#also this is my second time playing through all of yakuza 0 so this whole year? probably already well past 300 hours | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wsdalt · 3 months

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Okay let me see what I can think of. Unfortunately everything in my brain not already in your dms is either not allowed to say for another few days orrrrrrr the Yakuza games' hostess club mini game. But you wanted entertaining so mini game it is. I have no amazing insights about it for you, but I can summarise!

So Cabaret Club Czar as it's called officially appears in 2 games - 0 (a prequel game set in the 1980s, during the heights of the Japanese bubble economy), and Kiwami 2 (a remake of the 2nd game using the same engine as yakuza 0, though I cant remember if the remakes or 0 came first). In it you are tasked with running a Cabaret Club! Which is technically not a hostess club but in my head it's the hostess club mini game so sue me. It's... I'm not good on Japanese culture, but it's like an early form of a hostess club, the partway point between a cabaret (hug big shows where the ladies on staff could be hired to provide conversation at the booths) and a hostess club (where you have a conversation over drinks with an on-staff lady). Being music and maybe a singer but not a big show on the stage. I think. Look I'm running from a video game series and wikipedia here. I am not reliable there.

What I am more reliable on is the mini game! it is probably my favourite game that can be played quickly. Unfortunately it is a mini game inside a Yakuza game, and I do NOT get on with real time action combat. So I have to get my housemate to clear the games for me so I can play a mode with no plot and just do the club. Unfortunately when he got a new playstation he didnt transfer his saves, and so I cannot play. Sad :( currently he is replaying 0 so I can play the first form again (yay!) though I doubt he'll do me the second as well :( not anytime soon at least.

So the game itself. Its... surprisingly complicated and massively sports anime in vibes. You always start off with 1 platinum ranked girl and 2 brozen ranked girls. Now, there are 4 ranks (5 in 2) - bronze, silver, gold, platinum (and in 2 only, diamond, but that's also a plot rank). It is a failing club. You are mistaken for manager material and put to work running the place! You must defeat the other clubs, who have all sold out their souls and the true meaning of the clubs for cash-dollar and many of whom are implied to be abusing the girls working for them, in battle! By earning the most money in a single night (you can repeat if you fail but failure, shock horror, loses you money. And makes your girls sad. And you lose fans. Which we will consider shortly).

Now theres a whole host of things to balance which affect your earnings.

Easiest to explain are fans. You earn fans either slowly by just playing through shifts, or else by partnering with local businesses. This either is done by befriending store owners or paying shops large amounts of money. Simple.

Then there is the evening itself. During the evening men will come to your club, and you must match them to girls on shift - while rosters are pretty big, its I think 8 girls to a shift max, and 6 tables. You do not start with enough girls to fill all the tables, meaning at first sometimes you have to turn people away. You get money by people being there and buying drinks. You get more money if the girl's stats match what they want (with richer clients demanding higher stats). You get even more money if theres a popup requesting assistance and you get it right (something like bringing another drink, which will be indicated by a hand signal and you need to remember which hand signal is which thing). You will get less money if the guy and girl get into a fight and you do not resolve it (only happens if it's a poor matchup, stepping in to defend the girl is usually the right answer).

Now, your ladies. Basics and shared with all of them are stats. They have 4 aesthetics (cute, funny, sexy, beauty) which are fixed (for everyone but platinum+ but even their bases are fixed), skills (stamina, skill, party, love, talk) which increase as xp increases. XP increases in line with how much money they specifically have made you. Stamina is important as working will tire them out, and a tired hostess cannot work! And will be miserable making her clients miserable. Look after the ladies and they look after you. The rest is stuff the clients have preferences on. Match up to avoid trouble and get more cash.

Now how to get more hostesses? Welp. Theres various ways. Basic recruiting is a little different in each game (0 you just ask people on the street or get them for achievement points, 2 you put out job ads). Then theres people who join you as substory rewards (help them and they help you), and your platiniums. You start with one platinium, and get more by defeating other clubs. They are the stars of your and other clubs, generally being mistreated somehow or needing to adjust schedules in ways their bosses dont like, though not always. They're your rewards for completing each level.

Why are diamonds so special? Well first of all you can dress them up, changing their aesthetic stats and with enough number crunching maxing them out on all four! They also have the best stats. And they have plotlines!

Yup, not only does the mini game have a plot, the platinum ladies do too.

These are explored via training session, in which you usually do dating sim style multiple choice dialogue helping them practice talk to people, their job, in a usually mentory way (regardless of if you're playing Majima in 0 or Kiryu in 2, you are an elder brother or dad figure more than date potential for these girls - that's for *other* minigames), or you take them to other mini games like karaoke. Depending how well you do at these depends how much stat increases they get, which are real helpful as they're not tied to xp. What's that good? Because theres a level cap of course! (You also get side stories with each platinium, unlocked by doing enough training. Once you finish their plots, no more traininf).

And this is too long already but there is your crash course in the yakuza cabaret club mini game from a more mechanical perspective! I hope I have entertained for at least 30 seconds. <3 (this took me half an hour and we didnt even get into any of the ladies... I guess ask sometime and I can start on them, the actual good bit. Though I do love like... cafe running speed game plus princess maker gameplay very very much)

~ Factorial

this is very interesting thank you for sharing \o/!!!

sorry I don’t really have it in me to like… add anything as a response. But I enjoyed it \o/!!!

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generaltrashshecox · 9 months

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Y'all... Y'all don't even know how much this actually means to me bro 😭😭

Damien... In a Like a Dragon/Yakuza game??? I'M SCREAMING!!!

For context: I started playing this series at the beginning of the year. Well... Technically I had bought them last year as an impulse and they were on sale so I bought Yakuza 0 - Yakuza Kiwami 2. I started playing Y0 and while I liked the game I just couldn't get into it. Cue January of this year I just finished walking simulator (Death Stranding) and started playing the game again. This time I got to the juicy bits and I was hooked. Cue me finishing eight games in four months (including one of their spin-off games Judgement). I'll repeat that again. EIGHT games in FOUR months. I love everything about these games. They can be so hilariously outrageous but also can have the most heart wrenching of scenes. I don't think I've finished one of these games without crying somewhere during. I've wasted so much time on minigames and side quests and still have never tired of these games. I'm literally on my second playthrough of Y0. I'm literally watching someone play the game for the first time as I type this if that gives you any indication of how much I love this game series. And to have Damien, one of my favorite people, be a part of something that's so dear to me it's just- it's so stupid but I have no words on how happy that makes me?? I've already wanted to play this game since it came out (and I will when I have the money and the internet 😤😤) because it's Kiryu's story between games and I need to know so badly but this only makes me want to play it more! And it also makes me hope he'll be in future Like a Dragon titles (like the one coming out next month Infinite Wealth 👀 which I also need so badly 😭 Ichiban my love!) These games have helped me through a lot which is probably stupid to say but they did. I was going through some bullshit and playing helped me escape that. And Smosh also did that so having this... I don't know, it's so stupid lol but I just wanted to say all this.

Anyways long story short these games mean a whole lot to me and helped me through a hard time and so did Smosh and so this... This means so much to me 🥹😭

#damien haas #like a dragon #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza #smoshblr #this just means so much to me #its so stupid #but it makes me happy #smosh

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peemanne · 10 months

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Yakuza: Like a Dragon (or just yakuza 7) Review: My Life is Like a Video Game

Hey, it's Pee again! So there's this site called Backloggd that's basically just letterboxd for video games and I've been writing a bunch of reviews there, with a bunch of longer ones for RGG games because of course so. I've got one currently cooking for 0 and in the meanwhile, I've decided to put them up here too, for archiving or whatever. I also get to put silly captions on them now. So with that out of the way, here's the first big review I did: Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Also might as well plug my backloggd in here if you wanna see the rest of the stuff I've done hehehehehe

This review is spoiler-free! Reviewed on Jul 12, 2023 Completed on the Playstation 4 Rating: 10/10 (5 Stars)

(spoilers you're gonna be seeing perfect scores for a bit i can't tell you just how much i love this franchise)

if you play the dub one of the first things you'll hear is the word "cumstain"

Very necessary "review funnies" aside, I adore Yakuza 7. I don't even typically like turn-based RPGS, but Yakuza: Like a Dragon had me in a trance that lasted the entire game and then some. Let's talk about the main gameplay first. Even as someone who doesn't have a lot of experience in this genre, even I can tell it's not exactly the deepest out there. The elements system is either more or less just an extra thing or strictly needed depending on where you are in the game, and in both it just feels kinda tacked on. The environmental system with the characters using the stuff around sounds cool on paper, but in reality it's barely utilized because of either DE physics destroying everything your character touches with their pinkie toe, or because you can't reposition your characters to actually pick it up. This is a shame, since it was a really cool way to integrate a big feature from the beat-em-up games. With these being said though, they're ultimately just small nitpicks. The gameplay is still pretty fun with the MP management, the perfect block system encouraging more active gameplay, and the various buffs and debuffs you can utilize. And the main thing that makes the gameplay here is the sheer spectacle of it all. Ichiban's imagination cranks everything up to 11, and if I'm being honest, that justifies the gameplay switch by itself. Yakuza has always had it's goofy elements, but amplifying it tenfold to differentiate your new protagonist was a great way to introduce this little soft reboot. Thanks to the Job system, there's countless amounts of these different, joyfully imaginative attacks. There's a chef job which has you whacking your opponents with frying pans and throwing kitchen utensils at them. The mage archetype in this game is "Homeless Guy", who uses pigeon swarms and breathes fire by drinking then spiting out alcohol. If you do the business minigame, you gain access to an attack that has you pimp slap the enemy with excessive amounts of cash. And the heat actions are the peak of all of this insanity. I was actually introduced to this series as a whole through a gif of Essence of Orbital Laser with the caption "I don't agree with your opinion". It gets very crazy, very fast, even for this series, and I love all of it. And I must reiterate, I'm not usually a turn-based RPG guy. But I could tell this entire game is just a sweetly written love letter to JRPGs. Even with me only understanding some of the references, I could feel the love that RGG put into this game. And if you're someone who's already an RPG guy, this love letter's gonna get even sweeter for you.

And then there's the story. Yakuza 7 has, in my opinion, the second best story in the entire series, second only to JE. It has a very strong emotional core, which made me cry a few times throughout the story, and finally had me BAWLING at 12:30AM when I played the finale. The themes of fatherhood and found family really come through here. You feel for Ichiban, and you root for him the entire time, as he goes through struggle after struggle. And the characters themselves are amazing, even for the high standards for this series. Ichiban is amazing, but his party members are too. The main 4 bounce off of each other super well and I love their dynamics. And the other 2 party members (no spoilers) have pretty distinct personalities as well which compliment the main 4 some more. Eri is also there, I guess. I like to imagine she's the camerawoman for all the cutscenes. Man, poor girl. The thing that really makes these character dynamics are the little party chats and table talks. They feel like a real friend group with all this really cutely-written banter. I actually just sat down and listened to all the table talks one day and I just had this big dumb grin on my face the entire time. I care so much for these characters just from the main story, but all the side stuff just made me really fall for them.

Let's talk about the rest of the side stuff next. This series is known for it's fantastic side content, but Yakuza 7 goes the extra mile for it. This title's jampacked with both new and old minigames to enjoy. Dragon Kart serves as the "main big minigame" for this one, and it's a fun distraction with all the customization, tracks, and the storyline. The Karaoke selection is strong in this one, which is probably what you wanna hear. Mahjong's not required for completion in this one, therefore I don't have to hear about people complaining about it, which is a plus. I like how the bonuses here for completing the minigames are helpful stat boosts for Ichi, which encourages playing different stuff around the map(s) without it feeling strictly needed. The substories in 7 are pretty good. Not the series' strongest, I'd say, but there's a decent selection here. A lot of them do a good job at characterizing Ichiban, and some of them have the funniest "goofy substory fights" in the series. You can fight a giant out-of-control roomba, a chimp riding a crane, and a "Piss Wizard". The poundmates system is also a really cool incentive for doing them, and has the bonus of reminding you of all the cool stuff you did while you're in combat. Also also, it serves as a "friends we made along the way" thing, which is pretty funny to think about.

Let's finish things off with the soundtrack. 7's OST focuses mostly on electronic music, moreso than the other games. This might be against some player's tastes, but personally, I think it fits really well. It gives a sense of this new generation, and of passing the torch while still keeping some of the sound of the old one. There are some amazing tracks on here that come out of this. To give some examples, Receive You the Hyperactive and Rolling Eyes Fall Down the Dragon Wall are some of the best tracks in the whole series, embracing the past while weaving in a new, crazy spin on it. Tracks like War Maker, Answer From Geomijul, and appassionato are basically rave music. Brutality and Triplet after Triplet are some very heavy sounding tracks which fit their respective boss fights perfectly. Enter the Tiger is a very underrated track and has a pretty unique sound compared to the rest of the OST, almost like it's straight out of a Hong Kong kung fu movie's score. And ism is a beautiful sendoff to it all, and a fantastic final boss theme. The soundtrack's full of bangers, that all fit their respective places well. Fun little tidbit, the track "From Today I'm a Dragon Racer" was meant for a the third fight with Ozaki in Chapter 11 of Judgment, but was scrapped, then reused here, so now the funny racing minigame just has this super badass main theme song.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is just an amazing game, and another fantastic addition to the Yakuza series. This was a wild direction to take the franchise in, but in my opinion, that risk definitely paid off. Fantastic story, fun and imaginative gameplay, lovable characters, a boatload of side content, and a bopping soundtrack. It has it all. I cannot overstate how much I love this game, especially as a fan who's already familiar with the past games. I can't wait for Gaiden and LAD8. It's definitely a great time to be a Yakuza fan right now. Even if you're someone like me who wouldn't consider themselves an RPG fan, I would highly recommend giving Yakuza: Like a Dragon a try.

#rgg #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza #like a dragon #yakuza like a dragon #yakuza 7 #ichiban kasuga #ramblings of the pee-man #game review

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futuresconnected · 9 months

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January 1st, 2024: Kiryu Quest Continues

Happy new year everybody! Hope you all enjoyed your Holiday Week!

I had the week off from work, and set a goal for myself to beat Yakuza Kiwami 2. It took me most of the week, even though my final playtime only came in around 32 hours, it somehow felt much longer. Big thoughts up top is that that game is an absolute blast, easily my fave of the series that I've played so far, and I think it does a lot of interesting things with its position as "remake sequel to a remake sequel to a prequel". I want to dig into that a little bit more, so bear with me here.

Now that I've played all three, its interesting to look at how Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2 essentially form a trilogy that let RGG Studios look back at the story and characters that they built over the years and give the whole thing a new foundation. For me, I think that the clearest way that they accomplish this is with Majima. Goro Majima is a side character and recurring boss from the first couple of games in the series that grew a solid fanbase over time because who doesn't love a fucked up Joker man (I know I do), becoming popular enough to warrant RGG making him one of the protagonists and playable characters in 0. Here the players get a chance to meet Majima before he goes completely Joker-mode and get a better understanding of what kind of person he is beyond his later obsession with Kiryu and general mob boss-ness. His relationship with Makoto, a woman that the whole plot of 0 essentially hinges on, was something that I felt was really compelling, and his internal conflict between getting back into the Yakuza (killing Makoto) and helping this woman escape her situation and find a good life was something that had me holding my breath the whole time.

I bring this aspect up specifically, because the fact that RGG took the prequel story they made and built a ton of new connections to that into their remade first and second game stories is something pretty unique in the world of video games. Kiwami 2 is full of payoffs for this, from the very fun reprise of the cabaret club management game in Sotenbori and appearances from old Majima substory characters, to my personal favorite scene in the game where Majima reconnects with Makoto and both of them are able to get some closure on the mess they went through 20 years prior. These games usually don't get me too bad, but I was crying that whole time!

All that being said, this game was also intensely silly in ways that I loved, so here's a collection of good screenshots from times where Kiryu voice acted in a Yaoi game, runs into an impostor, and struggles to put together coherent sentences when various hot girls are on screen:

That's the Yakuza Update, I have also installed Yakuza 3 and played a couple hours of that, seeing Kiryu in full tropical dad mode is lovely, though I know that sadly will not last. Another exciting thing that happened this week is that I got the opportunity to help a friend of mine learn how to play Path of Exile!

For those who don't know, Path of Exile is a Diablo-style isometric loot-based RPG that was made for absolute freaks when it comes to character progression, player economy simulation, and pure visual clutter and chaos. It's by all accounts an insane game that you need to be a little insane to enjoy. I also have nearly 1000 hours of game time over the ten years its been out. When my friend Wes told me that he was going to play through at least the first five acts due to some end-of-year fantasy draft obligations, I offered my services as a guide and with a couple hours of instructive gameplay and conversation we managed to get his character build up and running, much to his delight. PoE is a game that is incredible easy to bounce off of if you don't know how the game is "supposed" to be played, or how to make a character that works, but I think at this point I've got him on the hook for at least a full Act 1-10 playthrough, and maybe a touch beyond that. I've never had the chance to play this game with a friend before, its been a lot of fun so far! And seeing someone experience the pure dopamine joys of filling the screen with bullshit that kills hordes of monster while zipping around at high speed has been a true joy.

That's all for me, I'll probably take a brief break from Yakuza Quest so as not to burn myself out, hopefully I'll get to play a good chunk more of Path of Exile, and the end of this month begins the 8 week Gamepocalypse of Yakuza 8, Persona 3 Reload, FF7 Reunion, and a bunch of other stuff I'm certainly forgetting. See you later!

#jan 2024 #futuresconnected

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jacksmysterylabyrinth · 1 year

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Downtime for the moment. Impressions so far...

I get the vibe that more of the characters are harder to crack than past crews, at least in this stage? Not sure how to put it. Like they have their ‘gimmick’, but they’re also more... distant? A little less wacky?

(This combined with) the ‘hey lets kill off the entire crew except Yuma’ isn’t really helping my attachment to any of them right now, though. Nonetheless my mind flits back to that chapter as suspiciously relevant. Besides that ones named ‘Chapter 0′ usually are...

It’s very pretty, of course. Super pretty. They’ve really come a long way since V3 and Despair Girls, with those models and the sprites too. Clearly a lot of effort was put into this and I’m feeling it

I’m getting a feeling that this world is more intense- not just an academy, but a whole city, fraught with corruption and it’s clearly affecting the people to the point of nigh worshipping a freakin assassin. Finding out that they plain omit details in crime reports is just icing on the cake

I’m psyched to learn about the supernatural world and how it plays into Fortes. About TIME we actually have some text from Kodaka that details this kind of stuff instead of just dancing around it the entire time

Shinigami... annoys me a bit? It’s clear she’s putting on some kind of airs, and she’s probably going to be the most mysterious one here next to Yuma himself. But maybe I’m not finding her as fun as I thought- oh I know why, it’s because she dragged you by the dick all the way through the Tutorial Chapter(tm) and now it’s all oversaturated with mascot before the game’s even really begun. Otherwise, she’s a fun character

I love the Persona-vibe with the Labyrinths- this is some good shit. Though it’s so obviously lifted from Danganronpa mechanics, it gives them a place and a purpose which is exciting

Actually roaming around and taking assignments like a detective does is a great way to use a detective protagonist. The place is so big, too. I feel like we’re in Yakuza. Expect to see Majima pop out at any moment

Maybe it’s because I’m a passive observer and miss things but I’m a little confused by the memory-fragments collection- when the heck do these things happen. I feel like I’m experiencing two timelines at once. Haven’t seen more of them yet though. It seems kinda arbitrary

High tier characters right now (the ones that are alive) are Halara and Yakou, and the main two are a good duo. Others I’ll... think about later. (Also I hope they don’t pull a Stupid(tm) with Halara’s gender)

As always, it’s a little hard to connect things in my head but still- this is shaping up to be interesting and fun! Next is collecting clues for the second Labyrinth

#offgame writing #whehh i'm tired-#doing a bit more shortly #ongame hour

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joy-returns-in-the-morning · 2 years

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For yakuza questionnaire, if it's not too overwhelming, ALL the subjective questions? Thanks !!

Thanks for asking! ^_^

What was the most infuriating moment?

At the end of Kiwami 2 when they have that quicktime event. And if you don't hit that 2 second window YOU LOSE THE GAME!!! >:O

Absolutely infuriating. My brother had to redo that fight like three times and the last time it was pure chance, he just picked a button at random. XD And actually that whole fight was a little silly. Like Kiryu already beat Ryuji once but then they have to fight again some reason? You know, instead of leaving because there's A BOMB?? But they're like "well, we're shirtless and on the top of a high tower, so I guess we GOTTA fight" This happens every game and it's so frustrating haha. Do you really though? Do you REALLY have to fight? 🤣

Also, that whole substory with the girl who needs the visa? And Kiryu gets her pizza instead? Easily one of the funniest substories in the game. But the ending is atrocious. Girl, don't marry that creep! You can do better! Drives me bonkers.

Which game had the worst plotline?

They are all bad in their own special way <3

Which character(s) deserved better?

Too many. 😭 Lately I've been thinking about Nishikiyama's sister Yuko. It's just so sad that we never even get to see her. Was her life really that unimportant? She lived and she died so briefly, and we never even saw her. What was the point of it? Why was she even born? Surely it wasn't meaningless. I really want to write a fanfiction about her (though who knows if I'll get around to it). She deserves better than a few offhand mentions and a death offscreen.

Which character would you like to see as a protagonist?

Strawberry Maya (she's a minor character from one of Akiyama's substories in Yakuza 5 lol). The Strawberry Kingdom is real and it's time for her to save the day!

Um, but for a more serious answer, let's see… Daigo! What does he do all day? I think it would be fun to be the head of a criminal empire. :) The whole thing would be a management game or something. Let's give the poor man a chance to show his competence for once.

My brother was saying a while back that Jingu should get his own game, but I don't know about that haha. Does anybody like Jingu? My brother just liked his evil laugh I think. I'll give him that, the man does have a good evil laugh. I suppose a story about a man falling into corruption could be interesting. Apparently he WAS nice once right? Yeah, it could actually be an interesting story. But, I think, not one that absolutely needs be told through the medium of video games.

Which character would you like to see as an antagonist?

This one's tough… I'm not sure. Maybe Kazama. A prequel fic where he ends up as captain. You play as another guy fighting for the captain spot… but you lose! idk, can't really think of anything. 😅

If you could revive any deceased character, who would it be and why?

Rikiya. Why? Because it's Rikiya. It's self-evident.

Which character should have died but didn’t? (If that’s too harsh, who deserves to rot in prison?)

Hm… maybe Dojima Sohei? I mean, he is a character that famously dies. But he should have died in Yakuza 0. Obviously he COULDN'T for story reasons, but I feel like Majima should have killed him. Then maybe Nishiki wouldn't have died… :/

Also Kume from Yakuza 7 lol. The character we all love to hate. XD I don't necessarily want him to die, but it would definetely be cathartic to see him rot in prison haha. Hows THAT for a gray zone, loser! >:)

What was the worst plot twist?

The rubber bullets? XD

Okay that's too easy. There was also this twist in Yakuza 4 I found really funny where that cop guy turns out to actually be a yakuza all along lol. And then, what do you know, the yakuza guy actually turns out to have been a COP all along??!! No waaay! I thought that was hilarious. But also it's a terrible twist because it makes Akiyama look like SUCH an idiot. Like he was trusting in Arai this whole time, right? But it turns out he had a completely wrong idea of the man. Uggh, I nearly died of second-hand embarrassment. If I were him I could never recover. That's cringe man.

There is probably more that could be said about Yakuza 4's terrible twists but I'm afraid I have already forgotten all of them. I'm probably more familiar with Yakuza 5 which also has it's own terrible plottwists. What frustrates me about THOSE twists is that they COULD have been good if only they had been set up better. Like at the end yakuza 5, they're all like AHA! AIZAWA was the final villain all along!! Bet you didn't see THAT coming! And I'm like: NOO?? OF COURSE NOT?!!??? Sorry but there was literally no way anyone could have seen that coming. There were so many twists that they just added in for the sake of having a twist - like Majima is Mirei's wife?? It seriously feels like they just picked a name from a hat. But after thinking about it for some time I was like, yeah okay, I guess I could see it… It could be interesting. There is a lot of potential for an interesting story in those twists! They just failed to set them up properly which makes it extra frustrating. :/

Okay but my absolute favourite twist is still that scene in Yakuza 2 where Date is chasing after Kazuki and they go on to the roof and there are TWO Kazuki's??!! WHAaaAAaaAT?? And it turns out the original had been replaced FOR SEVERAL MONTHS by an identical korean body double??!! And it's never brought up again and barely has any impact on the plot. XD XD XD XD

I won't even bring up the scene with the castle.

What was the most emotional scene in the series?

I love Ichiban's speech at the end of Yakuza 7. Like he's really just speaking his heart out there. The tears in his eyes, the raw emotion in his voice…!! Oooh it was great. 🥺🥺 I wish someone had given a speech like that to Nishiki at the end of Yakuza 1.

Which game do you think should get a remake?

They should remake Yakuza 5 so the plot twists actually make sense…. 😩 And expand Okudera's section while we're at it haha ��

Which character has the best taste in clothing? Who has the worst?

Shinada's shrimp outfit. the best AND the worst.

Whose voice do you enjoy hearing the most?

Hmm… I like Masato Arakawa's english voice. It's kinda hot…

Which sworn brothers worked best?

Kiryu and Nishikiyama I guess. Their bond actually makes sense, whereas I can't help but feel that Saejima was randomly inserted into yakuza 4 solely to give Majima a more interesting backstory. Like yeah okay, Majima has a sworn brother now. Cool. But why? How did they meet? I mean, that doesn't really matter, you can extrapolate things. But overall their relationship just doesn't… make sense to me? Like okay - in Yakuza 0 Majima claims to be doing everything he's doing for Saejima's sake and I just can't understand why!! Maybe I'm missing something but I just don't get it!! Saejima is on death row! He's not coming back?? (and sure, Saejima DOES, but… why would you expect that?) So why is Majima going to such great lengths to rejoin the yakuza? Maybe there's another reason but why bring up Saejima at all? And then in Yakuza 3 he just forgets about it all anyways and throws the yakuza to the wind to join a construction company. (there is something to be said for the historical ties between the construction industry and the yakuza but it's still a little odd). And I don't even get why they tortured Majima in the first place. Just because he wanted to help his brother? Again maybe I'm missing something here. But like, wouldn't it be considered honourable to want to help your sworn brother? They don't just swear these oaths for a joke right? And presumably they have to be approved by their bosses, right? These are highly formal and ritualistic things. So why should anybody be suprised when they act on their oaths? Obviously there must be deeper political machinations at play. So really, it's nothing to do with their ACTUAL relationship. I think on a personal level it's a nice little thing they've got going. I like their personal interactions and there's lots of interesting things that can be explored in their relationship. I just find some of the actions around it confusing. Kiryu and Nishiki make sense though. They grew up with each other. They know each other. Their relationship defines each other and it's central to the plot. In Yakuza 0 you see them actually hanging out and having fun and it's great and it makes the tragedy in the first game all the more poignant. 😭 Also as far as sworn brothers go I think that Watase and Aoyama are an interesting pair just because they seem to low-key hate each other. Underrated kyodai relationship.

What dynamic would you like to see more of?

I wish we could have seen more of Majima and Saejima and Yasuko. Like what's their deal. How did they meet? What did they do everyday? And why did Majima never talk to Yasuko again?

On a somewhat similar vein, I'd love to see more Saejima and Majima and Kiryu interactions. I think this could be really fascinating because Saejima and Kiryu both have these deep bonds with Majima, but without any real overlap. That is, they met Majima at very different periods of his life. So they have these two completely different versions of Majima, and by interacting they'd learn more about him. I want them to exchange embarrassing stories about Majima haha. XD And I'm curious which sort of version of himself Majima would present when he's with both of them. How would he negotiate himself between both of them?

Actually in general I'd just like to see more of Majima's dynamic with everybody. He's just such an interesting guy. I want to observe him beneath a microscope. How does anyone interact with him? How does he interact with Daigo? With the other Tojo Clan officers? Majima and Nishikiyama is also a dynamic that apparently doesn't seem to exist in the game but I think could have been interesting. They have a lot in common (sworn brothers in jail… is that a lot? haha) and I think that maybe a friendship between them could have really helped each other. I'm curious if they ever did interact in those 10 years Kiryu was in jail.

I'd also love to see more of the dynamics within the orphanage kids, I bet that could be really interesting. Nine kids are a lot! I bet there are unimaginable dramas taking place there everyday.

Who has the most tragic story?

Man, who doesn't have a tragic story? I feel like all you need to do for this question is list all the female characters. :// Even small tragedies are tragic in their own ways, I suppose the most tragic characters would be the ones who had miserable lives and miserable deaths. Someone like Yasuko, who endured a harsh and difficult life and then died without seeing any real resolution. Or even Reina, who spend so long pining over Nishikiyama only to die. Or Yuko, who lived and died offscreen. It's so sad….

Actually, Kiryu's story is pretty tragic too when you think about it. The poor man just never wins. I would be so emotionally devestated if I was him. He keeps trying to protect people and then they die. After a while you kinda gotta wonder if the problem is you. It's so weird because he's protrayed as this super cool protagonist who is this mega awesome legendary hero but like… has he really done anything to justify that? He's pretty much a failure. Poor Kiryu. :(( This whole series is a tragedy.

---

And that's all the questions! Thank you very much. :)

Yakuza ask meme by @kulemii

#yakuza ask meme #long post

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arysthaeniru · 4 years

Note

aAAA the joy of seeing an update on your current favorite fanfic is just aAAA

I always felt that kiwami 1s Nishiki was just a bit too,, I dont know how to describe it; but essentially he just felt off, granted yakuza 1 is a product of its time and therefore the plot is a bit dated and whack as all hell

The way you write Nishiki just feels so much better and realistic; in the original he just seems so uncaring towards Kiryu? which just feels kinda OOC? You'd think he still cares about Kiryu despite it all, especially when you take Yakuza 0 into consideration; and i feel like you portray Nishiki much more accurately

I never thought much about Yumi, because honestly, in the original she was kinda just, there? You actually made her a very interesting person! like I'm actually invested in her in your story! (side note you ever think about her clone who got tortued and died? yeah who WAS that???? thats never brought up is it??)

Theres so much more to talk about but in short; This is the best fix it/rewrite of a game plot I have read to date and it brings me joy in my current stressful school life. and no I will not stop praising it or the author, because this work has made me very happy. ;)

I just have a gift for picking favorites that end up dying,,aand another favorite of mine is Mine

imo theres a lack of soft, reassuring Minedai, i just feel like he'd need a reminder that people love him as a person and not just for the money he can provide, even if its obvious

I'd love to see how you'd write them, but I understand if theres more interesting/appealing drabble requests!

- Carp

CARP, thank you for this <3 this is so sweet!!!!! I’m so happy you enjoy my Nishiki! I had fun playing with what Yakuza 0/the Kiwami additions gave us about Nishiki’s personality and outlook on the world, and trying to reconcile that with the plot that Yakuza 1 initially had. Ultimately, I fell on the side that you did: even if Nishiki’s ambition took him down a monstrous path, I don’t think he’s the sort of person who neglects to pay back his debts. And he’s aware of the huge debt he owes Kiryu. Not to mention, their bonds of trust and love vanishing completely because of jealousy felt unreal to me. Their relationship becoming twisted or strange? Yes, but vanishing entirely felt unsatsifying to me.

And Yumi!! I had so much fun excavating her character from the clues we get of her in canon. I worry sometimes, that she’s unrecognizable, because you know, I’ve given her a college education, and a whole bunch of interests beyond hostessing alone, but people seem to like it and like her, which is great!! I hate fridging women characters, so keeping her and Reina alive was important to me, hahaha. (RE: fake!Mizuki, there’s this substory in Kiwami that actually addresses who she was, BUT IT’S EVEN MORE HORRIFYING. So that’s why Yumi in my fic is the one captured and tortured by Nishiki’s men, because the thought of this poor innocent woman getting dragged into the mess was just untenable to me.)

Anyway, thank you for your support and kind words, and I hope you’ll continue to read and that my fic can continue to relieve stress. I--tried to write this about Mine, but Daigo kind of stole the spotlight a little??? I hope you still like it--if not, I will try a ficlet from Mine’s perspective too. I enjoy minedai a lot, but I haven’t had room to think out their dynamic yet, so this took me a while.

Daigo’s no stranger to being desired. He’s attractive, he knows this—his mother’s beauty lives in his veins, and he’s always had the money to look after himself. Fancy soaps to wash his face, the invisible retainers to keep his teeth straight, fancy suits and skin-tight shirts to show off his frame. For all that Kiryu insists his charisma is something that comes from the soul, Daigo knows it wouldn’t be able to draw the sort of attention he does without being attractive.

Which is to say that Daigo’s not especially thrown off by the intensity of Mine’s gaze. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again. The thing that surprises him is how much he relishes in being seen by Mine.

Maybe it’s because Mine’s an island in a stormy sea, one of the only yakuza his age who’s sensible and level-headed enough to make it big. Maybe it’s because Mine’s gaze is always so reserved, polite, never overly lusty or overstaying its welcome, and Daigo has so rarely been desired so quietly. Or maybe it’s because Majima and Kashiwagi so clearly disapprove of him—Daigo’s always been something of a rebel, and he hasn’t shaken that off, even now he’s in his thirties and is the arbiter of rules for the Tojo Clan.

Daigo can’t quite put a pin on why he’s so comfortable with Mine’s yearning looks, but he’s never been one to hold back when he wants to indulge in something good. Not exactly a hedonist, not by yakuza standards, but Daigo has never kept himself from enjoying life, in the name of some dubious ‘honour.’

Which is why, in an after-hours meeting with Mine, as they eat cheap takeout sushi together, Daigo takes his chance. A momentary slip, the slightest hint of wasabi left at the corners of Mine’s lips and Daigo swoops in, rubs a thumb over the corner of Mine’s lips. Mine stutters to a stop, mid-sentence through a rundown of the real-estate that the Hakuho Clan’s been purchasing up, and stares at Daigo, eyes bewildered.

“Sixth Chairman?” he asks, his voice still remarkably composed.

“Wasabi.” Daigo says, nonchalantly, as if it’s nothing, and sticks his thumb into his mouth, slowly licking it off with a lingering lave of his tongue. He feels a sharp stab of satisfaction as Mine’s eyes turn darker, and his gaze follows Daigo’s hand down.

Daigo straightens up, languidly, and cracks his neck, casually. At this point in the day, he’s untucked his shirt, and he knows that a slight strip of his stomach will be visible when he stretches out his arms towards the ceiling. And as predictably as clockwork, Mine’s gaze darts downwards, to that pale expanse, to catch that brief second of skin. Daigo can’t help but feel warm. Something about being watched by Mine is exhilarating.

“Smoke?” offers Daigo, but as usual, Mine refuses, with a polite shake of his head.

Daigo knows from hearsay that Mine’s something a health-freak, so he’s not entirely surprised. It’s already too late for Daigo to preserve his health—he knows that his liver’s already been pretty ruined from long nights of binge-drinking as a youth, and this job’s too stressful to withhold from vices like smoking and drinking, without an optimal end-goal. So he walks over to the window, cracks it open a little, and lights up.

The breath of nicotine curls over his body, a tender caress, and Daigo feels his shoulders drop, as the relaxation hits. He pulls off his cufflinks, tosses them into his pockets and rolls up his sleeves. He takes it slow, runs his fingers over his skin a little more than strictly necessary. Surreptitiously checking the reflection in the window, Daigo watches Mine watch him, and smirks at how intense that gaze is, how Mine’s mouth has opened, and Daigo can just see the soft pink of his tongue.

“Dojima’s just fine, you know. When it’s just us two.” Daigo says, turning over his shoulder. He smiles, one of those charming smiles that had always gotten him whatever he wanted as a child, “We’re same-aged friends, after all.”

“Dojima-san.” Mine acknowledges, after a brief pause.

Daigo turns around, to properly look at Mine and lifts an eyebrow. “Dojima. Or Daigo, preferably. Dojima-san’s always my father in my head.”

Mine nods, face impassive. Daigo can’t read him like this. Maybe that’s why he likes when Mine stares at him, filled with longing. At least then, Daigo feels like he knows him. In moments like these, his implacable gazes might as well be a brick wall. “Right. Your Father was also in the Tojo Clan.”

Daigo smiles, wryly, and blows out a puff of smoke. “One of the most horrible men I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting—and I had to call him Father. But damn if he wasn’t good at the job.” He sighs and stubs the cigarette out against the ashtray. “...sometimes feel like I’m competing with his dead spirit. Everybody’s looking at me and wondering if this is what my Father would do. Or what Kiryu-san would do.”

“You’re doing better than any of them.” Mine says, immediately, with a vicious ferocity that Daigo wasn’t expecting. He can’t quite stop his eyebrows rising in surprise, and Mine straightens upwards, looking self-conscious immediately. Daigo regrets his instinctual reaction, immediately. “That is to say, Dojima, that I think that you’ve pulled this Clan into somewhere far more respectable. From what I’ve heard of your Father, he didn’t have the temperament to do proper business on this level—too insistent on formal obeisance and unable to be flexible as the times require. And Kiryu-san might be very honourable, but we are yakuza. There are certain things you have to do as a Chairman, that he couldn’t bring himself to do. But you are practical and do what is necessary, while also not overstepping into excessive violence. You are uniquely suited for this job, Dojima.”

...he’s taken aback a little, he can’t deny it. Daigo wonders if his cheeks are colouring, wonders if his obvious shock is offputting, wonders if this is how Mine feels every time Daigo teases him lightly about his obvious attraction. A startling warmth spreads through his chest, and Daigo can’t stop the slight smile that touches his face. Has anybody ever said something so unreservedly kind and measured about Daigo before?

Maybe this is the difference between everybody else’s gazes on him, and Mine’s gaze. It’s based on something more than desire alone. Respect.

Daigo runs a hand over his slicked-back hair and ruffles it free, with a rueful smile, a smile that he couldn’t take away from his face, even if he tried. “I appreciate that. You know I couldn’t do it without you, right?”

He’d never really believed himself capable of attraction to a man like Mine. All of his previous childhood crushes had been on bright, cheerful conversational, pure-hearted people. Daigo had always figured they would balance out his sardonic cynicism. He’d never thought someone as reserved and principled as Mine would ever make his heart flutter. But then, there was something about that deep hunger and passion that Daigo craved. Perhaps it was because he was no longer the gloomy punk of his youth. Maybe his tastes have changed towards tall, dark and handsome. Maybe Mine’s just that special.

“Dojima—” Mine says, clearly trying to refute it, but Daigo cuts him off.

“I mean it. Everybody in this fucking Clan wants me to do something or be somebody else. Kashiwagi-san wants me to be my mother. Majima-san wants me to be Kiryu-san. Everybody else expects my Father. But not you. You deal with me honestly, and with candour, and never hold any expectations against me except success. I appreciate your faith in me.” Daigo takes a couple of steps forward, until his shoes almost brush up against Mine’s own. He leans down over Mine’s chair. “I could not do this without your backing and help. Truly. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone like you in my life. A true friend.”

Mine tilts his chin up to meet Daigo’s gaze, a hungry devotion in his eyes, and Daigo, for a moment, wonders if this is wrong. If he should hold back, like Kiryu would. But Daigo is Daigo, and Mine clearly wants him anyway, so he leans down and kisses him.

Mine’s mouth is velvety smooth and wet and hot and it is oh-so satisfying a feeling to put his hand against Mine’s broad neck and feel his warmth up against Daigo. He pulls back, with a satisfied sigh, and feels the burn of wasabi across his lips, a final parting kick.

#minedai #mine yoshitaka #dojima daigo #spiraling downhill fic tag #yakuza #rgg

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beevean · 3 years

Note

How about a top 5 (or 10 if you prefer) best and worst bosses in video games? :D

I’m not very well versed in videogames, but anyway...

WORST

10) Chaos 4 (Sonic Adventure): Not a big fan of bosses who waste so much time - ooh, look at that, trying to hit me with very slow, very telegraphed attacks, and taking more and more time to becomes vulnerable the more the fight progresses. Also not a big fan of Tactical Suicide Bosses (excuse me Chaos, why is your strategy “stay in the water for increasingly amounts of time and then decide to raise my head to breathe”? In this form you’re a fish!). Even less of a fan of bosses that you have to fight three times to complete the game.

9) Sonic and Diablon (Shadow the Hedgehog): They couldn’t have come up with a more boring boss if they tried. Shoot the shield, shoot the cannon, avoid the hand, run away when you hear the word “anti-matter”, kick Sonic in the head, slowly chip at the large energy bar, rinse and repeat. The G.U.N. Fortress version is particularly painful, too, as the arena only offers those piss poor pistols with 10 bullets and minimal damage. And much like Chaos 4, you have to fight this lovely boss three times to get to the Last Story, except you don’t even get a different character with different abilities. Also, poor Sonic, from protagonist of the series reduced to nothing more than a footstep.

8) Collision Chaos boss (Sonic CD): Try to play a boss that relies on wonky pinball physics, that shoots projectiles with the only purpose of changing your already precarious trajectory, in the Bad Future that adds slightly more bumpers to destroy, with the American music (I linked the extended version to properly depict the experience). Pain is real.

7) Egg Pinball (Sonic Advance 3): Surprise! I find this boss worse than the more famous Egg Chaser. Yes, the Egg Chaser is very anxiety-inducing with its bottomless pit and the ball chain sending you into it, but once you learn the pattern of the platforms and that Amy as a partner makes it a joke it’s not that bad. This one, though? Even with Amy/Sonic, which is the only team where your partner is useless but you aren’t, this boss relies too much on luck, expecially by the end when way too many balls are flying across the screen. It’s almost funny, in a “screw you” way, that this is one of the two bosses in the game that can’t be hit by Cheese, in the stage where you finally unlock Cream. Pinball and Sonic don’t mix as well as Sonic Team thinks, apparently.

6) Boost Guardian (Metroid Prime 2, Gamecube): This boss’ strategy isn’t even that bad, it’s just that it hits you like a truck in an environment that is already sipping you of health. If being hit was less punishing, guessing the correct timing to jump over it would be fun. Too overkill for its placement in the game.

5) Mother Brain (Metroid Zero Mission): MB in the original Metroid 1 was... there, with the difficulty of the final boss coming from those stupid Rinkas pushing you into the lava below. In the remake, which otherwise is much easier than the original game, you have to think about the Rinkas, the lava, and MB who shots you fireballs! And if you fall into the lava (and you will spend half of the time in the lava)? She closes her eye and protects her only weak spot, forcing you to wait at the mercy of the Rinkas hitting you all over again. Asshole.

4) Dark Gaia (Sonic Unleashed): Dark Gaia, as a whole, is a stain on an otherwise beautiful game. Setting aside his “character” for a while: this boss is way, WAY too long (the first time I clocked at 11 minutes, like hell I’m trying again), the Gaia Colossus phase is frustrating for how slow it is and for having a nigh-unavoidable attack, the running phase requires pitch-perfect timing otherwise say bye bye to your life, and the Super Sonic phase is essentially “slipping down the shield to run over a bunch of snakes, then QTE up your ass”. Riveting. At least it has some banging music...

3) Egg Saucer (Sonic Advance 2): The bosses in SAd2 are already questionable with their “wind pushing you backwards” physics, but this one flings you enough bullshit to make you ragequit. Whoisthisgit made an excellent video explaining everything that makes this boss such a miserable experience. I am so sorry, Knuckles, that you had to be associated with this tragedy.

2) Antlion Mecha (Sonic 2, Game Gear): So let me get this straight devs, you take a boss that is already a little too had as the first boss in the game, you put it in a console with a much smaller screen, you screw up the slope physics making it just a little too easy to slide into the antlion’s jaws (and of course you don’t have any Rings), and on top of that you make the trajectory of the projectiles random when in the Master System they were consistent? Great game design there, guys :V

1) Spider Guardian (Metroid Prime 2, Gamecube): I was never as close as bestemmiare ogni santo e pure il padre eterno as I was when I was trying to beat this abomination. I love the Ing theme, but FUCK if I wasn’t hating every single sound of it while playing, OH MY GOD I envy the people who played it on the Wii so damn much

BEST

10) Robot Carnival/Storm (Sonic Heroes): Yes! Yes, I do like this boss! I’m probably the only one, I don’t care, I find these fights cathartic, especially with Team Chaotix <3

9) Jet Drill (Sonic 3 & Knuckles): The strategy may be simple, but I love the setup of Eggman destroying an ancient garden just to kill Sonic and I love how it emphasizes how much of a reliable bro Tails is. (let’s just ignore the fact that with Tails alone this boss is a pain...)

8) Doomsday Zone (Sonic 3 & Knuckles): The series had its fair share of Super Sonic bosses, but so far no one has beaten the original. It has excellent music, you can feel the tension as you smartly redirect Eggman’s missiles to him and as you chase him down through space, and Eggman in this game is really ready to do anything to win, I love it

7) Beta mk. II (Sonic Adventure): This is probably the best part of Gamma’s campaign. 90% of it is kindergarten-easy, and then Hot Shelter and the final boss are a sudden, but welcome spike in difficulty. Beta mk. II is a far cry from any other E-series robot you’ve faced, being almost completely invulnerable, hitting you with straight up nukes, and the time is still ticking in the corner. Then you add the context of having to kill your brother, and the deceptively upbeat theme, and it becomes a memorable experience.

6) Cykka (Metroid Prime 2): The first phase is fairly boring, but Adult Cykka is really fun to fight for some reason. Not only it has a cool design, but it’s a fast-paced battle (due to having to use the Grapple Beam to swing from platform to platform) where you have to go ham on the boss at certain points (when it becomes Dark Cykka), my two favorite styles for a boss.

5) Nightmare (Metroid Fusion): A name, a certainty. This boss looks, sounds and attacks in a way that makes you feel confused and powerless. Even at it becomes a game of “climb the stairs, shoot at its ungodly face, jump around to avoid it”, it’s still tense.

4) Ridley (Super Metroid): SM isn’t famous for having great bosses, but they put all of their effort into Ridley and it shows. There’s no strategy here, it’s simply “kill him before he kills you”. At this point you’re pretty much at the peak of your strength, you went through literal Hell to get The Baby back, you’re not going to be stopped by the asshole who killed your parents.

3) Shibusawa Keiji (Yakuza 0): What a beast of a final boss. The first Dragon of Dojima is the perfect foil to Kiryu, having all of his strength and style but none of his compassion, and beating him up to a bloody pulp, especially as you see him become sloppier and sloppier, is so, so cathartic. Also, Two Dragons, what more can I say?

2) Egg Dragoon (Sonic Unleashed): Best boss in the series? I don’t know but it’s surely in the top 10, and it’s ironic that you play as the hated Werehog. Not only it has some delicious music (that generations ruined), but it’s such a fun climax after the hell and a half that is Eggmanland! On one hand, Eggman sounds seriously angry and he is ready to kill Sonic (and if you take too much time, which admittedly is hard if you’re not doing it on purpose, he is positively gleeful while he sends you into a fiery death); on the other, Sonic just rips this giant robot apart like tissue paper, and even if it’s done through QTEs, it looks awesome.

1) Kuze Daisaku (Yakuza 0): I’ll let this say it all. If I had to pick a favorite version, the fifth one was my favorite to fight (by that point you have likely upgraded Kiryu’s abilities to the point of making him a juggernaut), but the second one is iconic for a reason... multiple, in fact. “DIE, YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

Special mention to Majima in Y1, YK and YK2 because he looks really fun, but I have never faced him myself so yeah.

#sonic the hedgehog #metroid #yakuza #sorry for the random italian #not my fault you guys don't have a word for insulting god himself #spinningbuster98

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piyoduki · 4 years

Text

Hinata and Kamukura

(wow what a creative title)

Just a place for me to dump my thoughts on these two, and why they are so important to each other... This is another really long essay analysis thingy.

Spoiler warning for... everything. :p

1. Reserve Course

Hinata is an ordinary guy who loved and admired Hope’s Peak Academy. He loves talent, and wishes he could attain a talent and become someone recognised by society.

Hinata always calls himself normal, and says there’s nothing noteworthy about him. But unlike Naegi, Hinata was not satisfied with being normal. Hinata was obsessed with talent, because he believed he needed one to become someone he could be proud of, to be acknowledged by others. That was why he wanted to enter Hope’s Peak Academy so much.

(Horror game protagonist?)

DR’s society is one that puts talented individuals, the best of the best, above everyone else. SDR2 and DR3 give us a look at just how the other people in this world, the ones who were not chosen by Hope’s Peak Academy, feel. Hinata is the one who represents the hopes and despairs of the common people.

Hinata’s hopes about the school were quickly dashed when he realises just how they were treated in comparison to the Main Course students, aka the Ultimates. It’s also interesting that despite claiming to love the school, Hinata doesn’t actually know how the Reserve Course differs from the Main Course. It appears that Hinata believed that he would be able to get a talent and become an Ultimate even if he entered through the Reserve Course. Either the school hid the dark reality of the Reserve Course (which wouldn’t be surprising), or Hinata didn’t actually dig deeper in his research. Especially considering he did not even try to apply for the position of Ultimate Luck (he did not even know about that, actually), I believe that Hinata is someone who doesn’t like to confront his greatest fears or worries, and by choosing to remain ignorant, he can hold on to his rosy image of a school that can make his dreams come true.

Of course, he can’t be ignorant of the truth once he’s actually in the school. Already, he can see a clear difference in how they were treated. The Main Course students are allowed to move between schools easily, but he (and the other Reserve Course students) get beaten up just for trying to enter the building? When his friend and classmate gets murdered by another Reserve Course student, that student then gets murdered by a Main Course student... who never got any sort of punishment? Two Reserve Course students lost their lives and the Main Course student who committed the same grave crime got their crime covered up? (Off-topic but isn’t it weird that Komaeda gets expelled for property damage but Fuyuhiko gets no punishment for MURDER... are the yakuza that powerful? Or more like why does DR3 want to make fun of Komaeda so much?)

And those are just what we see on screen. There is clearly some animosity between Main and Reserve Course students given Hinata’s class seemed very annoyed and hostile towards Koizumi when she went to visit Sato. The whole atmosphere of the Reserve Course is gloomy and depressing, compared to the Main Course where they were skipping class, throwing parties and playing games... We can infer what other micro-aggressions and unfair treatment the Reserve Course students felt when compared to the Main Course.

I have seen some people say that Hinata went through with the Kamukura Project because he wanted to impress Nanami... which I strongly disagree with. If anything it looked like he wanted to avoid her because he knew she would try to stop him. Hinata was fed up with being treated like second-rate trash. Not to mention he already has the pressure of his parents having to pay high school fees (that the Main Course most likely didn’t need to, given there are a few students in debt), so dropping out would disappoint them (and Hinata is stubborn and doesn’t give up easily once he’s decided to stick to something). Natsumi dying was simply the last straw. When he’s given the chance to become the person he’s always dreamed of becoming, a person full of talent, at this point where Hinata was at his lowest, there isn’t anything holding him back anymore. He is no longer afraid of something going wrong, because he’d already seen his classmates DIE, and the perpetrator with an Ultimate talent got to walk away scot-free. If he doesn’t take this chance now, he might end up the same way.

And he most likely would have, given all 2375 Reserve Course students committed a mass suicide. 2357 people who were not even named, or treated as individuals, who were just lumped into one number without any identity beyond having no talent.

By deciding to take part in the Kamukura Project, Hinata was able to live.

2. Kamukura Izuru Project

Or not really, because Hinata got his memories and consciousness erased. Can walking around as an emotionless shell really be called ‘living’? Junko implied that some messed up stuff happened to Hinata during the process, and I don’t know much about brain surgery... but we can imagine it was very painful and not ethical. Like Junko said, in order to completely rewrite Hinata’s personality, the researchers would have to go through drastic measure to accomplish something like that.

When did Hinata stopped being Hinata and when did he become Kamukura? We don’t know. But Hinata could feel everything when he was still Hinata. The fear, anger, regrets, pain, isolation... the feeling when he starts to realise he’s becoming numb. The feeling when he realises he can’t remember certain things. Soon the time will come when he can’t even remember anything. And he doesn’t even care anymore, because his emotions had been repressed to such an extent. (Does he even need anaesthesia to be operated on if he doesn’t feel pain? Hmm.)

He is now called Kamukura Izuru by the scientists who created him. Just like the other Reserve Course students, Hinata’s identity was erased and discarded.

In V3′s UTDP, Kamukura introduces himself in this way, basically showing he doesn’t really feel like he has a sense of identity either.

Kamukura is the proud product of the scientists’ hard work. Yet he is a secret who cannot be shown to the world, not just yet. The school claims it is to protect such rare talent, that he would somehow be mankind’s saviour. But it would surely tarnish Hope’s Peak Academy’s reputation, if the rest of the world knew what kind of lengths they went through to create such artificial hope anyway. And who knows just how much more they could push Kamukura’s talents? If Junko didn’t take over the school and call out to him, who knows what would happen to Kamukura? Would they dispose of him once their success was recorded and it might be too dangerous to keep a human experiment around? Would they fear the very being that they had created, that could easily overpower them if he wanted to? Would Kamukura, who had no motivation or reason to live, even care if he were to get killed...?

Kamukura was locked up in a dark room with just a bed. We can assume he was only let out to undergo tests and such. He was given the bare minimum for survival, and because Kamukura had no motivations, he did not want or need anything else... but he was extremely bored. Kamukura’s whole life was confined to his empty room and the lab. He could definitely escape if he wanted to, but what point was there in leaving? He could predict everything that would happen. To him, the outside world was probably as boring as the world inside the lab, or at least not worth the effort of sneaking out or escaping. (Although he did sneak out once in the DR3 anthology... and as you might have guessed, he found it boring.)

Junko is the one who gave Kamukura a motivation. She promised him the thrills and excitement of a world filled with despair. Kamukura had nothing to lose by going along with her plans, and in the best case scenario she would be correct and perhaps he might just feel something through despair.

Despite being apathetic and having all the talents... Kamukura does want to feel something. Because nothing surprises him, because he can predict everything, because he doesn’t feel challenged by anything, because he finds everything boring, Kamukura wants to find that something that can make him feel. And Junko promised he could find it through despair.

So she puts him into the Student Council Killing Game where he just... stands around and watch them. It isn’t until the very end when a bullet grazes his cheek where he gets somewhat surprised, and kills the student in self defence.

Junko uses him as a scapegoat to blame the killing of the student council on, and Kamukura starts to show signs of annoyance at being used. Eventually Junko kills Nanami, and Hinata’s subconscious reacts to the death of yet another of his friends, causing Kamukura to tear up. Although he is confused by the reaction, he holds on to her hairpin as a reminder. Hinata was still not truly gone, and he caused Kamukura to feel the most emotion he had felt in his short years of existence.

In UDG, Kamukura aggressively rips out Junko’s AI in annoyance, showing that he isn’t truly emotionless and he does dislike being used in such a matter. It’s also possible he was disappointed as despair did not really make him feel much. Still he goes along with her plan to infect the NWP and turn it into a killing game, but mostly to use it as a final showdown between hope and despair.

I say ‘final’, because the two options would both lead to Kamukura being erased and replaced by a different person.

3. Neo World Program and the Virtual Killing Game

Kamukura knew that he would not be able to take part in SDR2′s killing game, and told Komaeda that in Chapter 0. He knew that his previous self (Hinata) would be used as the avatar, so once again he could only watch from afar (was he even conscious?).

Kamukura went in knowing that if the rehabilitation of the Remnants of Despair was a success, then Hinata would live on as Hinata, and his memories and identity of Kamukura Izuru might be suppressed and erased (sound familiar?). If Junko’s plan succeeded, then she would upload her AI into all of the Remnant’s bodies and continue spreading despair.

Kamukura, before that point, had barely found a reason to live. But it still wasn’t strong enough to convince him. So if he were going to die, then at the very least he wanted to see if hope or despair could really excite him. If not, then at that point, would there be anything that could make him feel anything? Perhaps nothing would change even if he were to disappear. If he were to just keep being used by others to achieve such a boring, predictable hope or despair, then maybe he didn’t mind just dying. Perhaps, since death is what made him able to feel something, by putting himself in such a situation, he might even feel the fear of death itself?

And so Kamukura Izuru hijacked the NWP and Hinata Hajime was pulled out from the deepest recesses of his mind, and was able to live in the NWP.

But this Hinata isn’t the Hinata that is all too aware of the reality of being a talentless person in a world loved by talent. This Hinata is a fellow student in a class full of Ultimates. SDR2′s Hinata wanted to believe that he has a talent. When he sees the rest of the students, how they act, how some of them got to the school of his dreams through something like luck? Helped by Komaeda’s supportive words, Hinata believes that he must have just forgotten his talent due to the shock of suddenly waking up on a deserted island. Not to mention his memory of entering the school felt fuzzy in the first place, so it must be true. Since he was surrounded by Ultimates, he had to have one too.

That’s why, in SDR2, Hinata presents himself as a person who is more confident in himself. He sees himself as an equal to all the Ultimates, compared to Komaeda who clearly views himself as beneath the others. Hinata is able to feel comfortable making sarcastic remarks and comments about the others, because he believes he is just like them. But as the game progresses, Hinata starts to doubt himself. In Chapter 3, he starts to have some hazy memories that he tried to suppress.

It’s possible that he might have contracted the Despair Disease from Tsumiki and was starting to remember his past, before he entered Hope’s Peak Academy. Either way, as usual, Hinata continues to ignore his problems and negative thoughts.

When he hears about the traitor, while he did not want to believe it, he started to think it might be him. After all, he was the only one here who did not remember their talent. If he forgot something so important, perhaps it’s possible that he forgot he was the traitor as well. Despite his attempts to fit in with everyone, Hinata still felt left out from the others.

But Hinata continued to believe he was not the traitor, that his talent would come to him eventually, because he didn’t want to face what would happen IF he were the traitor. In Chapter 4, he reacts negatively to Komaeda and Souda suspecting him of being the traitor. He started acting more depressed and impulsive, not helped by the fact he had gone without food and being trapped in the Funhouse for a few days. Not to mention, he was the one who pushed everyone to go to the Funhouse so they could find the truth of their missing memories, in other words his talent.

Hinata became desperate, when he heard that there was a chance he might find out the truth through the Final Dead Room, he was ready to risk his life and go inside, but Nanami stopped him just in time. It’s very possible Nanami knew about his past to be better equipped to help him in his recovery. Or at the very least, it’s likely she knew he did not have a talent, and did not want him to get hurt if he found out the truth.

Unfortunately for them, Komaeda does get access to the secret files by playing roulette at Komaeda-level difficulty. Besides the details about them being Ultimate Despair, Komaeda also finds out the true talents of the Imposter and Hinata, which he promptly rubs in Hinata’s face probably in an attempt to make himself feel better about being the very embodiment of what he hates.

Hinata is shocked and in denial about it for a short while, because it came so suddenly, and from Komaeda, no less. But he could not run away from the truth forever. He should have expected it, being the only one who did not know his talent was just too suspicious. He should know better than anyone, how much he wanted a talent, how much importance he placed on talent. Forgetting was just a convenient excuse to make himself feel better. But that did not make it hurt any less. He was a fraud, a nobody, and this reality crushed Hinata’s fake confidence. The act he put up around the class crumbled. Komaeda constantly bringing up his lack of talent, mocking and insulting him did not help. But he had a murder to solve, and a genocidal Komaeda to deal with the next chapter. Hinata had no time to mope about and take it all in, he had to keep fighting for his survival.

Hinata had already lost hope when he found out about his lack of talent, but Komaeda starts tp be more aggressive in trying to expose the traitor’s identity. And once again Hinata starts to wonder if he were actually the traitor.

Komaeda gave them no time to rest and immediately told the remaining students about his plan to blow up the island. So they worked together to stop him, and found his gruesome dead body, and worked to find the murderer.

In the middle of the investigation, we once again see how pained Hinata felt when he confirms that he was in fact a talentless Reserve Course student.

“Why... why am I here with the other Ultimates?”

Eventually, they find out Komaeda’s death was not just a simple suicide, and they found out Komaeda’s true plan was to expose the traitor and execute them (which they later found was the exact opposite of what he wanted). Because Hinata knew Komaeda’s true personality, he knew that Komaeda wouldn’t die in such a meaningless way, so Hinata suspected there had to be something more to his death. Hinata was forced to expose Nanami as the traitor, through Monomi’s diary that included that moment that only Nanami should know about... Nanami, who noticed he was feeling anxious and being suspected of being the traitor, who left her group to find him because she was worried for him, who convinced him not to take the risk and leave the Final Dead Room, who told him not to listen to Komaeda mocking him.

Also, when Hinata saw that scene in the diary, he pretended not to acknowledge it and thought he shouldn’t bring it up to Nanami, because he wanted to avoid a potential problem once again, until he was forced to confront it in the trial.

With both Komaeda and Nanami gone, Hinata and the others are left exhausted and empty. But the time was up, and they could finally leave...? Even if Hinata wanted to completely give up now, the doors to freedom were (supposedly) finally open and it would be a waste not to at least give it a look.

A tired Hinata enters the mysterious Future Foundation building, and slowly pieces together the truth behind this killing game. In the final trial, we finally learn about Hinata’s backstory through Junko happily telling him that he is not merely a talentless Reserve Course student, but also a human experiment and his real self is no longer the same person standing in the class trial. The Future Foundation members are also shocked that Hinata and Kamukura were apparently the same person. Hinata’s first reaction is understandably denial, who would believe that they would go through something so messed up for the sake of hope and talent? Especially after Junko adds that Kamukura was the one who killed the student council members and kickstarted the tragedy.

But the seeds of doubt were already planted into Hinata. Junko easily uses Hinata’s fears to deter him from going along with the Forced Shutdown sequence. After all, by going through with it, he and the others would lose their memories of the virtual killing game, meaning he would go back to being Kamukura Izuru. For Hinata, this means that he would cease to exist. Again.

Junko brings up the fact that the Future Foundation want them to do the Forced Shutdown for their own desires, wanting to stop her from taking over the world, but is it really worth the cost of sacrificing their own lives and memories?

Hinata has a breakdown because how is he supposed to choose? Between sacrificing himself or saving the world, just because some people say so? He is afraid. He doesn’t want to disappear. He suddenly got put into this spot where the only choices are to die or destroy the world. Both Junko and the Future Foundation are only thinking of their own goals. The Future Foundation might give false reassurance that everything will be fine even if they go back to being Ultimate Despair, but will it really? They conveniently don’t bring up the fact that Hinata won’t even exist anymore in an attempt to convince them to go along with their plan to defeat Junko. As Junko mentioned, do these people even care about him and the others?

Hinata refuses to choose, because he cannot handle it anymore. The burden is too great, and Hinata would rather just give up. Once again, he is unable to face his issues head on and chooses to avoid them.

Hinata imagines an ending where the class is happy and back on Jabberwock Island. But Nanami snaps him out of it and confronts him. Hinata tells him his worries, tells him that he wants to give up, and adds that if they go through with the Forced Shutdown, everyone would forget about her too. Nanami tells him that no matter what, the future she and everyone fought for would still remain, and that Hinata should believe in himself and stop being so indecisive. Nanami tells him that they are the only ones who can decide their own future, and if they can’t choose one of the two options, to create their own future.

Hinata confronts his impression of Kamukura, or rather, his own negative feelings projected onto Kamukura’s avatar. His feelings of being talentless, being useless, being unable to change anything, being betrayed, his denial of being Kamukura Izuru. Hinata finally faces his own feelings head on and realises how uncool he is to act like that and keep moping about.

Thanks to Nanami’s encouragement, Hinata was able to overcome his feelings and awaken. Finally, Hinata has stopped running away and has decided to fight for a new future. He says that he is not Kamukura Izuru, but Hinata Hajime, and argues that they don’t have to stick to the two choices presented to them, that they can and will create their own future that they can be proud of. Hinata convinces the other survivors to do the same, and they go through with the Forced Shutdown sequence. Usami appears and defeats Junko, and the survivors wake up from the NWP.

3.5. World Destroyer

This technically happened before DR3, so I’ll put this here. With Kamukura’s talents, Hinata was able to create the AI of World Destroyer, who was given Kamukura’s personality to be as efficient and ruthless in his job as possible. And he was modelled after Hinata’s avatar because... well there are a lot of theories, but personally I think it’s because Kamukura’s hair physics would be a bigger pain to work with then Hinata’s short hair.

Okay that was a joke, but my interpretation the reason is that they wanted to pick someone who is distant from the other students, so that they wouldn’t get too attached or get emotionally hurt when WD shoots them and wakes them up. So they went with Hinata since the students won’t have any memories of him before the killing game (which seems to be where their minds are trapped within).

It’s possible that Hinata might sometimes feel as if he were not truly a part of the class, as everyone except him shared some memories of their time in Hope’s Peak Academy or being Remnants of Despair (that they may or may not have regained). We already know he thinks that he is different from everyone else. Not to mention, he might have also felt responsible for causing them to die in the NWP since it was Kamukura who injected Junko’s AI into it, so he tried to wake them from their coma.

Hinata (and Kamukura) had to shoulder the huge burden of saving these people, with the hopes of all the other survivors resting on him. Did he think, he was the only one who could do something like that? With all these talents, he could finally be of use to his friends? Despite people like Nanami constantly telling him that it’s okay not to have a talent, it’s only because he became Kamukura, that he obtained all this talent, that he was able to bring everyone back to life.

Having to deal with the pressure that you will be responsible for all these people’s lives, knowing that it’s your fault but not really that they ended up like this, having to deal with living the rest of your life with another person in your mind, knowing that you finally got what you always wanted but you caused so many people and yourself so much pain... That is something only Hinata Hajime would feel.

4. Kamukura, Hinata and the Future

(This section will contain a lot of rambling headcanons based on how they get along after the events of SDR2/DR3. Also me being confused by DR3′s writing.)

When Hinata wakes up from the simulation, it is heavily implied that Kamukura’s personality is still present within him, as he occasionally mentions being bored (like when the Future Foundation members come after them). Even though he cut his hair, and continues to mainly present himself as Hinata, he retains Kamukura’s talents and shares a body and mind with him.

There are a few confusing things about SDR2 and DR3, such as the fact Naegi and friends don’t know Kamukura and Hinata were the same person, even though Naegi would have likely needed to meet Kamukura to ‘capture’ him, and in the visions Kamukura retained his appearance when talking to Komaeda on the boat to the real Jabberwock Island. It would be kind of suspicious to see that Kamukura was not present in the simulation but instead a completely different person, yet the Future Foundation talk as if they did not know Kamukura even existed...? Why would a random Reserve Course student be in the simulation instead? You would think they would know the identities of who they were going to upload into a rehabilitation programme... or at least put two-and-two together and do some research into this Hinata Hajime person? Anyway I digressed.

I believe that Kamukura was able to also get what he wanted. While he might also have known about the Forced Shutdown sequence, I feel like he might still see it as a non-answer (it may be the Future Foundation’s hope, but he and the other Remnants would go back to being despair anyway). But I don’t think he would have expected Hinata to retain his personality (and possibly memories of the killing game) as well. (Or is it just Kamukura acting as Hinata? We will never know why it seems like the SDR2 cast reverted to their in-game personalities despite the Forced Shutdown being unable to retain those memories...) Either way, I think Kamukura would not have predicted such a thing, because it... defies logic. Seriously how did they even fuse? Why does Hinata have heterochromia?? Did the program malfunction and a miracle happen?? I guess so.

Hinata can still feel emotions, but probably a lot less than he would before, because his brain has been messed with to suppress emotions. But for Kamukura, who had felt nothing his entire life, to be able to feel what it is like to ‘feel’, even just a little, is exactly the kind of stimulus he had been looking for.

And for Hinata, to go from being a talentless nobody, to becoming possibly the only survivor of the Reserve Course, to be suddenly equipped with all these skills and talents... I imagine it must have overloaded him, to suddenly wake up and feel so foreign in your own body. To suddenly realise there is someone else besides him, in his own brain, and that someone be an emotionless, apathetic, harsh, judgemental person... but still a person.

As I mentioned before, I think Hinata felt responsible for putting the class through the killing game. Even if it wasn’t technically him, because it was him that became Kamukura, he caused them to suffer to such an extent... But at the same time, because it was him, because it was Kamukura, he was able to use his foreign talents for something he wanted to do - to save his friends. For once, his identity as the Ultimate Hope was not being taken advantage of by someone else, but he was able to use it for his own wishes. For once, Hinata was able to regain control of his, of Kamukura’s, talents. Because of Kamukura, Hinata was able to live, face his regrets and save his friends.

For Kamukura, I think that he has finally found a meaning to his life. To be able to feel Hinata’s conviction in wanting to rescue his comatose friends. To want to use his talents that he previously would find boring. To want to live and keep existing. Hinata has shown him that things that he can’t predict do exist. Because of Hinata, Kamukura was able to find his purpose.

Hinata, who had always doubted himself, his identity, had to suddenly wake up as two people in the same body. He had to come to terms with the fact that he was different from everyone else, that he had gone through some things people would never be able to understand. He had to learn how accept this was how he would be for the rest of his life, to accept Kamukura as a part of himself. And similarly, Kamukura would also have to accept Hinata as a part of him, rather than just his past that did not matter, Hinata exists and is here right now.

Also, since Kamukura technically only existed for a few years, despite having so much knowledge, he is still lacking in experience. So Hinata would still have things to show and teach him. I also think that Kamukura has low energy due to his lack of motivation, which was why he barely moves about, only sees the value in ‘efficient’ actions, prefers to stand back and observe others, and that is why Hinata is the one that takes the lead in their body after SDR2.

(Stealthy edit but I totally missed this part in the OVA, but Hinata confirms they are both him, meaning they’ve both come to terms with each other and has accepted the other as a part of themselves. :D)

Hinata needs Kamukura, and Kamukura needs Hinata. Without one of them, the other would not exist, and they make up for what the other lacks.

Bonus: Cute Stuff

To end this off, here are some miscellaneous cute facts about these two!

Kamukura talks in a more polite way than Hinata

They have two colours of underwear, blue and red/pink with white sakura patterns

Kodaka made a tweet that suggested Hinata Hajime’s name could be read similarly to Kamukura [Hi (ka) -nata (muku) Hajime (kura)]

Kamukura’s hair follows a similar pattern to Hinata’s hair (ahoge, the one pointy middle strand)

Hinata’s stop/cancel sign in his eyes transforms to a target sign when he becomes Kamukura (two prongs) and awakened Hinata (three prongs!!)

Hinata’s official watch has black and red clock hands... :]

Anyway, thanks for reading if you somehow made it this far! This ended up being.... extremely long and rambly... and I might have repeated my points a few times... but I hope you still enjoyed it! :’D

#danganronpa #sdr2 #hinata hajime #kamukura izuru #fishy thoughts #long post #text post #ahhh hh hh h #i may like them... maybe...#kamuhina #slaps the kamuhi tag here too because let's be real it's a kamuhi essay too ww

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alexis-dot-com · 4 years

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Template nicked from someone else who didn’t give credit to OP

Quick reasons for each pick: Persona 3 is the perfect mix of JRPG, visual novel, hope and despair. It's my favourite game in a fantastic series. The story, characters, music and gameplay are all top-notch. You gotta play this game. Yakuza 0 is probably my favourite game in the series from a story stand-point. There's drama, intrigue highs and lows. One of the best stories in gaming. Muramasa The Demon Blade's art is just gorgeous. All hand painted with some vibrant colours that bring the Edo period of Japan to life. Atlus has a killer music team. Everything they touch is gold. Their soundtracks for the SMT series, Persona, Catherine, are all incredible. From jazz, to rock, rap to pop, it's all amazing. Castlevania is a difficult series at the best of times, but the third game on the NES is rough. The platforming, enemy placement, and stiff controls make for a frustrating mix. Definitely worth a play, though. The Jackbox games are all fantastic ways to spend an evening with friends. Whiplash, Drawful, Tee KO are personal highlights. Resident Evil 6 wasn't too well received by many, but I loved every second of it. Main issues people had with it were the focus on action over horror, and the over-use of Quick-TIme-Events, but it's a big, dumb action game that's a ton of fun to play. I don't have the energy to rant about Fortnite. It's just so mediocre. The World Ends With You is easily one of the best DS games. The story, music, gameplay are all fantastic. Absolutely underrated, and I can't wait for the sequel. Mortal Kombat is just okay. The amount of praised lumped on it is just not justified. Warner Bros. spent so much money on the latest entry and it does not show. The animations are stiff, which leads to limp feeling attacks. I highly recommend a series by SugarPunchDesignWorks on Youtube that go in depth on all the issues surrounding the bad animation in that series. The Last of Us is my pick for Best Voice acting for this one scene alone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Csw8G6yruE And while Resident Evil 1 has some absolute stinkers looking back, It's amazing to see (or hear) just how far acting in gaming has come. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbNvS1LYD8 Zagreus from Hades is such a great protagonist. The way he speaks to people is so chummy, calling everyone "mate". His voice lines also act as tutorials for the game, and with thousands of unique lines of dialogue, you really get to know his personality over the hours. Juri Han is a bastard but she's my bastard. She's one of the villains from Super Street Fighter IV, and she just chews the scenery. Her gameplay reflects her toying personality, with counters and a keepaway play style. Link is a silent protagonist so you might be wondering how he's my favourite one? His animations are top-notch. He's a complete dumb-ass, from happily eating rocks, to punching treasure chests open, he's an absolute idiot, but he's also the saviour of Hyrule. Sephiroth is similar to Juri in that he likes to toy with the heroes. He crops up everywhere through Final Fantasy VII just to mess with Cloud. He's menacing when he needs to be though, and terrifying as the story goes on. Ellie (from the Last of Us Part 2 specifically) suuucks. She went from my favourite character in the first game to the one character I couldn't stand in the sequel. She's so hell-bent on revenge that she's blind to everything else. She just makes the most idiotic decisions throughout the entire run-time. I remember playing Super Mario World at a cousin's house when I was around 4? It was a ton of fun and it really opened my eyes to a whole new medium of entertainment. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the developer of the Yakuza franchise deserve more recognition, and I'm happy to see them get it in recent years. The Yakuza series is (mostly) focused on one character, Kiryu, who was a member of the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia), but just wants a quiet life. Needless to say things don't go his way as he's roped back in with every new game. Rockstar games make highly produced games, sure, but I feel their attention to detail takes away from other aspects (like if the game's even fun to play). Red Dead Redemption's horses have balls that shrink in cold areas! But the game's an absolute chore to get through, with slow animations for everything from picking up ammunition to looting enemy bodies. I'd love to see them focus their attention to actual fun gameplay than horse nuts. The Walking Dead is depressing. The visual novels, the TV series, and the game. The latter is probably the most depressing however, as you control characters who are forced to make decisions nobody should ever have to. I've not even finished all of the series because I need to take a year-or-two break between them. There are a million horror games that could have taken the place of "creepy" but Bioshock has such a unique environment that it has to be here. The world of Rapture, being at the bottom of the ocean is terrifying because you can't exactly escape. It's oddly beautiful at times, however, with whales swimming by among the skyline, and schools of fish visible through apartment windows. Katamari Damacy is always there to liven things up though! In Katamari, you play as the Prince of All Cosmos who needs to roll up objects to make an even bigger ball to create stars for the universe. It's an odd, funny, and addictive game that never ceases to cheer me up. I don't spoil the ending to Metal Gear Solid 3, but I will say it was pretty cool to see one of the final frames of the game be used as its box-art. Kojima's Metal Gear series is too long to summarise here so I won't even try. The salute Big Boss gives at the end of the game, though was the perfect send off to a hugely enjoyable game. This is how you make a game packed with details and fun gameplay, Rockstar. If you read all of this, jesus, get a life.

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theropoda · 4 years

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3, 4, 6-8, 11, 13-17, 19-22, 26-30 uwu

WOO LAD THAT’S A LOT THANK U!!! this got long and i wrote an essay or two LOL so im putting it under a readmore!

3: Best game you’ve ever played? WEEEELLLL.......let me preface this with two things: one, i am a FAKE GAMER as in my laptop is not at all made for gaming, it’s piss poor, so a big chunk of games i’m interested in is because i watched a playthrough of them lol. i have a 3ds but only 3 games on it (animal crossing new leaf, tomodachi life, nintedogs & cats). second, i’m very bad at choosing favorites of things.....BUUUUT .....i choooooose, in no particular order, OFF, pigeonetics, elder scrolls oblivion, pathologic classic HD!! i’m more than likely forgetting a few though, so sorry about that

4: Worst game you’ve ever played? as i said above, cannot choose favorites, neither can i choose whatever the opposite of favorites is but...uhh, does lif even count as a game? like lif, the stupid little furry flash game i remember playing on some shady website. it was surprisingly very active with a BUNCH of people there but i kept dying like every 5 seconds....AWFUL

6: A game that’s changed you the most? WELL define Changed.....ummm aha first thing that comes to mind is OFF. it’s one of those things where you never knew you wanted something so fucking bad until you saw it--and it’s like that for me. i NEVER knew i loved that odd, surreal, colorful, “looks playful and simple in some parts but incredibly violent and unnerving in other parts” aesthetic til i played it. like aesthetically i love that game to BITS and something about it just stuck with me til the end of time.

later in life (meaning, past year or so) it changed me because it taught me a lesson about storytelling and creative endeavors. a very useful lesson. which is: things don’t really need to have a meaning. stories, art, music, writing, whatnot, while it CAN be deep and meaningful, while you CAN use it as a way to communicate with the world about all kinds of heartfelt things, it can also be...nothing, really.

once i, as usual, got ridiculously overwhelmingly sad about small things. specifically seeing other people around me come up with all kinds of deep and meaningful characters and stories, sometimes putting them into webcomics or writings of theirs, and they were all so well-thought out and detailed and what i envied most was people put a lot of themselves and their experiences into them, venting and coping through them, whilst also making these larger-than-life grandiose complex stories and worlds and so on and so forth.

it made me look at my own ideas and get mad/frustrated at how shallow they were. but then i remembered OFF and i felt better because Fun Fact, mortis ghost has a now-abandoned dA account and if you go through the comment section on his profile, he answers a lot of fan questions and he mentions several times that the game didn’t really have a “meaning”, it didn’t really have a “deeper story” or moral or anything, really. i’m paraphrasing this but i vividly remember him saying “i wanted to make a game, so i did”.

that made me feel a lot better because it made me realise that sometimes art--especially stories, in my case-- doesn’t NEED to be DEEP or have MEANING...sometimes it can just BE!!!! sometimes it really can just be all about AESTHETICS like who GIVES a shit if there’s a hidden meaning if you take the first letter of all of your characters’ names and put them backwards, sometimes all that matters is if they just VIBE with you y’know....

yume nikki is similar in this regard bc that game doesn’t have any story other than “collect egg” and yet it’s so impactful. that game doesn’t have a story or meaning it just IS........ :) GOD THATS SO LONG IM SORRY ABOUT THAT but yeah. funny violent ghostbusting baseball man is a game that changed me :)

7: A game you’ll never forget? OFF AGAIN LOL,,, it’s just so memorable because of how unique it is. visuals, soundtrack, story, everything is so memorable. unforgettable. oh god you can tell how much i love this damn game can’t you

8: Best soundtrack? yakuza 0, OFF, there is a picture (another game by mortis ghost, again composed by alias conrad coldwood who also composed OFF), pigeonetics (the entire soundtrack of which is here), jojo’s bizarre adventure all star battle and eyes of heaven, silent hill 2 & 3, undertale....probably forgetting more but all of these...earcandy

11: Hardest game you’ve played? i am a shitty gamer so this is Most games i’ve played lol!! but uhh..well you see. hardest game i remember playing as of recent is pathologic classic hd in which it’s...not only hard to understand what any character is saying at any given time lol but also, i don’t think it’s HARD it’s just...you need to focus. you REALLY need to fucking focus and pay attention in this game. so i wouldn’t say its HARD, but i’m only putting this here bc it’s in recent memory.

i say recent memory because the true answer is susceptible to “yeah, but now you’re older, it must not be so hard.” as in if i played it now i think i’d have a way easier time. but when i was around....10-12 years old i had several ps3 video game adaptations of animated movies and i had SUCH a fucking hard time with them. g-force, bolt and up in particular were fucking HARD. like genuinely, the hardest time i had EVER had in my live playing video games is tied to these three fucking games. g-force and bolt ESPECIALLY. one particular level in bolt took both me AND my sister around a year to fucking finish.

again, i was baby, so i bet i’d have a much easier time with them now that i’m 17. but for now, in my experience, bolt and g-force for the ps3 were harder than pathologic classic. i think icepick lodge should take a few notes for them for pathologic 2.

13: A game you were the most excited for when it wasn’t released yet? STREETS OF KAMUROCHO...i spent the entire day of its release anticipating its launch lol

14: A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting? hmm..most games i like and know about do have voice acting so i dunno....i guess it would’ve been kind of cool if morrowind had like, full proper voice acting. but i can understand why it only voice acted things like greetings and battle insults because GOD that game is SO...complicated...and as a result, the conversations are so lengthy and text-full. playing morrowind is really like a goddamn book! if it was voice acted i’m sure all that information would have to be shortened bc i know no one is going to fucking voice act two whole paragraphs

15: Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover? pigeonetics and yakuza in which instead of being about the criminal underworld it’s about shady and unethical pigeon clubs, breeding, racing, etc etc...a lot of illegal shit does happen in the world of pigeons especially when it comes to racing; prized racers have been kidnapped and held for ransom before. and then there’s Avian Cucking: The Sport, where people breed the sexiest pigeons (horseman thief pouters), release them outside to seduce other people’s sexy pigeons, and bring them back and keep ‘em, drama ensues. will kiryu ever escape his past as a professional pigeon-napper, and find solace in his new life as a pigeon hobbyist? find out now by playing YACOOZA......

JOKES ASIDES i don’t know i really don’t....umm, pigeonetics and animal crossing somehow?? :O... like, instead of managing your own town it’s managing your own loft!...orrrr, the jojo games (all star battle & eyes of heaven) with yakuza, because i think they’re somewhat similar because they’re both haha Wacky Silly AND serious over the top fighty-fighting.....or maybe a crossover with OFF and discover my body, which, despite being an incredibly short and obscure indie game i still love to bits for what it’s worth. WAIT ANIMAL CROSSING AND MINECRAFT THAT WOULD FUCK SO HARD OH MY GOD

16: Character you’ve hated most? From what game? i can’t think of any character i like, HATE...with a burning passion.. there are a few i dislike or have a complicated relationship with though.. i’m not interested in the series anymore but ouma from drv3...i’ll admit that he is a bit fun sometimes, especially in the very early beginning he’s a likeable brat but as the game progresses he becomes more irritating than anything and i have an issue with him in regards to writing, despite the fact that i have never been awake in any english class ever lol. it’s too long to put in this already long post but i’ll keep it at that. if you like him, well, good for you for finding joy in something i couldn’t! but he just doesn’t do it for me.

AH I JUST REMEMBERED....MINE......FROM YAKUZA 3....maybe i’d change my mind if i watched a playthrough of y3 again, because i think you always absorb something better on your second watch (tho i honestly Dont have the energy to do that all over again, the yakuza games are too fucking long), but i really hate his writing. spoilers for y3 but, i think mine’s writing, alongside other things in the game, were super messy...and a big part of why i hate him is that not only is he one of those “could’ve had great potential but fell flat” sorta guys but also his love for daigo is seen as some fans as good gay rep and i?????/.............um....WELL let’s just say that, i think people nowadays will see any gay character ever in any circumstance and say it’s good gay rep just based off the fact that A Gay Character exists....he was Not, good gay rep imo....he was not, let alone, Good. .........

17: What game do you never tell people you play? can’t think of any games i wouldn’t tell people i play.. idk exactly what this question’s asking. does it mean what game you don’t tell ppl you play bc you’re embarrassed about it...? i’m not very embarrassed by any of them. the only thing that comes close, i guess, is uhh lioden and wolvden. i’ve only interacted with those communities a LITTLE TINY WEE BIT, yet of what i’ve seen it’s a goddamn dumpster fire and i’d never want to be associated with them lol

19: Which game do you think deserves a revival? i’m well aware it’ll never happen and that it’s more a wet dream than anything but...PT/silent hills..... on a more realistic/”could happen” note, PIGEONETICS!!!! SERIOUSLY, it’s an amazing game about amazing animals and it teaches genetics in a very simplified and efficient way!! genetics is SO hard for me to understand, i fucking hated studying it but this game really helped me understand how it works AND its super engaging and interesting!! HOWEVER, of all the pigeon genes we know of, only a handful were seen in pigeonetics and i’d LOVE a sequel that employs new game mechanics AND new genes!! i wanna learn about bronze and stencil genes! i wanna learn about phenotypes like grizzled and pied!!! genes like sooty and dirty!!! @ UNIVERSITY OF UTAH GENETICS DEPARTMENT PLEASE IM BEGIGNG YOU

20: What was the first video game you ever played? earliest memories of Gaming involves me at my aunt’s house playing two games: super mario brothers and some kind of trapeze game. i don’t remember anything else though

21: How old were you when you first played a video game? i can’t remember but i must’ve been REAL tiny.... 6-9 years, maybe??

22: If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do? immerse myself meaning go into their world...? huh....on one hand i’d like to go in the world of yakuza 0 to play in the arcades and do whore related activities but i’d also love to go into the world of animal crossing (and i’m pretty sure i’d be some sort of generic dromaeosaurid in that game!!) and shop, chat with villagers, do chores for them, go fishing, bug hunting, eat delicious fucking food like the apples mangos peaches cherries etc etc.....OH AND FOSSIL HUNTING THAT’S THE BEST PART!! though it would definetly be a little weird, to be a little dinosaur and finding a fossil of a...little dinosaur....i guess the non-sentient species went extinct and the dinosaur i am is some kind of, descendant of a sapient non-avian dinosaur that survived the k-pg extinction event...oh but who cares all i want is a cool little ambulocetus fossil or something. and some cherry pie :)

26: Handheld or console? my old ps3 just went kaput one day years ago so i haven’t used it in years so i can’t compare well... but i’d say handheld, because it lets me like DO stuff more...would love to get a console one day, a ps4 maybe but i’m kinda worried it’ll make me stay in one room all day wasting away my time when there’s other stuff i can do, y’know? but something handheld like my 3ds, on the other hand...i can do stuff with it. i can take it to my room and play it between breaks i take as i clean the room and fold my clothes, i can watch something on the tv and play the game during ad breaks, i can take it outside too if it has charge to last me a while! so....handheld i guess

27: Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry? yakuza 0 and undertale in particular have ALMOST made me fucking bawl with many of its moments....yakuza 0 especially, after that Fucking Ending i had trouble sleeping because oh my fucking god. video game people SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

28: Which character’s clothes do you wish you owned the most?

29: Which is more important, gameplay or story? HMMM....well, if i were to play a game with a shitty story but really good and fun gameplay i’d probably continue playing it for the gameplay. but if i played a game with shitty gameplay but an interesting story, there is a chance i’d play it more for the sake of the story but also i might just quite and see the rest of the story on youtube or something. i’m more likely to go through a boring story for fun gameplay than go through boring gameplay for an interesting story, so i guess gameplay is more important to me....that is, WHEN i actually own and play a game as opposed to when i just watch someone play a game because i don’t own the game but wanna know abt the story lol

30: A game that hasn’t been localized in your country that you think should be localized? i have no idea how video game localization really works....but i assume localizing a game in india would mean something like, removing content according to cultural norm and also somehow translating it into the 22 official languages..? or just two or three language if it’s tied to a particular state, which seems way more doable. i honestly have no idea? i’ve never interacted w the indian gaming community that much to be honest, all i know of it is of the video games i’ve seen sold in some game stores and a few whispers about like solid snake or whoever from my school’s cafeteria....the most popular games here, to my knowledge, are those very streamable games like fortnite and PUBG and your call of duties and whatnot. those generic shooters. and even then, that honestly isn’t the “indian” gaming community bc this country is so FUCKHUGE, it’s just tamil nadu. one state.

soooo, according to what little i know of gaming interests in where i live, i don’t think any of the games i like should be localized here bc i don’t really think there’s an audience for it as far as i can tell :( maybe animal crossing? it’s a fun little games for all ages and i think it has a chance of becoming popular here, so maybe that is worth a shot! but i can’t think of any other game that i like that really has an audience here (other than Me lol)

#asks #stommevrouw #THANK U EVIE THIS WAS SO FUNNNNNNN #WOOF haha this made me tired #im probably hitting the bed now! thank u!!

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bucketofcowboys · 4 years

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