay it just needed to be cut for all the downtime and repeating which still made it a bit tedious. However the second time with the heat actions felt like a complete waste of my goddamn time you just repeated the same issues that you had with the finishers the visuals and the IRL application it's okay to repeat those points but you don't have to show this tedious play by play of the heat actions you could just give us the highlights of one or two of them that prove your point it doesn't matter if people say your cherry picking if you're worried about that just show a quick montage of the other heat actions. The next times I didn't even bother watching the non-scripted parts they just seemed like you repeating on similar issues while yelling about them. It's okay if you wanted these to function as comedy but they don't need to be this long they can all be summarized by one or two clips each. None of them felt like they benefited from the lack of the script nothing would've been lost except time spend editing which probably isn't the case either since you do actually cut between small sections in these parts, but you don't cut any repetition which just makes it dull. Still like the video but I wish It didn't become the slog that it did at some points. One personal issue I forgot to mention was the whole negativity without providing an answer thing that a lot of critics have, you supply an answer sometimes but not all the time specifically surrounding the firefly and drone gadgets but it's not that big of an issue for this video. Lastly here are the games I've played in order; Gaiden, 0, 4, 6, and right now I'm on chapter 11 of lost judgment. Also I'd love to see what you have to say about other combat styles like shinada's and my three favorites: Tanimura's, breaker, and snake in that order (I think).
@tombstonepizza2299 one of the hardest things in the world (for me, anyway) is reading negative, but true, constructive criticism. I don't disagree with anything you've said here. I'm still trying to find my footing with how I want to present my videos, in terms of scripted versus non-scripted stuff, and with this one specifically, it ended up taking so long that I wanted to get the video out more than I wanted to make the best thing I could. Still, I'm glad that the basic formula presented here is something you enjoyed. I very much want to try my hand at analyzing other styles in this series, so I'm looking forward to taking what worked here and using it to its full potential. Thank you very much for not only sitting through as much of the video as you were willing, but also to contribute toward improving future videos Just for the record, I'm glad that you value the whole "no criticism without a resolution" thing. I normally try to bring that attitude to anything I look at, but I felt like maintaining a consistently negative tone would've fit better for where I was in the video. Also, you've started out with my personal favorite games in the series, so good on you in that regard
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I'm glad you took it so well! I kinda get carried away with writing comments sometimes since I don't know how to make my own videos like this, so I'm glad you were willing to read all that. great job on the video and I can't wait to see more :)
The problem I have with Agent style is that it's genuinely inferior to Yakuza Style in a lot of ways. It has basically one juggle startup in the Ex heat light combo that can be followed up, the amount of damage the style can do is next to pitiful, and the only good thing I use in extreme heat for this style is the 'mortal reversal'-esque ability and the aforementioned juggle startup. You'd think for the style that involves agility and defense, they would've added some sort of a parry or counter mechanic like Snake's parry or even K2's parry sidestep, but the only counter in this game is the mortal reversal thing in extreme heat or the Tiger Drop. It just feels like at most, you'd be using like 1/4 of Agent's moveset for like a few seconds before switching back to Yakuza most of the time.
@DominatorLater it really surprises me that there isn't a Komaki Parry or some sort of equivalent move for Agent style. Considering there's no easy way of stunning an enemy in this game, and that the parry has been in almost every Dragon engine game up to now, you'd think they'd add that to Agent as an extra incentive to switch styles, or at least a normal parry because that's what a technical style would have. The whole game is full of confusing omissions like that
@@realzekrom2668 I really hope, if nothing else, that Pirates In Hawaii does more with its gadgets. It's a really fun system in concept, and if this game ends up being the stepping stone on the way to something good (think 7 to IW), then I'll be able to think back on it much more fondly
Honestly I view Gaiden's combat as a slightly better and a slightly worse version of judge eyes. It does require skill and patience to understand the mechanics and it can be rewarding once you learn and understand it but since Gaiden doesn't have any depth or creativity and agent style being the crane style of this game being a wet blanket and can't do the job it's supposed to with the system,unlike Judge eyes, the problems become more evident compared to Judge eyes where there were methods to work around the problems the game had when it came to the combat. Also while Gaiden does fix the juggling and frame rate that plagued Judge eyes( the original) it adds a whole new plethora of issues that shouldn't even exist considering Lost Judgement nearly perfected everything they were struggling for some time. And if they're already using mechanics from Lost Judgement why couldn't they go all the way and add the TWO OBVIOUS MECHANICS THAT MADE LOST JUDGEMENT THE GOAT, max combo speed and faster cancel frames. Oh and get rid of the juggle limit and stupid hyper armor I'm surprised you didn't mention that since that is a BIG problem with this combat
@curlyaccidente3583 while this game and Judgment both have pretty fundamental problems with their combat, I don't think I would say they have enough of the same problems to compare the two, besides one style being obviously better to use than the other. That does get at another thing, though, which is that if I had made this video with the goal of including talking about the general combat and enemy design, it could've easily been twice as long. Gaiden is so poorly thought out in so many ways, not even counting the juggle limit, that I would honestly need to make a whole different video to discuss the wealth of ways it fails at what Lost Judgment did well. About the only thing I'd consider a major improvement is that multiple enemies will attack you at once, which is such a baffling omission from Lost Judgment that my running theory is that it happened because of some spaghetti code left over from Yakuza 7
@@maxwellpaynewell5305True but Judge eyes does have the same style problems as Gaiden where Tiger and Yakuza are the ones people are gonna use more than Agent and Crane plus considering the fact that it does borrow elements from two games I felt like it made sense to compare the two since RGG was already using mechanics form those games at least imo
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Honestly I think with how well you stated the facts of the big problems of Agent, and even though there are some things that I think are nitpicky and disagree with like the way it looks, I think you should do a deep dive analysis, that way people can most certainly understand the many problems that way too many people ignore. Let's just pray to God the new Majima game got more than 6 months though
@curlyaccidente3583 a deep dive analysis on the rest of this game's combat, you mean? I could definitely take a stab at that, but I don't know if I know quite enough about how the game works to make a satisfying video about how poorly constructed the entire package is. I definitely hope the Majima game comes out better, though. I don't think we've ever gotten two games that feel exactly the same, so if nothing else, it will feel different from how Gaiden feels
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 like I said it's up to you if you want, I just thought since you understand that combat moreso than most you'd do a good job analyzing it
Great video man I definitely agree with you. Agent style feels like they tried to put all of yagami’s styles into one. Flashy crane adjacent kicks, double handed tiger light attacks, and focus grappling like snake style. The flashiness doesn’t fit kiryu like it does yagami because yagami does kung fu. While agent is not as bad as Ishin gun style or K2 mad dog style, it still sits as one of the worst.
@HaTTStud that is an excellent way of putting it. I hope going forward they don't feel stuck in the shadow of Lost Judgment (and if the Majima pirate game is any indication, they're trying very hard to get away from it). Also, I admit I actually did forget to consider K2 Mad Dog when I made this, but that's mostly because I don't even remember the Majima Saga existed unless I get forcibly reminded of it. Plus, that would've been a much shorter and more boring video
If we are talking about gun style in original 2014 Ishin, I would honestly argue that single gun style fills a more useful niche and is more consistently practical than Agent, Gun also has better sway attacks than Agent, Ishin Kiwami is a different story because it's a very butchered version of the original that Sega should apologize to me personally for releasing
From what we've seen in the Majima trailers SO FAR, it seems like they're learning a bit. The pirate style does look like it'll be a lot of fun as someone who plays Dynasty Warriors games. It reminds me of that and the legacy style seems like it'll have more to it and it also looks fairly fun.
I've reached the point in the games cycles where I'm no longer watching trailers for fear of spoilers. That said, from what I've seen, it seems like there might be potential for what I enjoy out of these games, but if I wanted a Dynasty Warriors game, I'd probably just play one of those. It reminds me of how MGS Peace Walker was touting its Monster Hunter styled bosses as a positive, when I could just as easily play a Monster Hunter game if I wanted that. In an MGS game, I want to play MGS, and in Yakuza, I want to play Yakuza
I still had fun with Gaiden, but i get why people don't like it as much as others. I've played 0, Kiwami, skipped all the way to 7 while being aware of the main beats and characters up until that point, played both Judgment games, and now just beat Infinite Wealth. I still had plenty of fun, but i TOTALLY get why many didn't like especially the end half of the plot. The new Pirate game for me is kinda a yellow flag, I'm stoked to learn more about it, but imma wait and see how it's recieved and why before deciding if i should get it; don't worry about telling me not to pre order, I've avoided that pretty much out of principle since i was a teenager. As time gets closer to release, I'll probably shift to not buying it and just focus on other games, because i got burnt out on Yakuza before (i beat all those previously mentioned games BEFORE Gaiden within a 2 year period.) Edit note: If RGG keeps up the NG+ as paid DLC thing, I'm just done buying their games.
@@autiemartian7324 believe me, I'm starting to feel that burnout, and I managed to play every game (originals and remakes) up through Lost Judgment and The Kaito Files during a period of around 2019 to 2022. I don't think it's an overstatement to say the series got me through college, and it's upsetting to see them take their newfound popularity as a reason to pump even more content out even faster with even lower care for the consumer across the board. I'm coping really hard by telling myself that come next January, they'll release NG+ and the post game dungeon for free for IW, like how they did when Yakuza 7 went international. If that doesn't happen, I'll have to seriously consider whether I keep supporting this series. I've already started buying them physically only so Sega doesn't get all of the money, and if I need to start searching for secondhand, then so be it
@@maxwellpaynewell5305I didn't expect such a quick reply or "loved comment " notification, thanks. I get what you mean about the rapidly coming out games; I'm glad the series has gotten popular, and I *to my surprise* ended up loving Yakuza 7 when i first played it but they need to be careful in the near future. Also, I've seen your other comments about martial arts in games, and tbh part of my burnout on the series previously was due to playing a game called Sifu. That game's combat system has spoiled me to the point I end up comparing other martial arts beat em ups to it as a standard, sometimes to a probably unnecessary degree, so now combat in just about any Yakuza game seems *somewhat* unsatisfying on its own; if the series were to ever change combat again, and somehow did something that felt like Sifu's fighting while keeping all the open world, minigames, and other stuff people love, I'd probably play it WAY more than I already have.
@autiemartian7324 having played a bit of Sifu myself, I wouldn't say Yakuza necessarily needs ultra-grounded combat like that, but it absolutely does need difficulty. I haven't felt challenged by a Yakuza game besides the first three and maybe Lost Judgment (Judgment was hard, but only because endgame bosses would kill you in three hits), and when I first played Sifu, I was in genuine awe when I realized it would take actual effort to land counters and parries, not to mention I'd have to memorize the different finishers and other special moves. A satisfying difficulty alone would do these games so much good, especially the RPGs, all they need is adaptive difficulty to make sure you can't get too overpowered from grinding out jobs and then so many problems are solved
@autiemartian7324 having played a bit of Sifu myself, I wouldn't say Yakuza necessarily needs ultra-grounded combat like that, but it absolutely does need difficulty. I haven't felt challenged by a Yakuza game besides the first three and maybe Lost Judgment (Judgment was hard, but only because endgame bosses would kill you in three hits), and when I first played Sifu, I was in genuine awe when I realized it would take actual effort to land counters and parries, not to mention I'd have to memorize the different finishers and other special moves. A satisfying difficulty alone would do these games so much good, especially the RPGs, all they need is adaptive difficulty to make sure you can't get too overpowered from grinding out jobs and then so many problems are solved
I find it funny how the main series games peaked at OG 2 and Y3 and the rest of the combat is very inconsistent, but all of the spin-offs stay around the same high quality. Good editing and commentary.
@RockMD if it weren't for the changes they made to Kiryu in 4, I'd probably say that game is on the same level as 3 just for Akiyama existing. But every other game definitely varies with how good or bad its combat is. Thank you very much!
... I'm gonna be honest, the whole "heat trail" thing might be a problem exclusive to you. I can see it just fine myself... Unless you're mainly talking about darker environments, but you're fighting in broad daylight.
i think angeman's videos are for the most part a breath of fresh air because I can take a break from all the negativity I see on youtube (most of the complaints seem unreasonable to me even though I agree there is indeed stuff to criticise), I seriously love the newer games since Judgment and ,in my experience, a find a crap ton of negative talk about most games post yakuza 0 release wise (on youtube at least) and I find it very tiring , most of the time it's hard to find someone with a reasonable take on the more modern games and I don't think I can view many more before all their essence becomes lost on me I was excited and very pleased about most stuff RGG did recently (not all they did was right but hopefully they work on their shortcomings) and when I went to find topics regarding the games I found that most of them were all "x sucks y sucks all of this sucks mid", all sorts of complaint threads and videos. Upon watching a lot of them I don't think I've collected more than a few reasoanble takes regarding the current state of the series, I don't like glazers at all but I can't stand people who put negativity above all else. I have a lot of feelings on these, if I find more words about this, I'll add more. Have fun in a while guys. It's too bleak for some of y'all.
i'm probably among the not so many people to prefer RGG and their games post yakuza 0 (y0 included), I just like their modern side more, I like all the games, 1-5 they're really good, but I think they really started blooming after 0 and I think it shows in their newer games, the older games have more issues than the newer ones imo, they ironed out their strengths well and have worked hard on their shortcomings, not all is perfect but overall I think it is a very good net positive, among the better ones in the industry.
@mihairomulus2488 I find that kind of funny, just because I've had the exact opposite experience. It's incredibly rare that I find a genuine negative take, or even a good faith criticism of any of these games outside of the first game's dub, 3's everything, and 4's plot, but even then those criticisms are rarely in good faith. Snowiest is a really good example of that, he's needlessly positive about literally every game in the series except for the originals up through 4, and maybe Dead Souls. Not that there's anything wrong with a positive video, but it's so rare that he describes something as somewhere between perfect or absolute shit, that it comes off like every game is either a masterpiece or garbage. His video on Kiwami 3 is a great example, he has no idea what he's talking about for most of it, given that all of his points are either factually wrong or extremely inflammatory. Maybe I don't see the people who call anything that's not perfect mid because I don't use Twitter or Reddit, but if that's all I'm missing out on, I'm happy to continue avoiding them. Either way, nearly everything I've said in these videos is something I haven't seen other people talk about, so I'm sorry if I'm adding to some dogpile that I'm unaware of, but I think it's important that different perspectives are always brought to the table. I love this series a lot, and I hold a lot of the games in high regard, that's why I think it's important to point out things I think are lacking or signs of larger problems with the series itself. I don't want to see RGG release an objectively bad game because they're under the impression that they can do no wrong, and with the series where it is now, I worry that we're dangerously close to that
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I thought RGG will miss the mark entirely with Gaiden because I thought it felt out of place but now I think it's a really mature and well put game, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the Pirate Majima game, unless they go absolutely nuts and add irrelevant plots that are just silly for the sake of, then it's gonna be quite a solid entry giving their history, I don't see where someone might get the impression that they're untouchable and can do no wrong as a studio, it's not like their source for benchmarking is Reddit or Facebook, they have a very solid fanbase in Japan, they're well known by actors and gamers alike there and not everything they make passes right away, Ishin and Kiwami 2 or Yakuza 6 weren't exactly their most brilliantly received works, I'm sure they take good feedback time will tell
for me the perfect agent style would something similiar to the snake style from lost judgement, purely focussing on putting your opponent in submission
@ Shishido is the whole reason I play this game, and I knew it would be, which is why I didn’t buy it myself - one character isn’t enough to justify the cost of admission.
You should make game reviews of the Yakuza games, I love scrolling through people’s opinions because your videos really encourage people to tell us what they think in a rather unbiased way, it’s even better when you realize that these people really like the Yakuza series but have real complaints and criticisms and not just constantly meat riding whatever RGG puts out. This was an amazing pseudo review of Gaiden
@theraym14 that is the exact goal I went into this channel with, I'm really glad to hear I'm accomplishing my goal. Honestly, I don't think I'm good enough at making videos to do proper reviews of any games in this series, but that's definitely on my long-term list. It's one of those things you can really only do once, and I want my one time to be the best it can be. In the meantime, I'm definitely going to try to make videos about different parts of as many of the games as I can, I'd hate to limit discussion to the newer stuff
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 i wish you good luck on that, I’d really wanna hear your thoughts on certain topics relating to Yakuza and I’m glad to hear there is more to come, I subbed
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Best thing you can do is a video on Sea Dog style when Yakuza Gaiden 2 (i'm not calling it it's full stupid ass name) eventually comes out. In the meantime i would be most interested in a video about Infinite Wealth. Doesn't have to be a full review just something about the game you have a really strong opinion since i'm getting mixed feelings from the very little you mentioned IW in the replies.
@darksoulsismycity I'm torn between making what might be the only outright negative video on Majima pirate game (assuming it's bad) and not giving Sega money. If I do end up deciding it's worth it, that video will come out as soon as it can. As for an Infinite Wealth video, I'm figuring out whether to make a positive video about the gameplay or a negative video about any other part of it. I might make a poll after my next video drops, which will be in a couple days, god willing. I've got so many ideas that I'm finding it may be more worthwhile to leave the decision up to y'all, but we'll see what the future holds
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I do think they’ve ran out of ideas seeing this is modern pirates, but that game seems like a bargain bin game that’s only worth buying used if it’s going to be bought.
Funny, i experienced this game by watching my friend's playthrough and at the time i thought this style looked cool and fun to use, but then i noticed that he'd rarely ever use it, i asked why and he really never gave me an answer so i left at it and tuned in for the story. Then after watching this video i had an epiphany; it's because it just feels mad uncomfortable. And now i understand why he'd quickly switch to Yakuza style whenever he could. I'm also not really over the moon for the Majima game. Not because it's pirate-themed i love this AU unapologetically but because i think they could've used another character that we know less than Majima and expand on it. Honestly the way Gaiden made so many references to Ryuji and hinted at him possibly not being dead made me hope we could've gotten something out of it. So yeah my beef with the Majima game is that it robbed me of Ryuji Gaiden plain and simple lol (Thanks for making these videos btw, i love this franchise but most of the time it really feels like many don't want to address the bad stuff that's too obvious in these games for some reason)
@ryuuonigiri one of my main problems with the Majima pirate game is that I'm pretty sure it isn't an AU thing. They make explicit references to the story of IW in the trailers, plus since the title in Japanese is Like A Dragon 8: Gaiden (like how in Japanese this one is called Like A Dragon 7: Gaiden), it all gives me the impression that, somehow, this is canon. It only proves even more to me that they don't care about actually keeping the world grounded around some kind of realism, as long as they have a concept that will make each game goofier than the last. Funny enough, your point about a Gaiden game being better served for Ryuji Goda hints at a greater point that I've thought about a lot: Dead Souls should be canonized. It's easily got some of the strongest character writing in the whole series, some of the best substories, and like I said, it would bring Ryuji back to life without feeling like a total asspull. Yeah, it's absurd, and it would take some real finagling to make it fit between 4 and 5, but fuck it, if Majima pirate game is canon, I want the zombie game to be canon. It can only help RGG in the long run, honestly. Plus, it might mean we can get a remaster or at least a port so more people will actually play Dead Souls instead of dismissing it outright as some weird janky shooter
The Agent style most likely uses Jeet Kun Do for the close ranged elbows, kicks, palm strikes, and punches with a mixture of Aikido for the throws and joint locks. Stance wise it more so looks like a long guard in Boxing/MMA stance. Capoeira might be involved with the style for most of the kicks. 3:38
@meb8037 it's interesting how many pools you need to pull from in order to make a "technical" looking fighting style. I really wish those technique manuals mentioned in game had amounted to more than an upgrade system, I'd love to hear what ingredients make up the Daidoji martial art from their own mouths
Y’know I thought I was just out of my Yakuza phase when I bought Gaiden and struggled to play it even after half a year of owning it (just got to the castle btw), but the video encapsulates how I feel when playing it, it looks really cool when stuff happens, all flashy n’ such, but it’s such a drag to play cause of how slow Kiryu feels and how aggressive enemies are in comparison, coming out of LJ I was expecting something similar and was excited to see what crazy juggle combos Kiryu could come up with and how evasive he could be with his slick new style and was let down with how stiff and unfun the gameplay felt. I do plan on finishing it eventually cause the story seems promising but the combat is just not enjoyable and got me feeling somewhat bitter cause I loosely expected something like LJ 💀💀
@petrus648 I don't blame you for having trouble keeping it picked up, I had a whole weekend reserved to play it on launch, and even then I had trouble powering through it. I can't say the story does much that's interesting, but it's worth getting through to see the ending. Like I said, it's the one part of the game I wholeheartedly agree was done really well
As someone who likes both snowiestangeman, gaiden, iw, and yes agent style. I didn't hate this video and honestly i enjoyed most of it. But i might as well get my two criticisms out the way. First is i really dont like the live segemnts. I like the attempt to branch out but personally i found them to be a bit unfocused and went on for too long. Also i just didn't enjoy a lot of jokes. Not saying to cut them out but personally i'd like them to be sprinkled in the scripted segments to showcase a point. Second is specifically the jokes from the live segments. Mainly the nishitani rape apologist one which i found to be a bit mean spirited and i do like you pointed out you were joking right after but as someone who enjoys the game and yes even nishitani it just felt a bit aggressive towards people who just like something. Not saying to not joke about gaiden fans but rape apologist just feels needlessly negative. Anyway for the scripted parts i loved it. I really enjoy seeing you go into detail about the style and explain why you don't enjoy it and the whole thesis of style over everything else despite me disagreeing heavily i enjoy people talking about yakuza. Also i'd love to see more positive videos as thats what i prefer. Anyway i'd say this video is yakuza 5 the scripted parts are goated but live commentary is saejima prison. Tho that end part about a different perspective is why i ended up subbing since that is something in need. Anyway pretty good and genuinely its an accomplishment that i didn't hate the scripted parts as i was expecting this be like cvit's gaiden and y2 vid (didn't like gaiden vid bc cvit just gets angry at a game for an hour like he's avgn and for y2 i like his y2 parts but his k2 parts drag it down as it falls into avgn type rants for me and is just not my type of video). Hopefully i didn't come off as a toxic fanboy or a prick
Also i forgot to mention but i think the reason that gun heat action is glitched is because the guy you did it on is actually a miniboss from a previous long battle, so its like doing a gun heat action on a boss in the other games
@thebiggestofmen a toxic fanboy/prick wouldn't put so much effort into outlining the reasons they enjoyed a video despite a third of it being "Saejima prison," so don't worry about that part. I'm glad that I didn't come off as needlessly negative for most of the video, I was asking some friends about how mean I should be for this video just because I think it's important that I leave no false pretenses about my opinions in videos like this. On the one hand, I want to back up clear and obvious dislike with enough analysis to show I'm not just a hater, but on the other, I don't want to become the Nostalgia Critic of the Yakuza fandom. I was also annoyed by how intensely Cvit seems to hate the Dragon engine just for existing, and I don't want to embody that, either. That said, I do intend to make a positive video next, so I hope you look forward to that. It will probably not include any live commentary (something I'm also trying to feel out, there ended up being more here than I wanted for a miriad of reasons). Thank you very much for powering through a video that was difficult at times, it means a lot to me that fans of these games are willing to hear out a contrary opinion even if they don't agree with it or if it's not presented the best way it could've been. As for the gun heat action, it definitely does that for any gun user with a long enough healthbar. There's some normal dudes in the broke it fix it fight with guns, and the same thing happens there. I wish I'd powered through to that part so I could get footage of those guys specifically, but I was so drained by that point that I didn't even record the one in this video to my PS5, so even now I still technically have no proof of it on my console
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 i'm actually replaying the game rn just to check and yea what you said was very true, reguarding your live commentary i wanna say i owe you an apology, i was honesty way to harsh on it tbh. After watching your backlog and mainly your starship troopers and falling down vids i can say i like live commentary, just recommend maybe using it in smaller doses rather than one large segment but that's personal preference. Also im definitely staying because holy fucking shit your month of movie videos are great and i loved them
@thebiggestofmen no worries about the live commentary thing, like I said, there was more here than even I wanted. I'm trying to strike a balance with all the things I'm doing, some opinion/analysis videos with only scripted stuff, the movie videos with some commentary, and the gaming videos that have just that for those interested enough (mostly I just like making them, it's my brother with me in those and I want to make him at least a part of my channel's identity). I'm really glad that there's stuff here you enjoy that's not just the Yakuza stuff, gives me hope that I'm not trapping myself in a bubble with too much Yakuza stuff in such close proximity. Thank you very much for your kind words and for sticking around, I'm excited to see where I go from here
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 will say ironically this video has caused me to use agent a lot more and now i kinda love it despite all its obvious flaws. Especially the grab infinite i find it fun, also i'm glad at least a grab works since my biggest issue is that a lot of bosses and big enemies just ignore grabs. Ig style has power over me but ah well i have fun. Though i do agree with you gadget assessment especially why rope and boots work and why drones and bomb don't
the only thing i really hated from agent style is the rush combo from Extreme Heat, why cant it be the heavy attack button? the moment i got my hands on this game, when i entered extreme heatmode i instantly hated it how it is done. if it where similar in judgement/Lost Judgement it wouldn't be a problem for me. people on pc can have mods which changes it so it plays like judgement
@@Kevvv890k of all the decisions they made for Agent specifically, that one boggles my mind the most. I get that Yakuza style has a weird extreme heat combo, but surely they were capable of doing one style one way and the other a different way, especially when they already did it the best way possible. I hear people defending this by saying Judgment is a different series, but even considering that, why make this game worse just to make it different from Judgment?
Never would have guessed this game is so devisive. I enjoyed gaiden, i enjoyed the gameplay but i really enjoyed the agent style. I get your criticisms though and why you don't like it.
@klaus.sfc01official30 trust me, this video is coming from someone who's been pretty deep into no damages/stylish gameplay videos for the past few years, but also someone who cares a lot about the "art" in "martial arts." Looking at the game from a more casual perspective, I definitely see why people enjoy it as much as they do. I just can't really look at this series in a casual way anymore, for better and for worse
@@maxwellpaynewell5305this is actually similar to Pokémon, when you go to deep in nuzlockes or just the competitive stuff, you kinda get too critical and the game gets hard to enjoy lmao
@elias-tt7vx I've watched a guy called Radicalsoda slowly become more and more bitter and cynical over the course of the past five years, and it seems like Pokémon was the catalyst for that. I really feel for fans of that series, it's similar to Yakuza in a couple other ways too, mainly in terms of higher but lower production value
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 the difference between yakuza and pokemon (for me) is though that yakuza isn't an unplayable dumpsterfire that doesn't even try to look good or appealing anymore. No i am not talking about 4k i am not talking about flashyness i literally played this game (referring to gaiden) on a laptop and turned the graphics to deep fried. I mean that pokemon games look like my laptop settings somehow still run like ass and ask for the full price of 60$ While being the same game again and again with no real story. So i understand why pokémon fans just become depressed seeing the state of their beloved franchise.
Honestly I still don't understand how agent is the "worst" style in the series, even if its not as good as the ones from LJ I'd still take it any day over 6/K2's or Judgment Crane. Im not a pro and really not even that good at these games so my opinion isn't as valid but Gaiden is such an easy game that I really don't see a problem with the style, even with all the flaws you mentioned it never frustated me to use it like some others in the series which to me constitutes a good style, also some points feel a bit nickpicky like "not being able to see" do to the visuals which I had never even thought about it being a problem. Either way I honestly really liked Gaiden as a whole, it fits its role as a side story and as an unofficial "Yakuza 7" (following Kiryu) As for PiH... im definetely not pre-ordering it lol, though I haven't seen anything that would make me NOT want to buy it at some point, its definetely the most "out there" plot premise which makes me a bit worried about the future of the series on that front even if its a side game, although I feel like they've been trying to incorporate the "wacky" side stuff into the main stories since 7 but that's a whole other discussion. Anyway, I'd say this is overall a good video and sorry for the long ass comment, also English isn't my first language so I apologise for any mistakes that were made.
@fraktusdern no worries about comment length, I'm happier with longer stuff as long as it gets a point across. As someone who finds nearly every game in this series too easy, I've pretty much stopped judging them in any way by how difficult they are. So for me, all Agent offers is how good it looks, feels, and works, all of which I think fail. At least with Yakuza 6 Kiryu, I like how that style looks and feels to play. The main problem with it is that the enemies are way faster than you, so it isn't functional most of the time. Even then, it still has more going for it than Agent, at least for me. As for the pirate stuff, I don't care at all about the story, at this point I've stopped hoping for good stories out of these games. But there's definitely something to be said for how absurd it is in concept. Even with 7, the wacky stuff was mostly found in mandatory side content rather than the actual story itself. IW definitely pushed it more toward that direction, but it wasn't that crazy on a fundamental level. I'm curious to see how this game shapes whatever Yakuza 9 turns out to be, for better or worse, because I'd be fine with the series taking a more fantastical angle as long as it actually commits to it, instead of giving us giant animal fights and construction machine fights and trying to explain how that's actually possible in a grounded setting
@@Lappulleh part of why it was so painful to get back on the PS5 for this was because I haven't touched the vanilla release since I finished the game last year. The fact that Legend Remix makes it fun wouldn't be believable if I hadn't been playing it for months
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 my main issue with vanilla is the sluggish feeling from both styles. I played LJ’s verdict of the dragon mod before buying Gaiden so I was pretty disappointed with the initial release
@Lappulleh combo speed would've been nice, but it's really that lack of available moves that tears it for me. It feels like they're taking any cool ideas and just turning them into heat actions instead of actual moves you can do in gameplay. Bringing back the Lotus Flare Fist or the charged heavy from 6 would've been great, or at least the Komaki Parry. It's downright bizarre that the knockback is here and not it (even though technically the knockback was in K2, as neutered as it was)
I absolutely hated Agent style and used it only when really had to. My main gripes is that gadgets are too crazy in their design and that just throws me out of immersion. In my opinion if we had bladed boots, taser and tear gas it would've been much more realistic and fun. And moves themselves were too flashy, so it kinda felt like im playing Yagami. What would've cool if Agent style was a lot more takedown oriented. So it would be based around mix of Judo and Jiu-Jitsu, also fits for ideology of Daidoji being japanese PMC pretty much, and japanese are very proud culture so of course they would train in their native martial arts. It also would finally get us a character who has a ground game. We have Yakuza for striking and Agent would be for takedowns and that would get us a cool combo where you could do a counter takedown with Agent and on a low health Yakuza you could do this special ground and pound heat action where you punch downed opponent repeatedly.
I absolutely love the idea of a judo/jiu-jitsu focused fighting style, it would especially fit with the Daidoji as a super patriotic organization that shapes the government from the shadows. Not only would that be a pretty unique style compared to everything we've gotten before, it would even be pretty easily implemented. Given their habit of reusing Virtua Fighter movements for protagonists and bosses, I could easily see a rework of Goh Hinogami from VF5 being turned into an Agent style. He's both a judo user and an assassin with a violent streak, so there's already a really good base for them to work off of. If I could magically will a custom mod into existence, I would love to see what something like this would look like
As far as a style focused on takedowns, I'm just reminded of Tanimura's style where every standard combo finisher allowed him to follow up with a unique heat action or hell, Kiryu's pre-DE style that gave him several grapple finishers. God, I miss playing as a bribe-taking dirty cop.
@@eileenmilligan9673 that does touch on one other issue with Agent style, which is that each finisher doesn't do something markedly different from each other. None of them give different hit reactions, or at least not different enough compared to pre-DE movesets, to distinguish them in terms of utility
My biggest beef with Agent Style is thematic. Kiryu has been technical and agile before (Rush, certain Komaki techniques) but having him fight like Jason Bourne or John Wick just feels weird. He's a street fighter mixed with pro wrestling and some tidbits of martial arts here and there. Learning CQC so fast and embracing it fully feels weird and doesn’t match him at all. *Especially* with the gadgets! Kiryu is happy to use weapons, but he's never been good with trickery or technology. If anything, the Daidoji style feels more like it should be reserved for certain throws, weapons, and heat actions. Individual techniques he can learn throughout the game to add flair.
@imontheedgeofmyseat easily the worst thing Lost Judgment "added" to combat. And in this game it just makes it all the more confusing that the Komaki Parry isn't in it, seeing as they even brought back the knockback
@Fird9e erm actually if it were bajiquan the entire moveset would be reused from Akira Yuki (I can definitely see that, the comments have shown that there's a lot more distinct influence going into Agent than I was remotely aware of)
Another great video, especially the entire conclusion section. I wanted to make something similar to this previously, because I think that there are not a lot of people doing rather critical deep dives of these games. Without any criticism it's hard for RGG to improve the games, you know. Dunking this much on a game made in 6 months might seem pointless at first, but literally the entire fanbase is praising it, which might lead to the studio releasing more products like this. I feel like it's also worth pointing out that The Man Who Had a Mid Game has probably the worst balancing in any of these games. Well, it's usually a little all over the place, considering the side content in Yakuza can give you some really good rewards, however in Gaiden it's egregious. During my first playthrough I felt like I had to restrict myself from using half of the abilities to have some good challenge. The drones have no practical use besides being a “melt bosses health bar” button, attack upgrades are as busted as usually in Dragon Engine games, Gear multiplies your damage to an insane degree, some of the most powerful Heat Actions are the ones that are the easiest to activate. It's bad. Instead of pointing out pretty apparent issues like this, you just see people begging for the studio to add NG+ to the game. Like dog, do you need to one shot everyone even more? About Gaiden 2: The Man Who Sailed, I was at work during the actual live stream, so I just saw the promo piece of it and skimmed through the story trailer. I was immensely disappointed. However, with each new piece of footage released of it, I kinda mess with it. It's not only that the combat looks fun and refreshing, but also its the little things that are sick about it. The menus and UIs look neat, instead of equipping generic Gear, Majima can wear different rings with unique 3D models that give additional effects, both styles have different ways of integrating Thug combo strings into them. It just sucks that we sort of have to accept the trade of the game being fun at the expense of the story being shit. I used to love these games for combining really engaging storytelling with some fun gameplay. Now you choose one or the other. Also I wanna say, the Agent Ex Heat Dodge attacks are really cool, I hope another character in their games gets these :) Oh, and the music you used in the video is also neat. And, 48:33. Dog why do you have this saved
One of my biggest gripes with most Yakuza games is in how they conflate getting better at the game with doing more damage. I saw a video once complaining about how boss fights in Yakuza 3 take too long, and the example he gave was of a boss fight that took three minutes to beat. I think that moment specifically showed me where we're at with this series, and even though the problem was at its worst in Zero with the secret skill trees, it's something that the Dragon engine games integrated into normal play with having a stat specifically for upgrading your damage. Obviously it's good to have an option not to upgrade your attack at all, but I imagine most people see it the opposite way, where it's better to just upgrade attack and melt enemies and bosses alike, and that technically counts as being good at the game. Also, about NG+, I agree there are some more pressing problems in Gaiden specifically, but I think it sets a really bad precedent to let them think they can get away with removing key features from their games. Remember how Konami tried to make other save files a paid feature in Metal Gear Survive? This gives me the same feeling. I think it's important that we keep up a loud enough outcry against that, at least until they acknowledge it. Also also, I have that saved because right after she finished the line, I paused the game and sat there fuming for a good ten seconds because I was so pissed off that this is the level of writing we're at with these games. I wanted to keep a reminder for myself in the future when I skip cutscenes that this is, in fact, where we are now. Skimming over it like that definitely made it look sus, though
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I know which yakuza 3 video youre talking about haha. I laughed outloud when he showed the timer and acted llike its a century. About NG+ I meant it more as in a single really obvious issue was the main talking point about this game. Despite the fact that there are so many more problems like this. I was kinda surprised that Infinite Wealth actually had a pretty critical reception in terms of story and pacing, considering the fact that these were entirely overlooked with Gaiden.
@Hajber I remember back when the game first dropped, the spoiler-free devilleon video said something along the game having "S tier ideas, but B tier writing," and I instantly knew that there would need to be at least one letter grade subtracted from both of those descriptors. Even then, it was the most critical I'd heard someone talk about a Yakuza game that wasn't one of the pre-ordained jokes. It was sort of shocking to hear anyone say out loud that a game in this series was lacking in some way. I wonder, now that the NG+ thing isn't as explosive as it was, if maybe there will be fewer things distracting people from actually recognizing the other problems the series has created for itself recently. I'll be very grateful if it does, even if it means we get a couple more lacking/bad games before people say anything
@@jofreproblem if that's the one I'm thinking of, I'm absolutely going to give that a try. Putting this game in Lost Judgment will immediately improve it somewhat, what with the way they changed enemy properties/behavior, but I also like the way some of the gadgets were altered (again, if this is the one I'm thinking of)
crab on my yucky (it truly does show that this game was made in less then a year, i truly hope they stop doing the call of duty strategy as it genuinely harms their quality, cannot wait to play this and form my own opinion!)
I came here immediately after watching a 13 minute preview of Like a Pirate-Dragon-Yakuza-Gaiden, the DMC juggling mechanic looked cool I guess, but one REALLY subtle thing caught my eye that might ruin any interest I have in this game, and given that I had to mod Gaiden with a moveset mod within 30 minutes of playing it, my expectations were already low. Obviously, these exclusive demo previews are just gonna have the player not play as good as a diehard fan, but they’ll do one of two things: spam attacks and quickstepping out if they get slightly overwhelmed. Why wasn’t this dude immediately quickstepping out when he was taking too much damage? Probably because this might be a game so insanely tailored to casual players, or the fact that in the button prompt guide in the bottom right corner, *It seems that quickstepping got replaced with a jump button.* I’m not sure if they outright replaced it or just gave X/A a multifunction prompt but removing quicksteps is the stupidest decision for a Yakuza game to make, and it goes in tow with that other comment’s complaints too; I’m here to play a fucking yakuza game, why are you converting it into DMC? If you wanted a goddamn air juggle jump mechanic then reuse how LJ’s Crane style worked!!!!
@sandwichpony8071 I've become so blind to the stupid control guide in the corner that I didn't even think to read whatever it was saying. I will say that during some demos I recall seeing Sea Dog style doing a sort of animation where it jumps sideways and does a horizontal spin, some kind of parkour shit. I was under the impression that they were copying DMC5's Table Hopper dodge without the good feeling or the utility, but if there is a chance they outright replaced the dodge button, that might be baked into a move or combo. Just for the record, I have no doubt that they'd remove the quickstep if they thought it would bring in a different audience. Infinite Wealth has proven to me that this company cares more about bringing in the most casual audience possible on the promise of emulating better games, over actually making a good game. If we're really stuck with a jump option, though, I think what looks even worse is the fact that there's one air combo (that they've shown), and it ends with spiking the enemy back to the ground. So it isn't even like DMC juggling, where you can keep the enemy in the air while switching between air and ground moves, it certainly won't even come close to the possibilities that come with having a halfway decent ranged option, because they've only shown that gun being used after a full second of charge time. They obviously dont understand why DMC works so well, but on top of that, it's like they've learned literally nothing from Yakuza 5 Akiyama. There's so much more writing on the wall, including but not limited to every launcher they showed sending the enemy so high that your only choice is to use an air combo on them, but I'm so checked out of pirate game at this point that it can honestly do whatever it wants. Maybe I'll get it in a year's time, but certainly not on launch, and only on PC so I can make some attempt to mod the game into a playable state
@yaboi2500 I rewatched the trailer, and yeah, they shoved an R1 + X prompt at the very bottom of the button guide. So I guess we no longer have to worry about having to press a button to run in battle. Not sure if Gaiden already removed that, but either way it's a "feature" I'm happy to see removed, I always disliked it more than hitbounce
not technically the worse but expecting after finishing lj and all yakuza games before it to be the best or at least in bar with judgment. but the result is not focused combat with no direction just give the combat any **** you see without further testing or analysis. this what I felt playing it and had so little satisfying with it, even kaito files is much better and have real flow of combat far from this idc about the story if the combat return to its root but it was far from reality even for a "dlc" they could do much better. they need to improve their quality and stop recycle part from old games without creating anything new
To be honest I didn’t use Agent that much unless I had to fight Juzo Amon or to clear out a random encounter outside of the story while I agree that the Agent Style is a bit jank I upgraded the attack to the max so for me it wasn’t as bad.
@@StefFTW99 understandable. Personally, I try to keep my damage as low as possible so I can get a better feel for the combat in these games, plus it makes boss fights last longer so I can experience the coolest stuff for more time. That definitely plays a part in how much I dislike Agent, but I wouldn't say it's the most important part
@@maxwellpaynewell5305also I have watched more of the video itself I do agree with most of your points but I think your disdain towards the game itself comes from how badly you’re punishing yourself by barely upgrading the attack and using gear as come on you can get plenty of gear in the Castle. Also about the like a dragon pirate while I am excited for it to come out, I agree with the assessment of paying nearly 70 quid for a game that could be the same length as Yakuza 6 is a bit of a stretch, hell I got the first Gaiden on Sale as it was 20% off.
I watched this whole video and although i remember disliking agent style, I still loaded up the game to test it again (I disabled the mods I had for the test). Before testing I thought I would suck because I hadn't played in months, But to my surprise I was pulling off all sorts of combos and having fun and I was just about ready to make a comment disagreeing with this video when I noticed I parried like yakuza 6. Once I saw that I thought "wait do I have mods on still"? and I switched to yakuza and proceeded to do a Komaki parry, confirming that I had mods on still. So then I actually disabled the mods and tried again and finally remembered why I barely used Agent and didn't like it. So yeah Agent sucks but I still disagree that Gaiden is bad. I like Gaiden and I don't think the quality of the series has gone down with the newer entries. There was a sale for all the yakuza games for like 60 bucks and I had money at the time so I first played yakuza zero back in August 2020 and I remember liking it and thinking it was alright, but I barely did any side content and had like no upgrades. Then on the 16th of October 2021 I played Kiwami 1 and enjoyed it so much that I played Kiwami 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Judgment, Lost Judgement and then I played 3 chapters of 7 replayed 0 doing everything I missed then finishing 7 after 0 on the 15th of March 2022. Coincidentally Kaito files released 15 days later so I played that. Then I played Ishin, Gaiden and 8 on their release. The reason I say all this is to say that I have no nostalgia for the earlier games due to how I played and beat them all over a 6 month period (other than Ishin, Gaiden, And 8). I don't think the earlier games have a significantly better story or gameplay than newer games. Does 8 have an amazing Story? No, but is 1 any better? I don't really think so. I genuinely don't see a decline in story or Gameplay at all and I'm still excited for Pirate game. Sorry for the long winded comment.
No need to apologize. As is probably obvious, I don't have much of an issue with long-windedness. That said, I get not seeing much of a decline in the games' stories over the years, but what really surprises me here is that it was Kiwami that hooked you in over Zero. Do you mind if I ask why that is? I don't think I've ever seen someone with that perspective
1:30 as someone who hates y6s combat i personally felt yakuza style was great and borderline overpowered when at full tilt. Feel it was the best kiryu gameplay I had since yakuza 4; but I also just spammed dragon king essence at low health whilst tiger dropping every other hit… like I did in yakuza 4
I thought it was cool cause I could combo while they were mid air after grabbing them Though I honestly just used dragon style for the rest of the game
@indolentlard8612 facts, and that's coming from someone with Lost Judgment as my second favorite game in the series. It baffles me how someone can ride that game so hard that they're unwilling to admit the story is, at the very least, flawed. It definitely has the best combat, though. At least top 3 objectively
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 "flawed" is very generous, lol. i think the problem is that they became too ambitious, adding too many side minigames without polishing them enough, putting things in the story like the Liumang just to forget about them, etc. they should've made the game more grounded.
@Luhyn it annoys me to no end that they made a character as fun as Tesso just to not use him in any way. I still love Akutsu and Soma, but I'd trade a third of RK's screen time (especially those dumb boss fights that pop up every chapter) for some actual involvement from the Liumang besides being a massive red herring for the entire game
Agent and Yakuza style lack the synergy that all of yagamis styles provide in lost judgement. Id still say the best version of kiryus combat you can play is in kiwami 1. But the fact that agent doesnt have any permanence since the gadgets dont stick around if you switch just means you either stick with the style or rarely use it. Even with combos at most you can just use the triangle attack after launching with yakuza to get a hit in with agent before your force to switch back to yakuza to actually do the combo. Overall outside of the bugs, yakuza is the better version of kiryus new style that its hard to go back to the other games but its lack of synergy with agent just makes it not as interesting of a system compared to kiwami where all the styles can be switched to and have some purpose, even more so in lost judgment since you can get buffs from using certain ones that apply to the rest. I wouldnt say it has some of the worst combat in the series i enjoyed gaiden more than yakuza 3,4 and 5s combat, it has more variety than 6 and kw2 even if its not that much more if you dont count all the janky stuff. 0, k1 and lost judgement just remain the top for me with gaiden in 4th.
@sgr_sean style synergy is something that I worry is lost on the general player base of these games. Understanding why Lost Judgment works as well as it does means understanding why throwing style switching into a game doesn't suddenly make it better. Gaiden is a prime example of that principle, and I still saw plenty of people praising the game just because it has style switching in it at all. It's something I'd personally say is lacking in Yakuza 0 (partially with Kiryu, but definitely with Majima), where I feel like the styles feel limited but also isolated, but Kiwami definitely took steps to make using all four of them flow better and serve each other better in general combat and in stylish play. Like I teased at the end, I don't think Gaiden as a whole has the worst combat in the series. Ishin Kiwami is far worse in several ways, but I think Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 6 have fundamental issues with enemy design that make combat in those games less enjoyable, even with decent-to-well designed player styles. But I think that in terms of a playable protagonist, Agent is the least satisfying and the worst constructed individual gameplay style
@maxwellpaynewell5305 id say we agree on that. Agent on its own is too inconsistent, lacks utility that flows well with all the options it has. And its usability is gimmiky at best, its completely overshadowed by its other style. 0 definetly lacks, but the variety in playable styles is what boosts it. Even if they dont all work well together, especially majima, kiryus quick change clothes help but its a step above in k1 since you get to switch mid fight alot better. And without a doubt some of the games just suffer from enemy design where it makes the combat not able to shine as much. Ironically give yakuza 3 actual guard breaks into kiryus move set that actually leaves the enemies open to attack and its actually really fun to play, but theres TONs of mods that improve general combat in each game that it can be a discussion all its own.
Basic combat section of this video is insane. Frame data and martial arts reviews on kiryu man kiryu regularly pulls oversized sharks and sea creatures out if the water last yeamr and has punched possibly the same 2 tigers unconscious on 2 seperate occasions a decade apart theres a degree in which " damn that elbow is crisp he xould surely defend himself in a self defense scenario" gets weird
I tbh liked the Agent style 🥲 kept using it.. It helped me more with Amon basically and some hard collesuem fights. i was playing on the hardest difficulty. It was fun for me a lot seeing kiryu doing somerhing different.. Excited for the new amazon series but i dont think it will reach peak Game level story but i still hope.. Wish we get more Kiryu games someday.. didnt play Yakuza 8 till now will get it this month soon
@GamerGoneMad getting something different is definitely a good thing for this series, but I wish they'd accomplish those different things with different characters. The kung fu stuff works for Yagami, but for an established character like Kiryu, I'd prefer him doing things it makes sense for him to do. I will say that I have hopes for the Amazon series, but not very high expectations. Something good would be nice, at least
While agree with a lot of your Agent style criticisms, half the gadgets being almost useless and the weird hitboxes and lack of juggle options, the flashiness and other stuff you mention with heat trails, seem like personal taste. And you might've just gotten unlucky with those glitches lol.
@MugdhaMahdiShams I can accept the heat trails thing as a matter of personal taste, I just expected a lot of people to agree with that if shown the heat trails separate from the act of playing the game. As for the flashiness, though, I still think it objectively doesn't work with what Agent style was going for. I don't think Kiryu would act like that, and I don't think the Daidoji would train their agents to act like that. I totally get liking how it looks, especially if you enjoy how showy Yagami is, but liking it doesn't make it fit within the combat system as a cohesive whole. The glitches were definitely partially bad luck, but enough people have commiserated with them that I think it was worth bringing them up as a criticism of the game's construction
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Well it was made in 6 months. Mostly as a quick little thing as a promo for IW. Plus, while it does start as a Daidoji style, he learns the rest of his skills during the game from various books. You can say base Agent style before upgrades was just standard Daidoji without most of the other flashy stuff you learn later.
I am just at the beginning of the video, but had to write a comment already. Couldn't agree more about the agent's strikes not being easily readable. That was my first problem with it too. Doubler strikes in rapid succession made it feel unintuitive to see where for example the 2nd input ended and the 3rd began. You put it into words and visually very well. Second point I agree on extremely and smth I also thought many times is that Dragon Engine heat trails are getting too excessive. 3-5 remasters look way cleaner which I prefer
Watching a little bit further. I mostly agree on gadgets, though personally I don't feel so negative about them. Except the drone. The wire downside that you didn't mention but it is shown a lot in yor footage is that it's janky. Sometimes there is a force of a jet behind it, sometimes it just makes enemies kinda flop over, and the physics like to glitch out. I did like the cigarette bomb thingy though. Now onto heat actions: 100% with you on the obnoxious screen-covering effects. Like the triangles and some fire explosion from hitting a guy in the head Upd: Finished watching. Solid points all around.
@empty2892 Spider being so janky would definitely have been worth pointing out. Honestly, I think I omitted it because I've just gone blind to it, it doesn't even stick out to me anymore because I'm just so used to it, and it works often enough to where it doesn't piss me off
I do think they tried to do it like Rush style does it, but Rush style has the quirtk that while it has around 8 rush combos, it only has 2 finishers which span across the punching and kicking sections of the rush combo. Not only does the distinciton between rapid punching and wider kicks make it more readable but the bigger window for doing either finisher makes it need less readability as you have a lot of time to pull off the finisher you want before it's too late. Agent tried to do a really fast and technical style like rush where you just punch really fast, but making it work like any regular style was a serious detriment to the concept.
Shinada's style kinda does suck tho. He can't get off a basic light combo without the enemy guarding, often times you can't do heavy attacks either. He does super low damage and can't fight bosses without struggling, even with his sturdy weapons. I'd argue Shinada is worse than Agent
Shinada is really weird but somehow clicks with some people and don’t with most. I enjoyed his style a lot because you have to use every tool available, not just rush combos and finishers. His rush combo is weak, but his toolset as a whole is really interesting and fun imo
I mean, this style is supposed to be to crowd control and overall i think is pretty good for that, there were many times that the Dragon Style just couldn't do the work and i had to use agent style to use it's amazing kit throwing some fireflys and having fun with the spider and the boots, also it got some pretty good heat actions that are for 3 enemies with full health, low health, to control enemies with guns and if you want to 🧀 on the 1v1 colliseum you got them drones altought they are very useless tbh also the basic combo is very useless too but that's not the point of the style
Honestly, you’ve got a lot of good points about the presentation of the style in animations, form and general visual feedback. I agree that firefly and hornet are kinda stinky and that general combat speed could’ve been sped up. I’m not as informed on martial arts as you are, so that insight is something I really value But I don’t think a single thing you’ve mentioned is a deal breaker at all. Tons of other Yakuza styles have random bugs and freak design issues, especially the previous DE Kiryu you apparently like.I’d also include here the fact that MOST Yakuza games have the gun issue, where you can disarm an enemy in a heat action and they’ll still have the gun. If we’re gonna talk about engaging combat that rewards the player, let’s talk about Tanimura having “Essence of Combo Finishes”: a heat action he unlocks after any and all combo enders, making it the optimal way to win fights. And honestly, stuff like 53:30 is such a random nitpick? The devs put some love into a characters animation and that’s bad I guess? The vibes on this video don’t come across to me as a fan expressing critique, which I’m confident is your intention, they come across as “New thing bad, old thing good”. You said it yourself in the Pirate Yakuza segment “Story, I don’t give a shit”. These games are more than the issues you’ve brought here, valid as they may be and I’d much rather be “The worst idiot” excited for the future of this franchise rather than whatever the vibe is here
@Calhasnopals there's a lot to unpack here. First off, I'd like to make it clear that I'm no less of a fan for disliking what this series has chosen to prioritize in recent years compared to their older games, and I'm no less of a fan for thinking it's sort of dumb that they put so much emphasis on using their actors' likenesses to sell their games. That thing isn't a new problem that started for me with Gaiden. It just becomes more clear that this is where their priorities lie, compared to other parts of the game. When I said that about the pirate game, I meant that I don't care about the story of the game. I no longer expect good stories from these games, and I certainly don't think the game where Majima is a pirate with amnesia will have a remotely good story. I'm well aware that most other Yakuza styles have had at least one of these issues, but few of them have all of these issues, and generally feel so poorly put together as a whole. I'm well aware that the games are more than their problems, but I'm not talking about the games or Gaiden as a whole. I'm talking about a specific part of the game that I felt let down by. In particular, I'm voicing problems that I feel have been generally not talked about in the fandom at large, and given how many people seem to agree with me about some of my problems, it stands to reason that this isn't just a me thing. I have no problem with disagreeing with anything I've said in the video, and I admit that the pre-order thing was harsh. I'm tired of seeing a series I love take this turn just because of people who 1. Don't even play them, and 2. Only play these new games once and throw them away afterwards, there's no reason to replay them because they're nothing but shallow, gimmicky messes that are too scared to do things that aren't reused from a previously existing game (yakuza or otherwise) and tell stories that rely on legacy characters because without them they have nothing to draw you in. They derailed Infinite Wealth to end Kiryu's story for the third time now. I'm not confident in series that refuses to let a 60 year old man stop being the protagonist. I recognize that there still exist passionate fans who play these games fervently and will probably love every new Yakuza game, but if those fans can't criticize their favorite thing, then they're either a black and white thinker, or they love being a Yakuza fan more than they love the actual series. I'm not accusing you of either of these things, I just want to explain why I don't think I'm any less of a fan for feeling the way I do about Gaiden and Agent style
Glad I could provide something most other RUclipsrs aren't. A guy called Cvit made a pretty good video going over a lot of my gripes with the game's story, so if you're thirsty for more, I'd definitely give him a watch
i got 25 hours on my first playthrough of gaiden and i didn't even have 500 ko's with agent by the end i had to premium adventure it i hate it so much man
@@kakagetathegi I had a similar experience with my second playthrough. Griding out agent KOs for the akame points so I could have all the important abilities for the boss fights was probably the first spark that would eventually become this video
@@maxwellpaynewell5305i realized agent was useless when i found out you can just go intro extreme heat with yakuza and just spam the same heat action that does like 2 1/2 bars of health over and over until they die which is what killed the game for me. shishido's final boss fight does not exist to me because i never let him attack once
@kakagetathegi I have no clue what they were thinking giving Yakuza two heat actions that you can do by just standing in front of an enemy. Abilities like that fuck with the flow of combat in whatever game they appear in (cough Yakuza 5 cough)
I liked agent style I liked rush style(kiwami version cause 0 version sucked) And i like how the dragon engine does impact Agent style feels powerful while having the speed and finesse of rush style Also i love the battle theme when in agent style
It being the worst new moveset is definitely why I chose to call it the worst over K2 Mad Dog (in addition to actually forgetting it existed, not joke forgetting). It's one thing to badly port an already underwhelming moveset into a new engine, but it's another to have one as fundamentally flawed as Agent being entirely original Also major respect for the Vlad pfp
You got my brains gears turning & I want to put down ideas before I forget them, since I got hyper refocused onto Martial Arts thanks to Like A Dragon, here's my attempt to address at least the basic combat. ⬛⬛∆∆ follows up a left hook so a rear foot sweep should flow with the inertia and could follow up with essence of finishing (the big punch to the face, names change a lot it's hard to keep track.) ⬛⬛⬛∆ in my opinion shouldn't be a double finisher, that elbow strike in particular is already a hard hitting one and the stance is so wide, there's not many followers. If there's insistence in double finishers then for ⬛⬛⬛∆∆, probably the rear high side kick from joji kazama or something similar. ⬛⬛⬛⬛∆∆ should be a lead foot knee strike that's a no brainer, in my opinion (again) the third finisher should be learned from the skill books & so it can stay a launcher, the best i can think of is the mortal reversal rear high kick. Slightly flashy but infinitely less so. ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛∆∆ would have to be a rear roundhouse kick, the stance here's a little awkward since he's posting on the right leg already but the left is still straight-ish & ready to pivot so inertia wins again. Plus it can still give the spinning launch from Legend Remix Gaiden. Lastly, ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛∆∆∆ can be the rear foot flying knee. Again this is the best I can think of, unless you want another round house? the stance should be very close to the lock on stance & I'm out of options since Agent isn't supposed to be too flashy and following inertia doesn't help with that this time, hence the pick. There you have it, a spur of the moment thought turned into a potential problem addresser. I'm gonna go to sleep now. Since I haven't yet like a fool.
To be fair about the hitboxes, RGG really aren't the only action game devs with an issue of giving every single enemy gigantic sweeping hitboxes that stun you while the player gets pinpoint accurate hitboxes that maybe cause the enemy to, what I can only describe as, momentarily flinch before realizing they're Him. Edit: To clarify, I'm not saying that excuses it, I mean it's definitely particularly bad in this game, but as someone that plays a lot of action games... I'm used to it kinda lol
@weirdyakuzafan it's definitely not unique to them, but it does speak to how fucked this series might be if they keep trying to turn these games into character action games. I saw so many comparisons to DMC when the pirate trailer dropped, and the only thing I could think is how you could only think that if the only knowledge you have of DMC is the chair meme. The games aren't sturdy or polished enough to move that quickly, and they aren't sophisticated enough to have truly deep combat systems even close to Dante's toolkit. If they can't manage hitboxes in a game this slow paced, I am downright terrified for what might happen in the pirate game
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 As a DMC fan, RGG can get close to DMC. Lost Judgment is proof enough of that I think, and I'm not talking about the juggling. Yagami has three unique fighting styles that feel full and feature complete, and all of them could be used in practically any situation if you have the know-how, and it makes Yagami end up being so good at what he does that you barely even notice it shares some gameplay problems with not just Gaiden, but all Dragon Engine games. Wonky hitboxes, strange enemy AI, your mortal reversals not activating when they should... of course Gaiden did add some problems, like not being able to tiger drop deadly attacks, but Lost Judgment still has its fair share of strange design decisions. Like for example... why do I need to be low health in order to dodge grab attacks with Sky Dancer? Why does Snake's tiger drop-esque counter have not just a heat requirement, but an absurdly low heat requirement? Things like that. I'd honestly argue this is a similar situation to most DMC games, the game itself is a bit strange in its overall design but the main character is so good at what they do you can absolutely trivialize most challenges presented by said design if you were good enough. The big overarching problem with RGG is that they're so strange with the design it's pretty much a coin toss if the new game's combat is gonna be... well, up your alley or even good. Not that I want to imply it isn't clear Gaiden was made in six months, and not that I want to imply your fears for the pirate game aren't valid. Also yes, Lost Judgment and in turn RGG's catalog isn't as deep as DMC, but I'd argue the only character action game to ever get that close was Bayonetta for obvious reasons. (And also if the steam store page is anything to go by, RGG isn't even actively trying to make a DMC as there's no character action or spectacle fighter tag on it, only hack and slash, so it's a bit unfair for people to compare it to DMC anyways, it's just got jumping and air combos and that's it, it seems.) (P.S. Also sorry if this made no sense, I'm pretty sure I just went on a couple unrelated tangents at once but I have no idea how to fix it.)
Really good video. Referencing the heat aura of that one shinada boss was a neat flash of yakuza autist credentials. I had fun with the agent style and came away liking it but i pretty much used it as a grab button instead of a full style, which is by no means good. One thing you could cut down a bit on in the future are the live commentary bits. They demonstrate the point but you could do that without bogging down the pacing. Also Majima gaiden fills me with dread. My interest plummeted the second i saw their equivalent of the gaiden castle. Gaiden was not worth 50 bucks and i doubt this will be worth 60.
I'm still trying to work out a good balance between live stuff and scripted stuff, I feel like emotion is generally better conveyed without a script, and in this specific case it ended up that going over every individual move would've taken a long time either way, so I figured that it wouldn't be too much lost to leave whole sections to the live stuff. If I ever do a moveset deep dive like this in the future, I'll definitely tackle it in a less bullet-point-y way. The Ono mention was definitely a flex, but I also want to make clear that I care deeply about this series. The last thing I want is for someone to watch a video like this and think for even a second that I'm just a tourist who's hating to hate. Plus I spent way too long memorizing nearly every Yakuza 5 character's name and I need to use that knowledge somewhere
Finally someone who hates 7 Gaiden. I sometimes feel like a crazy person because I always see people online praising this game and putting it on top of their lists and here I am going into the game with already lowered expectations because my friends tell me it's not that good and I still came out disappointed!! I don't see why people like it so much. As for Agent style, I wanted to like it, i tried using gadgets and then just gave up and finished the game with Yakuza style, and it sucks because I don't like Yakuza style either, I even installed a mod that adds old dod style back to complete Coliseum. I guess 7 Gaiden is really good at luring people in, because it's presentation fucks
i read through all the complaints and I have a seriously hard time understanding them, ok Agent is weird to say the least but otherwise I think it's easily an A tier game
@dallika8585 the idea of Gaiden is really solid on the surface, I went into the game having watched a couple trailers and thinking I'd be playing a cool mission based game where you take secret agent missions, and eventually it would tie into 7. Words cannot express how disappointed I was when I realized it would basically just be a Yakuza game but shorter and worse. I have a feeling people who like/love the game knew exactly what it was going to be going into it. Personally, I don't like the entire game being outlined and spoiled to me as a means of making me want to play it, but I guess there's an audience for a really safe experience with few surprises as long as it gives you some fanservice and flashy gameplay every so often
Honestly i can't talk on gaiden too well since I can't really play gaiden atm. But as someone who played the Two original Yakuza games atleast, some of the bugs i saw here are just abhorrent! Like especially the Tiger Drop bugs. Why is the counter move not countering properly! RGG got this shit down back in the damned 2000s! Why is this a issue????. Also its kinda unfortunate how some people just throw your argument into the dumpster and resort to just insulting you. I swear its like fallacies were never taught in school when its a basic thing in senior high from my experience.
@TheBzlGuy some people don't like when someone has a lot of negative things to say about a thing they like. Plenty of people have had genuine rebuttals to a lot of my points, and I'm happy to argue or concede on anything people have to say like that. It sucks that a lot of people don't put effort into arguing their own side, and I hope those people at the least come to realize that people like me feel how we do for a reason (often many reasons)
No gaiden combat is actually good because Snowiest and Gokudoni said so. And Agent is a super complex style because reasons. In all seriousness, I think I agreed with 99.9% of the things you said in the video. I think the only thing I disagreed with wasn't even agent related lmao. Also I think it's very clear as to why they're going with this style over substance thing... Money:)
you earn a subscriber for not meatriding RGG. I hated how mcuh peoples have meatride the franchise lately and not criticizing anything even when it's worth the hate.
Never seen that, everyone criticises, and it kinda gets to a point where it does become stupid criticism at times. There's gotta be a balance is all im sayin
@@mihairomulus2488 I don't know, maybe the locking of Ishin difficulty to a DLC, unnecessary changes to Ishin Card System messing up the combat system, the butchering of Ishin Combat compared to the OG, the lazy "remake" of Ishin while overcharged it, the incomplete mess of a game that is Miden with no NG+, Infinite Wealth NG+ being locked out, Infinite Wealth Rushed Story and side content,... I can go on and on about how much of a mess RGG games has became imo even as someone who pre-ordered both Gaiden and 8 and being massively let down!
While all of these are happening, many big Yakuza RUclipsrs continue to praise RGG Studios regardless while not acknowledging that the franchise has not been as good or as polished since Lost Judgment
This and the Yumi video have made me a fan of your work, great stuff! I was in love with Gaiden when I first played it, and I still think my initial experience was great, but I definitely agree the game has a lot of issues regarding its combat and especially with how Agent style as a whole functions. It's such a weird ass style that feels like it needed a lot more time focused on it, which sucks given how good the general gameplay could have been if the developers took from LJ a bit more in gameplay philosophy. I am really interested in your thoughts about Gaiden as a whole, I agree the fanbase is way too toxically positive. I was already feeling a bit clocked out with RGG's future with IW because of various things, but I think the Pirate Majima game entirely took me out of it and I have 0 interest in that game despite how flashy the combat works. The fanbase is so defensive over every single thing about the "good" Yakuza games and will harass critics for not vibing with the game as much as they do (Cvit's Gaiden video is a good example of that imo,) it feels like any productive discussion of the games and their issues and being perceived as bad is just snuffed because people want to put the franchise on a pedestal. Like it's arguably my favorite game franchise because I think RGG has a lot of admirable ideas, but I think it's worth saying "oh this game's story is a bit half baked, oh the combat here sucks, oh they don't make good use out of the narrative potential from this aspect of this release," etc. It's extremely unfortunate that so many fans are willing to snuff out good faith discussions for the same regurgitated takes ad nauseum. Keep up the great work though!
@ilovenierreplicant2983 thank you very much! It does my heart good to see so many people support the idea of a further explanation into my feelings about Gaiden. I'm not sure I could do those feelings justice where I am now, but I definitely want to put them out there when the pirate game comes out. If the game gets a negative reception, I think I'll get some more support from the naysayers, but if it's received positively, then I imagine those people will be too busy with the pirate game to mind a video (or more) about Gaiden. I really do wish people were more receptive to critical videos about these games. I remember a year or two ago, in a moment of desperation, I looked up "yakuza 7 bad" on RUclips to try and find some sort of commiseration with how I felt about that game, and I only found one video. It was, of course, bombarded with disagreement in the comments, but people were receptive enough to give me hope that there might be more videos like it in the future. Cvit's video is the only other critical one I've seen of a game in this series. I actually looked up "yakuza 5 bad" to see if another one popped up, but the best I got was "Yakuza 5 is not bad." I really hope I can inspire people who feel like I do to speak up and make their presence known in the fandom. The rational ones, obviously. What I hope for even more is that I specifically don't inspire the people who just want attention to hate on these games and steal actual talking points from passionate fans. Watching the Kiwami discourse putter out and die because of people who haven't even played the original games was downright painful to watch, and if I inspire a second wave of that, I'll have a lot to answer for For now, though, I'm excited to continue the course and steer things as best I can. I'm glad that plenty of folks like you are excited to follow that course with me, I've got very high hopes for the future of this channel
i had the same problems as you did all the way up until the chapter 7 of your video. and then i realised: bro, i'm playing gaiden like yakuza 0 remember that you are joryu, not kiryu. you cant trigger beast style and run into crowds, decimating them with big, wide moves. yet agent style expects you to do that with the post 1x square/lmb finishers that accompany those light combos. you cant isolate a guy and focus on him while his teammates are walking around your back deciding when to attack. but agent style expects you to do that. that was infuriating, but the agent style expects you to do all these things BUT ALSO use the abilities it gives you to put agent's own twist on it. Instead of having to run into crowds and use slow, janky moves that seem very showy, you can use the gadgets to clear them out or distract with the drones, or your combos to make your opponents stumble, and then target the guy you want to take out, or juggle between all of them, using light combos or heavy finishers to dispatch them. But you need to be strategic, and have some distance, otherwise you'll pay the price for having a high damage/easy to paralyze opponents finisher, by being knocked down and out of rhythm. Gaiden's agent combat is about being an agent, literally strategising while on the field to dispatch your foes in the most effective way possible. The Daidoji faction didn't train you to be Kiryu, they trained you to be the most effective killing machine with the most lethal martial arts on the planet. This is gonna sound super rude. But your playstyle suits yakuza style more than it does agent style, and that's most likely why you despise it. You need finesse for like 80% of these flaws to not even matter (ok thats an exaggeration, but you WILL enjoy agent style if you play it with finesse). One example I had of this finesse was when I timed my finishers, made sure to use them if an enemy was about to attack me, or if I needed to stun an enemy that wasn't already stunned. I made sure to remember how many times I pressed LMB so I knew I could get the finisher I wanted. I used the gadgets to spread out the enemies with the wire, dispatch groups temporarily with the firefly, use the drone to deal with guys I haven't started a combo on so I can isolate the boss (though its targetting system is super fucking finnicky in order to do that), used the serpent to get me to positions where I wasn't surrounded, and could face all the enemies. In the case I was playing sloppily and was really angry with the game, I'd use the fact that I was on red health to play the game carefully, slowly charging up my heat, using heat actions and just waiting until I can use my heat actions or safely use extreme heat with agent style to strike the crowds, then run until it charges back up. This game is probably the first besides Yakuza 3 to really challenge the player on their ability to use their tools wisely. And judging by this video, this game is probably the Yakuza 3 of 2020 RGG. It's a shame that the tutorial doesn't teach you how to use agent style properly, because recurring players have only known to do things the Kiryu way and not the Daidoji Joryu way, so they'll struggle to adapt to the style, or hate how they have to adapt to playing like a coward to make the style perfect. To summarise, it's a John Wick style. You hit one guy, he goes down, but he'll get back up, so go to the next guy, injure him and get back to the first guy. It's all about juggling between opponents, rather than doing collateral damage and taking them all down. Which is slow, but fun to see when you do it properly. I expect them to change stuff, but probably not the triangles because people who want to SEE the move and not FEEL the move is rare in terms of people who play the game. people who want to experience a power fantasy. they could probably have a mode where they disable the glow and the triangles so people could analyse the moves, or see them in action in the perspective of a martial artist. The stuff about the heat actions and how the people randomly swap during them is funny, but it's probably because of how short the development time was. They'll fix it if they ever have to reintroduce agent style in a big game (cause there's no way they'll drop it now. this has to be a prototype for a bigger game, and they're just collecting feedback with gaiden). It'd be nice if agent could inflict agony with more of its moves (as well as give agony more effects that give the player more breathing room and ways to take down the enemy), as well as an upgrade to have the gadgets be able to inflict things like stun or burn. also, bro. how do you get into a rant over kiryu wiping his knee. it was his left knee and it hit the ground. animators wouldn't waste their time getting him to dust off his knee if it didn't seem like he didn't have any reason to dust it off. It's such a subtle thing that I was so confused why you mentioned it until I saw that one gesture that I've never seen nor care to see. Remember that this is a game. The glows, the triangles, the style, it's meant to make you, the player, feel like a badass. If you want something more practical, play kurohyou. I can't believe someone is complaining about practicality when we have Yagami using a guy to spin himself around with his stomach wide open, before putting that guy onto that ground, or Yagami staying in a flashy stance after throwing a dude over his back FOR 5 SECONDS IN SLOW MO. Or the breakdancing style. It's all for gameplay, and to make you look cool, which Gaiden probably doesn't do well when you get excited over the fact that this is a Kiryu with well-established martial arts from a whole government faction and not an old man. They'll probably fix some of the moves to establish that, they were probably drained of ideas. Also, that hit from the grab. I don't think anyone uses it. It's too slow, and never has a gameplay use. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get it to work because they didn't have time to and it wasn't a priority. Have some leniency and get them to fix it next time, agent style definitely doesn't feel at its max yet like Yakuza does.
In a way that hopefully comes across less harsh about his opinion on preorders: Please just be mindful when making any kind of purchases and preorders. Whether Pirate Yakuza will be a game we either love or hate, let’s communicate that to the company through our comments, concerns, and especially our wallets
one hour over a style is crazy😭🙏
@@OHKO132 I only see this kind of shit from MH fans
Yeah, it’s kinda sad this guy was yapping this much over a battle mechanic in a game that came out nearly a year ago. You’d think the game kicked his puppy or kidnapped his family or something.
Its called constructive criticism blud 💀🙏🏻
@@DaIceberg constructive criticism doesn’t leave a man ranting and yapping for over an hour.
@@edman9953 hey man he's not yapping, he spitting. I watched the video and he was actually right with most points. The style overhaul is garbage man
3:38 Okay this might just be me but the agent style stance is not a Muay Thai stance, heck most of his normal attacks aren’t really Muay Thai. I know that the way the hands are positioned and how they are open may seem like a Muay Thai stance like Higashi’s but the fact that both hands are not even on the face makes it not a Muay Thai stance. The stance is more like a Kung fu stance like Yagami’s crane or tiger or the stance Yagami usually takes in cutscenes and most of agent style attacks seem more like Kung Fu moves like those of Bajiquan or Taichi.
Edit: Now that I rewatch more of the Agent style attacks, I kinda realise that the Agent style is actually influenced by traditional Karate styles that do these kicks like the spinning back kick and the “kick to the sky” as you call it which is actually a kick from Taido which makes sense when you remember that Kiryu said that he learnt the agent style from reading the manuals which most likely means that he read the moves from a karate scroll that demonstrated how to do the agent style moves. So Agent Style isn’t really based on Muay Thai or Kung Fu but more so on Traditional Karate.
Yeah I heavily agree, Agent has a few good moves outside of the gadgets but aside from that I don’t get why everyone thinks its the speedy/dodgy style when you can’t even dodge cancel out of more than half the finishers and is clunkier to use than Yakuza.
Hi squidward
@DillionT of the many things I didn't mention in this video, that's got to be one of the most damning. I still can't believe they made 4 square 3 triangle a launching move, but you're not even allowed to juggle off it in any way. Legend Remix was a total lifesaver for stuff like that
@@maxwellpaynewell5305Yeah, Agent’s finishers are probably the worst designed I’ve ever seen gameplay wise in recent DE, a lot of them are pretty much just single target CC but have way too much commitment to be worth using especially since the gadgets do CC 100 times better.
Also the 6 second limit makes Agent worse since it forces you to optimize rejuggling instead of creative expression, leading you to just using Yakuza because of the amount of options it has for launchers.
I could see your argument if Majima Saga Mad Dog style did not exist. Mad Dog was already very much a memed on style in 0 but the Majima Saga took away key aspects of the style that made it at least somewhat unique and fun.
@sippinhotcocoa5934 I wasn't joking about forgetting Ishin Kiwami at the end, but I didn't even remember K2 Mad Dog in time to realize it should've been at least mentioned in some way. It's not quite as spectacularly bad as Agent, in my opinion, since it at least has a somewhat solid foundation in Y0 Mad Dog, but it's definitely a contender for worst
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I'd argue Y0 Mad Dog was already a pretty weak foundation, at the minimum with Agent it's all new stuff and doesn't serve to make a previously good style worse but taking out stuff it had prior. Thankful that Mad Dog is going to shine again in Like a Pirate
I would argue that it's at least defendable with how Y0's combat works. None of the styles are "complete", none of them are like Dragon style where they're objectively just the best part of all of them. Even if the style itself isn't that good, its another option you have access to that can combo into or from other moves and you have a variety of ways to mix it into the other styles. @sippinhotcocoa5934
I feel like I'm the only person who found the Gaiden ending hilarious because I pictured Hanawa helplessly watching Kiryu cry and snot all over his iPad
@m8rs558 on the one hand, I'm relieved that thought never came to me on my first playthrough, it felt good for the game to go out on a well-handled story beat. But on the other hand, I wish I had come to that realization on any of my subsequent ones, because that improves the scene on replay tenfold
One time i saw a meme of Gaiden Kiryu crying over Bambelina's death from Garten of Banban and it's the only thing i will picture in my head when thinkig of that ending
Someone who did taekwondo saying that turning strikes like spinning back kicks are stupid is rich
Thank you for the Shinada style defence brother 🫡🫡🫡🫡
@@judemcnab4394 gotta show these nonbelievers what real peak looks like
Shinada style is actually great against solo enemies, better than some others I'd say, it's just that you NEED specific weapons for crowd control
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 shinada haters are my haters
idk man, i love Gaiden (gameplay included) and i think looking cool is one of the strongest part of the series (HEAT ACTIONS). i reckon pirate majima looks cool so it will be cool, good analysis doe
I think what we got with Agent is a skeleton of what they wanted it to be. I think a teched out version of Snake with less technique but more brawn would have been a perfect fit for Joryu. They have the parry animation from 6/K2, and upon a parry you could choose:
-Light, as a really strong palm strike, knocking the enemy back a little and stunning him.
-Heavy, which would be a big sweep, dealing more damage than a light.
-Grab, which can THEN allow you to: -Throw which can just be the snake one, which would tie in really well with the whole submissive arts and efficiency that Agent should strive for.
-Heavy, and Joryu could elbow the enemy into the ground which you can also make into a launcher (which agent needs more of)
-Light could just be... idk
Also during the grab you have access to:
-Multiple heat actions (which agent needs more of).
-The guard shift during a grab that snake has, which would be AMAZING for a meat shield with how many enemies and guns Joryu faces.
You could also add snakes disarming, which would work considering that agent is supposed to be first and foremost efficient, and considering how many deadly weapons Joryu can face in 1 combat encounter, it would come in useful.
It just pisses me off that they could have just ripped off snake style, changed the light and heavy attack animations, added the depth of the gadgets (let Spider grab bosses and launch but make if like Yakuza 3 grabs where you have a set limit on how many times you can use it, and make Firefly a sticky bomb instead of a grenade and just remove Hornet) and you would genuinely have one of the best styles in any videogame, ever. Oh, and to balance it out make Dragon do less damage but be faster, and fix like the 50 shortcoming the combat has.
@mtgjuice6333 the simplified grab and lack of a parry really spelled Gaiden's failure as a whole for me. Even if Agent's base combo and finishers were more fun and applicable in one-on-one encounters, the lack of complex options in more advanced combat make it so the best thing the game offers is obscure tech like re-juggling, which isn't accessible enough without learning the combat way beyond what my patience allows for. Those gadget changes would also be appreciated, making them basically useless in boss fights (save for obscure tech or abusing them to melt healthbars) was an incredibly confusing choice
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I forgive LJ Tiger and Crane grabs being ass, cause you have a grab style that is very functional, in the same way I would forgive Dragon grabs being ass if Agent had good grabs.
Also, it is so sad to see a style with so much potential being relegated to:
- Spam Spider in the comically large crouds that only serve to pad playtime
- Use Serpent either as a heat building tool by breaking objects with it, a juggling tool or as a worse version of Spider if you decide to use it as a croud controller
- Use Light x2 in heat mode, for an inconsistent launcher that ONLY works if you miss the first attack? WHAT THE FUCK RGG
- The other tools/moves are niche either because they suck (non-heatmode cigarettes) or they just dont work well half the time (hornet).
My biggest gripe with the game is how they gut any crowd control that Dragon has, while also gutting any 1-on-1 potential that Agent would have. I also hate how they turned Dragon into a bruiser style, with the player basically being forced to tank hits with charged attacks to do any decent damage/launch outside of heat mode. In LJ, if you want to avoid damage, then you can. If you want to hyperarmor through everything of your own free will, go right ahead. But in vanilla Gaiden the gameplay gets so fucking repetitive. If youre in a group fight, switch to Agent, spam Spider or activate extreme heat and spam square, and if you're in a 1v1, switch to Dragon and just tank through everything to get a chance at bypassing the excessive hyperarmor every boss has, and just do repetitive juggles for like 3 minutes.
I really liked Gaiden and Agent style. The only bad things I had to say about Agent were that some of the heat actions were a bit challenging to pull off and the firefly gadget could only be used in very specific situations (and didn't even work properly in EX-heat mode). The drones I liked because it did a good job at distracting/harassing enemies and bosses whilst I was in a pinch.
It *did* take me a little bit to warm up to agent style, but I learned how to use it and grew to love it despite it's flaws, like people who enjoy Shinada's combat, or yakuza 3's combat (both of which I like).
@corneliusdoggerton I would be a massive hypocrite if I acted like I don't see the fun in learning a game, even if it's not the best. I love Yakuza 3's combat, and I've spent so long learning its intricacies that I can't help but mentally correct people that express their frustrations with it, even if I could never expect someone to put as much time into it as I have if they didn't start out liking it.
What I'd say of Yakuza 3 that I wouldn't of Gaiden is that 3 is a much more consistent game. The challenge it provides is both in how it limits you and how enemies behave, and neither of these things feel too much at odds with each other. With Gaiden, I get the feeling that Agent style wasn't meant to be something you need to put effort into learning, at least not in the same way. Obviously effort garners rewards, but the hyper aggressive enemies, and especially those moves which have weird/inconsistent hitboxes (or none at all), give me the feeling that they just wanted you to mash buttons and get through fights on raw strength and gadget spam.
Again, no shade to you for having fun with it or for getting good with it. It's especially impressive to do that with a game and a style like this. I just think that with previous difficult styles, there was a degree of intentionality to their design that is lacking here, or is at least muddled because of Gaiden's generally low production value
11:17 its not very realistic but in-game, the attack usually results in the enemies whiffing you because your hitbox is way lower. Im guessing you missed this because who would keep attacking instead of just dodging? But yeah, thats one thing to point out. It works against enemies like the hang-man relatively well to get some strikes in.
About the grabbing, its not explained but the thing with the only grabbing from one position is also tied a bit into the game mechanics. Atleast thats what I heard some commentary gamer say while playing and the footage he showed did look correct but I still havent fact checked it to see if his claims are actually true. basically, certain bosses cant be grabbed from the front. They just throw you down and counter. But if you do it from behind, the enemy AI has to wait a little before countering you and thus you get more time to use a move? something like that. Stuff like the agent style light attack though usually doesnt require as much time to hit and therefore doesnt require grabbing from behind but its useful for other attacks. They scrapped the back-grabs in favor of having better moves I guess.
20:43 I can confidently say that they didnt do it for no reason. There had to be some bugs with the cancelling out of agent attacks via style switch that probably couldnt get fixed fast enough. It doesnt even have to be strictly what I just said but theres never a "for no reason in particular" in game design. Especially when the same developers have already done the same thing but better.
agent spider: you left out a very cool part about agent. If you grab a strong enemy with it, the enemy will try to escape and youre supposed to mash the button to pull the enemy in. If you stop mashing and just let the enemy free himself, then kiryu will fall to the floor but not actually take any damage. What is this useful for? The heat action that requires kiryu to be on the ground.
agent gadget serpent: you left out some stuff like how the dash into enemy makes them "spin" and stagger allowing you to set up some stuff like an agent grab more easily. Also gaining heat via destroying the objects in your surrounding mechanic.
about hornet: you mention that you are locked out of heavy attacks and heat actions because you have to hold down the heavy attack button. Insert some "honest reaction gif" in here tbh because the same applies to serpent and spider but you didnt complain about those. Its only exclusive to firefly that you can kinda use your moveset while the gadget is active (if you count the timer on the bombs as being part of the gadget).
Also you left out a thing about hornet. When the enemies try to "swat" the drones away, it actually counts as an attack from the enemy which means you can use stuff like the agent styles extreme heat mode side step attacks or tiger drop.
27:28 this one is actually the worst complaint thus far. You can just block during the animation and kiryu will cancel his firefly animation. And guess what? after blocking, kiryu still has it in his hand. You can use light and heavy attacks to use it like the same way that kiryu would grab a traffic cone in the dragon engine games. And of course if you throw it, you can still get the massive explosion and no-timer. Just block and that fixes this one issue you had.
27:54 "and is flat out not very helpful in most instances" (shows footage of nishitani getting staggered for a few seconds which can be helpful if handed correctly afterwards.)
reached like half the hour mark, gonna edit this comment in the future to discuss the rest of the stuff. By the way, im not trying to be mean or something. Most of the points I agree with. I just want to explain some stuff to make the game a more enjoyable experience by handing out some tips.
@kingkaizoku85 tips are absolutely appreciated, and I welcome disagreement as long as it's kept civil. Part of the reason I started this channel in the first place was to foster an environment where people are free to think critically about stuff without worrying about getting told "it isn't that deep." I like when things are that deep, as is probably obvious.
That said, I may have misadvertised this as the deepest dive possible, because there is some tech here I was unaware of. Stuff like the spider grab letting you be pulled over and and the hornet swatting animation I did know about, but they provide such specific utility that I didn't feel it was necessary to point them out. That thing with the firefly extreme heat thing is pretty big news to me, though. That will definitely be handy, as I'm about to go through the game on PC to set up save points at significant battles.
Thank you very much for keeping with the video despite the disagreements and moments of slight misinformation. I look forward to seeing what else you have to add
It appears that the rest of the video wont be having anything I can talk alot about since its mostly just fair points and un-arguable objective glitches but im at 48:38 right now and in defense of the game, this seems to work well for catching players off guard lmao. Its like the enemy is trying to pull a cheap trick on you or something. Just hillarious to think about.
oh wow I genuinely feel bad for how many glitches you encountered. Ive got like 108 hours on the game and its like im watching some really obscure any% speedrun where they just showcase the wildest glitches imaginable. The only things I was aware of, was the heat actions sometimes swapping enemies, the agent style missing and the mortal reversals just failing and sometimes backfiring. Which is still alot but I should consider myself lucky for not having had to deal with stuff like this tbh.
Though I guess it does make sense that the tiger drop didnt work in some cases like at around 54:24. The attack just wasnt meant to be tiger dropped I guess. Even if you could do stuff like that in lost judgment, perhaps it wasnt meant to be? hard to tell whether they failed the tiger drop in gaiden, or if they failed it in LJ (the question being which version of the game is intended now? Or did they change their minds?)
54:31 oh something I can comment about again in regards to gameplay. Theres this cool thing you can do with yakuza style if kaito charges up his dropkick. Run really far away. Dont under-estimate his distance. And once youre far away from him, do 2 light attacks with your back facing him and then do the charged reversal attack behind you. I tested this alot. 9 out of 10 times, you will do the stomp from the reversal attack right onto kaito who just lays on the floor there and it looks pretty cool and its a free punish to get a fully charged yakuza attack onto him. The only times I would fail this attack would be because of standing too close and then I just got drop kicked. I might upload some footage some day.
I arrived at the start of the conclusions but im not happy with how little I yapped about the combat so I have a little tiny non-important thing to talk about. People say boss daigo is better than playable daigo and he kinda is in some ways. But theres this one thing players dont notice. The like 4 or 5 hit rush combo (I dont remember if its 4 or 5 hits.)
the last attack of the rush combo functions just like a normal rush attack would. Atleast for the boss. But the devs were nice enough to give playable daigo a "guard break" on his final rush combo which allows the finisher attack to hit the enemy. I specifically try to pay attention to stuff like this. The playable characters in the coliseum arent always just the enemies but worse in every way. Theyre just, "the enemies but worse in alot of ways". keywords: every and alot. The playable versions have some benefits like kaito has chargeable finishers as example. I havent tested them enough though yet, those are the only things I noticed.
also sorry but to avoid seeing too many spoilers about it, im gonna skip over the "dont pre-order the majima pirate game" section. However I can assume that the point was just "It might be like gaiden: terrible", ?
anyways, Ill post this comment now and go watch the conclusions. If theres anything worth mentioning about the combat again, ill edit this. Good video, very insightful without just whining about "6 seconds" like most people. You actually touched topics that most people dont.
@kingkaizoku85 I guess if there's anything I can address, it's probably the tiger drop thing. It's less a problem about it being a thing in Lost Judgment, and more about it being a thing in the first Judgment. Before they implemented mortal reversals, you either had to avoid the mortal attack or counter it with a wall attack or a tiger drop. I don't think they kept the wall attack counter, but them keeping the tiger drop thing in Lost Judgment was a good way of not limiting your options despite adding a pretty linear way of countering mortal attacks. A lot of gaiden follows that pattern, something you used to be able to approach from a miriad of ways suddenly becomes a lot more limited. Yakuza having two dodges, Agent not having a counter, not having a parry, so much of this game's combat feels like they just didn't include pretty crucial parts of previous games.
As for Majima pirate game, it's less that it looks like Gaiden, more that it looks exactly like Gaiden. The side stuff and especially the way the combat is designed looks like they're making a carbon copy of the game, down to having a live action side mode for no good reason. It's not that I want people not to buy the game, far from it. It looks better the more I see of the combat. But I want people to judge the combat once we can actually see all of it, and especially the story and minigames. People leaning into preorders like they are sends the message that they can be lazy, and I really want them to course correct from where Gaiden and IW have faltered. Pre-orders tell them that they haven't faltered at all
Again, thank you very much for watching, and thank you for the deep dive into what I presented here. I appreciate getting to talk with someone who clearly loves this series on a mechanic level as much as I do
to the spider gadget 23:10, you can leave them tied up. you need to be in Extreme heat mode, hold circle on enemys, once they are tied up just cancel into yakuza style and there you go!
@Kevvv890k thank you for that. I was iffy about leaving that in the video just because I wasn't sure if that was possible. But even beyond that, I've managed to let them go without extreme heat and without getting hit, I just have no clue how it's done. Mods make it possible/easier, so that makes me think it is in the game somewhere, it's just not explained
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I havent watched the video yet but im a huge huge combat guy. But not as in combos like all the yakuza no damagers but just efficiency, safety and the most practical thing without doing styling and legend remix and all that. So the spider gadet being able to tie enemies up is one of my favourites things in the early game when there are too many enemies. The extreme heat mode isnt the only way to tie them up. If you do it on an armed enemy, it just instantly disarms them but also ties them up. Atleast thats just from my testing, correct me if you can actually tie enemies up in a different way from these two as well.
I dont know if im gonna agree alot with this video or disagree but either way, I think that bad mechanics in a game due to it being rushed or just in general a rough game, that usually forces the player to play a bit smarter rather than brain dead. All of that gets thrown out if you buy too much gear and upgrades though but yeah, those are optional. I enjoy how limited some of the things are. I cant just button mash my way through everything and have to actively think about what I do and prioritize.
@kingkaizoku85 I'm of a somewhat comparable mind about Yakuza combat. Obviously no damages are cool, but for me, I'm all about super aggressive play when possible, and just making it through each fight in the off chance the game is actually difficult. I love Yakuza 3 for having some of the smartest enemies in the series, and I like 6 a lot for being difficult in other ways, even if it is through limiting Kiryu. I never buy strength upgrades if I can help it, I keep my damage output as low as possible.
Even with all that said, I still think Agent style falls short, and I think those reasons are present in the video. I'm happy to discuss those points or any counter stuff after you've watched it, if you want. It's refreshing to see a fan of the series that isn't all about the power trip these games can provide
From your words in the basic combat segment, I'd like to think that Kiryu wasn't taught those finishers and instead tried to make his own, thus giving us those... Rather weird moves that don't make sense in a submission style.
@@PurpIexion I did notice in retrospect that each of the finishers end with some sort of a high kick, so that idea may actually have some canonical resonance. Maybe there's some kind of basic pattern that the style is meant to abide by, and those are how Kiryu chose to end them. I tried to stick to the stuff the game itself says, but it often does help the game to connect some of the more distant dots yourself
Found the fact they‘re making a pirate game funny but never thought i was gonna buy it
1:02:04 'Toxic Positivity' is honestly the best way to describe the entire fanbase i love this franchise, many people do. I probably wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for yakuza 0. I played every single game including all of the spin offs but after playing Gaiden and Infinite Wealth all i can think off "Wow.. really..?" I couldn't help but notice that RGG has been falling off. i didn't like Gaidens story i love Shisido (thats it) and i don't even remember whos the final boss in infinite wealth and it opened my eyes STOP MEATRIDING RGG EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME holy shit i thought it was a me problem when i dont like clearly half baked games and then people just staright up eating all this shit up
I'm honestly having a harder and harder time figuring out who these games are for as more come out. My best bet for the moment is people who only want to do the side content, but even if that's the case, Animal Crossing and Pokémon already exist. It leaves me really curious what the breaking point with this series could possibly look like, if people are willing to shill out for these games because they include bad versions of other games you can play instead of the main game
Ironic because these more than half of these people have never played these games and meatride them
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Yakuza 1 and 2 have actually aged really well in that the fluff is largely kept to a minimum, there's some decent high quality side content but it's not enough to derail the game and you still spend most of your time punching people
@stormysoup1083 for Yakuza 2, I'd definitely say that. But I will say going back to Yakuza 1 is always hampered by going through the couple of chapters entirely dedicated to doing side stuff for Date, the Florist, and Haruka. It's definitely not as bad as Judgment, for example, but it still could definitely have lost a lot of weight and been better for it. Compared to the Kiwami games, though, they're masterclasses in pacing
I saw an interview with Yokoyama, the current producer of the series and this guy legit said they have to release the games as soon as possible before the trends they put in the game dies out (like V tubers and whatnot). And that's INSANE to me, I feel like they should spend more time perfecting the gameplay and story instead of focusing on shit like that
I’m often afraid that we’ll end up like from soft fans, where the game quality suffers as a direct consequence of fans’ unwillingness to criticise. There are huge flaws in the series that are barely addressed and sometimes even praised. I felt like a crazy person when the pirate game was announced. It felt like a weird dream and no one batted an eye. A gaiden game and nothing else. More overly zany and absurd elements standing front and center. This tone will get old FAST, and I hate that all us rgg fans will realise it when it’s too late. The combat especially stood out to me. The grounded yet absurd combat has come to a point where it’s too insane and flashy to feel deliberate or fun to control. I miss the more deliberate street brawl and martial art combat, I loathe the gadgets, shadow clones and now jump button… Yakuza might very well turn to shit and it’s our fault.
@sleepygorilla1341 I wasn't even aware there was a decline in FromSoft games, but I'm more than willing to believe you based on how many times I've heard people defending stuff to do with weird enemy windups in Elden Ring. I'm torn about the problems with tone, on the one hand I absolutely agree that it's gotten stale, but on the other hand I'm not sure how much further they can take it before there's nowhere else they can go with it. I hope they reach that point and find some new direction before the surface level fans who watch Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth All Kiwami Moves compilations instead of playing the games, but I could see it going either way.
A big part of why I want to talk about these games is to inspire more critical discourse around the series. Sincere discourse, obviously, I don't want to create a wave of haters that won't fix anything. But if I can inspire anyone who watches these videos to bring critical opinions to greater fan spaces, or even make videos themselves to inspire even more people to voice their disdain with where the series has gone, then I'm going to keep working toward that goal. With Infinite Wealth getting some actual negative reception for the first time in a long time with this series, I think there's a good chance that they'll listen to fans who think about the games they play. If we're loud enough, at least.
In my book, this series has already gone to shit. I'm going to do all I can to inspire some positive change, before the "new audience" who likes these messes of games turns into no audience, and we get a Like A Dragon game that is inarguably terrible with nobody to appreciate whatever is left of the series' original charm
You are on to something mr gorilla
I understand where you are coming from, but the combat changing to include weirder aspects has been around since 5 or even 3 if you count some of the heat actions. In my humble opinion, I like what they are doing with the franchise as they are at least acknowledging how silly the plots of the previous games have been and RGG have always been open to criticism and changes as shown with how the games have evolved from the beginning. Personally, I think that if the series was called Like A Dragon in English from the start, those wanting the “serious tone” might not be so pissed because then they wouldn’t have the notion that these games were entirely serious. And honestly, these games are just made to be fun so that’s why most fans just enjoy it.
@@Epicthomas1000 I don't understand the whole "yakuza was never serious" thing. It always had funny and outlandish side content, to contrast the mostly serious tone of the main story, but now a lot of people act like it's just the funny and goofy shenanigans series.
To me these games were never "just fun", the out of pocket comedic moments were just the cherry on top. If yakuza didn't take itself serious the entire premise wouldn't work. Yes some of the plots are pretty dumb when you think about it, but the answer to shoddy writing isn't to just give up and say "it's all fun now". That would go against everything the series stands for imo.
Also the combat in gaiden and ishin kiwami just sucks big monkey nuts and acting like it's all fun and ok won't fix anything.
@ well to me, the series is built entirely on the characters, doesn’t really matter if the plot is bad (although there are some times when it really needs fixing), as long as the characters are fun to watch or make me feel so freaking sad or angry at them, then the series is doing great. The only reason people are complaining about the wackiness now cuz before the characters were just reacting to the wackiness but now they are taking part in it. Thats probably why I think I and some other will probably love the new Majima game even though others may not because the fact that Majima finally gets to go full on wacky actual Mad Dog in a game is really interesting and I trust RGG will somehow still make it emotional and heartfelt.
Agreed with most, if not all points in the video, though I think a few parts can sound a bit nitpicky (mostly about the moves that don't seem practical for the style) and I assume they wouldn't be very convincing for someone who isn't already on board with the idea that Gaiden as a whole is kinda meh of a game. Personally, I'd probably also cut down the bug compilation and replace it with a short list of everything else that is actually wrong with the game (nonsensical story and character writing, Akame system grind, Coliseum), since that section doesn't really focus on Agent anyway.
Speaking more generally, recently I've become kinda concerned with the way Yakuza community treats criticism towards the series. Bigger RUclipsrs covering RGG games seem to downplay anything that isn't microtransactions and most egregious story flops. This is especially disappointing because otherwise I like their videos, but pretending that there's nothing wrong at all with the recent entries and then persuading tens of thousands people who are going to watch their videos of that won't have a positive effect on the future of the series. The rest of the dedicated playerbase seem to hold similar opinions and everyone speaking out against it is usually ridiculed and disregarded (sometimes deserved, sometimes not so much).
Gaiden was ultimately a disappointment for me, both story and gameplay-wise, but at least it was a side entry. Just recently I finally beat Infinite Wealth and the story got so bad in the last few chapters that it not only ended up ruining the whole game for me, but also made me very worried about their next games and Majima Gaiden in particular. I actually don't necessarily agree that it will play bad, but the zany tone and atmosphere combined with the aftermath of a nonsense of a story IW had makes my expectations... infinitely low.
@uriziel38 like I said, I've got basically no expectations for story anymore. I've been able to look past the lacking execution of a lot of these games in favor of appreciating some very good ideas, but from 7 forward, the quantity of very good ideas I've seen has dropped way faster than I was expecting. For a supposed series reinvention, there's been basically nothing new besides the gameplay and a worse protagonist (that they quickly sidelined in favor of bringing back every legacy character who's still alive, and some who aren't). Now we've got less than good ideas paired up with the usual shaky execution, and with Pirates In Hawaii presenting what I'd confidently call the first bad idea? Again, I have no expectations. I hope that's enough to save me from being disappointed
What I do hope for is that more content creators feel confident voicing their grievances with the games, now that they're almost inarguably in a worse state than they were when series popularity spiked. I'm sick and tired of everyone acting like they're getting paid by RGG to shill out every new game they shit out
I love yakuza videos where people don't meatride the franchise
@@Carl_JohnsonGSF I am both happy to provide but also kind of miffed that there aren't as many level headed Yakuza fans online as I wish there were
@@maxwellpaynewell5305agreed. Too many people meatride the franchise in many ways and honestly been hating it. Glad you truly don’t tho.
That's so real, I just saw someone online saying that real Yakuza fans have to love Yakuza 4 as if that's not just meat riding the series
@Giovfunny it is a good game though, besides the plot sometimes
@@Hiroakiarai88 it's a bad game with good moments because the main plot entirely relies on a series of coincidences and stupidity but the characters are not meant to be seen as stupid. A single thing done differently would've completely changed the story
e.g. what was Munakata's plan had Arai shot him in the head instead?
Mad respect the positive toxicity bit, even when the game was ANNOUNCED I knew it looked like it was trying way too hard to be quirky for majima's sake, but has NO ONE pointed out how bad the lighting looks in the gameplay?
@chairiot that's easily one of my biggest problems with the more recent games, the lighting is consistently awful. Way too much glare and lens flare everywhere, the color tone is completely off all the time, and everyone's skin is completely the wrong color pretty much whenever they go outside. Half the time there's this weird purple tint on people and objects when it's the middle of the day, I genuinely don't get how people can like how they look. I don't get how they went from 6 to this
The inspiration for agent style was aikido and taido. So some of the moves make sense in that context. But I agree with most of the criticism.
29:30 This is an Aikido technique called “Projection no. 17”
You cross the opponent’s arms at the elbow and push up on the lower arm and down on the top arm.
@elijahfyffe5176 having finally bitten the bullet and looked into taido, I'm shocked that it's as absurd as it looks in game. But I guess if you give cultures enough time they'll come up with a way to make a martial art out of anything. It's stuff like this that reignites my love for martial arts, so thank you (and the few other people commenting about it) for correcting me on this
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 No problem, I’ve been doing martial arts for just short of a decade and I loved RGG’s implementation of them.
But, I also agree that they’ve really messed up with how they put them together recently. I think the issue started with Yakuza 0/K1 messing with how dragon style came about.
But at this point it’s no longer the series struggling to make good lore explanations for the styles, but just outright making bad combinations sometimes.
25:57
You can throw cigs while using Serpent. Circle around them. Doesn’t fix the problem that much, but good to know.
Aside from agent being clunky, bright af and not staying with the theme of an “agent” fighting style, I also hate the general gameplay nerf. Bosses get super armor if they get pressured with too many hits or getting juggled for more than 7 secs, and status effects like stun and agony can only be applied once per enemy. Idk what they were thinking with this system. But hey mods are making this game a lot better now. I just hope rgg gets the combat system right for lad pirate this time. The last thing I want is 7 sec juggles
@issatsumo5054 that's another thing, the whole system of pressuring an enemy with taps doesn't work at all on bosses because the game was designed in such an odd way. It's like they specifically crafted the style and game separately so that there was a zero percent chance of them having any kind of synergy with each other.
Like you said, though, mods are improving my experience greatly. I'm excited to see if Yagami or Kaito work in any regard, but for moment, Legend Remix has been my lifesaver. I definitely hope they take the right lessons from Gaiden, but if all they do is replace 7 second juggles with a single air combo like in Yakuza 5, I won't be surprised
True! I still don't get why more people haven't pointed out the horrendous boss armor
Its kinda sad that people think that hyper armor tanking is "good" enemy design cause some people didn't like the idea of juggling longer like in LJ
the worst style in the series is the unarmed style in kenzan.
no finishing blows
no finishing holds
no komaki tiger drop
no quickstep blows
the second dodge takes to long
but the fact that the only style i can think of that is worse than agent is from a game focused on sword combat is saying something
also dishonarble mention to Sumo style from kurohyou 2 for having the slowest punches in the universe
@benpaul7923 honestly, I give that style a pass just because it serves a direct function in Kenzan as a whole. It being so barebones helps disguise Miyamoto's identity as a legendary swordsman when he's in Gion (as does his weird wooden sword style), and like you said, it's basically just a placeholder to incentivize using weapons. You're not really meant to use it. I do wish it at least had as much going on as Shinada's style (minus his insane amount of grab transitions), but for what it's trying to be, it doesn't offend me quite as much as Agent does
Also i wouldn’t say that this style is based on Muay Thai but they just use this stance for some reason. Muay Thai doesn’t rly do sidekicks and jumping stuff mainly bc you would have to be in a “bladed stance” (much more to look like karate) and that means you get sweeped easily from that position in Muay Thai. So yeah, stance does resemble Muay Thai but fighting style itself has a lot of Taido moves. That is a form of karate that we can see characters such a Reina from Tekken 8 use. Trademark move of this style is a rolling on a ground kick. However this agent style also have much more different techniques from other martial arts.
@Geagra I had a slight feeling that the Muay Thai thing was only stance deep, but I was so far into the video that by that point I felt like it would've taken too long to figure out what it actually was. Plus I'm not well enough versed in different styles of karate to pick a specific name like that. Generally speaking, I'm not good at recognizing karate because I grew up calling every martial art karate, but I'm glad someone who knows what they're talking about has shown up to drop some knowledge here
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 no no its ok, im just giving you and the rest of the viewers some insight on things. Im training in Muay Thai and our coach is also a former boxer and just MMA fan. So he tells us a lot about certain things.
Finally, someone isn’t GLAZING Gaiden given how flawed and unenjoyable the game is. The fact Snowiest lumped it in with Lost Judgement as an “underrated masterpiece” made me livid lmao. A bloated, 80gb, broken game that was made in 6 months is being compared to a rich, fleshed out, 50 gb, and FUN game is appalling.
Any time my friends ask me about Gaiden, I just tell them to play Yakuza 0 instead. 0 has MORE side activities, less storage, more and a better story, and much more enjoyable combat. You get more worth your buck playing a game from 2015 LMAO
ALSO FOR A STYLE FOCUSED ON GRAPPLES AND COUNTERS, HOW DO YOU FUMBLE SO HARD AND NOT ADD A PARRY MOVE TO AGENT??
@Aduubo honestly, that whole video's premise just pissed me off. I don't understand how not constantly talking about how perfect a game is constitutes its status as "underrated." None of those games are perfect, and Lost Judgment stands leagues above both Gaiden and Judgment, at least in my opinion. Its combat is certainly far better than Judgment. And people know that, everyone talks about how great Lost Judgment is. It just doesn't make sense on any measurable scale.
And the parry thing still confuses me. There's no reason it shouldn't have one, they could've reused the Y6 or Snake parry and nobody would've complained. The fact that I had to point out that there were things I didn't have time to talk about, and I still keep seeing new things I hadn't even thought of in the comments (parry not included, granted) really goes to show how lacking this style is
Certified hater, it's not bloated at all, it's the shortest and easiest to 100%
The other games are dog shit because they use the philosophy "more equals better" imo that's dog shit and half the mini games suck ☠️
@@soilthestillborn4949 “not bloated” yeah tell that to my storage and the 80 gbs the game stole
And even cutting out the mini games, LJ and Yakuza 0’s combat are still leagues above Gaiden. Imagine having a juggle limiter when LJ previously didn’t
@@Aduubo Ok, I want to tell you that I disrespectfully disagree with all of your arguments except for 80 Gb.
Gaiden wasn't even that bad but the way you described it, it sounds like Gaiden broke into your home and shot your dog or something.
This is not even contructive criticism, it's just general distaste. While I can see where you're coming from, I feel bad for your friend as you were just forcing your view on him without giving a chance to see for himself.
That's why I do not respect your arguments at all.
Hi just saw the channel for the first time today and this video was pretty good. Gaiden was actually the first game I played in the series, and I thought it was really fun but watching this video reminded me of problems that I had with agent style: mostly the weak feeling it gave off especially in heat mode. At first, I was ready to defend the wire gadget since I actually think it's amazing, but you didn't dislike that one, so I was glad. The jet boot gadget though was really weak, it was fun at times, and it was good for dodging enemies and running from battles, but ramming through enemies felt like a slog. Firefly was way more fun just having a ranged attack that felt like a trap was entertaining but maybe just in a shallow way. One thing that you didn't mention that I personally experienced was how I rarely used more than like 3 heat actions at most, I think the game didn't teach the importance of them very well but maybe that was just my fault as a player.
But I do have to criticize the video a bit because I had one major problem and 2 smaller things. Let's start with the smaller stuff. Firstly, when discussing the finishers you primarily focused on their visuals and IRL usefulness which is fine because you discussed how the visuals hindered gameplay, but you barely discussed their in-game application which, if you didn't have much to say then you should have said that. Secondly, I was a little let down by your comment on pirates, you didn't really analyze the gameplay at all and just said "It's the same game as gaiden" which I guess is fair but I myself have been looking at the gameplay a lot and I feel like it has a bit more to offer compared to gaiden. There's jumping which gives a lot of options for the fighting styles and the tools that pirate form has which mix better together with combos (although hook doesn't seem to have the same cool applications as wire but has a more pulling yourself towards the enemy and pulling enemies down from the air). Also, mad dog style it pretty different here it doesn't seem to be reusing animation from zero/kiwami 2 not to mention it's obvious mix with brawler which seems like it's move set is pretty complete. Overall, the combat seems like it's doing creative stuff however It does seem like majima might have the mind of his own problem that heat mode agent style had. Either way I don't really pre order games I just buy them when I have the money so its whatever.
Time for the big major problem I have with this video... The non scripted sections. They were so long and redundant and annoying to listen to that I after the first one and half of the second one I skipped them any time they showed up. The first one was okay it just needed to be cut for all the downtime and repeating which still made it a bit tedious. However the second time with the heat actions felt like a complete waste of my goddamn time you just repeated the same issues that you had with the finishers the visuals and the IRL application it's okay to repeat those points but you don't have to show this tedious play by play of the heat actions you could just give us the highlights of one or two of them that prove your point it doesn't matter if people say your cherry picking if you're worried about that just show a quick montage of the other heat actions. The next times I didn't even bother watching the non-scripted parts they just seemed like you repeating on similar issues while yelling about them. It's okay if you wanted these to function as comedy but they don't need to be this long they can all be summarized by one or two clips each. None of them felt like they benefited from the lack of the script nothing would've been lost except time spend editing which probably isn't the case either since you do actually cut between small sections in these parts, but you don't cut any repetition which just makes it dull. Still like the video but I wish It didn't become the slog that it did at some points.
One personal issue I forgot to mention was the whole negativity without providing an answer thing that a lot of critics have, you supply an answer sometimes but not all the time specifically surrounding the firefly and drone gadgets but it's not that big of an issue for this video.
Lastly here are the games I've played in order; Gaiden, 0, 4, 6, and right now I'm on chapter 11 of lost judgment. Also I'd love to see what you have to say about other combat styles like shinada's and my three favorites: Tanimura's, breaker, and snake in that order (I think).
@tombstonepizza2299 one of the hardest things in the world (for me, anyway) is reading negative, but true, constructive criticism. I don't disagree with anything you've said here. I'm still trying to find my footing with how I want to present my videos, in terms of scripted versus non-scripted stuff, and with this one specifically, it ended up taking so long that I wanted to get the video out more than I wanted to make the best thing I could. Still, I'm glad that the basic formula presented here is something you enjoyed. I very much want to try my hand at analyzing other styles in this series, so I'm looking forward to taking what worked here and using it to its full potential. Thank you very much for not only sitting through as much of the video as you were willing, but also to contribute toward improving future videos
Just for the record, I'm glad that you value the whole "no criticism without a resolution" thing. I normally try to bring that attitude to anything I look at, but I felt like maintaining a consistently negative tone would've fit better for where I was in the video. Also, you've started out with my personal favorite games in the series, so good on you in that regard
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I'm glad you took it so well! I kinda get carried away with writing comments sometimes since I don't know how to make my own videos like this, so I'm glad you were willing to read all that. great job on the video and I can't wait to see more :)
Did you put the 7:45 clip just to show that the guy kinda looks like Infinite Wealth Kiryu
@@LucasMantin I did not, but that's a good spot
The problem I have with Agent style is that it's genuinely inferior to Yakuza Style in a lot of ways. It has basically one juggle startup in the Ex heat light combo that can be followed up, the amount of damage the style can do is next to pitiful, and the only good thing I use in extreme heat for this style is the 'mortal reversal'-esque ability and the aforementioned juggle startup. You'd think for the style that involves agility and defense, they would've added some sort of a parry or counter mechanic like Snake's parry or even K2's parry sidestep, but the only counter in this game is the mortal reversal thing in extreme heat or the Tiger Drop. It just feels like at most, you'd be using like 1/4 of Agent's moveset for like a few seconds before switching back to Yakuza most of the time.
@DominatorLater it really surprises me that there isn't a Komaki Parry or some sort of equivalent move for Agent style. Considering there's no easy way of stunning an enemy in this game, and that the parry has been in almost every Dragon engine game up to now, you'd think they'd add that to Agent as an extra incentive to switch styles, or at least a normal parry because that's what a technical style would have. The whole game is full of confusing omissions like that
I agree with the gadgets part, good idea but bad execution
@@realzekrom2668 I really hope, if nothing else, that Pirates In Hawaii does more with its gadgets. It's a really fun system in concept, and if this game ends up being the stepping stone on the way to something good (think 7 to IW), then I'll be able to think back on it much more fondly
Honestly I view Gaiden's combat as a slightly better and a slightly worse version of judge eyes. It does require skill and patience to understand the mechanics and it can be rewarding once you learn and understand it but since Gaiden doesn't have any depth or creativity and agent style being the crane style of this game being a wet blanket and can't do the job it's supposed to with the system,unlike Judge eyes, the problems become more evident compared to Judge eyes where there were methods to work around the problems the game had when it came to the combat.
Also while Gaiden does fix the juggling and frame rate that plagued Judge eyes( the original) it adds a whole new plethora of issues that shouldn't even exist considering Lost Judgement nearly perfected everything they were struggling for some time.
And if they're already using mechanics from Lost Judgement why couldn't they go all the way and add the TWO OBVIOUS MECHANICS THAT MADE LOST JUDGEMENT THE GOAT, max combo speed and faster cancel frames. Oh and get rid of the juggle limit and stupid hyper armor I'm surprised you didn't mention that since that is a BIG problem with this combat
@curlyaccidente3583 while this game and Judgment both have pretty fundamental problems with their combat, I don't think I would say they have enough of the same problems to compare the two, besides one style being obviously better to use than the other. That does get at another thing, though, which is that if I had made this video with the goal of including talking about the general combat and enemy design, it could've easily been twice as long. Gaiden is so poorly thought out in so many ways, not even counting the juggle limit, that I would honestly need to make a whole different video to discuss the wealth of ways it fails at what Lost Judgment did well. About the only thing I'd consider a major improvement is that multiple enemies will attack you at once, which is such a baffling omission from Lost Judgment that my running theory is that it happened because of some spaghetti code left over from Yakuza 7
@@maxwellpaynewell5305True but Judge eyes does have the same style problems as Gaiden where Tiger and Yakuza are the ones people are gonna use more than Agent and Crane plus considering the fact that it does borrow elements from two games I felt like it made sense to compare the two since RGG was already using mechanics form those games at least imo
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Honestly I think with how well you stated the facts of the big problems of Agent, and even though there are some things that I think are nitpicky and disagree with like the way it looks, I think you should do a deep dive analysis, that way people can most certainly understand the many problems that way too many people ignore.
Let's just pray to God the new Majima game got more than 6 months though
@curlyaccidente3583 a deep dive analysis on the rest of this game's combat, you mean? I could definitely take a stab at that, but I don't know if I know quite enough about how the game works to make a satisfying video about how poorly constructed the entire package is. I definitely hope the Majima game comes out better, though. I don't think we've ever gotten two games that feel exactly the same, so if nothing else, it will feel different from how Gaiden feels
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 like I said it's up to you if you want, I just thought since you understand that combat moreso than most you'd do a good job analyzing it
Great video man I definitely agree with you. Agent style feels like they tried to put all of yagami’s styles into one. Flashy crane adjacent kicks, double handed tiger light attacks, and focus grappling like snake style. The flashiness doesn’t fit kiryu like it does yagami because yagami does kung fu. While agent is not as bad as Ishin gun style or K2 mad dog style, it still sits as one of the worst.
@HaTTStud that is an excellent way of putting it. I hope going forward they don't feel stuck in the shadow of Lost Judgment (and if the Majima pirate game is any indication, they're trying very hard to get away from it). Also, I admit I actually did forget to consider K2 Mad Dog when I made this, but that's mostly because I don't even remember the Majima Saga existed unless I get forcibly reminded of it. Plus, that would've been a much shorter and more boring video
If we are talking about gun style in original 2014 Ishin, I would honestly argue that single gun style fills a more useful niche and is more consistently practical than Agent, Gun also has better sway attacks than Agent, Ishin Kiwami is a different story because it's a very butchered version of the original that Sega should apologize to me personally for releasing
From what we've seen in the Majima trailers SO FAR, it seems like they're learning a bit. The pirate style does look like it'll be a lot of fun as someone who plays Dynasty Warriors games. It reminds me of that and the legacy style seems like it'll have more to it and it also looks fairly fun.
I've reached the point in the games cycles where I'm no longer watching trailers for fear of spoilers. That said, from what I've seen, it seems like there might be potential for what I enjoy out of these games, but if I wanted a Dynasty Warriors game, I'd probably just play one of those. It reminds me of how MGS Peace Walker was touting its Monster Hunter styled bosses as a positive, when I could just as easily play a Monster Hunter game if I wanted that. In an MGS game, I want to play MGS, and in Yakuza, I want to play Yakuza
I still had fun with Gaiden, but i get why people don't like it as much as others. I've played 0, Kiwami, skipped all the way to 7 while being aware of the main beats and characters up until that point, played both Judgment games, and now just beat Infinite Wealth. I still had plenty of fun, but i TOTALLY get why many didn't like especially the end half of the plot.
The new Pirate game for me is kinda a yellow flag, I'm stoked to learn more about it, but imma wait and see how it's recieved and why before deciding if i should get it; don't worry about telling me not to pre order, I've avoided that pretty much out of principle since i was a teenager. As time gets closer to release, I'll probably shift to not buying it and just focus on other games, because i got burnt out on Yakuza before (i beat all those previously mentioned games BEFORE Gaiden within a 2 year period.)
Edit note: If RGG keeps up the NG+ as paid DLC thing, I'm just done buying their games.
@@autiemartian7324 believe me, I'm starting to feel that burnout, and I managed to play every game (originals and remakes) up through Lost Judgment and The Kaito Files during a period of around 2019 to 2022. I don't think it's an overstatement to say the series got me through college, and it's upsetting to see them take their newfound popularity as a reason to pump even more content out even faster with even lower care for the consumer across the board. I'm coping really hard by telling myself that come next January, they'll release NG+ and the post game dungeon for free for IW, like how they did when Yakuza 7 went international. If that doesn't happen, I'll have to seriously consider whether I keep supporting this series. I've already started buying them physically only so Sega doesn't get all of the money, and if I need to start searching for secondhand, then so be it
@@maxwellpaynewell5305I didn't expect such a quick reply or "loved comment " notification, thanks. I get what you mean about the rapidly coming out games; I'm glad the series has gotten popular, and I *to my surprise* ended up loving Yakuza 7 when i first played it but they need to be careful in the near future.
Also, I've seen your other comments about martial arts in games, and tbh part of my burnout on the series previously was due to playing a game called Sifu. That game's combat system has spoiled me to the point I end up comparing other martial arts beat em ups to it as a standard, sometimes to a probably unnecessary degree, so now combat in just about any Yakuza game seems *somewhat* unsatisfying on its own; if the series were to ever change combat again, and somehow did something that felt like Sifu's fighting while keeping all the open world, minigames, and other stuff people love, I'd probably play it WAY more than I already have.
@autiemartian7324 having played a bit of Sifu myself, I wouldn't say Yakuza necessarily needs ultra-grounded combat like that, but it absolutely does need difficulty. I haven't felt challenged by a Yakuza game besides the first three and maybe Lost Judgment (Judgment was hard, but only because endgame bosses would kill you in three hits), and when I first played Sifu, I was in genuine awe when I realized it would take actual effort to land counters and parries, not to mention I'd have to memorize the different finishers and other special moves. A satisfying difficulty alone would do these games so much good, especially the RPGs, all they need is adaptive difficulty to make sure you can't get too overpowered from grinding out jobs and then so many problems are solved
@autiemartian7324 having played a bit of Sifu myself, I wouldn't say Yakuza necessarily needs ultra-grounded combat like that, but it absolutely does need difficulty. I haven't felt challenged by a Yakuza game besides the first three and maybe Lost Judgment (Judgment was hard, but only because endgame bosses would kill you in three hits), and when I first played Sifu, I was in genuine awe when I realized it would take actual effort to land counters and parries, not to mention I'd have to memorize the different finishers and other special moves. A satisfying difficulty alone would do these games so much good, especially the RPGs, all they need is adaptive difficulty to make sure you can't get too overpowered from grinding out jobs and then so many problems are solved
i kinda liked agent style but i can see why some people hate it.
I find it funny how the main series games peaked at OG 2 and Y3 and the rest of the combat is very inconsistent, but all of the spin-offs stay around the same high quality. Good editing and commentary.
@RockMD if it weren't for the changes they made to Kiryu in 4, I'd probably say that game is on the same level as 3 just for Akiyama existing. But every other game definitely varies with how good or bad its combat is. Thank you very much!
... I'm gonna be honest, the whole "heat trail" thing might be a problem exclusive to you. I can see it just fine myself... Unless you're mainly talking about darker environments, but you're fighting in broad daylight.
yeah i have no idea what hes talking about in that part
i think angeman's videos are for the most part a breath of fresh air because I can take a break from all the negativity I see on youtube (most of the complaints seem unreasonable to me even though I agree there is indeed stuff to criticise), I seriously love the newer games since Judgment and ,in my experience, a find a crap ton of negative talk about most games post yakuza 0 release wise (on youtube at least) and I find it very tiring , most of the time it's hard to find someone with a reasonable take on the more modern games and I don't think I can view many more before all their essence becomes lost on me
I was excited and very pleased about most stuff RGG did recently (not all they did was right but hopefully they work on their shortcomings) and when I went to find topics regarding the games I found that most of them were all "x sucks y sucks all of this sucks mid", all sorts of complaint threads and videos. Upon watching a lot of them I don't think I've collected more than a few reasoanble takes regarding the current state of the series, I don't like glazers at all but I can't stand people who put negativity above all else.
I have a lot of feelings on these, if I find more words about this, I'll add more. Have fun in a while guys. It's too bleak for some of y'all.
i'm probably among the not so many people to prefer RGG and their games post yakuza 0 (y0 included), I just like their modern side more, I like all the games, 1-5 they're really good, but I think they really started blooming after 0 and I think it shows in their newer games, the older games have more issues than the newer ones imo, they ironed out their strengths well and have worked hard on their shortcomings, not all is perfect but overall I think it is a very good net positive, among the better ones in the industry.
@mihairomulus2488 I find that kind of funny, just because I've had the exact opposite experience. It's incredibly rare that I find a genuine negative take, or even a good faith criticism of any of these games outside of the first game's dub, 3's everything, and 4's plot, but even then those criticisms are rarely in good faith. Snowiest is a really good example of that, he's needlessly positive about literally every game in the series except for the originals up through 4, and maybe Dead Souls. Not that there's anything wrong with a positive video, but it's so rare that he describes something as somewhere between perfect or absolute shit, that it comes off like every game is either a masterpiece or garbage. His video on Kiwami 3 is a great example, he has no idea what he's talking about for most of it, given that all of his points are either factually wrong or extremely inflammatory. Maybe I don't see the people who call anything that's not perfect mid because I don't use Twitter or Reddit, but if that's all I'm missing out on, I'm happy to continue avoiding them. Either way, nearly everything I've said in these videos is something I haven't seen other people talk about, so I'm sorry if I'm adding to some dogpile that I'm unaware of, but I think it's important that different perspectives are always brought to the table. I love this series a lot, and I hold a lot of the games in high regard, that's why I think it's important to point out things I think are lacking or signs of larger problems with the series itself. I don't want to see RGG release an objectively bad game because they're under the impression that they can do no wrong, and with the series where it is now, I worry that we're dangerously close to that
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I thought RGG will miss the mark entirely with Gaiden because I thought it felt out of place but now I think it's a really mature and well put game, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the Pirate Majima game, unless they go absolutely nuts and add irrelevant plots that are just silly for the sake of, then it's gonna be quite a solid entry giving their history, I don't see where someone might get the impression that they're untouchable and can do no wrong as a studio, it's not like their source for benchmarking is Reddit or Facebook, they have a very solid fanbase in Japan, they're well known by actors and gamers alike there and not everything they make passes right away, Ishin and Kiwami 2 or Yakuza 6 weren't exactly their most brilliantly received works, I'm sure they take good feedback
time will tell
for me the perfect agent style would something similiar to the snake style from lost judgement, purely focussing on putting your opponent in submission
I got gaiden as a gift. The fact that *I* didn’t pay for it greatly enhanced my enjoyment.
@@acheronrecusant on the flipside, my pre-ordering of Gaiden definitely diminished my enjoyment, so that is something worth acknowledging
@ Shishido is the whole reason I play this game, and I knew it would be, which is why I didn’t buy it myself - one character isn’t enough to justify the cost of admission.
Btw the silly little kick you see there where yk it goes down or something,that's from kyokushin a part of karate or smth
You should make game reviews of the Yakuza games, I love scrolling through people’s opinions because your videos really encourage people to tell us what they think in a rather unbiased way, it’s even better when you realize that these people really like the Yakuza series but have real complaints and criticisms and not just constantly meat riding whatever RGG puts out. This was an amazing pseudo review of Gaiden
@theraym14 that is the exact goal I went into this channel with, I'm really glad to hear I'm accomplishing my goal. Honestly, I don't think I'm good enough at making videos to do proper reviews of any games in this series, but that's definitely on my long-term list. It's one of those things you can really only do once, and I want my one time to be the best it can be. In the meantime, I'm definitely going to try to make videos about different parts of as many of the games as I can, I'd hate to limit discussion to the newer stuff
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 i wish you good luck on that, I’d really wanna hear your thoughts on certain topics relating to Yakuza and I’m glad to hear there is more to come, I subbed
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Best thing you can do is a video on Sea Dog style when Yakuza Gaiden 2 (i'm not calling it it's full stupid ass name) eventually comes out. In the meantime i would be most interested in a video about Infinite Wealth. Doesn't have to be a full review just something about the game you have a really strong opinion since i'm getting mixed feelings from the very little you mentioned IW in the replies.
@darksoulsismycity I'm torn between making what might be the only outright negative video on Majima pirate game (assuming it's bad) and not giving Sega money. If I do end up deciding it's worth it, that video will come out as soon as it can. As for an Infinite Wealth video, I'm figuring out whether to make a positive video about the gameplay or a negative video about any other part of it. I might make a poll after my next video drops, which will be in a couple days, god willing. I've got so many ideas that I'm finding it may be more worthwhile to leave the decision up to y'all, but we'll see what the future holds
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I do think they’ve ran out of ideas seeing this is modern pirates, but that game seems like a bargain bin game that’s only worth buying used if it’s going to be bought.
Funny, i experienced this game by watching my friend's playthrough and at the time i thought this style looked cool and fun to use, but then i noticed that he'd rarely ever use it, i asked why and he really never gave me an answer so i left at it and tuned in for the story. Then after watching this video i had an epiphany; it's because it just feels mad uncomfortable. And now i understand why he'd quickly switch to Yakuza style whenever he could.
I'm also not really over the moon for the Majima game. Not because it's pirate-themed i love this AU unapologetically but because i think they could've used another character that we know less than Majima and expand on it. Honestly the way Gaiden made so many references to Ryuji and hinted at him possibly not being dead made me hope we could've gotten something out of it. So yeah my beef with the Majima game is that it robbed me of Ryuji Gaiden plain and simple lol
(Thanks for making these videos btw, i love this franchise but most of the time it really feels like many don't want to address the bad stuff that's too obvious in these games for some reason)
@ryuuonigiri one of my main problems with the Majima pirate game is that I'm pretty sure it isn't an AU thing. They make explicit references to the story of IW in the trailers, plus since the title in Japanese is Like A Dragon 8: Gaiden (like how in Japanese this one is called Like A Dragon 7: Gaiden), it all gives me the impression that, somehow, this is canon. It only proves even more to me that they don't care about actually keeping the world grounded around some kind of realism, as long as they have a concept that will make each game goofier than the last.
Funny enough, your point about a Gaiden game being better served for Ryuji Goda hints at a greater point that I've thought about a lot: Dead Souls should be canonized. It's easily got some of the strongest character writing in the whole series, some of the best substories, and like I said, it would bring Ryuji back to life without feeling like a total asspull. Yeah, it's absurd, and it would take some real finagling to make it fit between 4 and 5, but fuck it, if Majima pirate game is canon, I want the zombie game to be canon. It can only help RGG in the long run, honestly. Plus, it might mean we can get a remaster or at least a port so more people will actually play Dead Souls instead of dismissing it outright as some weird janky shooter
The Agent style most likely uses Jeet Kun Do for the close ranged elbows, kicks, palm strikes, and punches with a mixture of Aikido for the throws and joint locks. Stance wise it more so looks like a long guard in Boxing/MMA stance. Capoeira might be involved with the style for most of the kicks. 3:38
@meb8037 it's interesting how many pools you need to pull from in order to make a "technical" looking fighting style. I really wish those technique manuals mentioned in game had amounted to more than an upgrade system, I'd love to hear what ingredients make up the Daidoji martial art from their own mouths
I just thought agent style lacked flow. Having to hold Down the buttons made it impossible to combo it dynamikly
Y’know I thought I was just out of my Yakuza phase when I bought Gaiden and struggled to play it even after half a year of owning it (just got to the castle btw), but the video encapsulates how I feel when playing it, it looks really cool when stuff happens, all flashy n’ such, but it’s such a drag to play cause of how slow Kiryu feels and how aggressive enemies are in comparison, coming out of LJ I was expecting something similar and was excited to see what crazy juggle combos Kiryu could come up with and how evasive he could be with his slick new style and was let down with how stiff and unfun the gameplay felt. I do plan on finishing it eventually cause the story seems promising but the combat is just not enjoyable and got me feeling somewhat bitter cause I loosely expected something like LJ 💀💀
@petrus648 I don't blame you for having trouble keeping it picked up, I had a whole weekend reserved to play it on launch, and even then I had trouble powering through it. I can't say the story does much that's interesting, but it's worth getting through to see the ending. Like I said, it's the one part of the game I wholeheartedly agree was done really well
23:13 you actually can if you change styles btw
As someone who likes both snowiestangeman, gaiden, iw, and yes agent style. I didn't hate this video and honestly i enjoyed most of it. But i might as well get my two criticisms out the way. First is i really dont like the live segemnts. I like the attempt to branch out but personally i found them to be a bit unfocused and went on for too long. Also i just didn't enjoy a lot of jokes. Not saying to cut them out but personally i'd like them to be sprinkled in the scripted segments to showcase a point. Second is specifically the jokes from the live segments. Mainly the nishitani rape apologist one which i found to be a bit mean spirited and i do like you pointed out you were joking right after but as someone who enjoys the game and yes even nishitani it just felt a bit aggressive towards people who just like something. Not saying to not joke about gaiden fans but rape apologist just feels needlessly negative. Anyway for the scripted parts i loved it. I really enjoy seeing you go into detail about the style and explain why you don't enjoy it and the whole thesis of style over everything else despite me disagreeing heavily i enjoy people talking about yakuza. Also i'd love to see more positive videos as thats what i prefer. Anyway i'd say this video is yakuza 5 the scripted parts are goated but live commentary is saejima prison. Tho that end part about a different perspective is why i ended up subbing since that is something in need. Anyway pretty good and genuinely its an accomplishment that i didn't hate the scripted parts as i was expecting this be like cvit's gaiden and y2 vid (didn't like gaiden vid bc cvit just gets angry at a game for an hour like he's avgn and for y2 i like his y2 parts but his k2 parts drag it down as it falls into avgn type rants for me and is just not my type of video). Hopefully i didn't come off as a toxic fanboy or a prick
Also i forgot to mention but i think the reason that gun heat action is glitched is because the guy you did it on is actually a miniboss from a previous long battle, so its like doing a gun heat action on a boss in the other games
@thebiggestofmen a toxic fanboy/prick wouldn't put so much effort into outlining the reasons they enjoyed a video despite a third of it being "Saejima prison," so don't worry about that part. I'm glad that I didn't come off as needlessly negative for most of the video, I was asking some friends about how mean I should be for this video just because I think it's important that I leave no false pretenses about my opinions in videos like this. On the one hand, I want to back up clear and obvious dislike with enough analysis to show I'm not just a hater, but on the other, I don't want to become the Nostalgia Critic of the Yakuza fandom. I was also annoyed by how intensely Cvit seems to hate the Dragon engine just for existing, and I don't want to embody that, either. That said, I do intend to make a positive video next, so I hope you look forward to that. It will probably not include any live commentary (something I'm also trying to feel out, there ended up being more here than I wanted for a miriad of reasons). Thank you very much for powering through a video that was difficult at times, it means a lot to me that fans of these games are willing to hear out a contrary opinion even if they don't agree with it or if it's not presented the best way it could've been.
As for the gun heat action, it definitely does that for any gun user with a long enough healthbar. There's some normal dudes in the broke it fix it fight with guns, and the same thing happens there. I wish I'd powered through to that part so I could get footage of those guys specifically, but I was so drained by that point that I didn't even record the one in this video to my PS5, so even now I still technically have no proof of it on my console
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 i'm actually replaying the game rn just to check and yea what you said was very true, reguarding your live commentary i wanna say i owe you an apology, i was honesty way to harsh on it tbh. After watching your backlog and mainly your starship troopers and falling down vids i can say i like live commentary, just recommend maybe using it in smaller doses rather than one large segment but that's personal preference. Also im definitely staying because holy fucking shit your month of movie videos are great and i loved them
@thebiggestofmen no worries about the live commentary thing, like I said, there was more here than even I wanted. I'm trying to strike a balance with all the things I'm doing, some opinion/analysis videos with only scripted stuff, the movie videos with some commentary, and the gaming videos that have just that for those interested enough (mostly I just like making them, it's my brother with me in those and I want to make him at least a part of my channel's identity). I'm really glad that there's stuff here you enjoy that's not just the Yakuza stuff, gives me hope that I'm not trapping myself in a bubble with too much Yakuza stuff in such close proximity. Thank you very much for your kind words and for sticking around, I'm excited to see where I go from here
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 will say ironically this video has caused me to use agent a lot more and now i kinda love it despite all its obvious flaws. Especially the grab infinite i find it fun, also i'm glad at least a grab works since my biggest issue is that a lot of bosses and big enemies just ignore grabs. Ig style has power over me but ah well i have fun. Though i do agree with you gadget assessment especially why rope and boots work and why drones and bomb don't
the only thing i really hated from agent style is the rush combo from Extreme Heat, why cant it be the heavy attack button? the moment i got my hands on this game, when i entered extreme heatmode i instantly hated it how it is done. if it where similar in judgement/Lost Judgement it wouldn't be a problem for me. people on pc can have mods which changes it so it plays like judgement
@@Kevvv890k of all the decisions they made for Agent specifically, that one boggles my mind the most. I get that Yakuza style has a weird extreme heat combo, but surely they were capable of doing one style one way and the other a different way, especially when they already did it the best way possible. I hear people defending this by saying Judgment is a different series, but even considering that, why make this game worse just to make it different from Judgment?
Never would have guessed this game is so devisive.
I enjoyed gaiden, i enjoyed the gameplay but i really enjoyed the agent style. I get your criticisms though and why you don't like it.
@klaus.sfc01official30 trust me, this video is coming from someone who's been pretty deep into no damages/stylish gameplay videos for the past few years, but also someone who cares a lot about the "art" in "martial arts." Looking at the game from a more casual perspective, I definitely see why people enjoy it as much as they do. I just can't really look at this series in a casual way anymore, for better and for worse
@@maxwellpaynewell5305this is actually similar to Pokémon, when you go to deep in nuzlockes or just the competitive stuff, you kinda get too critical and the game gets hard to enjoy lmao
@elias-tt7vx I've watched a guy called Radicalsoda slowly become more and more bitter and cynical over the course of the past five years, and it seems like Pokémon was the catalyst for that. I really feel for fans of that series, it's similar to Yakuza in a couple other ways too, mainly in terms of higher but lower production value
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 the difference between yakuza and pokemon (for me) is though that yakuza isn't an unplayable dumpsterfire that doesn't even try to look good or appealing anymore.
No i am not talking about 4k i am not talking about flashyness i literally played this game (referring to gaiden) on a laptop and turned the graphics to deep fried.
I mean that pokemon games look like my laptop settings somehow still run like ass and ask for the full price of 60$
While being the same game again and again with no real story.
So i understand why pokémon fans just become depressed seeing the state of their beloved franchise.
Honestly I still don't understand how agent is the "worst" style in the series, even if its not as good as the ones from LJ I'd still take it any day over 6/K2's or Judgment Crane.
Im not a pro and really not even that good at these games so my opinion isn't as valid but Gaiden is such an easy game that I really don't see a problem with the style, even with all the flaws you mentioned it never frustated me to use it like some others in the series which to me constitutes a good style, also some points feel a bit nickpicky like "not being able to see" do to the visuals which I had never even thought about it being a problem.
Either way I honestly really liked Gaiden as a whole, it fits its role as a side story and as an unofficial "Yakuza 7" (following Kiryu)
As for PiH... im definetely not pre-ordering it lol, though I haven't seen anything that would make me NOT want to buy it at some point, its definetely the most "out there" plot premise which makes me a bit worried about the future of the series on that front even if its a side game, although I feel like they've been trying to incorporate the "wacky" side stuff into the main stories since 7 but that's a whole other discussion.
Anyway, I'd say this is overall a good video and sorry for the long ass comment, also English isn't my first language so I apologise for any mistakes that were made.
@fraktusdern no worries about comment length, I'm happier with longer stuff as long as it gets a point across.
As someone who finds nearly every game in this series too easy, I've pretty much stopped judging them in any way by how difficult they are. So for me, all Agent offers is how good it looks, feels, and works, all of which I think fail. At least with Yakuza 6 Kiryu, I like how that style looks and feels to play. The main problem with it is that the enemies are way faster than you, so it isn't functional most of the time. Even then, it still has more going for it than Agent, at least for me.
As for the pirate stuff, I don't care at all about the story, at this point I've stopped hoping for good stories out of these games. But there's definitely something to be said for how absurd it is in concept. Even with 7, the wacky stuff was mostly found in mandatory side content rather than the actual story itself. IW definitely pushed it more toward that direction, but it wasn't that crazy on a fundamental level. I'm curious to see how this game shapes whatever Yakuza 9 turns out to be, for better or worse, because I'd be fine with the series taking a more fantastical angle as long as it actually commits to it, instead of giving us giant animal fights and construction machine fights and trying to explain how that's actually possible in a grounded setting
this is kinda why i wanted a mod which replaced agent with brawler
After playing the Gaiden remix mod I don’t see myself ever switching back to Vanilla
@@Lappulleh part of why it was so painful to get back on the PS5 for this was because I haven't touched the vanilla release since I finished the game last year. The fact that Legend Remix makes it fun wouldn't be believable if I hadn't been playing it for months
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 my main issue with vanilla is the sluggish feeling from both styles. I played LJ’s verdict of the dragon mod before buying Gaiden so I was pretty disappointed with the initial release
@Lappulleh combo speed would've been nice, but it's really that lack of available moves that tears it for me. It feels like they're taking any cool ideas and just turning them into heat actions instead of actual moves you can do in gameplay. Bringing back the Lotus Flare Fist or the charged heavy from 6 would've been great, or at least the Komaki Parry. It's downright bizarre that the knockback is here and not it (even though technically the knockback was in K2, as neutered as it was)
I really wanted Agent to be a good style. But if anything else. Agent’s theme is really good.
I absolutely hated Agent style and used it only when really had to. My main gripes is that gadgets are too crazy in their design and that just throws me out of immersion. In my opinion if we had bladed boots, taser and tear gas it would've been much more realistic and fun. And moves themselves were too flashy, so it kinda felt like im playing Yagami. What would've cool if Agent style was a lot more takedown oriented. So it would be based around mix of Judo and Jiu-Jitsu, also fits for ideology of Daidoji being japanese PMC pretty much, and japanese are very proud culture so of course they would train in their native martial arts. It also would finally get us a character who has a ground game. We have Yakuza for striking and Agent would be for takedowns and that would get us a cool combo where you could do a counter takedown with Agent and on a low health Yakuza you could do this special ground and pound heat action where you punch downed opponent repeatedly.
I absolutely love the idea of a judo/jiu-jitsu focused fighting style, it would especially fit with the Daidoji as a super patriotic organization that shapes the government from the shadows. Not only would that be a pretty unique style compared to everything we've gotten before, it would even be pretty easily implemented. Given their habit of reusing Virtua Fighter movements for protagonists and bosses, I could easily see a rework of Goh Hinogami from VF5 being turned into an Agent style. He's both a judo user and an assassin with a violent streak, so there's already a really good base for them to work off of. If I could magically will a custom mod into existence, I would love to see what something like this would look like
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Goh was my favorite fighter in that game
As far as a style focused on takedowns, I'm just reminded of Tanimura's style where every standard combo finisher allowed him to follow up with a unique heat action or hell, Kiryu's pre-DE style that gave him several grapple finishers. God, I miss playing as a bribe-taking dirty cop.
@@eileenmilligan9673 that does touch on one other issue with Agent style, which is that each finisher doesn't do something markedly different from each other. None of them give different hit reactions, or at least not different enough compared to pre-DE movesets, to distinguish them in terms of utility
I HATE ALL THE FLASHY EFFECTS TOO WHY TF DOES IT LOOK MORE LIKE AN INFAMOUS SECOND SON GAME THEN A YAKUZA GAMEEEEEEEEE
My biggest beef with Agent Style is thematic. Kiryu has been technical and agile before (Rush, certain Komaki techniques) but having him fight like Jason Bourne or John Wick just feels weird. He's a street fighter mixed with pro wrestling and some tidbits of martial arts here and there. Learning CQC so fast and embracing it fully feels weird and doesn’t match him at all. *Especially* with the gadgets! Kiryu is happy to use weapons, but he's never been good with trickery or technology. If anything, the Daidoji style feels more like it should be reserved for certain throws, weapons, and heat actions. Individual techniques he can learn throughout the game to add flair.
32:47 I HATE THIS SHIT SO MUCH
@imontheedgeofmyseat easily the worst thing Lost Judgment "added" to combat. And in this game it just makes it all the more confusing that the Komaki Parry isn't in it, seeing as they even brought back the knockback
3:38 erm, actually it's meant to be like a bajiquan stance 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓
@Fird9e erm actually if it were bajiquan the entire moveset would be reused from Akira Yuki (I can definitely see that, the comments have shown that there's a lot more distinct influence going into Agent than I was remotely aware of)
Another great video, especially the entire conclusion section. I wanted to make something similar to this previously, because I think that there are not a lot of people doing rather critical deep dives of these games. Without any criticism it's hard for RGG to improve the games, you know. Dunking this much on a game made in 6 months might seem pointless at first, but literally the entire fanbase is praising it, which might lead to the studio releasing more products like this.
I feel like it's also worth pointing out that The Man Who Had a Mid Game has probably the worst balancing in any of these games. Well, it's usually a little all over the place, considering the side content in Yakuza can give you some really good rewards, however in Gaiden it's egregious. During my first playthrough I felt like I had to restrict myself from using half of the abilities to have some good challenge. The drones have no practical use besides being a “melt bosses health bar” button, attack upgrades are as busted as usually in Dragon Engine games, Gear multiplies your damage to an insane degree, some of the most powerful Heat Actions are the ones that are the easiest to activate. It's bad. Instead of pointing out pretty apparent issues like this, you just see people begging for the studio to add NG+ to the game. Like dog, do you need to one shot everyone even more?
About Gaiden 2: The Man Who Sailed, I was at work during the actual live stream, so I just saw the promo piece of it and skimmed through the story trailer. I was immensely disappointed. However, with each new piece of footage released of it, I kinda mess with it. It's not only that the combat looks fun and refreshing, but also its the little things that are sick about it. The menus and UIs look neat, instead of equipping generic Gear, Majima can wear different rings with unique 3D models that give additional effects, both styles have different ways of integrating Thug combo strings into them. It just sucks that we sort of have to accept the trade of the game being fun at the expense of the story being shit. I used to love these games for combining really engaging storytelling with some fun gameplay. Now you choose one or the other.
Also I wanna say, the Agent Ex Heat Dodge attacks are really cool, I hope another character in their games gets these :) Oh, and the music you used in the video is also neat.
And, 48:33. Dog why do you have this saved
One of my biggest gripes with most Yakuza games is in how they conflate getting better at the game with doing more damage. I saw a video once complaining about how boss fights in Yakuza 3 take too long, and the example he gave was of a boss fight that took three minutes to beat. I think that moment specifically showed me where we're at with this series, and even though the problem was at its worst in Zero with the secret skill trees, it's something that the Dragon engine games integrated into normal play with having a stat specifically for upgrading your damage. Obviously it's good to have an option not to upgrade your attack at all, but I imagine most people see it the opposite way, where it's better to just upgrade attack and melt enemies and bosses alike, and that technically counts as being good at the game.
Also, about NG+, I agree there are some more pressing problems in Gaiden specifically, but I think it sets a really bad precedent to let them think they can get away with removing key features from their games. Remember how Konami tried to make other save files a paid feature in Metal Gear Survive? This gives me the same feeling. I think it's important that we keep up a loud enough outcry against that, at least until they acknowledge it.
Also also, I have that saved because right after she finished the line, I paused the game and sat there fuming for a good ten seconds because I was so pissed off that this is the level of writing we're at with these games. I wanted to keep a reminder for myself in the future when I skip cutscenes that this is, in fact, where we are now. Skimming over it like that definitely made it look sus, though
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 I know which yakuza 3 video youre talking about haha. I laughed outloud when he showed the timer and acted llike its a century. About NG+ I meant it more as in a single really obvious issue was the main talking point about this game. Despite the fact that there are so many more problems like this. I was kinda surprised that Infinite Wealth actually had a pretty critical reception in terms of story and pacing, considering the fact that these were entirely overlooked with Gaiden.
@Hajber I remember back when the game first dropped, the spoiler-free devilleon video said something along the game having "S tier ideas, but B tier writing," and I instantly knew that there would need to be at least one letter grade subtracted from both of those descriptors. Even then, it was the most critical I'd heard someone talk about a Yakuza game that wasn't one of the pre-ordained jokes. It was sort of shocking to hear anyone say out loud that a game in this series was lacking in some way.
I wonder, now that the NG+ thing isn't as explosive as it was, if maybe there will be fewer things distracting people from actually recognizing the other problems the series has created for itself recently. I'll be very grateful if it does, even if it means we get a couple more lacking/bad games before people say anything
How about this, k8say is doing a Agent style rework for Lost Judgement Legend Gaunlet, will you try that?
@@jofreproblem if that's the one I'm thinking of, I'm absolutely going to give that a try. Putting this game in Lost Judgment will immediately improve it somewhat, what with the way they changed enemy properties/behavior, but I also like the way some of the gadgets were altered (again, if this is the one I'm thinking of)
crab on my yucky (it truly does show that this game was made in less then a year, i truly hope they stop doing the call of duty strategy as it genuinely harms their quality, cannot wait to play this and form my own opinion!)
i forgot i made this comment until now, anyways uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh the game blows, low d to f tier
Agent style is only good when you're in extreme heat mode.
I came here immediately after watching a 13 minute preview of Like a Pirate-Dragon-Yakuza-Gaiden, the DMC juggling mechanic looked cool I guess, but one REALLY subtle thing caught my eye that might ruin any interest I have in this game, and given that I had to mod Gaiden with a moveset mod within 30 minutes of playing it, my expectations were already low.
Obviously, these exclusive demo previews are just gonna have the player not play as good as a diehard fan, but they’ll do one of two things: spam attacks and quickstepping out if they get slightly overwhelmed.
Why wasn’t this dude immediately quickstepping out when he was taking too much damage? Probably because this might be a game so insanely tailored to casual players, or the fact that in the button prompt guide in the bottom right corner, *It seems that quickstepping got replaced with a jump button.*
I’m not sure if they outright replaced it or just gave X/A a multifunction prompt but removing quicksteps is the stupidest decision for a Yakuza game to make, and it goes in tow with that other comment’s complaints too; I’m here to play a fucking yakuza game, why are you converting it into DMC? If you wanted a goddamn air juggle jump mechanic then reuse how LJ’s Crane style worked!!!!
@sandwichpony8071 I've become so blind to the stupid control guide in the corner that I didn't even think to read whatever it was saying. I will say that during some demos I recall seeing Sea Dog style doing a sort of animation where it jumps sideways and does a horizontal spin, some kind of parkour shit. I was under the impression that they were copying DMC5's Table Hopper dodge without the good feeling or the utility, but if there is a chance they outright replaced the dodge button, that might be baked into a move or combo.
Just for the record, I have no doubt that they'd remove the quickstep if they thought it would bring in a different audience. Infinite Wealth has proven to me that this company cares more about bringing in the most casual audience possible on the promise of emulating better games, over actually making a good game.
If we're really stuck with a jump option, though, I think what looks even worse is the fact that there's one air combo (that they've shown), and it ends with spiking the enemy back to the ground. So it isn't even like DMC juggling, where you can keep the enemy in the air while switching between air and ground moves, it certainly won't even come close to the possibilities that come with having a halfway decent ranged option, because they've only shown that gun being used after a full second of charge time. They obviously dont understand why DMC works so well, but on top of that, it's like they've learned literally nothing from Yakuza 5 Akiyama.
There's so much more writing on the wall, including but not limited to every launcher they showed sending the enemy so high that your only choice is to use an air combo on them, but I'm so checked out of pirate game at this point that it can honestly do whatever it wants. Maybe I'll get it in a year's time, but certainly not on launch, and only on PC so I can make some attempt to mod the game into a playable state
I don't think quickstepping is gone. It might be just a case of "You have to hold down the lock-on button to quickstep" kind of thing
@yaboi2500 I rewatched the trailer, and yeah, they shoved an R1 + X prompt at the very bottom of the button guide. So I guess we no longer have to worry about having to press a button to run in battle. Not sure if Gaiden already removed that, but either way it's a "feature" I'm happy to see removed, I always disliked it more than hitbounce
not technically the worse but expecting after finishing lj and all yakuza games before it to be the best or at least in bar with judgment. but the result is not focused combat with no direction just give the combat any **** you see without further testing or analysis. this what I felt playing it and had so little satisfying with it, even kaito files is much better and have real flow of combat far from this
idc about the story if the combat return to its root but it was far from reality
even for a "dlc" they could do much better. they need to improve their quality and stop recycle part from old games without creating anything new
not the 1 hour agent style video
@@cashtomatoe unfortunately so. Next comes the 4 hour video about the history of Kyushu No 1 Star's ownership and management
00:13 i never saw Shinada doing that animation..
To be honest I didn’t use Agent that much unless I had to fight Juzo Amon or to clear out a random encounter outside of the story while I agree that the Agent Style is a bit jank I upgraded the attack to the max so for me it wasn’t as bad.
@@StefFTW99 understandable. Personally, I try to keep my damage as low as possible so I can get a better feel for the combat in these games, plus it makes boss fights last longer so I can experience the coolest stuff for more time. That definitely plays a part in how much I dislike Agent, but I wouldn't say it's the most important part
@@maxwellpaynewell5305also I have watched more of the video itself I do agree with most of your points but I think your disdain towards the game itself comes from how badly you’re punishing yourself by barely upgrading the attack and using gear as come on you can get plenty of gear in the Castle.
Also about the like a dragon pirate while I am excited for it to come out, I agree with the assessment of paying nearly 70 quid for a game that could be the same length as Yakuza 6 is a bit of a stretch, hell I got the first Gaiden on Sale as it was 20% off.
Guy starts the video off with Infinite Handcuffs, instant like and subscribe
I watched this whole video and although i remember disliking agent style, I still loaded up the game to test it again (I disabled the mods I had for the test). Before testing I thought I would suck because I hadn't played in months, But to my surprise I was pulling off all sorts of combos and having fun and I was just about ready to make a comment disagreeing with this video when I noticed I parried like yakuza 6. Once I saw that I thought "wait do I have mods on still"? and I switched to yakuza and proceeded to do a Komaki parry, confirming that I had mods on still. So then I actually disabled the mods and tried again and finally remembered why I barely used Agent and didn't like it.
So yeah Agent sucks but I still disagree that Gaiden is bad. I like Gaiden and I don't think the quality of the series has gone down with the newer entries. There was a sale for all the yakuza games for like 60 bucks and I had money at the time so I first played yakuza zero back in August 2020 and I remember liking it and thinking it was alright, but I barely did any side content and had like no upgrades. Then on the 16th of October 2021 I played Kiwami 1 and enjoyed it so much that I played Kiwami 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Judgment, Lost Judgement and then I played 3 chapters of 7 replayed 0 doing everything I missed then finishing 7 after 0 on the 15th of March 2022. Coincidentally Kaito files released 15 days later so I played that. Then I played Ishin, Gaiden and 8 on their release. The reason I say all this is to say that I have no nostalgia for the earlier games due to how I played and beat them all over a 6 month period (other than Ishin, Gaiden, And 8).
I don't think the earlier games have a significantly better story or gameplay than newer games. Does 8 have an amazing Story? No, but is 1 any better? I don't really think so. I genuinely don't see a decline in story or Gameplay at all and I'm still excited for Pirate game. Sorry for the long winded comment.
No need to apologize. As is probably obvious, I don't have much of an issue with long-windedness. That said, I get not seeing much of a decline in the games' stories over the years, but what really surprises me here is that it was Kiwami that hooked you in over Zero. Do you mind if I ask why that is? I don't think I've ever seen someone with that perspective
1:30 as someone who hates y6s combat i personally felt yakuza style was great and borderline overpowered when at full tilt. Feel it was the best kiryu gameplay I had since yakuza 4; but I also just spammed dragon king essence at low health whilst tiger dropping every other hit… like I did in yakuza 4
I thought it was cool cause I could combo while they were mid air after grabbing them
Though I honestly just used dragon style for the rest of the game
46:53 based, the LJ glazer annoys me to no end
LJ has the best combat, tho
@@Luhyn I love LJ, I just find Snowiest's videos annoying.
@indolentlard8612 facts, and that's coming from someone with Lost Judgment as my second favorite game in the series. It baffles me how someone can ride that game so hard that they're unwilling to admit the story is, at the very least, flawed. It definitely has the best combat, though. At least top 3 objectively
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 "flawed" is very generous, lol. i think the problem is that they became too ambitious, adding too many side minigames without polishing them enough, putting things in the story like the Liumang just to forget about them, etc. they should've made the game more grounded.
@Luhyn it annoys me to no end that they made a character as fun as Tesso just to not use him in any way. I still love Akutsu and Soma, but I'd trade a third of RK's screen time (especially those dumb boss fights that pop up every chapter) for some actual involvement from the Liumang besides being a massive red herring for the entire game
Agent and Yakuza style lack the synergy that all of yagamis styles provide in lost judgement.
Id still say the best version of kiryus combat you can play is in kiwami 1.
But the fact that agent doesnt have any permanence since the gadgets dont stick around if you switch just means you either stick with the style or rarely use it.
Even with combos at most you can just use the triangle attack after launching with yakuza to get a hit in with agent before your force to switch back to yakuza to actually do the combo.
Overall outside of the bugs, yakuza is the better version of kiryus new style that its hard to go back to the other games but its lack of synergy with agent just makes it not as interesting of a system compared to kiwami where all the styles can be switched to and have some purpose, even more so in lost judgment since you can get buffs from using certain ones that apply to the rest.
I wouldnt say it has some of the worst combat in the series i enjoyed gaiden more than yakuza 3,4 and 5s combat, it has more variety than 6 and kw2 even if its not that much more if you dont count all the janky stuff. 0, k1 and lost judgement just remain the top for me with gaiden in 4th.
@sgr_sean style synergy is something that I worry is lost on the general player base of these games. Understanding why Lost Judgment works as well as it does means understanding why throwing style switching into a game doesn't suddenly make it better. Gaiden is a prime example of that principle, and I still saw plenty of people praising the game just because it has style switching in it at all. It's something I'd personally say is lacking in Yakuza 0 (partially with Kiryu, but definitely with Majima), where I feel like the styles feel limited but also isolated, but Kiwami definitely took steps to make using all four of them flow better and serve each other better in general combat and in stylish play.
Like I teased at the end, I don't think Gaiden as a whole has the worst combat in the series. Ishin Kiwami is far worse in several ways, but I think Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 6 have fundamental issues with enemy design that make combat in those games less enjoyable, even with decent-to-well designed player styles. But I think that in terms of a playable protagonist, Agent is the least satisfying and the worst constructed individual gameplay style
@maxwellpaynewell5305 id say we agree on that.
Agent on its own is too inconsistent, lacks utility that flows well with all the options it has.
And its usability is gimmiky at best, its completely overshadowed by its other style.
0 definetly lacks, but the variety in playable styles is what boosts it. Even if they dont all work well together, especially majima, kiryus quick change clothes help but its a step above in k1 since you get to switch mid fight alot better.
And without a doubt some of the games just suffer from enemy design where it makes the combat not able to shine as much.
Ironically give yakuza 3 actual guard breaks into kiryus move set that actually leaves the enemies open to attack and its actually really fun to play, but theres TONs of mods that improve general combat in each game that it can be a discussion all its own.
Basic combat section of this video is insane. Frame data and martial arts reviews on kiryu man kiryu regularly pulls oversized sharks and sea creatures out if the water last yeamr and has punched possibly the same 2 tigers unconscious on 2 seperate occasions a decade apart theres a degree in which " damn that elbow is crisp he xould surely defend himself in a self defense scenario" gets weird
Well, that's pretty based bro
@@Moveset-Mastery thank you very much!
I tbh liked the Agent style 🥲 kept using it.. It helped me more with Amon basically and some hard collesuem fights. i was playing on the hardest difficulty. It was fun for me a lot seeing kiryu doing somerhing different.. Excited for the new amazon series but i dont think it will reach peak Game level story but i still hope.. Wish we get more Kiryu games someday.. didnt play Yakuza 8 till now will get it this month soon
@GamerGoneMad getting something different is definitely a good thing for this series, but I wish they'd accomplish those different things with different characters. The kung fu stuff works for Yagami, but for an established character like Kiryu, I'd prefer him doing things it makes sense for him to do. I will say that I have hopes for the Amazon series, but not very high expectations. Something good would be nice, at least
While agree with a lot of your Agent style criticisms, half the gadgets being almost useless and the weird hitboxes and lack of juggle options, the flashiness and other stuff you mention with heat trails, seem like personal taste. And you might've just gotten unlucky with those glitches lol.
@MugdhaMahdiShams I can accept the heat trails thing as a matter of personal taste, I just expected a lot of people to agree with that if shown the heat trails separate from the act of playing the game. As for the flashiness, though, I still think it objectively doesn't work with what Agent style was going for. I don't think Kiryu would act like that, and I don't think the Daidoji would train their agents to act like that. I totally get liking how it looks, especially if you enjoy how showy Yagami is, but liking it doesn't make it fit within the combat system as a cohesive whole. The glitches were definitely partially bad luck, but enough people have commiserated with them that I think it was worth bringing them up as a criticism of the game's construction
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 Well it was made in 6 months. Mostly as a quick little thing as a promo for IW. Plus, while it does start as a Daidoji style, he learns the rest of his skills during the game from various books. You can say base Agent style before upgrades was just standard Daidoji without most of the other flashy stuff you learn later.
I am just at the beginning of the video, but had to write a comment already. Couldn't agree more about the agent's strikes not being easily readable. That was my first problem with it too. Doubler strikes in rapid succession made it feel unintuitive to see where for example the 2nd input ended and the 3rd began. You put it into words and visually very well. Second point I agree on extremely and smth I also thought many times is that Dragon Engine heat trails are getting too excessive. 3-5 remasters look way cleaner which I prefer
Watching a little bit further. I mostly agree on gadgets, though personally I don't feel so negative about them. Except the drone. The wire downside that you didn't mention but it is shown a lot in yor footage is that it's janky. Sometimes there is a force of a jet behind it, sometimes it just makes enemies kinda flop over, and the physics like to glitch out. I did like the cigarette bomb thingy though.
Now onto heat actions: 100% with you on the obnoxious screen-covering effects. Like the triangles and some fire explosion from hitting a guy in the head
Upd: Finished watching. Solid points all around.
@empty2892 Spider being so janky would definitely have been worth pointing out. Honestly, I think I omitted it because I've just gone blind to it, it doesn't even stick out to me anymore because I'm just so used to it, and it works often enough to where it doesn't piss me off
I do think they tried to do it like Rush style does it, but Rush style has the quirtk that while it has around 8 rush combos, it only has 2 finishers which span across the punching and kicking sections of the rush combo. Not only does the distinciton between rapid punching and wider kicks make it more readable but the bigger window for doing either finisher makes it need less readability as you have a lot of time to pull off the finisher you want before it's too late.
Agent tried to do a really fast and technical style like rush where you just punch really fast, but making it work like any regular style was a serious detriment to the concept.
Shinada's style kinda does suck tho. He can't get off a basic light combo without the enemy guarding, often times you can't do heavy attacks either. He does super low damage and can't fight bosses without struggling, even with his sturdy weapons. I'd argue Shinada is worse than Agent
Shinada is really weird but somehow clicks with some people and don’t with most. I enjoyed his style a lot because you have to use every tool available, not just rush combos and finishers. His rush combo is weak, but his toolset as a whole is really interesting and fun imo
ok but agent boots go brr.
@@LuckyyBrawl hard to argue with that, honestly. They're one of my two preferred gadgets for a reason
Sshhhhhhh
Kiryu with sunglasses
@@Vertically_rotated_shark honestly true
I mean, this style is supposed to be to crowd control and overall i think is pretty good for that, there were many times that the Dragon Style just couldn't do the work and i had to use agent style to use it's amazing kit throwing some fireflys and having fun with the spider and the boots, also it got some pretty good heat actions that are for 3 enemies with full health, low health, to control enemies with guns and if you want to 🧀 on the 1v1 colliseum you got them drones altought they are very useless tbh also the basic combo is very useless too but that's not the point of the style
29:16 Modern Anime sakuga be like.
Honestly, you’ve got a lot of good points about the presentation of the style in animations, form and general visual feedback. I agree that firefly and hornet are kinda stinky and that general combat speed could’ve been sped up. I’m not as informed on martial arts as you are, so that insight is something I really value
But I don’t think a single thing you’ve mentioned is a deal breaker at all. Tons of other Yakuza styles have random bugs and freak design issues, especially the previous DE Kiryu you apparently like.I’d also include here the fact that MOST Yakuza games have the gun issue, where you can disarm an enemy in a heat action and they’ll still have the gun. If we’re gonna talk about engaging combat that rewards the player, let’s talk about Tanimura having “Essence of Combo Finishes”: a heat action he unlocks after any and all combo enders, making it the optimal way to win fights. And honestly, stuff like 53:30 is such a random nitpick? The devs put some love into a characters animation and that’s bad I guess? The vibes on this video don’t come across to me as a fan expressing critique, which I’m confident is your intention, they come across as “New thing bad, old thing good”. You said it yourself in the Pirate Yakuza segment “Story, I don’t give a shit”. These games are more than the issues you’ve brought here, valid as they may be and I’d much rather be “The worst idiot” excited for the future of this franchise rather than whatever the vibe is here
@Calhasnopals there's a lot to unpack here. First off, I'd like to make it clear that I'm no less of a fan for disliking what this series has chosen to prioritize in recent years compared to their older games, and I'm no less of a fan for thinking it's sort of dumb that they put so much emphasis on using their actors' likenesses to sell their games. That thing isn't a new problem that started for me with Gaiden. It just becomes more clear that this is where their priorities lie, compared to other parts of the game.
When I said that about the pirate game, I meant that I don't care about the story of the game. I no longer expect good stories from these games, and I certainly don't think the game where Majima is a pirate with amnesia will have a remotely good story.
I'm well aware that most other Yakuza styles have had at least one of these issues, but few of them have all of these issues, and generally feel so poorly put together as a whole. I'm well aware that the games are more than their problems, but I'm not talking about the games or Gaiden as a whole. I'm talking about a specific part of the game that I felt let down by. In particular, I'm voicing problems that I feel have been generally not talked about in the fandom at large, and given how many people seem to agree with me about some of my problems, it stands to reason that this isn't just a me thing.
I have no problem with disagreeing with anything I've said in the video, and I admit that the pre-order thing was harsh. I'm tired of seeing a series I love take this turn just because of people who 1. Don't even play them, and 2. Only play these new games once and throw them away afterwards, there's no reason to replay them because they're nothing but shallow, gimmicky messes that are too scared to do things that aren't reused from a previously existing game (yakuza or otherwise) and tell stories that rely on legacy characters because without them they have nothing to draw you in. They derailed Infinite Wealth to end Kiryu's story for the third time now. I'm not confident in series that refuses to let a 60 year old man stop being the protagonist. I recognize that there still exist passionate fans who play these games fervently and will probably love every new Yakuza game, but if those fans can't criticize their favorite thing, then they're either a black and white thinker, or they love being a Yakuza fan more than they love the actual series. I'm not accusing you of either of these things, I just want to explain why I don't think I'm any less of a fan for feeling the way I do about Gaiden and Agent style
YES! I've been waiting for something like this. I'm motivated!
Glad I could provide something most other RUclipsrs aren't. A guy called Cvit made a pretty good video going over a lot of my gripes with the game's story, so if you're thirsty for more, I'd definitely give him a watch
i got 25 hours on my first playthrough of gaiden and i didn't even have 500 ko's with agent by the end i had to premium adventure it i hate it so much man
@@kakagetathegi I had a similar experience with my second playthrough. Griding out agent KOs for the akame points so I could have all the important abilities for the boss fights was probably the first spark that would eventually become this video
@@maxwellpaynewell5305i realized agent was useless when i found out you can just go intro extreme heat with yakuza and just spam the same heat action that does like 2 1/2 bars of health over and over until they die which is what killed the game for me. shishido's final boss fight does not exist to me because i never let him attack once
@kakagetathegi I have no clue what they were thinking giving Yakuza two heat actions that you can do by just standing in front of an enemy. Abilities like that fuck with the flow of combat in whatever game they appear in (cough Yakuza 5 cough)
I liked agent style
I liked rush style(kiwami version cause 0 version sucked)
And i like how the dragon engine does impact
Agent style feels powerful while having the speed and finesse of rush style
Also i love the battle theme when in agent style
I can agree here, I do like it somewhat but it’s pretty underbaked, and I’d say it’s probably the worst new moveset in DE to date.
It being the worst new moveset is definitely why I chose to call it the worst over K2 Mad Dog (in addition to actually forgetting it existed, not joke forgetting). It's one thing to badly port an already underwhelming moveset into a new engine, but it's another to have one as fundamentally flawed as Agent being entirely original
Also major respect for the Vlad pfp
You got my brains gears turning & I want to put down ideas before I forget them, since I got hyper refocused onto Martial Arts thanks to Like A Dragon, here's my attempt to address at least the basic combat.
⬛⬛∆∆ follows up a left hook so a rear foot sweep should flow with the inertia and could follow up with essence of finishing (the big punch to the face, names change a lot it's hard to keep track.) ⬛⬛⬛∆ in my opinion shouldn't be a double finisher, that elbow strike in particular is already a hard hitting one and the stance is so wide, there's not many followers. If there's insistence in double finishers then for ⬛⬛⬛∆∆, probably the rear high side kick from joji kazama or something similar. ⬛⬛⬛⬛∆∆ should be a lead foot knee strike that's a no brainer, in my opinion (again) the third finisher should be learned from the skill books & so it can stay a launcher, the best i can think of is the mortal reversal rear high kick. Slightly flashy but infinitely less so. ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛∆∆ would have to be a rear roundhouse kick, the stance here's a little awkward since he's posting on the right leg already but the left is still straight-ish & ready to pivot so inertia wins again. Plus it can still give the spinning launch from Legend Remix Gaiden. Lastly, ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛∆∆∆ can be the rear foot flying knee. Again this is the best I can think of, unless you want another round house? the stance should be very close to the lock on stance & I'm out of options since Agent isn't supposed to be too flashy and following inertia doesn't help with that this time, hence the pick.
There you have it, a spur of the moment thought turned into a potential problem addresser. I'm gonna go to sleep now. Since I haven't yet like a fool.
To be fair about the hitboxes, RGG really aren't the only action game devs with an issue of giving every single enemy gigantic sweeping hitboxes that stun you while the player gets pinpoint accurate hitboxes that maybe cause the enemy to, what I can only describe as, momentarily flinch before realizing they're Him.
Edit: To clarify, I'm not saying that excuses it, I mean it's definitely particularly bad in this game, but as someone that plays a lot of action games... I'm used to it kinda lol
@weirdyakuzafan it's definitely not unique to them, but it does speak to how fucked this series might be if they keep trying to turn these games into character action games. I saw so many comparisons to DMC when the pirate trailer dropped, and the only thing I could think is how you could only think that if the only knowledge you have of DMC is the chair meme. The games aren't sturdy or polished enough to move that quickly, and they aren't sophisticated enough to have truly deep combat systems even close to Dante's toolkit. If they can't manage hitboxes in a game this slow paced, I am downright terrified for what might happen in the pirate game
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 As a DMC fan, RGG can get close to DMC. Lost Judgment is proof enough of that I think, and I'm not talking about the juggling. Yagami has three unique fighting styles that feel full and feature complete, and all of them could be used in practically any situation if you have the know-how, and it makes Yagami end up being so good at what he does that you barely even notice it shares some gameplay problems with not just Gaiden, but all Dragon Engine games. Wonky hitboxes, strange enemy AI, your mortal reversals not activating when they should... of course Gaiden did add some problems, like not being able to tiger drop deadly attacks, but Lost Judgment still has its fair share of strange design decisions. Like for example... why do I need to be low health in order to dodge grab attacks with Sky Dancer? Why does Snake's tiger drop-esque counter have not just a heat requirement, but an absurdly low heat requirement? Things like that.
I'd honestly argue this is a similar situation to most DMC games, the game itself is a bit strange in its overall design but the main character is so good at what they do you can absolutely trivialize most challenges presented by said design if you were good enough. The big overarching problem with RGG is that they're so strange with the design it's pretty much a coin toss if the new game's combat is gonna be... well, up your alley or even good. Not that I want to imply it isn't clear Gaiden was made in six months, and not that I want to imply your fears for the pirate game aren't valid. Also yes, Lost Judgment and in turn RGG's catalog isn't as deep as DMC, but I'd argue the only character action game to ever get that close was Bayonetta for obvious reasons.
(And also if the steam store page is anything to go by, RGG isn't even actively trying to make a DMC as there's no character action or spectacle fighter tag on it, only hack and slash, so it's a bit unfair for people to compare it to DMC anyways, it's just got jumping and air combos and that's it, it seems.)
(P.S. Also sorry if this made no sense, I'm pretty sure I just went on a couple unrelated tangents at once but I have no idea how to fix it.)
Really good video.
Referencing the heat aura of that one shinada boss was a neat flash of yakuza autist credentials.
I had fun with the agent style and came away liking it but i pretty much used it as a grab button instead of a full style, which is by no means good.
One thing you could cut down a bit on in the future are the live commentary bits. They demonstrate the point but you could do that without bogging down the pacing.
Also Majima gaiden fills me with dread. My interest plummeted the second i saw their equivalent of the gaiden castle. Gaiden was not worth 50 bucks and i doubt this will be worth 60.
I'm still trying to work out a good balance between live stuff and scripted stuff, I feel like emotion is generally better conveyed without a script, and in this specific case it ended up that going over every individual move would've taken a long time either way, so I figured that it wouldn't be too much lost to leave whole sections to the live stuff. If I ever do a moveset deep dive like this in the future, I'll definitely tackle it in a less bullet-point-y way.
The Ono mention was definitely a flex, but I also want to make clear that I care deeply about this series. The last thing I want is for someone to watch a video like this and think for even a second that I'm just a tourist who's hating to hate. Plus I spent way too long memorizing nearly every Yakuza 5 character's name and I need to use that knowledge somewhere
Finally someone who hates 7 Gaiden. I sometimes feel like a crazy person because I always see people online praising this game and putting it on top of their lists and here I am going into the game with already lowered expectations because my friends tell me it's not that good and I still came out disappointed!! I don't see why people like it so much.
As for Agent style, I wanted to like it, i tried using gadgets and then just gave up and finished the game with Yakuza style, and it sucks because I don't like Yakuza style either, I even installed a mod that adds old dod style back to complete Coliseum.
I guess 7 Gaiden is really good at luring people in, because it's presentation fucks
i read through all the complaints and I have a seriously hard time understanding them, ok Agent is weird to say the least but otherwise I think it's easily an A tier game
@dallika8585 the idea of Gaiden is really solid on the surface, I went into the game having watched a couple trailers and thinking I'd be playing a cool mission based game where you take secret agent missions, and eventually it would tie into 7. Words cannot express how disappointed I was when I realized it would basically just be a Yakuza game but shorter and worse.
I have a feeling people who like/love the game knew exactly what it was going to be going into it. Personally, I don't like the entire game being outlined and spoiled to me as a means of making me want to play it, but I guess there's an audience for a really safe experience with few surprises as long as it gives you some fanservice and flashy gameplay every so often
@@maxwellpaynewell5305 it's got the best final chapter in all of the series and one of the best expositions
Honestly i can't talk on gaiden too well since I can't really play gaiden atm. But as someone who played the Two original Yakuza games atleast, some of the bugs i saw here are just abhorrent! Like especially the Tiger Drop bugs. Why is the counter move not countering properly! RGG got this shit down back in the damned 2000s! Why is this a issue????. Also its kinda unfortunate how some people just throw your argument into the dumpster and resort to just insulting you. I swear its like fallacies were never taught in school when its a basic thing in senior high from my experience.
@TheBzlGuy some people don't like when someone has a lot of negative things to say about a thing they like. Plenty of people have had genuine rebuttals to a lot of my points, and I'm happy to argue or concede on anything people have to say like that. It sucks that a lot of people don't put effort into arguing their own side, and I hope those people at the least come to realize that people like me feel how we do for a reason (often many reasons)
Bad take... agent is fun asf your using it wrong your even missing juggles often
No gaiden combat is actually good because Snowiest and Gokudoni said so.
And Agent is a super complex style because reasons.
In all seriousness, I think I agreed with 99.9% of the things you said in the video.
I think the only thing I disagreed with wasn't even agent related lmao.
Also I think it's very clear as to why they're going with this style over substance thing... Money:)
@khone6662 true honestly, I should've considered that before making this video
you earn a subscriber for not meatriding RGG. I hated how mcuh peoples have meatride the franchise lately and not criticizing anything even when it's worth the hate.
Never seen that, everyone criticises, and it kinda gets to a point where it does become stupid criticism at times. There's gotta be a balance is all im sayin
tbh they're not perfect but there's not all that much to criticize
@@JoAmonGus2nd yeah tbh i've seen a lot of pointless dumb hate recently, most of the complaints hardly point anything valid
@@mihairomulus2488 I don't know, maybe the locking of Ishin difficulty to a DLC, unnecessary changes to Ishin Card System messing up the combat system, the butchering of Ishin Combat compared to the OG, the lazy "remake" of Ishin while overcharged it, the incomplete mess of a game that is Miden with no NG+, Infinite Wealth NG+ being locked out, Infinite Wealth Rushed Story and side content,... I can go on and on about how much of a mess RGG games has became imo even as someone who pre-ordered both Gaiden and 8 and being massively let down!
While all of these are happening, many big Yakuza RUclipsrs continue to praise RGG Studios regardless while not acknowledging that the franchise has not been as good or as polished since Lost Judgment
This and the Yumi video have made me a fan of your work, great stuff! I was in love with Gaiden when I first played it, and I still think my initial experience was great, but I definitely agree the game has a lot of issues regarding its combat and especially with how Agent style as a whole functions. It's such a weird ass style that feels like it needed a lot more time focused on it, which sucks given how good the general gameplay could have been if the developers took from LJ a bit more in gameplay philosophy. I am really interested in your thoughts about Gaiden as a whole, I agree the fanbase is way too toxically positive. I was already feeling a bit clocked out with RGG's future with IW because of various things, but I think the Pirate Majima game entirely took me out of it and I have 0 interest in that game despite how flashy the combat works. The fanbase is so defensive over every single thing about the "good" Yakuza games and will harass critics for not vibing with the game as much as they do (Cvit's Gaiden video is a good example of that imo,) it feels like any productive discussion of the games and their issues and being perceived as bad is just snuffed because people want to put the franchise on a pedestal. Like it's arguably my favorite game franchise because I think RGG has a lot of admirable ideas, but I think it's worth saying "oh this game's story is a bit half baked, oh the combat here sucks, oh they don't make good use out of the narrative potential from this aspect of this release," etc. It's extremely unfortunate that so many fans are willing to snuff out good faith discussions for the same regurgitated takes ad nauseum.
Keep up the great work though!
@ilovenierreplicant2983 thank you very much! It does my heart good to see so many people support the idea of a further explanation into my feelings about Gaiden. I'm not sure I could do those feelings justice where I am now, but I definitely want to put them out there when the pirate game comes out. If the game gets a negative reception, I think I'll get some more support from the naysayers, but if it's received positively, then I imagine those people will be too busy with the pirate game to mind a video (or more) about Gaiden.
I really do wish people were more receptive to critical videos about these games. I remember a year or two ago, in a moment of desperation, I looked up "yakuza 7 bad" on RUclips to try and find some sort of commiseration with how I felt about that game, and I only found one video. It was, of course, bombarded with disagreement in the comments, but people were receptive enough to give me hope that there might be more videos like it in the future. Cvit's video is the only other critical one I've seen of a game in this series. I actually looked up "yakuza 5 bad" to see if another one popped up, but the best I got was "Yakuza 5 is not bad." I really hope I can inspire people who feel like I do to speak up and make their presence known in the fandom. The rational ones, obviously. What I hope for even more is that I specifically don't inspire the people who just want attention to hate on these games and steal actual talking points from passionate fans. Watching the Kiwami discourse putter out and die because of people who haven't even played the original games was downright painful to watch, and if I inspire a second wave of that, I'll have a lot to answer for
For now, though, I'm excited to continue the course and steer things as best I can. I'm glad that plenty of folks like you are excited to follow that course with me, I've got very high hopes for the future of this channel
i had the same problems as you did all the way up until the chapter 7 of your video.
and then i realised: bro, i'm playing gaiden like yakuza 0
remember that you are joryu, not kiryu. you cant trigger beast style and run into crowds, decimating them with big, wide moves.
yet agent style expects you to do that with the post 1x square/lmb finishers that accompany those light combos.
you cant isolate a guy and focus on him while his teammates are walking around your back deciding when to attack.
but agent style expects you to do that.
that was infuriating, but the agent style expects you to do all these things BUT ALSO use the abilities it gives you to put agent's own twist on it.
Instead of having to run into crowds and use slow, janky moves that seem very showy, you can use the gadgets to clear them out or distract with the drones, or your combos to make your opponents stumble, and then target the guy you want to take out, or juggle between all of them, using light combos or heavy finishers to dispatch them.
But you need to be strategic, and have some distance, otherwise you'll pay the price for having a high damage/easy to paralyze opponents finisher, by being knocked down and out of rhythm.
Gaiden's agent combat is about being an agent, literally strategising while on the field to dispatch your foes in the most effective way possible. The Daidoji faction didn't train you to be Kiryu, they trained you to be the most effective killing machine with the most lethal martial arts on the planet.
This is gonna sound super rude. But your playstyle suits yakuza style more than it does agent style, and that's most likely why you despise it. You need finesse for like 80% of these flaws to not even matter (ok thats an exaggeration, but you WILL enjoy agent style if you play it with finesse).
One example I had of this finesse was when I timed my finishers, made sure to use them if an enemy was about to attack me, or if I needed to stun an enemy that wasn't already stunned. I made sure to remember how many times I pressed LMB so I knew I could get the finisher I wanted. I used the gadgets to spread out the enemies with the wire, dispatch groups temporarily with the firefly, use the drone to deal with guys I haven't started a combo on so I can isolate the boss (though its targetting system is super fucking finnicky in order to do that), used the serpent to get me to positions where I wasn't surrounded, and could face all the enemies. In the case I was playing sloppily and was really angry with the game, I'd use the fact that I was on red health to play the game carefully, slowly charging up my heat, using heat actions and just waiting until I can use my heat actions or safely use extreme heat with agent style to strike the crowds, then run until it charges back up.
This game is probably the first besides Yakuza 3 to really challenge the player on their ability to use their tools wisely. And judging by this video, this game is probably the Yakuza 3 of 2020 RGG. It's a shame that the tutorial doesn't teach you how to use agent style properly, because recurring players have only known to do things the Kiryu way and not the Daidoji Joryu way, so they'll struggle to adapt to the style, or hate how they have to adapt to playing like a coward to make the style perfect.
To summarise, it's a John Wick style. You hit one guy, he goes down, but he'll get back up, so go to the next guy, injure him and get back to the first guy. It's all about juggling between opponents, rather than doing collateral damage and taking them all down. Which is slow, but fun to see when you do it properly.
I expect them to change stuff, but probably not the triangles because people who want to SEE the move and not FEEL the move is rare in terms of people who play the game. people who want to experience a power fantasy. they could probably have a mode where they disable the glow and the triangles so people could analyse the moves, or see them in action in the perspective of a martial artist. The stuff about the heat actions and how the people randomly swap during them is funny, but it's probably because of how short the development time was. They'll fix it if they ever have to reintroduce agent style in a big game (cause there's no way they'll drop it now. this has to be a prototype for a bigger game, and they're just collecting feedback with gaiden). It'd be nice if agent could inflict agony with more of its moves (as well as give agony more effects that give the player more breathing room and ways to take down the enemy), as well as an upgrade to have the gadgets be able to inflict things like stun or burn.
also, bro. how do you get into a rant over kiryu wiping his knee. it was his left knee and it hit the ground. animators wouldn't waste their time getting him to dust off his knee if it didn't seem like he didn't have any reason to dust it off. It's such a subtle thing that I was so confused why you mentioned it until I saw that one gesture that I've never seen nor care to see.
Remember that this is a game. The glows, the triangles, the style, it's meant to make you, the player, feel like a badass. If you want something more practical, play kurohyou. I can't believe someone is complaining about practicality when we have Yagami using a guy to spin himself around with his stomach wide open, before putting that guy onto that ground, or Yagami staying in a flashy stance after throwing a dude over his back FOR 5 SECONDS IN SLOW MO. Or the breakdancing style. It's all for gameplay, and to make you look cool, which Gaiden probably doesn't do well when you get excited over the fact that this is a Kiryu with well-established martial arts from a whole government faction and not an old man. They'll probably fix some of the moves to establish that, they were probably drained of ideas. Also, that hit from the grab. I don't think anyone uses it. It's too slow, and never has a gameplay use. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get it to work because they didn't have time to and it wasn't a priority. Have some leniency and get them to fix it next time, agent style definitely doesn't feel at its max yet like Yakuza does.
based shinada love