Four stories and one big mystery||A Yakuza 4 Remaster Review

Photo by SEGA                                                                   Photo from PSN

Yakuza 4

A year after Yakuza 3 a murder happens in the Tojo Clan causing four characters Kiryu, Akiyama, Saejima, and Tanimura to get involved. With more questions than answers they learn a mysterious woman is in the center of the mystery.

Screenshot by SEGA                                                  Photo by GamingBolt

[Combat]

Yakuza 4 has four different combat styles. Well...kinda.

Let's start with Akiyama.
Akiyama has a style of using only his legs. Yes I mean kicking.
At first I hated his style, he felt slow and had barely any combos to learn. After training I mean actually training with his mentor you learn some great skills making it fun to use in street fights to level up.
But I will say though, I played as him the longest and I think he has the worst fighting style for bosses who block alot. Akiyama doesn't have any good guard breakers making boss fights not fun unless you spam Triangle. (on PS4) But that wasn't the biggest deal so I very much enjoyed his combat.

Saejima.
He has to be my least favorite combat.
When I said there's kinda four different combat styles, Saejima is what I meant. He feels like Kiryu from Yakuza 3 but with less combos and very slow. I get he's a brick wall but geez they really went for it. His mentor wasn't that fun either. You literally have to punch BOULDERS as his training. While that does sound fun it's not at least to me. Also I remember being angry that I finished his training and learned kinda useless stuff.
I know it sounds like I had a bad time but actually I didn't, I enjoyed playing as Saejima but I wasn't particularly a fan of his combat. He isn't the worst combat in Yakuza's series but it wasn't the best either.

Tanimura.
Ah, my favorite combat. Tanimura has the best combat in the game in my opinion. He felt like Rush from Yakuza 0 but with fun combos. His combat is much different from both Kiryu and Akiyama.
I will say this I didn't do any of his training with his mentor because I hate the dodging system he has in the game. But even without training I liked his combat which is fine for me.

Kiryu.
If you liked Yakuza 3's combat, it's back in this game but better.
Kiryu is probably the most broken character in the game. I mean broken in the way that he has all his skills from Yakuza 3 and you just upgrade them or get even better skills. He DESTROYS everyone on sight at first, even the first boss fight you get is pretty easy compared to everyone else.

Screenshot by SEGA                                                  Photo by GamingBolt

[Heat Actions]

Everyone in Yakuza 4 have their own unique Heat Actions.
Some of my favorites include Akiyama, Tanimura, and Kiryu's.
Each of them have some epic Heat Actions that trigger much easier than Y3 which was a complain in my previous review.
These actions are very handy if you wanna get out of battles fast and with the easy heat regain in this game you trigger them fairly quickly one after another. The Heat Actions are pretty good and I have barely any complaints other than Saejima lacking in every part of the combat department. But of course that is my opinion.

[Combat overall]

Kiryu and Tanimura's combat styles were my favorite in this game and probably some of my favorites from the series. Though I had my problems I think Yakuza 4 Remaster has some solid combat for an older game and I don't think it's too dated for newer fans like myself.

Screenshot by SEGA                                                       Photo from TrueTrophies

[Mini Games]

Here we go once again. I played most of the mini games that aren't gambling related.
My list goes
Pool,
Karaoke,
Fishing,
Darts,
Baseball,
Hostess dating game?
and
Police radio mission.

Pool
Plays genuinely the same in most of series, at least from what I remember.
I played it for Haruka's after game system and I think a sub-story or just because I enjoyed it. Either way I had fun, didn't have any problems with it and I genuinely like pool in the Yakuza's series so...

Karaoke
I did karaoke after the main story because I totally forgot about it until I was reminded of it afterwards.
Nonetheless I did it and had fun but I'm rubbish at it. I'm mostly bad at it with these older game mechanics, I feel like it's not as responsive as I would like but I could just be bad at it. Regardless it's like Yakuza 3 so it's not too bad.

Fishing
Did you know I love fishing? No? Well I do, in every game that has fishing I'm trying it. Yakuza 4 has great fishing, I remember hating it at first but after doing it for awhile I found it as my favorite mini game in the game. Though others might not enjoy but I definitely did. Like the other mini games it's not mandatory so give it a try at least.

Darts
I play this in every Yakuza game and it's basically the same in each of them.
I'm not the biggest fan of darts and it took me until this game to understand how to lightly throw the dart. Anyway, I will say I did it for Haruka's affection but other than that I didn't touch it much. 

Y0 still haunts me with darts.

Baseball
This game and Kiwami 2 has the best baseball mini games for me. I enjoyed playing it and probably will play it again in my second playthrough when I get a chance. My overall opinion it's pretty good.

Hostess
I played the hostess mini games for sub-stories and didn't enjoyed at all. The girls are bland and some of the women's models are unflattering.
After doing research and seeing the actual women for the models I'm confused how they made them look nothing like the actual women. Like the main story chick you meet in the game looks so much better in cutscenes and outside of them. I don't want to sound like a jerk but if I had the choice to skip them without skipping my sub-stories I would of.

Police Radio Missions
As Tanimura you get radio missions that you can interact with. Meaning you get a notification on your screen with a insert situation and you have to deal with it. I ABSOLUTELY loved these mostly the chase missions like in Yakuza 3. These are so fun and I didn't expect to love it so much but I do. I say this is the most fun of Tanimura's part. You know other than the main story.
I recommend doing them because they have a small side story to it which was fun and pretty easy.

Screenshot by SEGA                                                  Photo by GamingBolt

[Substories]

This game has 63 substories and around 16 for each character including one Amon for Kiryu, which I skipped.

I did 62 because I didn't care to deal with a super boss that was going to hurt my wrist for a trophy.

Anyway, I had fun with most of them. I had problems with the hostess ones but otherwise I had fun with each character. I mostly enjoy doing substories to get a personal feel of them, which this game does and I appreciate.

This games doesn't have as many as Y3 but each character has something interesting even to the final chapters.

Photo by SEGA

[The characters]

Yakuza 4 has some SPECTACULAR characters. I enjoyed everyone in this game, from the protagonists to the villains, I liked it.
My favorites were Saejima and Tanimura, as their storylines shined the brightest for me; but that doesn't mean the others lacked behind.

There's other characters in this game that makes you understand why each of these characters were meant to meet. The play out for each character is done wonderfully and I applaud them for this well writing.

Screenshot by SEGA                                           Photo From Truetrophies

[The Storyline]

The storyline of this game is one of my favorites so far.
I do usually give out a brief description of the storyline but I kinda spoiled Yakuza 3 in my last review so I'll jump into the Good and the Bad this time.

[The Good]

Screenshot by SEGA                                               Photo by Dualshockers 

The storyline is solid.

Each of the characters has their reasons and backstories for the goals they want to achieve.

They all meet up in a story driven way that doesn't feel forced or silly.

The villains are satisfying with their goals and how far they would go to achieve them.

The story takes less of an action movie approach and instead uses assets from them.

Less dramatic situations unlike the last game.

Characters are likeable even when they aren't suppose to be likeable.

Overall great characters and outcomes.

I will say the way this game played out, it felt a lot like Yakuza 0 to me. I wouldn't say exactly because of course the storytelling of Y0 is 10/10 but it's pretty good.

[The Bad]

Screenshot by SEGA                                               Photo by Dualshockers

The beginning of the game starts off slow and has short chapters.
I mean really short, if you skip the substories to play through only the storyline it's quite short. Most of my time I spent on it was goofing off to do other stuff. (Mostly substories and baseball.)

The slow part is mostly for Akiyama, his chapters were a drag for me at first. Plus his part of the story really annoyed me at how fast he trusted a "certain" person for a dumb reason. That's a personal opinion but of course you can judge it when you play it.

Screenshot by SEGA                                               Photo by Dualshockers

[Overall]

After everything I said I will give Yakuza 4 a...🥁

For an older game I will give it a 9 as a lot of new games these days lack the substance what older games like this could achieve.
This was great and finishing up here makes me want to play it again. I highly recommend this game and jumping into the Yakuza series.

Yakuza 4

Have you played it?
Did you like it?
Did you try out the mini games?
Whatever's your answer is tell me about it.
No matter how brutally honest you are with it, I wanna hear it.
(Please no hate towards the devs, Sega, Atlus, or anyone else's opinions as this is about the game not the company, devs, etc.)

Photo by SEGA                                               Photo from PlayStation store

Yakuza 4 is available on the PlayStation store, Steam, and the Xbox store in the remaster bundle or stand-alone.

Review and written by AshyPaints
(All store links used are US links)

Before You Press Play|Fate: The Winx Saga|What you need to know before watching.

Photo by Netflix

So there's a live action version of Winx Club and I think we need to talk about it.

As a huge fan of the original I was the most excited for the live action and couldn't wait to see what they would do for my favorite cartoon series.

After the cast was revealed I was so disappointed and couldn't understand how the original creator Iginio Straffi would allow such a wonderful, diverse, and female empowered series turn to whitewashing and toxic femininity.

So today I will be writing why I think we should hold on before clicking the play button on Fate: The Winx Saga.

Photo by Netflix and Just Jared Jr

Reasons:

#1 Whitewashing

One thing I love about the old cartoon is the diverse characters. I'm quick to dislike a show that throws in forced diversity and forced conversation about real life situations (Cough*Cough  Season 5 of Winx Club)
With that in mind, I do love seeing everyone having a place but in Fate everyone doesn't.
Musa and Flora are no more the race they were depicted. Musa was based on Lucy Liu and Flora was based on Jennifer Lopez, each of these characters were based on Asian and Latin descent, furthermore Fate: The Winx Saga has changed that with a mostly White cast line.
Musa's actress (Elisha Applebaum) has the dark hair and the looks to be Musa but she isn't race Musa depicted as which is big bummer for fans who had a connection with the character because of that.

Like with Musa they changed Flora to a character named Terra played by Eliot Salt who is basically white flora with all the personality and everything just a different race and with a different name.
I have no problem with the actress and I do not condone the acts of the hate towards because of her body shape yet that's what everyone seems to believe everytime you mention disliking her as part of the cast.
I have nothing against her, her acting, etc but I dislike that the casting/ director's choice to cast someone who isn't of Latin descent as Flora and that they tried to change her character overall.
No matter what your opinions are on these actresses or characters in the original it's still not right to change their race when there's little diversity to this cast other than two black people.

Photo by Netflix

#2 Removing Characters

There's six Winx Club member or seven if you count season 4. (Which I do)
There's Bloom, Stella, Flora, Musa, Tecna, Aisha/Layla, and later Roxy.
Wondering who did they removed? It's Tecna, she doesn't exist in the Fate version and some of the specialists too.

Tecna is a fan favorite, with her struggles to understand feelings and relationships, to her being the geeky, smart, and less girly girl character.
She's very interested in technology and mostly wears pants/less girly colors until later seasons.
Tecna was removed for no good reason and I can't help but be angry that the least problematically written character was chopped out.

If you're unfamiliar with the seasons Tecna is an original from the first season and onwards, roommates with Musa, and dating Timmy.
Tecna only had one fight with Timmy making her one of the least problem filled character in the series with Flora.
With everything I read about this show I feel as if they didn't want Tecna in it because they didn't have much for her as she stays in her lane like Flora and barely had drama. Furthermore I believe she's cut out due to not wanting to write her or she's not dramatic enough to have her around. But that's my speculation.

The specialists are also on this list of removing characters as most of them are gone.

Original specialists are Sky, Brandon, Riven, Timmy, Helia, and Nabu (Nabu is more considered apart of the winx after season 3 dialogue but him and the specialist hung out so do what you will with the information.)
In Fate, only Sky and Riven are returning names, because there's only four specialists and two I've never heard of. There's Sky, Riven, Dane, and Sam.
For me, at this point I'm beyond disappointed, I'm actually a huge fan of both the winx and specialist, I love the humor and how the characters behave around each other and they felt pretty normal together.
(The later seasons are debatable of the behavior between the specialist and the winx but it's up to your perspective.)

Either way they did the specialists dirty and that means Sky's first season plotline has changed which is a huge bummer.

The Trix are not making an appearance either in the Fate version.
The Trix were a large part of the original as the main villains, it's a shame that they won't be making an appearance.
While they won't be appearing, you're probably wondering "Who's the villains then?" Well, it's a lady I'm guessing a witch or an evil fairy who's named Beatrix. Yes I said BeaTRIX that's what they thought was really clever, and will be replacing Icy, Darcy, and Stormy. Like I said with changing characters with the specialists, that means we probably won't be getting Riven getting controlled to help the Trix and later getting his redemption arc helping them to escape cloud tower.

Photo by Netflix

#3 Different storyline

I wasn't expecting the exact storyline but I expected it to have some of the original story.
Though the story starts with Bloom learning she has powers and going to Alfea like the original story but takes a turn when the school isn't truly a fairy school. In Fate everyone doesn't have wings because of the dark and edger feel of the show. Fans of the original feel as if this was lazy and a cheap way of not having the girls "iconic" transformations.
The story doesn't in involve the witches so they changed it to monsters around the school called the "Burned Ones"
Winx Club never was about monsters but fantasy creatures like Nut who's an ogre and the witches also hired a troll that was in the first few episodes.
Like I said I expected change but without certain characters and memorable plot points from the cartoon there's hardly anything from the original to even call it Winx.

Photo by Netflix and Just Jared Jr

#4 Lore changes

In Magix there's three known schools. Red Fountain, Alfea, and Cloud Tower. Red Fountain is for the specialists, Alfea for the fairies, and Cloud Tower for the Witches.
With the changes of the story I have no real clue if Cloud Tower even exist in that universe. 

With the fairies not having wings they're basically spell casters at this point without wings, so why have witches?

One of the changes of the lore is the specialists have women in there ranks which wasn't there in the original. I'm all for women fighting but in the original lore of Winx Club, Red Fountain was young men training to be heroes/protectors for people who are wizards or young men in the magic dimension while other young women with powers went to Alfea and Cloud Tower. Women in Magix had their schools while the men had one. (There's other schools in different places in the magic dimension but they still don't have boys and girls going to the same schools at least it's hasn't been stated that they do in the first four seasons.)

I will say in my opinion that I liked the original idea for the schools, as not many shows of my memory actually showed all girl schools and all boy schools being in cartoons but I could have a bad memory.
Plus I really like the cute boys nextdoor thing they were going for in the original. 

Also let's say they added a female only Red Fountain, it still wouldn't make much sense either because most of the female characters they met in the series had magic and were going to a different school or one of the two I mentioned before. I get what the director was going for but the original idea for the specialists felt better and was unique for the lore. But other than my opinions it wasn't originally in the cartoon which shows they didn't care for the original lore and really wanted this to be completely different.

Adding on to this mess they added male fairies. Yes male fairies go to Alfea which angers me. Girls are star of Winx Club at an all girl school and sometimes ask for the help of the specialists but most of the time the spotlight is on the girls at Alfea which was cool for young girls and women like myself. In this day and age women still don't have much spotlight in shows and if they do it's gosh awful with catty attitudes and drama which is over used and I'm tired of it. That's why seeing this show breaking the original lore of an empowered girl school is heartbreaking to see. I still love shows like Totally Spies and Winx Club because it spotlights normal teenagers learning they have something special about them or them having a special job showing them they can do anything. Not many girl empowered shows do this anymore and it's devastating that Netflix and Rainbow would ruin something so nice and refreshing to see in tv shows even if it's an adult drama it's still devastating and didn't need to change.

They also changed the girls magic from the original.

Their original powers were Dragon Flame, The Sun & The Moon, Nature, Music, Technology, and Waves, later Animals. 

Fate change them to Fire, Light, Mind, Earth, and Water. 

I'm a fan of originality so this is a let down. And why change Musa's powers?! Like that was so cool also that was a big part of her backstory and with her mother. Also she comes from a place called Melody which all the fairies are music based soo...

I'll also add of course that they changed Alfea's logo and the pink aesthetic for the edger approach of the series. That's it.

Photo by Netflix


#5 The fashion

The fashion is horrendous. None of these girl look like the characters because of their outfits!
I talk about how cheesy the Power Rangers were in the early seasons making characters like Jason wear red all the time and Sky wear blue as his casual wear. How can Power Rangers make the characters look better than an high budget Netflix adult drama?!
So basically you get no original Specialists, no Trix, no transformations, and no color coordinated/character specialized colors.
I have nothing else to say on this.

Photo by Netflix and Just Jared Jr

#6 What critics say about it

As someone who hasn't watched it since it isn't out yet while writing it, I took the liberty to read some early reviews.

One reviewer for Polygon said

"It feels like the protagonists barely tolerate each other. Because so little groundwork cementing their friendships was laid, the teasing doesn’t come off as playful banter, but instead as catty and mean-spirited." 

Also saying

 "Young’s writers seem to think that evolving girlhood friendships means turning them into thinly veiled rivalries."

But ending by saying "But that arc would be more compelling if the characters were likable or interesting, or if they shared even half the bonds of their animated counterparts." 

Next reviewer for Paste Magazine also mentioned the mean spirited ways of the adaption by starting the article with

"Netflix's Fate: The Winx Saga Adaptation Is an Insidious, Mean-Spirited Mess" and

"This gritty live action adaptation of Winx Club fails to sparkle or engage with social issues meaningfully."

Going on to say the same thing as the first reviewer mentioning how Terra was the butt of everyone's joke and poking at her weight. 

As I said earlier fans have been defending the actress from this kind of hate in real life but as it seems the writing in the series is body shaming the character Terra which fans feared for the actress.

Den Of Geek reviewer said that with only 6 episodes didn't give it enough time to flesh out world of Fate and saying 

"Never quite living up to its ambition of being an adaptation for ‘adult fans’ of the original, Fate: The Winx Saga has the potential to hook younger viewers eager for a new fantasy series made solely for them."

Also giving the show a 2.5 out 5

A Gizmodo reviewer goes on to say 

"This show is certainly nothing like the original but since I didn’t grow up with it, I watched the first episode of Winx Club to compare. I’ve got to be honest: Winx Saga might be one of the strangest adaptations I’ve ever seen."

Entertainment.ie said 

"In spite having a talented young cast ('Normal People' fans will be delighted to see Eliot Salt pop up), 'Fate: The Winx Saga' is too ridiculous and pointless to invest in, on top of the aforementioned revolting dialogue"

Full articles linked 

Most of these I didn't see their rating but from their reviews it isn't looking good for Winx Saga. I will link each article and appreciate their early reviews as I enjoyed reading each of their opinions and will probably read more as more comes out on release.

Photo by Nickelodeon

Overall: My opinions.

With everything I told you it's up to you to take the plunge and watch it.
It's 6 hours of watching so it's up to you to do whatever with your time.
But I on the other hand I won't be watching.
With everything I read and my love for the original I can't say I could even enjoy one minute of it, because in my opinion it's a disgraceful adaption.

I'll clarify again I don't dislike any of the actors or the actresses, I hope they continue to get roles and move up in the world but for Brian Young and his writing team they failed to create even a decent adaption.
The disrespect and the salt in wounds that they did to the original fans is ridiculously.
The massive changes, the missing characters, and the completely different storyline makes this worst than Dragon Ball Evolution and Netflix Death Note. I watched both and rather watch them again than watch even an episode of Fate.
You can't judge a book by it's cover but you sure can judge one by it's synopsis that's why I say to original fans of Winx Club I surely recommend not watching it as that's exactly what they want you to do to give them any kind of views to renew for more seasons which I rather not see that and hope in the future they hire someone else to make another adaption but actually follow the original.

And those are my thoughts.

How about you?
Have you watched Fate: The Winx Saga?
Are going to watch it?
Did you like the original before watching?
How did you like it if you did?
However you feel about it tell me about it no matter how brutally honest you are I wanna hear your opinions on Fate: The Winx Saga.
(Please no hate towards the actors and actresses, company, employees, fans, writers, or anyone associated with Netflix, Rainbow, Viacom, Fate, or any of the reviewers mentioned in this article.)

Photo by Netflix

Thank you for reading and Fate: The Winx Saga will be be streaming on Netflix January 22th 2021.

All articles are linked in their name.

Article written and edited by Ashypaints

Family, Politics, and The CIA?! Yakuza 3 is a wide ride||A Yakuza 3 Remaster Review.

(Boxart by SEGA)                                          (Photo from the PSN store)

Yakuza 3

Shortly after the events of Yakuza 2 Kiryu and Haruka heads off to Okinawa to run the Morning Glory orphanage where Kiryu and Nishiki was raised before joining the Dojima Family. 

Yakuza 3 has been out for awhile now, and as a fan I wanted to review the remasters to see if they are on par with Yakuza 0 (Zero) and Kiwami 1&2.

I have alot of thoughts about Yakuza 3 so without further ado let's jump into it.

(Screenshot by SEGA)                                          (Photo from the PSN store)

[Combat]

Coming from Yakuza Zero and Kiwami 1&2 then starting Yakuza 3 is a DRASTIC DIFFERENCE.
Yes it is an older game and I do know that but that isn't the biggest problem and I believe Yakuza 3 plays better than Yakuza 4 but that's another story.

Kiryu is absolutely terrible in the beginning.
He knows less than he did after getting out of prison.
He has no guard breakers, his combos don't get better until you leave Okinawa or grind by fighting for hours to gain EXP.

I'll tell you now he isn't fun in beginning and doesn't get better until later on but don't worry you won't suffer for long.

Kiryu gets better by learning moves (like in the other games) and as he gets more moves and better attacks after leaving Okinawa, you'll have fun.
Kiryu's combat is like Brawler from Zero or the base style in Kiwami.

As you do substories and fights in the street you'll be ready by the ending of the game to defeat the final boss and won't need much as long as you're on Easy or Normal difficulty.

(Screenshot by SEGA)                                          (Photo from the PSN store)

[Heat actions]

Surprisingly Heat Actions are not as easy to trigger as the remakes and Zero.
Heat Actions take their time to pop up which is annoying at first but later you'll master the timing but if you came from the remakes or Zero and expect to time each Heat Action perfectly you may not be able to.

Yakuza 3's Heat actions are not as bad Yakuza 4 but I will say, it wasn't fun trying to trigger Heat Actions and almost dying because it thinks I'm only pressing triangle as an attack.

[Overall Combat]

Though I'm not that picky when it comes to to older games I will say I personally didn't mind Yakuza 3' combat after getting farther through the game and will say it's not the most dated combat.
You'll love it, hate it, or bare through it.

(Screenshot by SEGA)                                          (Photo from the PSN store)

[Mini games]

Like the other Yakuza games we have mini games.
I played a few games for this review and those were...
Fishing
Pool
Karaoke
Darts
Golf
and

 The Hostess Maker.

Out of all of these I only enjoyed two.
Fishing and Pool were the easiest and least annoying ones to play.

Golf
I only had to play this once since it's forced to play it through the storyline.
Not gonna lie, it took me an hour or three to finish the mission because of the Golf mini game.

I'm not a fan of the golf nor do I know how to play it, so I was awful either way.

But I did try to copy how the NPC did it and for some reason I just couldn't do it.

I won't say it's bad because I don't know a thing about golf or golf games, so I recommend trying it if you're into it.

Karaoke

Karaoke in this game was harder than the karaoke in the other games in my opinion.
I felt like it had a lot of latency or it was just extremely faster than I'm use to.
Either way it wasn't that fun but give it a try, I call myself a rhythmless hack anyway so maybe I'm just terrible. 

(But I do enjoy karaoke in Zero)

Fishing
The others I won't get into too much detail since I didn't play them in-depth because the game is overall dated but pool was fun and so was fishing.
I do alot of fishing in games so each game I play I try it out.
If you really enjoy fishing in games, I recommend trying Yakuza 3 & 4 because these two have some of the best plus it reminded me of FFXV fishing which was fun.
No matter how much I didn't like the other mini games they didn't really effect the experience since I wasn't planning on doing them anyway but I did a few while playing and experienced it so I wanted to put that out for those who wanted to try them.

Next is not really a mini games since doesn't feel much like one but here we go.

The Hostess Maker is not fun AT ALL.
If you get a bad hostess that's it, you're stuck with them until you figure out how to get another.
Through my play-through I found a woman named Jo (I absolutely regretted getting her) After finding out that she didn't like to learn any skills or even could get better by dressing her up because I guess bad RNG?
I wished I never met her first.
Yeah I could've reloaded but I spend too much time in between that I didn't care enough to reload.
Played about an hour or two trying to get her to raise her skill/traits things but nothing worked and I looked it up to see if others had the same problems and YES they did.
Most people say to skip it or at least try to finish the substories from it.

Speaking of...

(Screenshot by SEGA)                                          (Photo from the PSN store)

[Substories]

There's 119 substories in Yakuza 3.
I finished about 102 because I could careless about the mini games ones or the...Hostess Maker ones.

There are plenty of great ones in the game, even ones about the characters you meet throughout the story.
Some have lovely cutscenes and great writing.

Also some are just hilarious and amazing.

Both in Okinawa and Kamurocho you get substories, some even drift to and from those places.
I enjoyed alot of them more than the ones in Kiwami as most of Kiwami's was con stories which got sort of boring.
Yakuza 3 has multiple connected substories which were pretty cool.
Okinawa has some of my absolute favorite substories and I recommend doing as many as you want since it's pretty fun and enjoyable.

(Photo by SEGA)                                          (Photo from Fandom wiki)

[The Characters]

One of the best parts of Yakuza 3 is characters and there's a lot of them.

From the kids at Morning Glory to the pals you make in Okinawa there's a lot of great writing for them and all around interesting backgrounds.
Some of my favorite characters from this series so far comes from this game and I think a lot of people who haven't played this yet are in for a treat.

To not spoil anything I will say that I don't think you'll be disappointed by the overall characters, but I do believe the story may have some unfavorable moments.

(Screenshot by SEGA)                                          (Photo from Fandom wiki)

[Storyline]

Things are getting messy in Okinawa with a fight for a military base and a resort.
Problem for Kiryu is that he's in the way.

The storyline is pretty straight forward.
Daigo gets involved with the situation and then mysteriously gets shot by someone who looks like Shintaro, Kiryu's adoptive father.
As things progress for the worst Kiryu gets involved, leading him back to Kamurocho where he's attacked by mysterious foreigners who has something to do with the CIA.

[The Good]

(Screenshot by SEGA)                                          (Photo from Fandom wiki)

The storyline for Yakuza 3 in my opinion is better than original first two.

This game was written and done differently from 1&2 which this one took a slower pace and focused on Kiryu and the characters you meet throughout the story, which I enjoy.

Yakuza 1&2 and even the remakes push the storyline to the far end that it feels rushed and unsatisfying.
I struggled to care for the first two games since I played Zero first to get their backstories before playing the original.
Throughout Yakuza 3 these characters felt better written than 1&2 and the storyline satisfied my hours I put in.

Yakuza 3's storyline is slower paced and finely written.
It also brought back characters from the last games and had them fit in well too.
It's definitely not Zero but it's much more refined than 1&2.

[The Bad]

(Screenshot by SEGA)                                          (Photo from Fandom wiki)

Some of the characters have some missing points.
They're supposed to be the big bad but fall kinda flat.
However some shows their real colors later on and felt a little better.
There are some that are completely...how can I say this?
Gone?
Not too much of a spoiler but there is a character that shows off how threatening they are and then after that it goes blank.
Which slightly confusing because I was like "Wait what happened to him?"

Other than that there are some things that happens for dramatics that felt like they were cutting connects to previous games and also just to fuel the rage.
Some of these things bothered me, making me think some of these characters are blatantly stupid.
Somethings that happened was copied and pasted from the first two games, You'd think some of the characters had learned from those events right?
Nope, they learned nothing and the events happens so quickly that it's more frustrating than anything.
It annoys me that they keep doing it for DRAMATIC moments.
At least do it in a surprising way, that's all I ask.

Either way it's an older game and nothing can change but it still bothers me.
Though this is the bad I still appreciate what Yakuza 3 gave me for a story.

(Screenshot by SEGA)                                          (Photo from Fandom wiki)

[Overall]

After everything I been through I will let you know that Yakuza 3 is...🥁

PLAYABLE

It may look like a lot of cons but most of them don't ruin the experience and it's more in-depth to let you know if you skipped to the end.

I wholeheartedly recommend Yakuza 3.

Most of the game was great and a fun experience.

Though it might be old and have issues, it's still enjoyable and playable.

Yakuza 3

Have you played it? 

Did you like it?

Did you try out the mini games?

Whatever's your answer is tell me about it.

No matter how brutally honest you are with it, I wanna hear it.

(Please no hate towards the devs, Sega, Atlus, or anyone else's opinions as this is about the game not the company, devs, etc.)

Yakuza 3 is available on the PlayStation store in the remaster bundle or stand-alone.

Review and written by AshyPaints

(All PSN store links used are US links)

Yakuza 0 on Xbox One||Pros and Cons compared to PS4

Boxart by SEGA

Yakuza 0 (Zero)

After putting 70+ hours in I finished Yakuza 0 on the Xbox One(S)
Here are my pros and cons compared to the PlayStation 4.

Pros:
#1 It's on Gamepass.
As Gamepass continues to grow and is quite cheap to get a month or two, you can easily play it on there, which is how I played it basically free.

#2 It's plays well.
No matter how many cons this version has it's still very fun to play.
I enjoyed most of my time playing since it is a great game and played well through out the story.
I had barely any problems playing through the storyline so if you came for story it does well.

#3 No crashes
I played about 70+ hours and no crashes!
Just like PS4 it didn't crash, but I did have someone I'm close to tell me it crashed on them but remember experiences differ.

Pros overall:
Though these are all the pros, the PS4 one is still the superior version due to the problems I had playing it which could differ due to different experiences.
It could all depend on your experience so give it a try after reading the cons.

Cons:
#1 It lags A LOT so much certain mini games speed up after lagging that it ruins the experiences.
Also certain important cutscenes lag making you laugh or uncomfortable to watch.

#2 Xbox controllers aren't good for mini games. As someone who only uses Xbox controllers I'll say I can't play this with one.
Some of these mini games were unnecessarily hard on Xbox though I did them well on PS4 which is weird since 99% of the time I use Xbox controllers on everything.
And I have done most of the mini games two times already on PS4 and had finished substories that were related to them too.

(Oh and the karaoke and the dancing mini games were the hardest on Xbox due to latency with button mashing but that could be only on my end.)

#3 Rendering distances are not good on Xbox One at least not on the S.
The trash on the street doesn't render from decent distances and models don't render in well either.
You have to be quite close for them to render and even at the ending cutscenes Majima didn't render in and looked blurry for a few seconds before going back into a close up shot where he was completely rendered in.
I had none of these on PS4 and yes I played Yakuza 0 earlier this year on PS4 for my second play through and this time on Xbox One for this comparison.

#4 Long battle transition.
Not too long of battle transitions but still longer than the ones on PS4 compared to Xbox One.
Some load quick after battle and some take longer than and excepted* but I'll throw this in as a con since some people really hate long transitions.


Cons overall:
With all the all cons I say it's fine enough to play if you aren't annoyed easily or going for a casual play through but for the best experience so far between PS4(Slim) and Xbox One(S) I say I had an overall better experience on PS4.
But that's my experience if you wanna try out Yakuza 0 (Zero) for yourself it's available on Gamepass with Kiwami 1 & 2.

I give it a 

PLAYABLE-

After all I think it's a 7 compared to the PS4 version.
Don't get me wrong it's the same game but with the experience I had with PS4 and not having to be frustrated over lag during mini games as I love doing most of them anyway I think I'll stick with PS4 since I'm spoiled when it comes to Yakuza 0 (Zero) on it.
PlayStation 4 wins this around for comparison. 👑👏

If you played Yakuza 0 (Zero) on Xbox One how did you like?
Did you do the substories and mini games?
And did you have similar problems I did?
Tell me all your experiences as brutally honest as you can be.
(No hating on the developers, or other's opinions as this is about the game and not the company or other people's opinions on the game.)
Let's have a discussion, and tell me what you think.

Available on PSN and Gamepass

(US links)

Review by AshyPaints