yakuza 6 is growing on me
while i still have many misgivings about the notes within the song of life, the whole composition isn't as much of a mess as i initially felt. the shock of how limited the combat is has been muted by doing so much damage that i don't even really have time to get miffed that there's functionally no depth to it. a narrative that i found took too long to really get anywhere is now heading straight for the wall like aubrey mcclendon at max rpm (this is a good thing). i also just really love the new cast. the whole hirose family, joon-gi han, someya, big lo, the list goes on. in particular, i like how two characters that initially seem mostly unimportant quickly grow to become the focus of the narrative. the list goes on.
the weak points for me that i don't think are going to go away though are such:
- while i really enjoy the breezy chill vibes of onomichi, i do just wish there was like, more to do there. this is weird to say about an area with 3 major minigames within it, but i find them all kind of slight. you don't really play baseball, bar chat isn't that interesting, and spearfishing takes like 30 minutes to complete if you get the broken speargun.
- i still haven't gotten over how the "not gold" cutscenes mostly look really really stiff. this was still the case in prior games, but it feels like the "good" cheap cutscenes are much much rarer than they were in 5 and 0. the cutscenes where characters stand in stock poses flapping their jaws are a) completely ever-present and b) stick out way more in contrast to how good the gold cutscenes look. -still chaps my ass that the ps4 versions of 6 and kiwami 2 are forever doomed to be laggy 30fps versions
anyway i'm almost at the end. i have baseball, hostess club, and a small handful of other substories left to finish. given how much is left to get all the achievements after that, i think i'll just go for that to cuz fuck it.