128: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (with Deadbeatpunk - WTFDYW!?)

00:00:02.72 Dave Hello everybody, my name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video games deep dive review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it, and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show, host of the What the Fuck Do You Want podcast, and one of the shirtless, gyrating sickos on the streets of Honolulu. Pleased to welcome back the nicest man on the internet, Deadbeat Punk, 00:00:31.90 DeadbeatpunK Pleasure to be back, David. Thank you for the introduction. And I thought I was going to be one of the drunks that got shot out of the tree. 00:00:34.94 Dave of course oh yeah yeah moving on up in the world yeah sooner or later you'll just be a regular old street thug exactly yeah well it's good to have you back previously we did the citizen sleeper episode together which is a real good time people want to go back and listen to that but today we have a 00:00:38.65 DeadbeatpunK So that's quite the upgrade for me. 00:00:46.93 DeadbeatpunK Someday there will be a Deadbeat punk enemy and that's me. I'm going to retire. 00:01:01.90 DeadbeatpunK Yes, I think people got the wrong impression we didn't do a lot of swearing in that one and people thought I was nice. 00:01:06.22 Dave Yeah, this game today is very different. It might be a little bit more conducive to the regular tone. Today, we're going to be talking about Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, which is an RPG developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega for contemporary consoles and PC minus the Switch in 2024. Before we get too deep into it, previous Yakuza episodes on the show, there was Yakuza Like a Dragon, which was episode 34 with Rick Firestone, Like a Dragon Ishin, which was episode 74 with Nave from the Gaming Together podcast, and Like a Dragon Gaiden, the man who erased his name, episode 102 with Matt aka Stormageddon and Flora Merigold. So this is the fourth Yakuza episode. ah Matt Stormageddon and I also did an episode just about the entire series and why we love it. So this is, I guess, the fifth Yakuza episode 00:02:04.41 Dave on the show. If this is your first time listening today, thank you for tuning in. We appreciate you very much. Here's how spoilers work. It is the same as every episode of the podcast. We're not going to spoil the story for you for a while. We're going to talk about everything else. And then we'll warn you when the spoilers begin. There's also a timestamp down in the show notes for when to get out of here if you don't want to know what happens in this game today. To get started, what is like a dragon infinite wealth? I say the longtime Yakuza series finally leaves Japan and takes on Hawaii. Punk, what's the pitch for this game for you? 00:02:41.97 DeadbeatpunK I would go for, after 30 odd years of street violence and melodrama, Kiryu finally gets a mai tai. 00:02:49.37 Dave That's right. Fantastic. As far as playtime goes, this is quite a long game. I played this on PC. Most of it I actually played on Steam Deck. And it took me 76 hours to beat. And that was with all of these sub stories that I found. I did a lot of the teammate links, but I did not do a lot of optional content. There's an entire fucking Animal Crossing game in this game. I skipped the whole thing. So 76 hours feels on the low end for this game. ah How about you? 00:03:21.75 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, I was on the 100 hours side of things. I got a code for this game from 47. 00:03:25.26 Dave Yeah. 00:03:28.17 DeadbeatpunK Catherine at Forty Seven, thanks again. 00:03:30.46 Dave Yeah. 00:03:30.76 DeadbeatpunK And yeah, I wanted to kind of get in deep before I reviewed it. I think if I was playing it for myself, I would have skipped a bit. But that Animal Crossing island, that absorbed me. 00:03:44.48 Dave Okay, right on. well we will ah We'll get into what that's all about. Maybe you can tell me what was so enthralling about that, because I did the one quest in it, and then I skipped it. But for later, so long game, Let's talk a little bit about our histories with the series. Now, the two of us, we did an episode on your podcast about this series, where we talked about every single talking point, everything that could be said about the series in 30 minutes. So what? 00:04:14.08 DeadbeatpunK Yes, not a detailed mist. 00:04:16.44 Dave Yes, exactly. Nothing at all. 00:04:17.70 DeadbeatpunK And you even got a little bit of karaoke at the end. It was lovely. 00:04:20.28 Dave That's right. Yeah, I did. So, people can go check that out if you want to hear me sing without preparation. You really threw me a curveball there with that one. 00:04:29.92 DeadbeatpunK I like to do that. 00:04:32.05 Dave So, tell everybody about your history with the Yakuza series. When did you first play it? What got you into it? And then, um you know, what was it that made you want to jump on Infinite Wealth right even before release? 00:04:44.67 DeadbeatpunK Well, to my shame, I did play it on the PlayStation 2 when it was advertised as Japanese GTA. 00:04:51.62 Dave Right. 00:04:52.09 DeadbeatpunK And I'm afraid to say, at that tender young age, I didn't get it. It wasn't until I played Yakuza 0, and I think the change to the combat system really made it speak to me a bit more, because it felt a lot more like River City Ransom. And yeah, it just clicked and I rinsed through the entire series again after that. 00:05:15.58 Dave Yeah, it's ah it's definitely not Japanese GTA, so I'm glad that I didn't jump in like when that was the thing that was going around, because I probably would have been like, no, this sucks. 00:05:23.06 DeadbeatpunK had to really mis sold it at that stage. Yeah. 00:05:25.95 Dave You can't hit people with hammers at all in this game. Well, you can, but not in the same way. 00:05:31.68 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, the Joker was Majima, so that novelty will stay with me. 00:05:34.22 Dave Yeah, that's true, yeah. ah For me, it's the same story that I've told many times on the podcast by now, but my first, I will tell it again, yeah, an encore, a quintuple encore or something like that. 00:05:41.36 DeadbeatpunK What do you tell it so well, Dave? Regalous. 00:05:50.15 Dave um Yakuza 0 was the first one for me, played in 2019 or so. It was just because I just got a PS4 and I looked at those online lists of best PS4 games and Yakuza 0 was on there and I saw gameplay videos of Kiryu beating people over the head with motorcycles and I was like, well, I gotta try this. So I played that and then it's just been a journey catching up. And this is the first game that I played right at release in the series, other than Gaiden, which is a side game. 00:06:20.58 Dave It's much smaller This is the first like main series game that I've played right on release um and I love just how Well, I won't give it all away people should go listen to the episode that we did on your show But one of the things about the yakuza series for me is that this series is uniquely Consistently good There are over 10 games in the series that I've played now and I can't think of another game series with this many games and 00:06:33.08 DeadbeatpunK Oh yeah. 00:06:49.04 Dave where I would say that I genuinely like all of them, and I think that they're all quite good. It's really, really impressive. 00:06:56.19 DeadbeatpunK Poor Mega Man. 00:06:58.65 Dave I've only played a couple of Mega Man games. 00:07:01.17 DeadbeatpunK David. One for the way backlog. 00:07:03.61 Dave but I like how you're calling me David, like you're my mom scolding me. It's giving me complicated feelings right now. 00:07:11.65 DeadbeatpunK Saucy. 00:07:14.61 Dave So to get into some opening thoughts here about infinite wealth. so The main opening thought here is that if you like the Yakuza series, you're definitely going to like this. I think it is in line with the quality. All of the characteristics that make people like the series, the characterization, the melodrama, the goofy tone, the turn based combat, that stuff is quite good. um I think this game is too long and there are some story things that really stretch way too long without really anything entertaining happening, in my opinion, which kind of like 00:07:50.23 Dave I played this right when it came out. I played it for like a month and then I took a several month break because I was just like, I don't want to play this right now, I'm tired. 00:07:59.43 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 00:08:00.04 Dave And then I picked it back up. I played like 40 hours in two weeks and finished the game out. So it was one where I got kind of tired of playing it and I think it's a pacing issue. I don't see any reason why this game needs to be this long just to finish it. So there are parts that drag, but other than that, like This is a quality Yakuza game. Fans of the series are going to like it. The dual protagonist setup that they have going on here really for the first time since Yakuza 4, when they have multiple protagonists. They have that going on here too. And that is pretty good. like I like that. Both protagonists are awesome. Enjoyed following the story. So it was what I expected. It's a really good game. It has everything I like about the series. 00:08:50.72 Dave It's just, unfortunately, I think a bit too long and that, you know, if I were to make a ranking of the games in the series, that would be a thing where I'd be like, yeah, this game is really good, but it's long. 00:09:02.79 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, you really need to set some time aside for it. 00:09:05.74 Dave Yeah. 00:09:06.41 DeadbeatpunK Might be a bit off topic, but do you think this is a hangover for games being charged with $70 for you guys, 70 pounds for ourselves? 00:09:14.80 Dave and Not for me. I mean, like by any metric, I think that this game is worth it. 00:09:19.03 DeadbeatpunK Oh no, I just mean from a design decision, if you're going to be charging more for a product now, do you think people are lengthening it? 00:09:19.29 Dave Uh, so I, I didn't like, you know, I honestly, I don't think so. At least not with this. Cause the last one, the naming convention is really fucked up when you talk about like this transition, but Yakuza like a dragon or Yakuza seven was a pretty long game too. 00:09:44.91 Dave So like, I think that. when they're doing this turn-based like Dragon Quest inspired style, like they're doing it long on purpose. And now you have two protagonist stories and an entire Animal Crossing game and all of that stuff. Like, I think this game was going to be long. 00:09:59.51 DeadbeatpunK And then there was talk that Gaiden was from you yeah removed from this game and made it into its own. 00:10:05.91 Dave Oh yeah. Oh, can you imagine if that was in here too? That would be just too much. What do you think right at the top, like some top-level thoughts about this game? 00:10:18.44 DeadbeatpunK Well the opening I loved the jazzy at the intro was almost persona-esque in its opening but after that it really did get into all the details and I think that was to explain the previous game to people that may be newcomers because you always run that risk. 00:10:24.10 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:10:34.78 Dave Yeah, yeah. 00:10:37.75 DeadbeatpunK So I think that dried a little bit. I would have liked to get into the meat of the game sooner. Again, if we seem to be mentioning time a lot with this. 00:10:47.09 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Like the advertising and stuff and in the elevator pitches that we both did was like Yakuza in Hawaii, but you don't go to Hawaii right away. Like you could spend five to 10 hours before you even get to Hawaii. 00:10:57.05 DeadbeatpunK It's quite a while. 00:11:00.84 Dave So it does take some time to set up for sure. ah Do you think that this is a good game for brand new people to the series or do you think they should start elsewhere? 00:11:12.11 DeadbeatpunK I think you'll get rewarded either as a long-term fan or a newcomer. I think a lot of things that we'll talk about later is almost an education into the series. Much like Zero, you could go in and want to relive it all for yourself if you were so inclined. 00:11:32.08 Dave Yeah. 00:11:35.27 Dave Yeah, there is a lot of stuff in here that I think could serve that dual purpose of teaching backstory to newcomers, but also being like those nice callbacks for longtime fans for sure. 00:11:44.92 DeadbeatpunK Mmhmm. 00:11:45.92 Dave Yeah. 00:11:49.66 Dave Cool, well, let's get into talking about the story setup. Let's listen to a bit of music when we come back. Let me restart that. Cool, well, let's listen to a bit of music and then when we come back, we will get into what this story setup is all about. 00:12:10.43 Dave In Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth, you play once again as the wannabe Dragon Quest hero slash Golden Retriever X Yakuza member, Kasuga Ichiban. And Ichiban was introduced in the previous game, Yakuza Like a Dragon. In that game, ah that game culminated with the dissolution of the two dominant Yakuza clans in the country. So at the beginning of this game, a lot of the X Yakuza members are having a hard time reintegrating into society for various various reasons. 00:12:44.58 Dave Ichiban is helping them find legitimate jobs at a local temp agency, but a VTuber puts out a report that he's doing shady things. And that leads to him getting fired and having a whole bunch of free time on his hands. And a quick little side note here, ah the VTuber thing is an interesting thing. We'll kind of like put this in a place in time when someone were to play this like 30 years later or something like that. but 00:13:10.22 DeadbeatpunK listen 00:13:11.36 Dave seems like they're trying to make a point here that Vtubers and YouTube reporters are pests. 00:13:17.45 DeadbeatpunK You do get that impression to begin with and you can kind of see why it's kind of easy even in our pockets of gaming on social media. 00:13:25.26 Dave Yeah. 00:13:27.13 DeadbeatpunK It's not hard to kick up a rumor. 00:13:28.54 Dave No, no, definitely not. So that plays a big part in how this story is propelled forward. A lot of times it's not just straight up the Yakuza people dealing with each other. It's this VTuber has a report and now the heat is on or something like that. So big. 00:13:48.24 DeadbeatpunK And the Vtuber always has an element of truth as a foundation. 00:13:52.98 Dave Yeah. 00:13:53.04 DeadbeatpunK These things did happen, but not the way they spin it. 00:13:57.06 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. So now Ichiban has a bunch of free time and this causes him to follow one of his, you know, ex-Yakuza mentees. to a local Yakuza headquarters of the Seiryu clan, which is the dominant one in this story. The captain of the clan is also trying to continue this great dissolution plan, but enlist Ichiban's help ah for something else. 00:14:24.42 DeadbeatpunK So Dave, we've talked about the start of this game now. 00:14:29.44 Dave Yeah. 00:14:30.03 DeadbeatpunK Up to this point, it takes a couple of hours to actually get to this point. 00:14:33.23 Dave Yes, it does. 00:14:35.27 DeadbeatpunK There is a segment where the gang gets back together and Ichiban gets his punch perm back out of nowhere. 00:14:42.94 DeadbeatpunK I guess the other two helped do it up again. 00:14:46.36 Dave Yeah. 00:14:48.61 DeadbeatpunK Really enjoyed that segment, but yeah, it took a while for this game to get going. 00:14:53.14 Dave Yeah, it's a lot like people have kind of moved on since the end of the previous game and everyone's working like Ichiban has his job, Adachi has his job, everyone's kind of moved on and then it all goes to shit because of this VTuber's story. And then you do have like this getting the band back together type of thing going on. 00:15:13.70 DeadbeatpunK Mm 00:15:16.45 Dave You have a little storyline where Ichiban goes on a date and the characters help him get ready for the date. 00:15:22.38 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 00:15:22.76 Dave And they're all just so fucking stupid and like, they're such a great cast and it's good to see them get back together at the beginning of this. 00:15:32.63 Dave So the task for Ichiban is that he needs to go to Hawaii and track down a woman who is important to the Saryu clan. And the kicker is this woman also might be Ichiban's long lost mother. Ichiban was an orphan who was raised by the local Yakuza clan as a child, raised in the bath house in the neighborhood, the soapland, yeah. 00:15:57.25 DeadbeatpunK ah Soap land. 00:15:59.90 Dave so Ichiban has a chance to meet his mom and also help out this clan captain. So we're going on to Hawaii. But before we go there, let's talk a little bit about Ichiban as a character, because this is your first time on this podcast talking about the series. What is it about Ichiban that stands out to you as a protagonist? 00:16:20.65 DeadbeatpunK I think everybody says the same thing. I mean, you called him a golden retriever at the start of the episode. I always say he's a Labrador man. 00:16:26.85 Dave Yeah. 00:16:26.95 DeadbeatpunK just brainless, goofy, but loyal to a fault. 00:16:32.86 Dave Yes. 00:16:33.97 DeadbeatpunK And I think you do get a feel for that if you haven't played the previous game, even with him dating. And, you know, you remember this man was incarcerated for a lot of his, what, from late teenage years up to midlife, really? 00:16:46.08 Dave Yep. 00:16:51.74 DeadbeatpunK So he's not street savvy, he's quite naive, and this does help get him into the situations he does, but he's just so emotive in a series where we've come to respect stoicism. 00:16:55.96 Dave No. 00:17:07.67 Dave yeah yeah exactly like so Kiryu who is the protagonist of Yakuza 0 through 6 and he's also in this game as a dual protagonist Kiryu's that stoic strong like inspires the people around him due to his loyalty and like 00:17:08.39 DeadbeatpunK So it is a complete contrast to what we would be used to in other protagonists. 00:17:32.25 Dave physical strength it's like are you think of like in the Rocky movie when Yvonne Drago says that it's like punching steel like that's the feeling you get from Kiryu as well Ichiban Yeah, Ichiban just has like this infectious like positivity and Inspiration about just who he is as this like you said super naive super positive super friendly super loyal to a fault all of those things like 00:17:42.64 DeadbeatpunK You're just making them mad. 00:18:01.82 Dave He gets himself in all of these situations because he wants to help everybody and he believes in, he believes that everybody can be the best version of themselves. 00:18:12.67 DeadbeatpunK yeah 00:18:12.86 Dave Like literally everybody. So he is slightly different from Kiryu, but a lot of those same qualities make them both super likable as protagonists. 00:18:19.87 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:18:23.19 DeadbeatpunK listen 00:18:24.31 Dave Yeah. So, you had something? Go ahead. 00:18:30.83 DeadbeatpunK No, no, sorry. Breath of, Mike. 00:18:31.96 Dave Okay. 00:18:36.08 Dave So we're going to Hawaii and this was one thing that I was really excited for because this series is really known for like one of their biggest strengths is building these locations out, these small open worlds that are set in real world places or inspired by real places and they basically just changed the names. 00:18:52.69 DeadbeatpunK Mm. 00:18:57.33 Dave So This game, a lot of it takes place in Honolulu in the Waikiki Beach area. There's also sections in Yokohama and in Kamurocho, which Kamurocho has built based on the red light district in Tokyo. One of the strengths of the series is how they recreate not only what these places look like, but what they feel like to be there. Like they somehow capture that atmosphere. And I think that having been to Hawaii, that's we went on our honeymoon in Hawaii, 00:19:29.04 Dave So I've been in this neighborhood where this game takes place. 00:19:30.81 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 00:19:32.18 Dave I've been in this and the red light district in Tokyo, different story, different type of vacation. 00:19:39.49 Dave um They recreated, I think that more relaxed feel of walking around like that beach area in Hawaii. And it's, you know, this long-time strength of the series that continues here in this game, I think. 00:19:55.16 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, virtual tourism will always be a draw, and I haven't got to visit these places yet. 00:19:58.66 Dave Yeah, yeah. 00:20:03.30 DeadbeatpunK it's ah My only drawback was how technically similar Hawaii was to Japan, but I think there's no getting around that with the game engine. But yeah, it was fun. New sites. I think with the maps back in Japan, I think some of us know them better than our own hometowns at this stage. 00:20:24.54 Dave Oh yeah. A hundred percent. 00:20:25.49 DeadbeatpunK You know, every side straight when something changes, you know, that's not right. The last time I was here, it was at a butcher shop. 00:20:32.48 Dave Yeah. 00:20:35.27 Dave Yeah, I think I could, I think maybe only my hometown, other places I've lived, I know Kamurocho better than those places, for sure. 00:20:43.29 DeadbeatpunK The last time I was here, this was an empty lot. 00:20:44.33 Dave ah So, exactly. Now it's, well, it's this big old thing now. Yeah. 00:20:52.42 Dave um Interesting, going back to those neighborhoods from previous games too, and seeing how they have changed a little bit, like there's the park in Kamurocho that used to be like where all the homeless people lived. Now it is this huge apartment complex and stuff. 00:21:06.88 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:21:09.95 Dave And so these neighborhoods are evolving through the games. You feel like you're along that journey too. It's pretty cool. 00:21:16.10 DeadbeatpunK It does feel like if you dropped into a random game you would be able to tell the time period as well. It's quite well established that way. 00:21:21.94 Dave Yeah. 00:21:23.72 DeadbeatpunK And I have to say it was quite a shock when you realized this game is set in Hawaii. 00:21:30.67 Dave Yeah. 00:21:30.73 DeadbeatpunK I thought the Japan segments would be much smaller and I didn't realize we would have the full map to explore when we went back. 00:21:39.07 Dave Mm hmm. 00:21:40.36 DeadbeatpunK A lot of land mass in this game. 00:21:40.87 Dave Now, yeah, one of the benefits, I guess of them like, using this game engine and putting out so many games per year is that they probably basically have all these other neighborhoods built and ready to go with just a little bit of tweaking, I guess. 00:21:55.50 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 00:21:56.94 Dave So that's a benefit for sure. So this setting in Hawaii opens up like really one of the only things that really bugged me other than the pacing I already talked about earlier. One thing that just kind of stuck in my craw was really actually pretty annoying. I think in the first half of the game you have to pick whether you're going to play with English voice acting or Japanese voice acting. However, and but we'll say, yeah, up at the top, in my opinion, not a choice. 00:22:27.42 DeadbeatpunK It's not even a choice. 00:22:31.68 Dave The Japanese voice acting is incredible. And like, I will stop short of saying that the English voice acting is bad. 00:22:34.46 DeadbeatpunK listen 00:22:40.64 Dave Cause I don't think I can properly judge it because I'm like a thousand hours into Japanese voice acting in these games. I can't switch to English now. It would, it would feel wrong. 00:22:52.30 DeadbeatpunK No, when you're well established with these characters, they have their voices. They are played by people. You're with that. I'm always glad the choice is there for newcomers or people that don't want the option. 00:22:58.88 Dave Yeah. 00:23:03.43 Dave Exactly, yeah. So, because you have to pick, you're either going to have everyone speaking English, or if you pick the Japanese dub, ah the main characters speak Japanese, but then you go to Hawaii, where people should be speaking English if this were, if it were perfect. 00:23:21.53 DeadbeatpunK Did they not all speak Japanese and Hawaii when you went there? 00:23:24.61 Dave they did not all speak Japanese, especially not like the people in you know stores and stuff like that. 00:23:25.66 DeadbeatpunK Oh. 00:23:31.17 Dave So it sets up a difficult logistical situation, I think, when they pick this setting, ah but they want people to be speaking English in Hawaii because that's what they should be doing. 00:23:34.01 DeadbeatpunK you. 00:23:45.20 Dave um What happens is that They feel like they took the Japanese voice cast, had them do all their Japanese lines, and then a lot of people either did not, a lot of characters, we'll say, that should speak English either do not have English voice lines or they have English voice lines. 00:24:06.54 Dave And like, I really hate to rip on somebody who's doing voice acting in a second language. 00:24:10.68 DeadbeatpunK Oh no, I mean, everybody in this game. 00:24:13.00 Dave Like, fuck me if I'm going to do voice acting in my second language, but some of these, uh, English voice lines in the Japanese dub are horrific. They're terrible. And they're really... 00:24:22.97 DeadbeatpunK I think the scripts must have been written out phonetically in their native language is the impression I got. 00:24:28.41 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly right. And like again, I feel bad saying that the voice lines are terrible, but some of these are main characters. like There's one, ah this character named Bryce, who is a major character in the game, a native Hawaiian person. 00:24:45.01 DeadbeatpunK With emotional scenes. 00:24:47.26 Dave and The English dub or the English voice acting is awful. It is legitimately distracting. 00:24:54.56 DeadbeatpunK And again, I have massive respect for anybody that is bilingual or more, but when it's a media product, you'd think, but ah I think this is down to direction. 00:24:59.93 Dave Yeah. No, and like what I don't understand is like, so they have a full English dub. 00:25:06.99 DeadbeatpunK I would not like to throw shade at the voice talent here. 00:25:11.01 Dave no and like what what i don't understand is like so they have a full english dub 00:25:16.41 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 00:25:16.68 Dave Why not just use the English lines for characters that should be speaking English? Like, yeah, I don't know if it's a contractual thing, like, or they can't do that. 00:25:21.18 DeadbeatpunK Swap them in a note. Yeah. 00:25:28.85 Dave It's a logistical nightmare, I feel like, because the other part of this is, if you're playing with the Japanese dub, your main characters don't speak English. 00:25:35.33 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 00:25:38.00 Dave Like, they've made a point of it in previous games to be like, Kiryu and Ichiban do not speak English. 00:25:43.52 DeadbeatpunK Well, even in this game, when you begin with, when you first land, you're looking for a taxi driver that is fluent in Japanese. 00:25:50.50 Dave Yeah. 00:25:51.14 DeadbeatpunK So you can ask them questions. 00:25:53.51 Dave Right. And that's another character, that taxi driver, Tomizawa, who becomes a party member. He supposedly grew up in Hawaii. He speaks fluent Japanese because of his family's Japanese. His English voice is also really bad for someone who... 00:26:11.06 DeadbeatpunK That is one that I saw clipped into memes online. 00:26:14.62 Dave Yeah. Yeah. For a character who grew up in Hawaii, they should, you know, it's ah It's a really difficult situation. And like I made a note of this because it was very distracting for me. 00:26:27.83 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:26:31.10 Dave Maybe I'm holding this series to a really high level because voice acting is usually something where we're like, these games are perfect for voice acting. 00:26:38.66 DeadbeatpunK yeah 00:26:39.15 Dave They're incredible across the board. And this is the first time, and you like the immersion of having these neighborhoods built up the way that they are, and you really feel like you're there. 00:26:45.13 DeadbeatpunK Mhmm. 00:26:49.65 Dave but the Hawaii section of this game is just not quite there for that. 00:26:56.36 DeadbeatpunK And although it may be ridiculous when I said out loud, I was thinking now after Gaiden, with all Kiryu's gadgets that he had, his rocket shoes, would it have been outside the realms of possibility to have earbuds that auto-translated English to Japanese? 00:27:06.13 Dave Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He has a he has like a he has like a fucking spy whip and rocket shoes in that game. 00:27:20.45 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:27:21.75 Dave He could, uh, he can have Google translate going. 00:27:25.56 DeadbeatpunK You could have something like that. So our protagonists could understand everyone around them. They might not be able to respond, but. 00:27:33.83 Dave Yeah. So, the realistic thing would be like, Tomizawa is bilingual. 00:27:39.55 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 00:27:40.12 Dave Uh, Chitose, another character is bilingual. She's an exchange student from Japan. She's in there studying, supposedly studying in English, right? But I don't think you could have them just translate back and forth in all of these scenes. like That would be ridiculous. 00:27:53.54 DeadbeatpunK Just double the script. 00:27:55.81 Dave Yeah, you'd have you'd have a villain giving like their big speech about how you know these are the big changes we're gonna make and you're all just insects in my way and I'm gonna squash you and everyone's like, hold on, like what did they just say right now? but 00:28:08.53 DeadbeatpunK Idioms don't really work when you're translating. You'll have to say that again, please. 00:28:11.81 Dave Yeah, exactly. So I don't know this, uh, not to like to spend, you know, a ton of time on this, but this was the first time in any of these games that I have felt anything less than like a perfect level of immersion in a setting. 00:28:27.15 DeadbeatpunK Even when they had the students in the previous title that could speak English, it's the sub story you get before you start doing quizzes. 00:28:39.95 Dave Yeah. 00:28:40.94 DeadbeatpunK They made a joke about this sort of translation in their previous game. 00:28:43.60 Dave Yeah, it's just an unfortunate kind of weird logistical thing that they set themselves up for by having this take place out of Japan. 00:28:53.75 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, it was very difficult, and again, not to detract from the work the voice actors did. 00:29:01.23 Dave No, I'm not blaming somebody for not being bilingual. It's really hard to speak multiple languages. 00:29:04.87 DeadbeatpunK I might, I don't know if I want to be on a recording doing that, but yeah. 00:29:07.17 Dave But Yeah. I mean, I am bilingual. I am, but I don't want to do voice acting in my second language. Like that shit's, that's horrifying. So yeah, again, just to reiterate at the end of this, it feels like a decision that they made and some voice actors were put in a really tough spot. 00:29:27.10 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:29:27.28 Dave Uh, but you do have some scenes where Bryce is giving a big speech and it's just like, Oh man, this is rough. 00:29:37.90 DeadbeatpunK I should be fully involved in this scenario but I'm kind of giggling a little bit. 00:29:43.35 Dave Yeah, it's, uh, yeah. So anyway, I will say this does get better later in the game. It feels like they kind of abandoned characters being bilingual and they were just like, fuck it. Everyone speaks Japanese all the time and like the last half of the game, even in Hawaii. And it's like, you don't have that realism factor anymore, but you also don't have that distraction anymore. And I think that was the better way to go. 00:30:06.32 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:30:09.18 Dave So in Hawaii. Ichiban also meets up with the other protagonist mentioned before, Kazuma Kiryu, who has been living in the shadows after faking his death at the end of Yakuza 6, and the ending of Like a Dragon Gaiden took him to Hawaii. When I say living in the shadows, I mean kind of trying to maintain anonymity by wearing sunglasses when he's outside and getting a new hairstyle, but still beating the fuck out of everyone who crosses him. 00:30:39.67 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, it cuts quite a fake here. You're not going to get them mixed up. Very easy. 00:30:42.81 Dave the whole No, no, I don't like it. We talked about it in a dragon guide episode, but like everyone's like, Hey, you're Kazuma Kiryu. Right? And he's like, no, that's not me. And then he beats the shit out of like 30 people at once. They're like, that's definitely you. And he's like, Nope, don't know what you're talking about. 00:30:59.49 DeadbeatpunK He just doesn't have the guile to pull it off. that Nope. 00:31:02.49 Dave No. 00:31:03.43 DeadbeatpunK That's an okey-doke. 00:31:05.40 Dave So, uh, here use there. He's also on a mission from his handlers, uh, that are. kind of controlling his life in exchange for them helping him fake his death, he has to kind of do what they say. So he's in Hawaii also. His mission aligns with Ichiban's, so they team up again, but this game introduces a new wrinkle in the story because Kiryu's days might be numbered. And I'm not going to say anything more right now, but that is kind of the new thing that they throw in here. Kiryu's days might be numbered. 00:31:41.05 DeadbeatpunK He's going to retire. 00:31:42.57 Dave Yeah, just he's that cop, right? He's like, just got two more weeks that I can retire. 00:31:49.06 DeadbeatpunK Two more days in Hawaii. How will I manage? 00:31:52.51 Dave Yeah. Well, spoiler alert, things go weird. um So Ichiban and Kiryu are on this chase for this woman. who might be Ichiban's mother. And I think we'll put a pin in like specific story things that happen for now. But I just want to give another shout out to Ichiban and Kiryu as really good like the lead characters. 00:32:17.89 Dave And there are parts in the game where both of them split off and they have their own parties, I guess, in different parts of the story. So the contrast between the two and um continues along like some character development from previous games with Kiryu, where he's not quite the same type of character that he was before. ah He's older. 00:32:41.71 Dave He now has this, like we said, this thing hanging over him. um I really like what they've done with him. He's not exactly the same as he was before. 00:32:54.79 DeadbeatpunK learning to depend on a party. I do like how a core mechanic of the game actually worked its way into the story. 00:33:02.85 Dave Yeah. 00:33:03.44 DeadbeatpunK Ichiban's inspiring a new group of people to become heroes like him, whereas Kiryu's kind of not softening, but learning to rely on his friends. 00:33:09.12 Dave Yeah. 00:33:19.06 DeadbeatpunK that's 00:33:21.31 DeadbeatpunK No, I was going to go on a tangent, I shan't. 00:33:24.04 Dave Okay, fair enough. A quick shout out to the voice actors again in the Japanese dub which we both played. So Kazuhiro Nakaya as Ichiban and Takeshi Kuroda, long time voice of Kiryu, are back for this one here. Both of them are incredible to the point where they could have gotten anyone to do the English voices they would have sounded wrong in my head. Both of them embody these characters to me. They're great. 00:33:54.52 DeadbeatpunK It is when you look at a character and you hear the voice, those are the voices they tend to belong to. 00:34:00.16 Dave Yeah, exactly. And it's not Mark Hamill for Majima for me, despite the first game. One ah one quick note about this dual protagonist setup, just and we'll talk about this more in the spoiler section, but Ichiban is like the main character coming off of the previous game, and the game starts out as you playing as Ichiban. 00:34:22.78 Dave And I think if you laid them out side by side, you spend more time controlling Ichiban in this game. But this story feels like Kiryu's story to me. Ichiban's story takes a backseat like halfway through, I would say. And this very much becomes a story about Kiryu and what's going on in his story. 00:34:42.96 DeadbeatpunK I think that could depend too on what type of player you were. I do wonder if newcomers would be less attached to hear you as you and I would be. 00:34:51.72 Dave That's true, yeah. A lot of the stuff you're doing as Kiryu is, we'll say, referential to things in the past. And if you skipped all of that, like I spent a long time doing a lot of that stuff, but it is optional, a lot of it. 00:35:03.58 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:35:06.02 Dave So if you skipped all of that, then I think you're right. you could lean the other way. 00:35:14.24 Dave Since this is a party-based RPG, you do have a lot of other characters who join your traveling party. Party members returned from the previous game, the former cop Adachi, the former nurse Nanba, the hostess Saeko, the gangster turned chef in this game Zhao, local Korean mafia leaders Sunny and Junghi, and then a few new characters that they meet in Hawaii. ah Eric Tomizawa, the cab driver like we talked about, and then Chitose Fujinomiya who is a 00:35:47.83 Dave Exchange student who you learn is an heiress to a giant corporation in Japan. So you've got a really diverse cast of characters. Like they injected some youth into the group this time with Chitose and Eric seems a bit younger. 00:36:00.13 DeadbeatpunK Mhmm. 00:36:03.15 Dave And then you have all like the older fuck ups like Ichiban and Namba and Adachi and stuff from the previous game. It's a really eclectic party, we'll say. 00:36:18.17 Dave Let's see. And I think that this party all has a really good dynamic together, especially the best friend group of Ichiban, Namba, and Adachi all together. They are just three idiots having the best time whenever they're all together. It's great. 00:36:37.58 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, it's very impressive the chemistry they get going in this game and they do splinter them all off at various points. 00:36:40.61 Dave Yeah. 00:36:43.87 DeadbeatpunK And there isn't a bad duo. Every time two characters get lumped together, they always have something to talk about. There's back and forth between everyone. 00:36:52.32 Dave Yeah, yeah it's I mean, really good ah really good writing, I think, like when characters are talking with each other. And then a lot of the characters in this game have their own personal storylines that you'll explore, like their backstories. And there's a lot of ah themes of making amends, getting closure for things that happened, or making peace with things that happened in the past. Making amends with people from your past. A lot of the characters are going through these types of stories and I thought these were all really good. 00:37:25.41 DeadbeatpunK And no characters overly like Ichiban. He wears everything on his sleeve. As soon as he bumps into somebody, he tells them about his situation. 00:37:31.97 Dave Yeah. 00:37:36.41 DeadbeatpunK Other characters need to earn their trust. The story evolves as the chapters go by. 00:37:43.13 DeadbeatpunK It's just, it feels very organic. 00:37:45.64 Dave Exactly. Yeah. and kind of spearheading those you know thinking about the past or making amends and things like that ah is Kiryu's story, which we'll talk about in the spoiler section. 00:37:57.65 Dave ah Just a quick note, a little teaser for people. You can go around and Kiryu will see things that remind him of things that happened in the previous games. 00:38:05.02 DeadbeatpunK Heh. 00:38:06.91 Dave And these were really entertaining because they walk this line that the series always walks of being serious, being sentimental, being melodramatic, but also being some of the funniest shit that you'll see in video games. So like the one example I pulled out is he goes to a convenience store and he just kind of reminisces about, oh, I love, you know, convenience stores and each chain has their own specialty food. And I just think the food is delicious. I hope that one day I can try them all. But while this is happening, 00:38:41.30 Dave They show you a picture of him like throwing a dude through a store shelf. It's like a perfect encapsulation of the two tones that these games always walk. 00:38:52.74 DeadbeatpunK They really were the ultimate Easter eggs of Kim's. 00:38:55.67 Dave yeah yeah ah They're fantastic. So um That's the main story. Let's talk about the substories a little bit too, or just you know briefly talk about them. Because those are where the two tones really shine. The main story of Yakuza games is always like high melodrama. People faking their own death and betrayals and all kinds of stuff like that and grand master plans. The sub stories or the side quests are always full of these little, you know, short stories. 00:39:27.87 Dave The gameplay in these games usually amounts to you talking to somebody, they tell you their problem, you beat the shit out of some people, and then you solve their problem and everybody learns a lesson along the way. But the combination to me of some of these being really heartfelt, some of them are downright sad, like a couple of them brought tears to my eyes, while also being the most absurd shit possible is something that like, 00:39:49.96 DeadbeatpunK Oh yeah. 00:39:57.80 Dave A lot of games do goofy absurd shit, but not many games can do both. The goofy stuff and the very serious, very real stuff in the same five minute side quest. 00:40:11.17 DeadbeatpunK And just blend it together so well that it doesn't stick out or feel odd or out of place. 00:40:16.16 Dave Yeah. 00:40:18.59 Dave Yeah. So like, I don't know, you might be going down the street and some little kid lost their bouncy ball or something like that. And it sounds like a really stupid little time waster thing, but these writers. 00:40:29.94 DeadbeatpunK his grandfather gave him that bouncy ball and it's the only thing he had left. 00:40:31.99 Dave Exactly. There's something hiding behind it. So like, I do recommend doing most of these, uh, these sub stories because you'll get that backstory. You'll get, uh, some goofs along the way. And like I said, This little kid lost his bouncy ball. The way you're going to get it back is you have to beat the shit out of six people and then get the ball back. 00:40:56.03 DeadbeatpunK an eccentric bouncy ball collector that forgot his way and forgot why he started collecting these in the first place and then the two became best friends. 00:41:05.29 Dave Yeah. Crazy. And then last thing about the story, just the customary shout out every single episode that we do, the shout out for the localization team for taking a game written in another language with jokes and puns and idioms and all of these things in another language and just making everything thoroughly entertaining, really funny. It's fantastic. So again, I always want to shout these people out, the localizers. 00:41:35.56 DeadbeatpunK Ever since the remastered collection they went back and cleaned up the scripts there and it's such subtle yet fatal work. 00:41:43.08 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. And there's some um interviews that were done with people on the team, giving examples like, this joke in Japanese does not work if you literally translate it to English. 00:41:58.53 Dave It would make no sense at all. So here's how we have to find something completely different that carries the tone of the original joke, but is funny for English speakers. It's just, it's great. 00:42:10.92 DeadbeatpunK Yes, well done them. 00:42:12.67 Dave Yeah, absolutely. 00:42:18.08 Dave Little thing about how this game looks and sounds, just a quick shout out to the style. Yakuza games always go for the more photorealistic style, but within that very recognizable character designs, I would say, and especially faces, the faces are always super memorable. You know People have big scars or just goofy looking faces. So they're going for that. and then the recreation of the neighborhoods, I think, you know, again, we're in this photo realistic style, but you can look at these places and be like, oh shit, that is Tokyo right there. 00:42:56.57 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:42:57.17 Dave Looks exactly like it. um The recreation of Hawaii. 00:42:58.90 DeadbeatpunK That's been mentioned before, but that ambient noise of the cities always feels so authentic. 00:43:02.70 Dave Yeah. Yeah. And this, yeah. And the sound design too is fantastic. The difference in the sound of the neighborhood in Honolulu versus the sound of the neighborhood in Tokyo. and youll spend a lot of time in Honolulu and then you will go back to Japan for something and be like it's so fucking loud here and that's that's how it is. Tokyo is a loud place and it's much louder than Honolulu and they captured that in this game too. So the visuals and sound design do a good job to give you that sense of where you are and what it's like to be there. 00:43:43.80 Dave Yakuza games music I think is like one of those that kind of like does the job i'm not really known for their music I would say other than the karaoke yeah yeah there are some like good like uptempo like especially during boss fights and stuff like that there is one 00:43:54.08 DeadbeatpunK I don't know. There's a few battle things and yeah, they're, I see a lot of workout playlists being composed of these songs. 00:44:11.74 Dave like really pivotal boss fight in this game where the mute like I noticed the music I was like this is incredible right now I think you know the one we're talking about but we'll talk about it in the the spoiler section but yeah yeah so you do have that 00:44:17.59 DeadbeatpunK Really step it up. 00:44:23.17 DeadbeatpunK because the previous game kinda introduced almost dub-steppy music to the combat scenes where you really wouldn't have had that before. It's great beating up people to good tunes. 00:44:36.74 Dave Yeah and then you have the same songs that the series has been using for like over a decade at this point. The same song that plays when you start a sub story. The same song that plays when people are learning their lesson at the end of the sub story. All of those things they're just comforting things that you're like yeah this is my favorite pair of sweatpants like this is comfortable. 00:45:01.92 DeadbeatpunK I did like when you got to Hawaii anytime you recruited a new party member. It was like a tropical variant of the jingle. 00:45:09.51 Dave Yeah. Yeah, the same. ah You got a new party member song, but it's on like a ukulele and like a steel drum or some shit. 00:45:17.78 DeadbeatpunK It entertained me. 00:45:32.49 Dave Let's talk about the gameplay in infinite wealth. So It is turn-based combat. We'll talk about combat first, because you'll be doing a lot of it just like every Yakuza game. 00:45:40.33 DeadbeatpunK Mmhmm. 00:45:42.54 Dave So turn-based combat, ah real turn-based. And this combat system has button presses, timed button presses. When you attack to do extra damage, when you do a spell, there will be a little QTE to do bonus damage. 00:45:52.37 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:45:58.09 Dave Sometimes you have to hit the QTE to get a special effect, like ah Some spells or abilities will be like, you will get a critical hit if you get the timing thing down. 00:46:09.35 DeadbeatpunK yeah 00:46:10.34 Dave I didn't check on the accessibility options for that. i Hopefully there is something there. 00:46:17.43 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, even you've noticed the hold button instead of tapping and quite a few games now. So you would hope that's in there. 00:46:23.49 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because there are some that are like button mash X to do extra damage during this attack. So you have those timed elements. You could also do the timed thing to reduce incoming damage, which is always really, really helpful when you get that. And then the combat system emphasizes elemental attacks and weaknesses. It emphasizes buffs and debuffs, status effects. Your level and gear are also quite important, especially when you get up into more difficult stuff later in the game. How do you feel about this combat system? 00:47:02.38 DeadbeatpunK Well, I loved the previous one. It was a bit barebones for turn-based combat, but Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, I loved that input, Legend of Dragoon. It kind of keeps you more involved as you're playing, so you're not just tapping confirm for a few hours. 00:47:20.67 Dave Yeah. 00:47:22.92 DeadbeatpunK And it is nice that each attack has different timing, different inputs. You do find the ones you like and just stick with those, I find. 00:47:31.03 Dave Yeah. Yeah, it seems like a kind of simple way to get, and I mean simple in a kind of derogatory way, like a quick and simple way to get people to pay more attention during combat is to make them do timed button presses, but I like it. I can't help it. I like doing it. I can't really think of a game. 00:47:50.68 DeadbeatpunK And that mobile game thing, you get a little spark and lights, and you go, oh, I did a good thing. 00:47:55.98 Dave Exactly. Yeah, I'm a good boy. I hit that right. Yeah. Like any time Sea of Stars, you know, all these games that have these types of things, I like it. 00:48:01.84 DeadbeatpunK Oh, yeah. 00:48:04.97 Dave Even though I recognize it, it feels kind of cheap to get me to pay attention, but I'm it. The QTEs I can kind of do without, especially because there's a lot of like when you're doing abilities and spell type attacks, they're all pretty different. And I felt like it was kind of hard to remember which one is which. But they all basically boil down to Mash X, do a timed button press on Y, or like there's a sequence of you know QTE-type things to do. But they're all kind of different. So now try to learn those, I guess. 00:48:43.88 DeadbeatpunK How'd they become muscle memory eventually? 00:48:48.06 Dave You would think that. They are the only ones that I did like every combat. 00:48:50.72 DeadbeatpunK It didn't make it. 00:48:52.69 Dave Yeah. um Also, one thing that I think gives this a good step up over the combat in Like a Dragon the previous game is there are a lot more like contextual interactions in combat this time around. 00:49:07.28 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:49:07.74 Dave like When you knock an enemy down, ah sometimes your teammates will run over and hit them. Getting your like friendship bond up with party members will help them do that more often. There are contextual attacks where you're like you go attack an enemy, but they're close to a wall So you can hit them into the wall that will do extra damage then they'll fall down then your teammate will run over and bash them there's a lot of ways to like You think like my regular attack is not going to do enough damage to like 00:49:45.42 Dave beat this person, defeat them. So let me try to angle the attack because this attack will knock them backwards. Let me try to knock them into a teammate or knock them into a car in the middle of the road or something like that. And that will get you that little extra damage that you need so they don't get to take another turn. There's a ton of stuff like that. It's always good to line those up. 00:50:07.88 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, and with the free movement being introduced in this one, you do get a better control for it. 00:50:11.36 Dave Yes. Oh, yes. 00:50:13.38 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. Nothing like selecting an attack and then getting stuck on a gate or a hedge or a flower pot. 00:50:15.56 Dave yeah Yeah, you have a limited movement range, but it's usually enough to line up something that's going to help you. 00:50:27.75 DeadbeatpunK but even to get close enough I think it depends on which character is where but if you're close enough you get extra damage and then you can yeah and if you get the angle right as you were saying earlier you can literally pinball an enemy towards the end of the game if the bonds are high enough everybody kind of takes a turn with them in the one turn 00:50:36.11 Dave Yeah, yep, there's a proximity ah bonus. 00:50:51.48 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's really good. It feels great to line those up. This game also introduces tag team attacks where two two party members will do this like a special combo attack and you have a gauge that's building up all the time that allows you to kind of do those. 00:50:58.51 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 00:51:09.04 Dave They don't use your magic points or anything like that. ah So all of these things play together 00:51:18.93 Dave in a way that I think enhances the battle strategy, because like the actual tactics of this combat system, I think it is pretty simple. It's like, what element are they weak to? Can I put a debuff or a status effect on them? That's basically what you're trying to do. But then you also have all of this positioning to think about that, okay, this attack will launch them backwards into other stuff. This attack won't make you think about what all of these things do and how you can chain all this stuff together does elevate it, I think above just, oh, they're weak to fire, use a fire attack, you know? 00:51:57.91 DeadbeatpunK I also found, and it's another small touch but a brilliant one, Nanba in the last game, if he had certain items equipped, would recover MP whenever he attacked. This now happens across the board for all the characters. 00:52:12.50 Dave It helps, yeah. 00:52:13.19 DeadbeatpunK And like again, if you're doing tag team attacks, both those characters will recover MP. So it's you're being encouraged to use your abilities where you kind of preserve them a little bit in the last title. 00:52:26.94 Dave Yeah. 00:52:29.10 DeadbeatpunK And I like that you don't run out of ability points as quickly as in that one because it's that old thing I'm going to see of my powerful attacks for when I need them and then you never use them. 00:52:39.22 Dave Right. 00:52:41.55 Dave Now, this game never really put me in that mindset. 00:52:41.48 DeadbeatpunK Whereas I think. 00:52:45.00 Dave I felt okay to use my good attacks most of the time. Also, ah I don't remember if this was in the previous game, but it's not in a lot of RPGs like that. If enemies are much lower level than you, and this is important because enemies are roaming the streets in ah these levels, and there are a lot of enemies, so it is basically like having random battles. If they see you, they'll chase after you, and if they get close to you, a battle starts. 00:53:16.52 DeadbeatpunK It is, yeah. 00:53:17.67 Dave But if they're much lower level, you can just press the left trigger, I think, and they will knock them out in one hit. You get reduced experience, but you still get experience. You still get money. You still get job system points. 00:53:31.97 DeadbeatpunK so It's also good if you were in an area looking for a certain item that was dropped by enemies. 00:53:37.02 Dave Yeah. 00:53:37.05 DeadbeatpunK At least so you don't have to do the endless battles looking for it. 00:53:39.88 Dave Right. So that's good to just kind of speed things up a little bit. um One other thing about the battle system is You have a bunch of special skills. You think of them as ultimate attacks. You also have a summon system called Poundmates, where you can summon some of the more colorful NPCs to come in and do big attacks. 00:53:58.92 DeadbeatpunK Those cutscenes. 00:54:00.87 Dave yeah And the cutscenes are ah ridiculous. you can tell that the animators are just having the time of their lives like thinking, like what would it be like if you summoned a lobster to come attack your enemies? 00:54:15.05 Dave What would that summon animation be and then they just go to town. 00:54:20.83 DeadbeatpunK Top work. Fantastic series. 00:54:21.97 Dave Yeah, it's great. There's also a job system. So lots of jobs to choose from. And one of the things that helps this stand out from many RPGs like this is this takes place in the real world. So it wouldn't make sense to have the standard Black Mage, White Mage, Thief, Dragoon, and shit like that. The character classes. are all, you know, themed after real world things. So there is a, I forget what they call it, but there's a surfer class. 00:54:52.90 DeadbeatpunK Real-life jobs like summer a or cowboy 00:54:55.79 Dave Exactly, you're right, okay, all right. Yeah, the Desperado, as we know, and we see Desperados every day. um There is a surfer class, there's the samurai, there's the Desperado, there's special classes that only Ichiban and Kiryu get called Hero and Dragon of Dojima, And then there's a bunch of others like Eris and aye there's one that's like based on yoga poses and like, there's a bunch of Hawaii themed classes. 00:55:29.69 DeadbeatpunK Yes, there's a fire dancing one. It was quite fun. 00:55:32.09 Dave Yeah. And so they map onto traditional classes, like the fire dancing one would be like a pyromancer or something like that, but they're all like fun. and different enough and they they all feel like they can do multiple things like there's a class that specializes in buffs but they also get a bunch of spells that they can use and so these were a lot of fun to play around with did you have any of these yes it has that system where you can like 00:56:03.27 DeadbeatpunK There were in the job systems quite kind with letting you move abilities around once you change. 00:56:11.53 Dave master abilities and then like you can change your class but use abilities from other classes as well. What ah what classes did you particularly enjoy? 00:56:23.80 DeadbeatpunK Well, I didn't play around with Ichiban's or Kiryu's overly. I always find their default classes almost to be the best, unless you want to add a few abilities into the mix. 00:56:33.97 Dave Yeah, me too. 00:56:34.06 DeadbeatpunK But the Housekeeper one I found surprisingly brilliant. 00:56:41.32 Dave and Yeah, okay. 00:56:42.34 Dave I didn't use that one. 00:56:43.92 DeadbeatpunK Yeah I tried them all out just to see which would stick and I normally like to give them jobs that I think they'll hate because I'm kind of vindictive like that. 00:56:56.10 DeadbeatpunK I told myself I had him as the Desperado that just seemed to work but then kept a lot of his mechanical abilities into the mix so electricity nobody likes getting hit with that. 00:57:03.65 Dave Yeah. 00:57:09.49 DeadbeatpunK Samurai, I definitely had, oh, the Female Ninja. I forget the title first. 00:57:16.09 Dave Yeah, I forget what that was too. 00:57:17.57 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, ah just because it seemed to get almost two turns, the speed was high in that class. 00:57:22.56 Dave Oh yeah. 00:57:25.26 DeadbeatpunK So yeah, it's one of those ones you experiment with. you find If you find abilities you like, move them over. It's a mix and match. Fantastic. 00:57:34.13 Dave Yeah, it's pretty good. um I also didn't really mess. 00:57:35.37 DeadbeatpunK How about you? Any favorites? 00:57:37.71 Dave Yeah, I also didn't really mess with Ichiban or Kiryu's. I kept them as the standard ones, but Chitose I had as the tennis ace for a lot of the game, because it does gun damage, but it's just tennis balls. Adachi I had as a linebacker for a lot of the game. 00:57:54.67 DeadbeatpunK That was my samurai. 00:57:56.26 Dave It was great. You know we're in the US, so we have to have a football playing class. And then Tomizawa I was the chef for most of the game. and Actually, no, it's the surfer. The surfer has an ability and I made sure to get this on most people where they just pull out like a big ass frozen fish and just bash people with it. 00:58:17.67 DeadbeatpunK A fairy hetman. 00:58:18.79 Dave And I thought that was hilarious. So yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I had a lot of fun moving around jobs and then I found the ones that seem to like cover all different damage types, make sure somebody can heal, make sure someone can do, you know, a couple of status effects and then we're We're golden, and this turns out to be a game that like once you have those covered, and if you're at the right level, then you're pretty good against most things. But it is a game where levels and gear are important too. 00:58:51.64 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 00:58:53.24 Dave yeah um Also, outside of combat, there's a lot of stuff to take up your time too. So these are open worlds. you know You're going around, you can eat at restaurants, you can go visit the shops, all of that stuff. You can talk to people on the street, But the Yakuza series is most famous, I think, other than for being goofy as shit, for the amount of minigames and side activities that you can do. So the classics are here, the batting cages, the mini golf, the karaoke, the can quest from the previous game. Lots of stuff is here. ah There's a bunch of new minigames, such as Sicko Snap, which is what they call it in the game, which is a Pokemon Snap type game. 00:59:36.77 Dave where you're taking pictures of gyrating perverts in their underwear around the city, such as our guest punk here. 00:59:44.36 DeadbeatpunK I like to pose. It did remind me we had a state of play in the past and there is a camera game on that. That's all I could think of. 00:59:53.84 Dave ah Just sicko snap. 00:59:54.93 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, that's what a beautiful game is. Well done. 00:59:57.97 Dave Yeah, I'll never be able to play Fatal Frame again. I'll just be looking for those sickos. There's also Dondoko Island, which is an entire Animal Crossing type game. There is also Tsujiman battling, where you can collect the enemy characters as Pokemon. And then there's a whole side quest in the Colosseum where you can fight them. There's a lot of side activities. So what did you spend your time doing? 01:00:24.36 DeadbeatpunK Oh, this was all Dondoko Island for me. 01:00:28.31 DeadbeatpunK I could not continue the story until I got my five stars. 01:00:30.02 Dave Jesus. jesus 01:00:32.58 DeadbeatpunK And then it's quite similar. 01:00:32.89 Dave That's like Dozens of hours, right? 01:00:35.77 DeadbeatpunK Well, you know, I lied earlier and said I only played it for a hundred. I was just attracted to all my island time. 01:00:42.32 Dave Yeah. 01:00:43.99 DeadbeatpunK What did get me as well, this is my main source of income, so it would have been like the business management game. 01:00:50.44 Dave Yeah. 01:00:51.19 DeadbeatpunK from the previous title. I just adored it. Again, we talk about enjoying easter eggs. The people that stay on the islands are all characters from previous titles. All the buildings are from previous titles. 01:01:02.80 Dave yeah 01:01:05.95 DeadbeatpunK So much to sink your teeth into and just so bad for you that this is just anybody with a social life to not even look at this game. um 01:01:20.05 Dave Yeah, I did the opening quest for Dondoko Island and I yeah did the opening quest for dondoco island and i like did the thing that they made me do. I hit a bunch of trash bags with a baseball bat to get rid of them and then I set up a like like a little bachelor thing no roof just out in the grass there was a little bed a keg of beer and a yakuza finger cutting board and then i was like hey i'm done i'm going home and someone can rent that if they want to yeah okay we will end the episode here and i will be back once i finish that i'm back 01:01:57.31 DeadbeatpunK Well, David, I think you have no authority to talk about this game until you go back and finish that portion. 01:02:09.86 DeadbeatpunK A couple of months. 01:02:12.54 Dave Okay, well that was fun. So anything other than Dondoko Island that you spent time doing or was it all just all Dondoko all the time? 01:02:21.94 DeadbeatpunK I know I completed that. I became the Sujimon master. 01:02:27.10 Dave Did you? 01:02:27.18 DeadbeatpunK Of course I did. 01:02:30.10 DeadbeatpunK I had to fill my little Pokedex or whatever we call it in this. Sujidex. Crazy delivery. Did you spend much time with? 01:02:38.47 Dave I did actually, those are like bicycle deliveries, crazy taxi style. 01:02:43.66 DeadbeatpunK I adored that. Again, over the top. 01:02:45.94 Dave Yeah, it's goofy and fun, yeah. 01:02:49.25 DeadbeatpunK Serious melodrama, but you can ride up the side of skyscrapers on a bicycle. 01:02:54.43 Dave Yeah, and yeah, you're doing flips and stuff in the middle of the street. Yeah, that was fun. um I did all of the quizzes at the, 01:03:07.47 DeadbeatpunK Of course, yeah. 01:03:08.12 Dave the vocational school. I did all the tests. Yeah, I like those for some reason. 01:03:11.56 DeadbeatpunK Need to get those personality points up. 01:03:14.43 Dave Yeah, exactly. So I did those. I did a little bit of sicko snap like maybe three or four times. 01:03:20.97 DeadbeatpunK Oh, I bet you did. 01:03:21.76 Dave um Lots, oh yeah, oh yeah. 01:03:22.20 DeadbeatpunK You like that, don't you? 01:03:25.39 Dave Lots of mini golf when you get the opportunity to do that. Karaoke every time the main quest would take you back to like your home base bar. It was always like, let's decompress. 01:03:35.38 DeadbeatpunK Batting cages. 01:03:37.16 Dave Let's sing. Yeah. Uh, batting cages when you get the chance for sure. Yeah. Uh, so there'd be like entire play sessions playing this game where it's like, I have a break. I can play this game for an hour and I'm just going to do the batting cages. I'm going to try and do all of them. 01:03:55.18 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:03:57.46 Dave And so I spent a lot of time with that stuff. 01:03:59.80 DeadbeatpunK Even in digital form, it's such a stress relief. 01:04:02.91 Dave Oh yeah, it's great. it's just there's like very little music there's like no fanfare it's just hitting baseballs so oh no the this is not the game no maybe next time but today's not the day when i learned how to play mahjong or uh or shogi no 01:04:11.95 DeadbeatpunK Still never got my head around shogi. I'm an idiot. 01:04:23.39 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, I'll never get full achievements. I just can't wrap my head around it. 01:04:28.63 Dave ah Yeah, I should then next time I go to Korea with to see my in-laws I can hang out with the old guys in the park ah Okay, so Okay, so I think this is the time to get into our wrap-up thoughts recommendations things like that before the spoilers start flying so as we always ask on the show and What type of person would you recommend to play like a dragon to infinite wealth? 01:04:59.56 DeadbeatpunK If anybody's struggling with angry issues that don't want to punch co-workers, you'll get a lot out of these games. 01:05:06.02 Dave True. 01:05:07.41 DeadbeatpunK And I believe most people that are already this deep into Yakuza or Like a Dragon, they've already got it. They've already played it. 01:05:15.71 Dave Yeah, the biggest group of people who would consider playing this I think are already in because they probably played one of the other games. But in case this might be your first, it's not the worst one to start with. 01:05:29.36 DeadbeatpunK Hmm. 01:05:32.44 Dave It might be like third on my list of games to start with, like zero. 01:05:37.28 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, the previous one and zero, I'd definitely recommend this, but if people stumbled into this, given the hype, because for a brief window, this was the Yakuza game that broke 90 on Metacritic, and they went down to 89. 01:05:41.13 Dave Right. 01:05:49.57 Dave Yeah. 01:05:53.01 Dave next time but yeah it's it's a really good game and um I think that for a lot of people there's a lot to like ah there are some things that put people off of the series some people don't like the tone like the dual tones some people don't like the amount of cutscenes and there is there's no avoiding that like these are games that will have yeah these are the type of games that have like 01:05:54.08 DeadbeatpunK Close. 01:06:14.75 DeadbeatpunK Well, we don't need that sort of negativity in our lives. So don't worry about those people. 01:06:20.42 Dave 30-40 minute cutscenes regularly. So, yes, correct. 01:06:23.83 DeadbeatpunK You will have to reconnect to your controller at times. so 01:06:28.60 Dave But, you know, No Secret, it's one of my favorite game series, very easy for me to recommend to people. 01:06:37.12 DeadbeatpunK Yes, it was a very bad time to get a contrast in view in that one. 01:06:37.39 Dave So, yeah. 01:06:48.54 Dave So before we get into the spoilers, I think it's pretty easy to say that both of us like this game. We recommend it to most people. We always do our plugs as normal. So tell people about your show, what type of things go on on the show and where people can find it. 01:07:07.88 DeadbeatpunK Well, I will say go to wtfdyw.co.uk and just take a little stroll. I'm sure there's something that'll catch your eye. It's a different subject every week. I'm on a temporary hiatus at the moment because I foolishly thought running your own business, building a house and getting married all at the one time was a sensible thing to do. So I had to knock something on the head and it was either going to be the marriage or the podcast. 01:07:36.26 Dave Right. 01:07:36.60 DeadbeatpunK The podcast lost. 01:07:39.58 DeadbeatpunK So, yeah. 01:07:39.88 Dave Understandable. But there are at the time that we're recording this, there's I think 135-ish episodes to choose from. 01:07:47.82 DeadbeatpunK There are. 01:07:48.86 Dave Yeah. So lots of different subjects. 01:07:49.49 DeadbeatpunK And scrubs, yeah. 01:07:51.06 Dave I've been on the show three times, I believe. We did the Yakuza episode. We did Tenacious D and the show Scrubs. Yeah. So those are, they're always fun. ah Half hour episodes for the most part, so quick listens. 01:08:06.82 DeadbeatpunK I try not to take up too much of your time. I know you're busy, listener. 01:08:10.85 Dave Yeah. Neither do I. I would never do a two to three hour long podcast. Never. 01:08:15.38 DeadbeatpunK Never. No. 01:08:16.56 Dave No, absolutely not. 01:08:16.56 DeadbeatpunK Not like the previous Yakuza episode. 01:08:19.14 Dave No. I mean, none of my podcasts are any longer than a half hour. So. 01:08:24.22 DeadbeatpunK God bless that double-speed. 01:08:26.04 Dave Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So, uh, if you, if you're listening to the Alvin and the chipmunks version of this podcast, I salute you too. Uh, but if you want an actual half hour long, uh, podcast, different topics each week, good laughs, uh, good guests. Every time I recommend you go check out WTF D Y W there we go. 01:08:45.12 DeadbeatpunK Oh, well done. 01:08:45.53 Dave Yeah. I've been practicing all afternoon, walking around my house. 01:08:48.30 DeadbeatpunK I could see the strain on your face. 01:08:49.98 Dave Yeah. yeah Still had to use my brain a little bit. 01:08:51.10 DeadbeatpunK What an awkward acronym. 01:08:53.95 Dave yeah ah Yeah, but good show. I'll put a link down in the show notes. People can easily find it. 01:09:00.13 DeadbeatpunK Appreciate it. 01:09:01.45 Dave Yeah, ah for this show, same things to support as, same ways to support as always. You can join the Discord server, come chat about the games you're playing, chat about the podcast, things going on in life, movies, things like that. Share pictures of your pets and your food. We would love to have you. It's a good community of people there. There is an invite link down in the show notes. You can also leave a rating and review if your podcast platform allows it, Apple podcast, Spotify podcast addict, to places like that. You can listen to my list of podcasts called the top three podcasts. And if you want to support the show monetarily, you can do that at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson. And with the Patreon subscription, you get some bonus episodes. You can vote in polls for what games come up on the show and things like that. 01:09:51.17 Dave so With all of that being said, we are going to take a break. And when we come back full spoiler time for like a dragon infinite wealth. 01:10:52.04 Dave All right, we're back and it's full spoiler time for like a dragon infinite wealth. And we're going to begin the spoiler section just by talking about our favorite sub stories. So punk, was there a sub story that stood out to you as being most notable? 01:11:09.83 DeadbeatpunK One that stuck with me was the lemonade stand and 01:11:13.78 Dave Okay. 01:11:15.62 DeadbeatpunK Where to start with this? I think it's the ultimate Yakuza formula. 01:11:19.80 Dave okay I have another one on the list that I think is the perfect Yakuza sub story, but this one's pretty good too. 01:11:27.56 DeadbeatpunK Well, we will compare. 01:11:29.25 Dave Yeah. 01:11:29.28 DeadbeatpunK It's not a competition. 01:11:29.79 Dave Good. 01:11:30.04 DeadbeatpunK I know we've taken our shirts off for the spoiler section, but... 01:11:33.24 Dave That's right. Yeah. Shown, you know, tattoos and everything. 01:11:34.49 DeadbeatpunK I... I've drawn a tattoo in biro, you didn't go to the effort. 01:11:42.26 DeadbeatpunK So on your travels you come across a lemonade stand, which in Hawaii you'd imagine thirsty. 01:11:50.14 Dave Yeah, it's hot. Yeah. 01:11:52.70 DeadbeatpunK Ran by a little lad named Tony and this is everything I want in a substory. 01:11:54.93 Dave Mm-hmm. 01:12:01.09 DeadbeatpunK He's got brilliant lemonade but having a brilliant product in this day and age does nothing. You need incredibly violent advertising. 01:12:09.88 Dave Yes. 01:12:09.84 DeadbeatpunK And who better than Ichiban? I do like at this point when I do this Kiryu is still at the party and he kind of stands off to the side. 01:12:13.82 Dave Yeah. 01:12:20.51 Dave ah huh 01:12:21.29 DeadbeatpunK And I just love that thought of, oh, I remember when I used to get dragged into these sorts of things. 01:12:27.89 Dave Yeah. He's like, I'm too old for this shit. You handle this. 01:12:31.64 DeadbeatpunK So to help this young lad out with his lemonade stand, you start off by handing out free samples to people. 01:12:31.83 Dave Uh, yeah. 01:12:41.85 DeadbeatpunK This already was brilliant because as you walk up to people with free samples you can almost see their thoughts or maybe you hear what they're murmuring and say oh you poodle-headed prick if you come up to me with the lemonade I'll bite you so you don't give lemonade to those people. 01:12:49.78 Dave Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 01:12:59.25 Dave These are my favorites. Like I wrote down some of these quotes from people. Uh, there's like, so you're supposed to, you have a time limit and you can, you're only supposed to give lemonade to the people that want it. And so you'll walk up and someone will be saying like, ah, day two of my no lemon cleanse or, uh, uh, one of them says apple juice is king. All other juice is the devil's piss. And I was like, this is so good. And then there's another one where someone says, uh, if someone offers me a drink, I'm going to freak out. 01:13:29.85 Dave So you just turn the other way. 01:13:32.54 DeadbeatpunK And I am a contrarian, so these are the people I wanted to give the lemon juice to, but probably. 01:13:36.99 Dave Right. 01:13:38.02 DeadbeatpunK I wanted to finish the sub-story too, so I didn't. 01:13:41.16 Dave Yeah. 01:13:41.88 DeadbeatpunK So you're given a time limit, you walk quite slowly because you don't want to spill the drinks, and you have to hand out all the free samples and time. 01:13:49.07 Dave Yeah. 01:13:50.56 DeadbeatpunK Which you do. Eventually, I think an influencer comes to the stand, gets a picture of it, that goes viral. He starts to get really busy. He's really raking the money in. And then we find out why he's gathering all this money. He spent a time in an orphanage and Ms. Mao, who looked after him, wanted to get her a gift. 01:14:13.92 Dave Yeah. 01:14:13.94 DeadbeatpunK A tiara, of all things, because she said she liked the luck of it one day. And they look expensive, and Lemonade doesn't sell for a lot. 01:14:22.75 Dave Right. 01:14:23.37 DeadbeatpunK So he really has to up his numbers. Which, you help him. Of course, you know, this is a young man's dream, and it's the Yakuza way to make it happen. 01:14:33.15 Dave yes 01:14:35.47 DeadbeatpunK So, in typical fashion, He gets very successful. It seems like he should have the money to get it now, but when Ichiban asks him if he's ready to buy it to pass on the gift, he can't. And he doesn't really give an answer and he slinks away. And this is not the chirpy, happy, go lucky little chap we've met so far. So, don't listen to this listener. shit It's alright in this game, but please don't do this. He follows the child home. 01:15:06.96 Dave Yeah. 01:15:08.08 DeadbeatpunK and finds he's got quite an abusive uncle looking after him who takes the money off him for beer, and well there's only one way to fix this, and that's to remove all the teeth out of his head, probably inside of the child, to teach him a lesson and to become a better person, because after this scene he's over there, he's looking at the tiara through the window, he doesn't have the money for it, and 01:15:20.50 Dave Yes. Yeah. Mhm. 01:15:36.19 DeadbeatpunK Miss Mao, she's flying out to New York this very day. Too late. You tried your best. It wasn't good enough. But the uncle, the better man now after getting his head kicked in, returns with money. The money that he was holding on to for him and returns it. The tier is bought. We rushed to the airport and we got the gift there just in time. 01:16:02.91 Dave Yeah. 01:16:02.89 DeadbeatpunK And we get a sweet little moment it Very bittersweet, you know, the boy's happy, but he's quite sad, just almost like a paternal figure leaving him. But he managed to express himself because he was very shy and Ichiban helped him through that as well. And we get like the sadness of music, a little tear down the cheek, and Ichiban putting his arm round the boy's shoulder. 01:16:28.79 Dave Yeah. 01:16:28.67 DeadbeatpunK He's the big brother we all deserve. And I just thought this story kind of 01:16:33.23 Dave Yep. 01:16:35.29 DeadbeatpunK compressed everything I enjoy from substories into one little pill. I said, yeah, that just had everything. Thank you. 01:16:42.41 Dave Yeah, it has kind of like an innocent beginning. 01:16:46.57 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 01:16:47.05 Dave It has the goofs along the way with those, you know, those people who viscerally hate lemonade that are quite making all those quotes. 01:16:53.88 DeadbeatpunK Devil's piss. 01:16:55.32 Dave Yeah, ah it has the part where you solve the problem by beating the shit out of somebody with his uncle and then the lesson learned and then the happy ending. 01:17:00.41 DeadbeatpunK Of course. 01:17:06.87 DeadbeatpunK I just found it so ridiculously sweet and it just came out of nowhere because I just thought it was going to be handed out samples in a time limit and that'll be it. 01:17:14.87 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 01:17:17.05 Dave Yeah. I mean, that's how most of these stories start. They start with them giving you some, you know, seemingly simple or like really video game side questy shit to do. And it turns out to go down this whole rabbit hole. 01:17:32.08 Dave The other one that I wrote down as my example of the quintessential Yakuza sub story is the one with the woman who wants to see snow. Uh, so you find this, um, this quest by a guy who, uh, is trying to figure out a way to help his dying wife see snow. And that's a problem because they live in Hawaii where it's not probably going to snow there. So when you meet this guy, you talk to him. 01:18:04.92 Dave He's like, I want to help my wife see snow. And you're like, okay, I will help because I'm Ichiban and I will help with anything. 01:18:10.78 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, because it starts off with them throwing snow cones on the ground. 01:18:14.63 Dave Yeah. 01:18:15.15 DeadbeatpunK You're trying to work out why he's doing this. 01:18:17.05 Dave Yeah. So it starts out like that, but you're like, okay, buddy, like, yeah, sure. I'll help you find snow, whatever. And then this ties in with one of the recurring joke characters in the game, which is the baby fetish guys who have been in most Yakuza games for like the last several. 01:18:36.49 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:18:36.65 Dave So they're here. And the way this starts is you go to the mall in a stroller, like, tumbles down the escalator and then flies out of the shopping mall and you have to chase it down on the streets and you do like chasing minigames with the stroller. It's like an extremely naked gun with the stroller going everywhere. Then you catch up to it and it has a grown man inside and it's the baby fetish Yakuza boss from the previous game. It turns out he and his entire clan of baby fetish guys are on vacation in Hawaii. 01:19:14.55 Dave Uh, so yeah. 01:19:15.92 DeadbeatpunK So it was the moment where you finally catch the prom and the rest of them accuse you of trying to steal a beer baby. 01:19:21.92 Dave Yeah. Yeah. So it's goofy as shit right there. And at this point, you don't know that it's tied in with this, this snow quest for this, this dying wife. Uh, but they offer to help once they figure out what's going on. Because they figured out that diaper absorbent, like powder mixed with snow cones, looks like snow. So that's what you're going to do. The fetish guys brought a ton of this diaper absorbent chemical with them to Hawaii and they're going to like unselfishly give that all up to make this woman's dream come true. So they get up on the roof of the building where they live and they do this in this like fake snows flying everywhere and this guy talks to his wife and she she thanks him for like 01:20:14.81 Dave making her dream come true. And they have this really touching conversation and she dies during the scene. And it's extremely sad and heartfelt. And then the camera cuts to the roof and the guys in their diapers are up there passed out after all of this work to make all this snow. So it's that one also has all of these elements to it. Extremely goofy. 01:20:36.84 DeadbeatpunK And I'd had that sweet message too, when they were having their heart to heart and say, why did you waste so much time trying to make my dream come true? 01:20:41.01 Dave Yeah. 01:20:43.93 DeadbeatpunK It was time we could have spent together. 01:20:46.12 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:20:46.01 DeadbeatpunK You didn't have to do this. as ah That is something we forget. 01:20:52.86 DeadbeatpunK I became a better person because of this game. I'll admit that. 01:20:57.06 Dave Yeah, yeah, 100%, this quest for sure. But it has all of these elements, like it has what I think is one of the funniest moments of the game when you're chasing a stroller in this naked gun scene. And then it also has a part that brought tears to my eyes, not much longer, and then made me laugh again when it cuts to the roof and the baby the diaper guys are up on the roof. 01:21:17.49 DeadbeatpunK yeah 01:21:24.86 DeadbeatpunK and it feels natural, it feels in-game when it's all connected. 01:21:28.08 Dave Yeah. 01:21:28.64 DeadbeatpunK It doesn't feel like this happened in an alternative universe. 01:21:32.74 Dave no Now, these games have built up the bandwidth to do that whole range of emotions. 01:21:41.23 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, because we've met, as you've said, we've met the baby Yakuza before, and despite their fetish, which there's no shaming, 01:21:46.60 Dave Yeah. 01:21:51.15 DeadbeatpunK They're really hearts of gold underneath there. It was the baby formula last time. 01:21:54.28 Dave Yeah. 01:21:56.81 Dave Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I remember the quest from, uh, from like a dragon, the emergency call for baby formula. Yeah. So, uh, those two quests, big, uh, big, um, big examples of what make these sub stories worth doing. Uh, there's another one. 01:22:15.48 DeadbeatpunK Definitely felt like standouts. 01:22:17.24 Dave Yeah, there's another one where Ichiban's pet crayfish, who he could not bear to leave in Japan, so he somehow took to Hawaii with him, Nancy. 01:22:27.86 DeadbeatpunK I have to ask, there is an option to take Nancy. 01:22:28.99 Dave Nancy's with us. 01:22:32.45 DeadbeatpunK I would never dream of not taking her. 01:22:32.91 Dave There's an option? Oh, there's an option to say no. 01:22:37.46 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. Did anybody use that or did it change the outcome? Cause I hope she snuck along anyway. 01:22:44.17 Dave I would think that she probably did. I hope that nobody listening to this show would be heartless enough to say no to Nancy. 01:22:47.40 DeadbeatpunK Good. 01:22:51.37 DeadbeatpunK Delete the episode if you did. Negativity in life? No. 01:22:55.75 Dave Yeah, especially not to Nancy. She's so sweet. So ah Nancy's in Hawaii and she falls in love with a hermit crab with the fanciest mirror shell on the beach. And then there is a multi-part love story with the two of them. 01:23:12.04 DeadbeatpunK Mm-hmm. 01:23:12.43 Dave this crayfish and a hermit crab. And it's great. 01:23:16.10 DeadbeatpunK It's an Ichiban of all the people giving romantic advice. It's, yeah. 01:23:18.94 Dave Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. And like all quests, this is solved by beating the shit out of people who stole ah the hermit crab the hermit crab's name is Olivia and stole her shell to... 01:23:35.16 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, you come back to the beach and she's wearing like a beer can. 01:23:38.39 Dave Yeah. And you're like, oh no, what happened? 01:23:39.33 DeadbeatpunK I don't know. 01:23:45.25 DeadbeatpunK Oh, I enjoyed beating them up. 01:23:45.73 Dave And there's... 01:23:46.85 DeadbeatpunK Who steals a hermit crab's shell? 01:23:49.97 Dave Exactly, yeah. 01:23:50.31 DeadbeatpunK Mutants. 01:23:51.93 Dave And so you get the shell back, they're reunited, and then they go back and live at the bar. Also going back to live at the bar, there's a quest with a baby chicken that lives in Ichiban's hair for a short period of time. 01:24:03.01 DeadbeatpunK Even if it's a parrot. 01:24:04.88 Dave a Parrot, right, okay. Was a chicken in another game? 01:24:09.29 DeadbeatpunK No good. 01:24:11.72 Dave There, I mean, there are multiple chickens, like I, I have, I, maybe it's a false memory of another baby bird living in Ichiban's hair. 01:24:19.96 DeadbeatpunK Would not shock me. It looks very comfy. 01:24:21.43 Dave Yeah. Right. There's another animal backstory with this, uh, this, um, this bird living in his hair, a baby bird. Uh, and then there's these people who want to, um, like take it and sell it or something, cause it's worth a lot of money. 01:24:37.39 DeadbeatpunK I think so you've got the check the check recognizes the mother a golden parrot so you're chasing down the golden parrot to reunite them and then these poachers want to kill it for taxidermy because they're worth a fortune oh 01:24:51.00 Dave Oh, yeah, right. 01:24:54.14 Dave Yeah, there's a good screenshot I took of the face off because you know, you are going to beat the shit out of these guys. That's how you solve your problems. 01:25:01.18 DeadbeatpunK of course there's not a question about that 01:25:03.85 Dave Yeah, so there's a thing where Ichiban's like, I don't care how much noise this bird makes or how much it shits in my hair. You're not taking it. And then yeah you beat them up and the bird. 01:25:13.31 DeadbeatpunK ah this If there's two guys with guns and he's prepared to put his life on the line with this baby bird, it's Ichiban, yes, hero. 01:25:17.01 Dave Yeah. 01:25:23.39 Dave Yeah, Hero, yes, but also Ichiban, you're in the US, like, you might get shot. 01:25:29.54 DeadbeatpunK Get out of my safe space. 01:25:31.54 Dave Yeah. Another side quest real quick that was really fun. There's a stunt director who has a reputation of being the most dangerous stunt director because he doesn't believe in special effects. He enlists Ichiban to help with stunts for his movie. And the way that this plays out is Ichiban has to run through traffic and they set up a bunch of like semi truck drivers and like missiles and explosions and stuff that you have to dodge while running down the street. 01:26:02.47 Dave And it's just a little like, I don't know, an endless runner type mini game, but it's pretty fun. And the story is good. 01:26:08.52 DeadbeatpunK And all the previous stuntmen were getting jealous. 01:26:12.25 Dave Yeah. Yeah. So that one's fun. Um, the, uh, Oh, I forget the name, but the giant Roomba vacuum cleaner guy is back. 01:26:23.99 DeadbeatpunK From the last game, yeah. 01:26:25.55 Dave Yeah. And, uh, this time it can detect trash people as well as real trash. And so you have a storyline where it's vacuuming up, uh, people because it's definition of trash as like it's AI programming is expanded to include people. So comedy comes from that. 01:26:44.60 DeadbeatpunK So this one continued on. Did you get another part of this sub story? 01:26:49.14 Dave With the UFO, yeah. 01:26:50.30 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:26:51.49 Dave Yeah, yeah, that was weird. There's another substory where a woman thinks a UFO is stealing her cows, I wanna say. 01:26:58.98 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:27:00.05 Dave Yeah, and it turns out it's the vacuum it learned to fly at some point. So, very over the top, ah very good, good callback. 01:27:12.80 DeadbeatpunK I mean, we could be at these all day. Do you want to go onto the main plot? 01:27:15.39 Dave Yeah, yeah, we'll get into the main plot. 01:27:20.56 Dave So let's start with Ichiban's story, and we'll do Ichiban's story, we'll talk about Kiryu's, and then we'll bring them together at the end. So the story actually begins, and I didn't say this in the non-spoiler part, not because it's a giant spoiler, but because, well, we have a lot to talk about anyway. So ah the story begins with Ichiban going through that stuff with the Vtuber ruining his life, but also he decides that he wanted to propose to Saeko. who was one of the party members in the first game. 01:27:51.38 Dave She is a party member later in this game, but for a while she is not part of the picture because Ichiban works up the courage, ah gets ready with Nanba and Adachi to go on the first date and on the first date he proposes to her and she just kind of walks away and disappears from his life for a while. 01:28:12.58 DeadbeatpunK How are we following there? 01:28:16.98 Dave It's like remembering watching that scene and just being like oh my god Ichiban. No, dude. What are you doing? 01:28:25.40 DeadbeatpunK Well, I was quite surprised because I never Maybe I've just never picked up on them in the previous game, but I didn't get that many romantic inklings between the two. 01:28:34.47 Dave I Don't remember that either like Maybe just maybe a little bit of like, you know 01:28:36.12 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:28:41.30 Dave No, Ichiban can't flirt. I was about to say maybe they flirted a little, but he, no, he doesn't know how to flirt. He's an idiot. 01:28:46.86 DeadbeatpunK No, it doesn't have guile, it's... 01:28:49.69 Dave No. So I think I agree with what you wrote in the notes here for why he proposed. 01:28:59.04 DeadbeatpunK An agreement there. 01:29:00.61 Dave Yeah, just that he fell in love with the first woman he spent any substantial time with and then proposed on the first date. 01:29:09.83 DeadbeatpunK ah Time efficient. 01:29:10.32 Dave So. Uh, they're separated. Yeah. So they're separated for most of the game, um, partly because she ghosts him and then Ichiban goes to Hawaii. Now there's a bunch of the story that like, not a lot happens. Like a lot of the story is just Ichiban looking for Akane who's his mother. um 01:29:31.27 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:29:32.30 Dave But they do have you know the fun scene at the beginning when he meets Chitose. She kind of seduces him a little bit, drugs his champagne, and then he passes out naked on the beach, which was in the promo materials. But yeah, like after that, a huge part of the story, like at least like the first five or six chapters, is just them following dead ends. And so there's not a whole lot. memorable from that section, I feel like. 01:30:06.37 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, I think they did well to establish how out of water he was. 01:30:11.35 Dave Yeah. 01:30:11.26 DeadbeatpunK I mean, if it wasn't for his chance meeting with Kiryu, I don't think he would have accomplished anything he did in the end. 01:30:18.45 Dave He would have got caught by the police and put in maximum security prison or something like that. 01:30:23.55 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, probably. 01:30:24.87 Dave Yeah, so um I did like, you know, they do eventually rescue Akane. They find out why she's wanted it's not actually her it's the little girl she's uh you know leading around uh named Lonnie um but the reunion between Ichiban and his mom is delayed for a while because they're on the run for a long time ah but then they do have a really nice heartfelt scene on the beach where it's not like this 01:30:57.21 Dave I don't know, it's not what you might expect in your head. 01:30:59.07 DeadbeatpunK It's not Hollywood. 01:31:00.35 Dave No, not Hollywood, but there's a really good scene where Ichiban has been carrying his father's ashes around in a necklace. He gives those to her and there is a very emotional, like the facade breaks from her and she just kind of loses it that he's dead now. 01:31:20.33 DeadbeatpunK I also enjoyed this because up to this point, she'd been protecting a child against the odds that really dangerous people very narrowly escaped with the child's safety. 01:31:27.29 Dave Yeah. 01:31:35.27 DeadbeatpunK This is something she's prepared to do, that this is a hero's task. This is something Ichiban respects. 01:31:39.62 Dave Yeah. 01:31:42.05 DeadbeatpunK And in the same light, she sees what Ichiban's doing for what's practically a complete stranger, just because it's the right thing to do. 01:31:43.44 Dave Yeah. 01:31:50.67 DeadbeatpunK So I think at this point, they've really got a feeling for each other. They know what type of people they are. 01:31:55.23 Dave yeah yeah for sure yeah um yeah it's a good scene and um it's not it's not like drawn out for a really long time they really only get like this one scene where they reunite and then shit hits the fan again and it's never really revisited like i think that that scene on the beach is almost the end of itubon's story in this game um there are things that he does with 01:31:56.15 DeadbeatpunK But it's just done very subtly. 01:32:26.43 Dave other characters. 01:32:27.48 DeadbeatpunK It is. 01:32:27.75 Dave He leads the charge against Bryce at the end, but that was Chitose's moment at the end of the game. 01:32:37.17 Dave His story, I think, kind of finishes at this point, which you know well before the end. so 01:32:46.97 DeadbeatpunK I do feel that Ichiban kind of builds people up. Chitose only gets to that stage because of his guidance support. 01:32:53.70 Dave Yeah Yeah, and he helps Tomizawa kind of move past his failures as like a member of the local Yakuza crew there. He helps him move past that and realize his own self-worth. He helps Tomizawa, if you do the drink links, helps him kind of like make peace with his lost love. 01:33:17.83 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:33:24.03 Dave um, help, uh, Chitose to, uh, kind of make peace with, uh, or kind of reconnect with this mentor figure that's like living on the island there, uh, Gramps. 01:33:35.69 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, almost like her grandfather. 01:33:37.74 Dave Yeah. Who you beat the shit out of, uh, which I thought was fun. 01:33:39.80 DeadbeatpunK Of course. 01:33:41.13 Dave I thought it was very funny. It's like you get into a fight with him and it's just a picture of an old man. Like he is just an old ass guy and you just beat the shit out of him. But you know, that's how you solve problems. So, um, Then, yeah, 01:33:53.87 DeadbeatpunK He's Gurock Badum, Dragon. He just brings everybody up. It's fantastic. 01:33:57.01 Dave yeah exactly. And then at the end, there is the resolution of the story with Psycho. I thought that this story was just kind of getting off to a strong start and then, like, it went so long without being a part of the game, really. Like Ichiban talks about her ah and other people, like, there's like this, 01:34:17.18 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:34:21.20 Dave feeling that Chitose might like Ichiban or like there might be something there but every time that starts to like grow a little bit people are like nah he's obsessed with this other woman still so that kind of gets nipped oh 01:34:34.51 DeadbeatpunK Trying to recall who it was that actually mentioned her to Psycho. And it does get a reaction when she hears that he's running around Hawaii with a young woman. 01:34:46.67 Dave it might have been it might have been Nanba then when they go back to Japan 01:34:49.71 DeadbeatpunK That's like something he'd do, yeah. 01:34:51.68 Dave Yeah, he's an idiot too, so. But yeah, at the end, when they go back to Japan, there is this nice scene. Before the final chapter, they have like this, you know, night, everyone's drinking Ichiban and her ketchup and agree to hash things out if they make it after the final mission. 01:35:12.35 DeadbeatpunK Listen. 01:35:12.52 Dave And then they do, of course. And then at the end, Ichiban, he's learned along the way through many, many conversations like how he fucked this up, that he just kind of like spilling his guts about everything that he felt and everything that he envisioned for the future with her and all of those things and not really considering what she wanted her life to be like, which put her off and like made her distance herself. 01:35:35.84 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:35:39.65 Dave So he apologizes for that, ah tells her that he loves her, things like that. She says that she loves him too. And then because Ichiban is an idiot, 01:35:51.34 Dave he rips off his jacket and he's got a t-shirt a custom shirt that says I love psycho and he's made her a shirt that says I love Ichiban and he's like this is great we can wear these together and she gets embarrassed and runs away and Namba in the bar is looking out the window and he just says ah you can't fix stupid yeah yeah I love it yeah um 01:36:13.56 DeadbeatpunK Nothing says love like merchandise. Bye bye bye. 01:36:20.86 Dave So, I don't know, do you think that this has accomplished anything or do you think they're gonna start with this weird tension in the next game? 01:36:29.56 DeadbeatpunK I don't think it'll be as much tension as we expect. I think it will start off with a couple again. But I think, yeah, there's no change in Ichiban. He's always going to cut his foot in it. 01:36:40.70 Dave Yeah. So this is just like temporary embarrassment. She's just like, oh my God, this fucking guy, not not we'll we'll try again tomorrow. 01:36:50.93 DeadbeatpunK Good days and bad days. 01:36:52.49 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. It would be interesting to, I guess, see, because I can't imagine him in a relationship. So it would be interesting to see if that's where they go. 01:37:05.27 DeadbeatpunK Well it is, as we said earlier, he has got a lot to learn. He missed out on his formative years, so you can't punch yourself happier in a relationship. 01:37:12.27 Dave Yeah. 01:37:17.64 Dave That's true. Yeah. 01:37:19.02 DeadbeatpunK Apparently. 01:37:26.70 Dave Let's talk about Kiryu's story. So Ichiban's is taking a back seat. I think this is like the real story here. And so the thing that we held back, although as you noted in the notes here, was in a trailer for the game, which I think is a giant mistake. They reveal that the reason Kiryu's days might be numbered is that he has aggressive cancer and he has, they say, a half year left to live. 01:37:57.08 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. So ah again, after the guiding episode, I was talking to Stormy Geddon about this and they were lucky enough not to interact with any of the promotional material because not only was that spoiled for me, the very powerful scene in the guiding episode. 01:38:08.66 Dave Oh yeah. 01:38:16.61 DeadbeatpunK And everybody talks about that in the promotional material for that game. 01:38:22.21 Dave Oh shit, was it? 01:38:23.20 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. So I knew that was coming up as well. 01:38:24.26 Dave Jesus Christ. Oh man. 01:38:26.89 DeadbeatpunK And now, you know how those scenes land. 01:38:31.34 Dave Yeah. 01:38:31.57 DeadbeatpunK There are people that I've been talking to that have been playing this game and it's the end of chapter reveal, it's chapter three or so, this comes out. 01:38:39.75 Dave yeah 01:38:41.46 DeadbeatpunK And it's just people that get hit with that and they put the controller down and it's just, oh, that that one landed, that that really hit me. 01:38:49.61 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 01:38:52.55 DeadbeatpunK Well, thanks Sega. You kind of robbed that from everybody that's watched your warmup trailers. 01:38:57.83 Dave Yeah, I didn't even watch the trailer, but I got spoiled on this ahead of time because people like, and I'm not blaming them for this, but people are like, oh, it's in the trailer. It's fair game to talk about. we're going to say, like, oh, isn't that weird? Kiryu has cancer in this game. And I was like, ah, I would have liked to find that out for myself in context. 01:39:15.49 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:39:17.32 Dave And I'm not, again, not blaming anyone who did that because I generally operate under the belief that if it's in the trailer, it's fair game. It's not a huge spoiler. But this is a weird thing to give away in a trailer. like That's going to be the reason someone plays this game. They're like, oh, I wasn't going to play it, but Kiryu has cancer. So yeah, let me let me buy it. 01:39:37.42 DeadbeatpunK See you later. 01:39:39.25 Dave Yeah. So this is an interesting thing. And I've noticed this in several other very high profile AAA video games. And I won't say the names because I don't want to spoil it in those games, but terminal illness has become kind of a thing for these bulletproof characters. Like you're not going to have somebody else kill Kiryu in single combat. So illness seems like, you know, if you're going to have him go 01:40:10.50 Dave you know, before the age of 90 or 160, whatever, this feels like a smart way to kind of at least make him reckon with mortality in a way that he never has before. Because he's been shot, he's been stabbed. You can't kill this guy through conventional methods, you know? 01:40:29.77 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, I smoked his entire life. He doesn't even have a cough. 01:40:33.50 Dave Exactly. Yeah. 01:40:34.40 DeadbeatpunK uh it is it is powerful i think video gamers are kind of growing up at the same time i mean a decade or so maybe a bit more now that we had all the dad games with the last of us got a war because a lot of the the audience were parents at that time maybe we're getting older they sadly i know a lot of listeners too 01:40:36.50 Dave yeah 01:40:52.94 Dave Yeah. 01:41:02.75 DeadbeatpunK A lot of us have dealt with relatives with cancer. We know what a battle it is. 01:41:05.72 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 01:41:07.24 DeadbeatpunK And yeah, and to see somebody as invincible as Kiryu dealing with it, it really strikes a chord. 01:41:07.39 Dave Or people have dealt with sickness themselves. Yeah. 01:41:19.01 Dave Yeah, and the way that he deals with it originally is just to ignore it, basically, and just go like full balls to the wall. um Like, he, he doesn't, he's not defeated by it. Like he doesn't want to just sit down and wait for it to happen. But he also does not seek treatment for it. 01:41:43.93 Dave gets into all the fist fights and all of these things and, you know, just kind of like making it worse, like actively making it worse, you know? 01:41:53.94 DeadbeatpunK And it is that thing a lot of people don't seek help from others. I suppose you could look at it as a male toxic trait, which the series is renowned for. 01:41:58.80 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 01:42:06.94 DeadbeatpunK But he doesn't want to waste the time he's got left, but his time could have been better invested in other areas. And if he had leaned on the people that loved him, it would have been a better time for him. 01:42:13.78 Dave yeah 01:42:20.11 Dave Yeah, for sure. And that's part of the growth of Kiryu in this game. I think that he fully realizes the value of accepting help from other people. And it takes a lot of work from basically everybody else in the game to get him to that realization. 01:42:39.67 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, because he definitely doesn't give up, but in certain regards, he's not doing the right thing either. 01:42:40.76 Dave Yeah. So, no. 01:42:48.37 Dave Yeah. I mean, he doesn't, like I said, he doesn't give up and just likes to lay down and wait until he dies, but he also doesn't seek treatment. He doesn't, you know, ask anybody for advice. He just keeps on business as usual. 01:43:00.74 DeadbeatpunK Other people first, kind of not as concerned with himself. 01:43:02.31 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I think there's a, there's a couple of things that really helped to kind of spearhead the growth for Kiryu in this game. Um, the first one is, um, the people in the party. in especially in the early Hawaii section Ichiban lays into him at least once in the game for basically not living out the rest of his days doing what he wants to do and for he quote I think he says like living the rest of his life on the Daidoji's leash so he he yells at him for that um 01:43:37.93 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:43:43.40 Dave Kiryu doesn't exactly disagree with that, but he doesn't want to talk about it, which is, you know, very Kiryu. 01:43:51.11 DeadbeatpunK I did find this part, and I think Ichiban carries some of the blame whenever they get into a fight. ah I've got Kiryu up my side if we can do anything. 01:44:01.84 Dave Yeah. 01:44:01.92 DeadbeatpunK like He was rushing into dangerous situations with him. Fair enough he didn't realize at that time, I think, that Kiryu wasn't well. 01:44:11.68 Dave yeah 01:44:12.04 DeadbeatpunK but that He really made that man push himself to the limits. 01:44:16.23 Dave Yeah. 01:44:20.41 Dave There are like a bunch of situations where it's like, even if Kiryu is well enough to fist fight a bunch of people, maybe he shouldn't be charging into a burning forest and things like that. 01:44:31.14 DeadbeatpunK Guys, he's an older man. 01:44:33.57 Dave Yeah. 01:44:33.54 DeadbeatpunK Don't make him fight somebody with a crowbar. 01:44:35.80 Dave Yeah, exactly. um So there's that. There's the part where Kiryu recognizes that it's not just Akane that they're trying to protect, it's this other, this little girl Lani, where I think that he sees Akane and Lani as he sees himself in Haruka from the previous games. 01:45:00.13 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:45:01.79 Dave So he is inspired by that too, I think. 01:45:05.65 DeadbeatpunK As we do get that short flash between the two when he's looking at a picture, I think maybe. 01:45:10.69 Dave ah Maybe I'm not as smart as I thought I was making that connection. Maybe they just show you that in the game. 01:45:13.49 DeadbeatpunK Oh, I think he outright says it at one point. 01:45:16.45 DeadbeatpunK Yes. 01:45:18.20 Dave Well, there we go. Yeah. So he remembers that and that gives him a little bit of inspiration. And then there's a part in the game where he um gets into a fight. His illness has progressed to the point where he physically can't do it. He coughs up blood, they capture him, things like that. You have to go rescue him and then he gets on a plane and goes back to Japan. And, um, this, he doesn't seek treatment in Japan, but they're like, we gotta at least get you on home soil, I guess. 01:45:50.77 DeadbeatpunK No, but this is, what is this, Kiryu's first failure? This is the first time he's had to palm a task off to somebody else. 01:45:58.91 Dave Yeah, that's true. Yeah. 01:46:01.03 DeadbeatpunK So this is a low point for the character. I know he's that stoic. He doesn't go through the traditional methods, but like he's low at this point. 01:46:12.21 Dave Yeah, yeah for sure so like Yeah, that's a good point He basically has to say like okay Ichiban this is yours Namba takes him back to Japan so The big thing I think is that when he's in Japan and 01:46:14.22 DeadbeatpunK There's a child that needs saving and he couldn't do it. That's his core character. 01:46:37.56 Dave he meets up with Date, who comes back. 01:46:41.17 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:46:41.88 Dave First he writes his bucket list, and that opens up this thing where you go around town and you reminisce about things that happened in previous games, like the cabaret club managing, throwing people through glass plate windows in convenience stores, throwing people off of bridges, which I thought was great. 01:46:50.59 DeadbeatpunK Ah memories. 01:47:04.21 Dave And then um Oh, there's the other ones that you mentioned where he mentions the side story games where he's like, I had a weird dream where I was in the Sengoku period or whatever the fuck the period the Ishin game took place in or had a weird dream where Kamurocho was overrun by zombies and I had a giant gun. Really weird. 01:47:26.84 DeadbeatpunK I did like it because they covered all the games, every single one in the series, and then managed to squeeze in the spin-offs as well. 01:47:32.13 Dave Yep. Yeah. yeah 01:47:38.20 DeadbeatpunK A lovely trip down memory lane. 01:47:38.51 Dave Just imagine Kiryu. Yeah, it was great. like i loved I did all of those, every single one of them. um You need to, because the next optional thing is the optional quests with Date. And in order to get all of them, you have to do all of these like bucket lists, reminiscing like collectibles, basically. 01:47:56.84 DeadbeatpunK isn Yeah. 01:48:05.49 Dave but I really liked this side chain with Date, who shows up again. He is like one of Kiryu's only real friends in the entire series, basically. And I don't mean like someone that Kiryu worked with, like actually a friend, you know? 01:48:26.80 DeadbeatpunK because Kiryu doesn't think he has any regrets at all in his life until Data makes him sit down, actually think about it, and do the bucket list. 01:48:31.80 Dave Yeah. 01:48:36.85 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, so the way this plays out with Date, and again, like Kiryu, if you're following along and loging you don't know what's going on, Kiryu is supposed to be out of sight. He's not supposed to be reconnecting with people from his past. So Date like, exactly. 01:48:54.85 DeadbeatpunK Kiryu's dead. This is Joyru. 01:48:57.78 Dave Yeah. Or Suzuki-san or something like that. 01:48:59.58 DeadbeatpunK Okay. 01:49:01.05 Dave So. Kiryu finds or Date finds all these loopholes that allow Kiryu to go reconnect or at least see the people from his past and help him like in Kiryu's mind help him make peace with where everybody is. But I think Date knows that what this is actually going to do is to inspire Kiryu to like try to be there for these people later in life or to stick around at the very least. 01:49:30.86 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:49:31.92 Dave so, did you do all of these? 01:49:33.86 DeadbeatpunK Of course I did. 01:49:35.26 Dave Yeah. 01:49:35.29 DeadbeatpunK Didn't miss one. 01:49:36.61 Dave Nope, same here. And I forget what it was, but I did all the reminiscing things. I did all of the ah side quests that I could find. In order to unlock the last one, I had to grind ah restaurants. 01:49:48.97 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:49:56.65 Dave I had to go to all the restaurants, buy all the food to get those little star little personality bonuses to get up to that highest level. 01:50:02.48 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, high enough. Because I was under the impression that maybe it was a story progression thing, but when I was getting quite late in chapters, it was like, this still hasn't unlocked. 01:50:11.58 Dave Yeah. 01:50:12.16 DeadbeatpunK So yeah, I think I had to do the same. 01:50:14.64 Dave Yeah. But, you know, I had like $10 million dollars or whatever at that point in the game, so it's easy to just hit up every restaurant in town, buy everything on the menu, and you get those little bonuses. but 01:50:26.43 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:50:26.77 Dave That was kind of annoying, but anyway. um Other than the final one, were there any of these that you thought were especially good? Were you seeing the people from his past? 01:50:40.16 DeadbeatpunK Dave, I'm not going to lie, every one of them I enjoyed. It was such an ultimate trip down memory lane and then it was doing this part of it that made me realize really, since the first title, how many years I've been playing along with this and I don't think I've got many franchises with that connection. 01:50:43.67 Dave Yeah. 01:50:55.34 Dave Oh yeah. 01:50:59.41 Dave No, there's serious history here with people who played these games. 01:51:01.62 DeadbeatpunK Oh, big time. 01:51:03.73 Dave Yeah. um I will say, so there's like nine of these or something like that. I will say that all nine of them, even if they're not my favorite characters from the past games, all of them were instantly like, oh, it's those people. I remember them. 01:51:19.64 DeadbeatpunK Oh, yeah. 01:51:20.63 Dave I remember those stories. um And they didn't just go for easy ones. Like Majima is not one of these. for example. 01:51:29.39 DeadbeatpunK Sadly. 01:51:30.58 Dave Yeah, so it would have been good to see him there, but Majimba has his own role in the story. 01:51:37.00 Dave The first one that you see is Taichi, who's one of the boys from the orphanage that Kiryu was managing. And he... 01:51:43.33 DeadbeatpunK Touchy was always the wrestler. 01:51:46.09 Dave Yeah, and so... 01:51:46.57 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. I just kind of remember the right one. 01:51:49.93 Dave Yeah, the little little little big dude. So this one, I think, was effective to show how long it had been since Yakuza 3, because he was a little kid and now he's an adult, he's a firefighter. 01:52:00.11 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:52:06.86 DeadbeatpunK And it was great to see Proud hear you when he's standing up to the thugs that are threatening the staff at this club and say, yeah, that's a fine young man you've raised. 01:52:14.14 Dave yeah Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And this was um this this is the first one, so I didn't know what these quests were going to be like. And so I was like, okay, Date wants to show me something, go to the cabaret club. And I'm like, all right, what is this? What's it going to be? Oh, fuck, it's one of the kids from the orphanage. This is what we're doing. You know, um we had talked in the Gaiden episode about how that game was kind of like a clip show type of like, ki you run is like Kiryu's greatest hits, basically, in that game. 01:52:37.66 DeadbeatpunK Yep. 01:52:52.14 Dave But then this game is even more than that. with these things. And so Kiryu sees Taichi in the cabaret club. He stands up for the ladies in the club. He gets his ass beat when he's knocked out. 01:53:06.80 DeadbeatpunK No, come on, be fair, he was sucker-punched. 01:53:10.06 Dave He was sucker punched, yeah. So while he's like laying there in a haze, yeah, Kiryu beats up the people who beat him up. 01:53:13.46 DeadbeatpunK By a pervert. 01:53:19.43 Dave And he's like concussed or whatever so he thinks that he had a dream that it was Kiryu but you know it's a really sweet thing where like Kiryu got to reconnect with him but not really and that's kind of like the theme of all of these is you have all these people from his past and there's only only one I think where they actually like talk and they're like oh fuck Kiryu you're still alive you know and that was just because Akiyama is too 01:53:33.19 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:53:48.94 Dave street smart to be fooled by this yeah he punched Kiryu in the face as soon as he saw him he's like you asshole like what are you why are you doing this to everybody yeah yeah oh yeah 100% yeah 01:53:50.39 DeadbeatpunK I was so glad that he worked that out by himself. It was so in character. 01:54:03.66 DeadbeatpunK But even sorry to bring it back to Tai Chi. catching the punch with such a key or you move. it Just little visual flares at the door. 01:54:21.15 Dave So after this, there's a part in the story where the Daidouji handler who Kiryu's been working with in Hawaii gets killed during a scene. And after this, Date gets more bold with how public he's gonna like to allow Kiryu to be, to catch up with these people from his past. So... 01:54:42.81 DeadbeatpunK It is some of the loopholes he makes up and here you just barely go along with it. 01:54:43.08 Dave ah the Yeah, yeah, he... like I think Date has these like very carefully planned out and Kiryu can like you said can like barely handle the plan you know but he doesn't really break the um like the right like legally like he can't publicly make himself known but he can like listen in on conversations from the fire escape which is 01:55:00.50 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. Yeah, terms of agreement or whatever he has with the agency. Yeah. 01:55:20.75 Dave There's a scene with the guys from Stardust. um 01:55:23.49 DeadbeatpunK It's great to see them back to being oil. 01:55:26.38 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. So he goes back to Kamurocho for some of these and kind of remarks about how things have changed and stuff like that. So there's one of these with the Yakuza family from Yakuza 6, like that kind of small, small-time family that he gets involved with. 01:55:45.19 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:55:45.70 Dave They come back. The one that got me before, like the one at the very end, the one that really piqued my interest, because once I figured out what these were, the one that I was thinking was like, is the woman from Kiwami 2 going to come back? Like his 01:56:01.67 DeadbeatpunK yeah 01:56:04.29 Dave You know, he had his ah Yumi, who he proposed to, she died. And then the only love story in the entire series, like in the game's main events, is Sayama from Kiwami 2. And she does come back. And I thought this scene was really good. And it showed me Like, they always build up your hopes, like, is Kiryu gonna make himself known? And he never does. And this was the one that kind of hammered home, like, nope, mean he's never going to do that. 01:56:35.27 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, he ducked out of this one last second. 01:56:38.79 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 01:56:40.28 DeadbeatpunK That is on the verge of revealing though. 01:56:43.12 Dave Yeah. Yeah, they're having coffee. Date and her and Kiryu like sitting elsewhere in the restaurant and eavesdropping. Very disappointing for Kiryu when he finally makes that decision like, nope, can't do it. 01:56:59.98 DeadbeatpunK but it was just that one really landed because you kind of realize he could have had a life if he had been more selfish if he had to turned his back on people just by helping other people out it's never for his gain 01:57:08.62 Dave Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there were so many games in this series where Kiryu was done at the end of the previous game and then he gets roped back in. 01:57:26.17 Dave Right, exactly. Yeah, he'd still be chilling at the orphanage if it were up to him, I guess. 01:57:30.36 DeadbeatpunK Oh yeah, the original tropical Kiryu. 01:57:31.54 Dave Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:57:33.41 DeadbeatpunK I like that shirt. 01:57:34.81 Dave Okay, yeah, for sure. um via The final one, and this was the one that, like I did all the grinding because I knew what the final one was going to be. 01:57:43.37 DeadbeatpunK Oh, it's hard to be. 01:57:47.56 Dave Yeah, so Haruka and Haruto are invited back to Kamurocho by Date. um 01:57:57.85 Dave Feels like a little suspension of disbelief is necessary that Haruka would not know why she's being invited back to Kamurocho and that she has no idea that Kiryu's all over the internet on the Tatara channel at this point. 01:58:06.67 DeadbeatpunK And we've known this character since she was a child. We know how sharp she is. 01:58:17.00 Dave Yeah, exactly. So I don't know, maybe they don't have fucking have internet in Okinawa at the orphanage or something like that. But yeah, she's there, they're talking about like, what like Kiryu's listening from the hallway at Serena where they are and Date's talking with her about like what would you say to Kiryu if you saw him again and then she goes on this thing about how like she actually is not sure that she would like to see him again because she's not sure that she would like make him proud and she's not like personally ready to like live up to 01:58:56.55 Dave like her standard of who he is like the type of person that he is and things like that and like here you overhears this and decides i'm not going inside but also the fact that she's saying this means that she is like that type of person like that quality of person and he's just proud to have overheard that and it decides that he's not going to fuck this up so it's a 01:59:14.72 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 01:59:24.74 Dave It's a selfless act by him, I think, not to make himself known to her, I think. 01:59:32.87 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, I took it as. He didn't want to come back into her life, basically just to die on her for a second time is the way I picked it up. 01:59:41.18 Dave Yeah. 01:59:44.25 DeadbeatpunK even though I'm sure he'd love nothing more than the comfort of his family. 01:59:48.89 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like the the two people in the world that he would Reunite with if he was given No strings attached like chance to do that for sure. 01:59:59.69 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 02:00:00.71 Dave Yeah, but that was that was pretty heartbreaking and then Yeah, you know I thought like okay, they're doing this like Because it at this point in the game like you're still not sure is here you gonna die at the end of this game like is this gonna be a 02:00:04.62 DeadbeatpunK I was kind of furious about this. I'm sure we'll go into it later, but I say they can't just leave it like this. 02:00:23.48 Dave the final scene between him and Haruka. And then right after this, he walks outside and the Didoji are out there and they're like, they caught wind and Date date you got caught doing all this stuff. 02:00:38.72 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 02:00:40.10 Dave So they beat the fuck out of Date and that kind of activates Kiryu to like another level of of like passion, I guess, and or like will to live, we'll say. 02:00:52.88 DeadbeatpunK It's a small part but one of the agents and he's pointing a gun at Kiryu and he wants him to say the line that Kazama Kiryu is dead. 02:01:03.02 Dave Yeah. 02:01:03.70 DeadbeatpunK And he won't. And again, it's a subtext. It doesn't have to be said outright. Refusing to do it at that moment, it was just like, yeah, Keir U's back. 02:01:14.00 Dave Yeah, he's the John Wick thing. Yeah, I'm thinking I'm back. So yeah, that was great. um And he he just beats the fuck out of that guy too. That's how we solve problems. But no. 02:01:26.60 DeadbeatpunK They weren't friends afterwards. That's how you know this one was serious. 02:01:30.00 Dave This one was serious because the guy did not learn a lesson and shook Kiryu's hand after it was all done. So after this is over, the way that this whole thing with Date wraps up is like they're about to say goodbye and Date lays in into Kiryu too about why he's not fighting this. And like after he spent his whole life fighting everybody on behalf of other people, why would he not fight on behalf of himself, basically? 02:01:50.03 DeadbeatpunK Mm 02:02:01.30 Dave And that if he were to fight cancer and not just wait for it to happen, it would further inspire everybody else in his life. 02:02:11.87 Dave And again, this is great coming from Date because Ichiban did a very similar scene earlier in the game, but Kiryu and Ichiban have not known each other that long. And like Kiryu might feel a little bit of like a mentor type status for Ichiban, but Date is like his longest 02:02:23.10 DeadbeatpunK no and he seems to interact with Kiryu in a way nobody else can he kind of cuts straight to the point 02:02:30.62 Dave long time friend. It's different coming from him. 02:02:40.41 Dave Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So at the end of this, like I think this is what sparks Kiryu to Like, I have the idea that maybe it is time to fight this. Like, is it going to be worth it for me? Because he's still under the Didoji agreement. In the scene where he refuses to say that Kazuma Kiryu is dead, he also agrees that he's still going to honor the terms of the agreement with the Daidoji still. 02:03:07.43 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 02:03:13.32 Dave He's still going to lay low. But then he refuses to say that he's dead. But I think in his head he's still thinking like, I'm going to do this. So he wonders here, like, would it be worth it to fight the cancer only to live the rest of my life under these terms still? 02:03:33.44 Dave But Date kind of gives him that speech and says the only way to find out is to keep living and see maybe one day you can come back for real. 02:03:43.18 DeadbeatpunK And again, just a great friend because a friend is someone that will tell you the truth you don't want to hear. 02:03:49.18 Dave Yeah. Yeah. And again, like there are not many people in the world that Kiryu would actually listen to like saying this, like other people have tried, but not many people are going to get him to actually think about it like this. So yeah, this is the culmination of. 02:04:07.77 DeadbeatpunK But it just shows how much it took to change his mind. This is how stubborn he is. This entire dotty quest line was just him trying to change his mind. 02:04:16.11 Dave Yeah. Yep. Yeah, a culmination of tons of effort by one person coordinating, bringing all these people back. And then, you know, not insignificant. 02:04:27.46 DeadbeatpunK At the power of nostalgia. 02:04:30.27 Dave Yeah, then not insignificant the other things, right? The storyline in Hawaii, ah helping out the other people, trying to help out Lani and Akane. So that stuff too. So this is great. This is probably my favorite part of the game is this quest line with Date. It's just really good. 02:04:54.40 Dave Okay, music. All right, let's tie the story back together and let's get on to talking about how this game ends and things like that. So real quick, most remember one of the most memorable moments in the game is when You're trying to get support to kind of fight back against the Saryu clan's, you know, new plan, I suppose, their deception and things. Kiryu goes out to find his old buddies and he finds Majima, Saejima, and Daigo out in this shack by the side of the ocean. 02:05:35.31 Dave Just kind of like, I don't know what the fuck they're doing out there. Just, you know, living destitute lives fishing. 02:05:41.81 DeadbeatpunK Fishing! 02:05:44.81 Dave Sitting around burning trash in a barrel, stuff like that. 02:05:48.19 DeadbeatpunK Really, I don't know why it struck me so hard, but Majima just being a, like, lay-in-bed drunk. 02:05:54.93 Dave Yeah. 02:05:55.50 DeadbeatpunK and Just, no. No. 02:05:57.80 Dave No, this is the guy, he's got all the energy. 02:06:00.23 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. Hey, you should be out there with a harpoon. 02:06:03.20 Dave So yeah, for sure. Yeah. So Kiryu goes out and he's going to try and get their help. Um, they. 02:06:12.67 Dave don't initially agree to help and you actually end up having like this big boss fight against them out in the snow. There's this like incredible guitar music happening in the background. 02:06:18.71 DeadbeatpunK yeah 02:06:24.98 Dave The boss fight is one of the hardest ones in the game I felt like because you fight all three of them at the same time and they're still really powerful ah but that moment like the like the cinematography, the music, the boss fight, all of the like the story 02:06:36.24 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. Mhm. 02:06:41.02 Dave the reunion with these characters, like fucking everyone loves Majima. So like seeing him again, all of these things coming together was a really great moment. 02:06:52.22 DeadbeatpunK and you really couldn't have topped this moment. 02:06:55.00 Dave Yeah. 02:06:55.07 DeadbeatpunK I started as it was to see them at their lowest, kind of nagging them into a fight was brilliant. 02:07:01.41 Dave Yeah. That's a good point. um Like earlier, you had mentioned that this story sees Kiryu arguably at the lowest point in his life. 02:07:11.32 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 02:07:11.88 Dave These three, you know, legendary characters in the story are also at the lowest point in their lives too, I feel like. 02:07:18.67 DeadbeatpunK yeah 02:07:19.47 Dave So, they solve their problems and get each other out of the doldrums the way that everyone solves problems in this game by beating the shit out of each other. 02:07:29.75 DeadbeatpunK only way to learn 02:07:31.24 Dave Yeah, it's the only way to make someone listen to you. So, um we have this whole plan with Bryce, um who's the leader of this orphanage and who turns out to be the leader of this cult. Bryce works with various governments around the world and the Yakuza clan to store nuclear waste in Hawaii and just make a bunch of money, basically. 02:07:53.91 DeadbeatpunK It's the only way to learn. 02:07:59.84 Dave It's a plot that is not confusing, but it's also like, yeah, it's just typical Yakuza plotting and stuff like that. 02:08:09.16 DeadbeatpunK They also have a sub point where Kiryu was working at one of these factions at one point. 02:08:15.26 Dave That's how he got cancer . He's working at the nuclear waste facility. 02:08:16.59 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, that was the one moment he developed his cancer, because that's how it happens. 02:08:20.26 Dave Yes, exactly. Yeah, so I don't know what it's, it's as interesting as most of the big plots in these games, these games are always more interesting just because you know, you're going on the ride with these characters really. 02:08:36.11 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, and you do piece it all together as you go, but it's never anything grand. 02:08:37.20 Dave but 02:08:42.39 Dave Right. But the fact that this is all taking place on Bryce's like private island in Hawaii gives you the opportunity to have another thing that was in the trailer. And I was like, was this only in the trailer? But the fight against the giant shark when you're going to the island, which I might have squealed and clapped like a seal when it popped up. 02:09:02.09 DeadbeatpunK Yep. 02:09:07.24 Dave But I was like, holy shit, I get to fight a shark. Let's go. 02:09:11.03 DeadbeatpunK Well, tigers are so blasé. You could fight a couple of those if you really wanted to. 02:09:13.22 Dave Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we fought so many tigers. Like it's time for another apex predator. So you fight a shark. There's another shark boss fight where it's actually one of the most mechanically interesting boss fights in the series where you can't get too close to the edge of the boat or the sharks will jump up and grab you. 02:09:37.19 DeadbeatpunK yeah 02:09:37.37 Dave And you can knock enemies into this. You have to keep your characters out of this. um I thought that was really fun. And then you fight the giant shark later. 02:09:45.01 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 02:09:45.80 Dave And then not only do you fight a giant shark, like 20 minutes later, you fight a giant squid on Bryce's Island. And I was like, okay, this is the real Yakuza. Let's go. 02:09:58.35 DeadbeatpunK And again, it never seems so outlandish. It's like, oh, this doesn't make sense. I know this made perfect sense at the time. 02:10:05.53 Dave No, makes perfect sense for this series, of course. um And then the ah The last part about I think this storyline with Bryce is that this is the moment where Chitose makes peace with her past. She had a bad relationship with her parents and then she before this had made up with her dad and her dad was involved in this nuclear waste deal. 02:10:35.01 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 02:10:35.81 Dave So she reveals herself to the world as the VTuber, the Tatara channel, and tells the real story. She'd been kind of blackmailed into all of the bad things earlier in the game, but now she tells the real story, she outs herself, her dad outs himself as being part of this bad deal, showing that they made up. So that is her story of like, you know, making peace with the past, making amends with the past, stuff like that. So I enjoyed that. 02:11:09.84 Dave ah But that is, like, I think the least interesting of the two conclusions, we'll say. 02:11:15.60 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, this did feel like the cartoony big bad. 02:11:17.82 Dave The other one... 02:11:20.99 Dave Yeah. Bryce. Yeah. And Bryce stopped speaking English, like, halfway through the game, which was a big help for the end. 02:11:29.38 DeadbeatpunK Start taking them seriously again. 02:11:31.42 Dave Yeah. But then the other part of this is, ah because this is a Yakuza game, you have to have the final boss fight in Millennium Tower. in Kamurocho. So back to Millennium Tower. Big final dungeon climbing up Millennium Tower. Before you do this, Kiryu puts on his old suit and his hair is in his old hairstyle, his old hair color, but his hair is kind of gray. 02:11:54.05 DeadbeatpunK Yep. 02:11:58.91 Dave He looks old. He looks worse, we'll say. Like he puts on his old suit, but you can tell Kiryu's older now. 02:12:06.73 DeadbeatpunK He's lost a bit of miles here. 02:12:08.49 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. So that was good. 02:12:13.16 Dave The fight alongside Majima and Saejima in Daigo in Millennium Tower was awesome. 02:12:17.71 DeadbeatpunK Oh, I have us all over that. 02:12:20.54 Dave Yeah, yeah, that was great. 02:12:22.87 DeadbeatpunK Peak Yakuza. 02:12:25.47 Dave Yeah, yeah, that was really fun. Just, you know, a lot of these games have those moments when you're your buds come to help out and it's this big triumphant thing and that was great. And then you fight the final boss who is The, is he the Saryu clan leader, Ebina? 02:12:43.49 DeadbeatpunK he is yeah 02:12:44.67 Dave Yeah. Ichiban's half-brother. Remember the story from the previous game where there were two babies in the lockers? He was the other baby in the locker, in the subway station? 02:12:55.32 DeadbeatpunK No, that was the previous boss. 02:12:56.90 Dave Or was he not? 02:12:57.89 DeadbeatpunK and Arakawa had an arranged marriage at the start of this game. 02:13:01.07 Dave Okay. Yeah, okay. 02:13:05.14 DeadbeatpunK so that was the child from that marriage and that's the reason Akane had to run off was because of this arranged marriage but yes the three half Yakuza babies 02:13:14.40 Dave Okay. Yeah. Too many babies to keep track of. 02:13:19.61 Dave Yeah. And he hates the Yakuza because of, you know, I guess how, I forget why exactly, but like it, he blames the Yakuza for how his life turned out. 02:13:36.04 Dave So, which is fair. 02:13:36.50 DeadbeatpunK Understandable. He didn't have a great life and it was the Yakuza's fault. 02:13:39.84 Dave Right. So what's cool about this is, It's not like this battle of wills with Kiryu versus him. Kiryu fights him because he forces him into it, Ebina forces him into it. 02:13:54.53 DeadbeatpunK Yep. 02:13:54.79 Dave But Kiryu, after he beats him, tearfully apologizes to him for everything that the Yakuza have done to him in the past. and he So like this guy's plan was he's going to set up this nuclear waste facility. He's gonna trick these Yakuza members who were not involved in what happened to him personally, but they are Yakuza, so they're guilty. 02:14:17.86 DeadbeatpunK Mm hmm. 02:14:20.84 Dave So he's going to trick them into this like slavery, basically, working on this nuclear waste island. And Kiryu is crying, begging him not to do this to these people. And basically saying like, whatever hate you have for the Yakuza, whatever guilt the Yakuza deserve, put it on me. I will take anything that you have, like, so curious, decided, I think , decided at this point, like, yeah, I am going to fight, fight the illness and stuff like that. 02:14:57.27 Dave ah And I'm also going to take responsibility for how this guy's life got ruined to the point that he can. 02:15:01.72 DeadbeatpunK Well, it was similar to the Chitose, just taking ownership for everything that she had done indirectly or not. 02:15:13.26 Dave Right. Right, because this is not Kiryu's own personal mistakes he's making up for, but like he sees an opportunity, I guess, to take responsibility because ah his whole life, he's benefited from being in the Yakuza, arguably. Other than people close to him have been hurt, and he's in witness protection right now, basically. Other than that, like his lot in life was enhanced by being the yakuza boss and things like that so he feels like he has a chance right exactly and he's back to doing all this on behalf of other people right he's gonna take the grunt for everybody else so yeah exactly so that was a good uh a good 02:15:46.29 DeadbeatpunK And it is he'd rather be one person suffering than waves of countless people. 02:16:03.54 DeadbeatpunK if that's what it takes to end the chain of cruelty yeah he'll take that yeah and it didn't end with well it did end up with a shirtless battle but normally they fall off the side of a building or sacrifice themselves so they're not in the sequels yeah 02:16:12.66 Dave two games in a row now with really emotional like conclusions with Kiryu there. 02:16:26.48 Dave Right, no explosions. yeah Yeah, so that was a really good ending there. um So that was good. I personally kind of hated Ichiban's ending in this game. Not the ending with Psycho, but the ending with, yeah, Ei-chan, yeah. 02:16:43.19 DeadbeatpunK eachan 02:16:47.31 Dave Who I had forgotten about, completely forgotten about by this point at the very end. 02:16:52.00 DeadbeatpunK Well, I suppose we really didn't get into it, but Ichiban did get fooled by somebody that pretended to be in a wheelchair because the character knew this would have drawn his sympathy because of his half-brother that passed away. 02:16:59.64 Dave Yeah. Right. 02:17:07.23 DeadbeatpunK So he was a plant from the beginning, he took advantage of Ichiban, and he kind of made a getaway after things broke out. 02:17:18.79 Dave Yeah. 02:17:19.49 DeadbeatpunK And what typically would happen in Like a Dragon, Yakuza's story is you would hunt this person down. Revenge. Retribution. You'd get your payback. 02:17:28.17 Dave Right. 02:17:30.04 DeadbeatpunK Not here because Ichiban's a different type of Yakuza. 02:17:35.29 Dave Yeah. 02:17:35.42 DeadbeatpunK And it was a bit over the top, but I thought it had to be. When Ichiban forgives him, calls him his friend, he carries him through a mob. 02:17:46.59 Dave Yeah, they're like throwing eggs and batteries and shit at him. 02:17:49.73 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, just being pelted with everything. 02:17:49.96 Dave Yeah. 02:17:52.16 DeadbeatpunK Before they make it to the police headquarters, the YouTubers, or I don't know, the gang that tries to get Ichiban to beat them up so they can get it on camera. 02:18:03.18 Dave Yeah. 02:18:03.64 DeadbeatpunK They start attacking him and people are cheering it on and he doesn't retaliate. And slowly people stop cheering and they just move aside. So I'm very battered and bloody Ichiban. 02:18:13.90 Dave yeah 02:18:19.11 DeadbeatpunK Carries Ichan to the police headquarters and then we get the scene where he wishes him bon voyage in such a ridiculous Ichiban way. 02:18:27.52 Dave Yeah. 02:18:34.31 Dave Yeah. I guess even if I didn't personally love that scene, I guess that that is 100% Ichiban. 02:18:45.44 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 02:18:46.83 Dave He will never carry a grudge against somebody. He will always forgive somebody. 02:18:50.38 DeadbeatpunK And believe the best up until the end. 02:18:52.98 Dave Yeah. He will always see the best in everybody around him. so 02:18:57.04 DeadbeatpunK And he's telling this guy as he's bringing them to the headquarters that, you know, if times ever get hard or you think you've nobody to talk to, you always have me. 02:18:57.56 Dave I guess that makes sense. 02:19:05.94 Dave Yeah. 02:19:06.71 DeadbeatpunK And this is not, no, you get revenge and these people, if they've wronged you like this, you beat them up, you get payback. 02:19:13.09 Dave Yeah, that's what you do. 02:19:13.07 DeadbeatpunK That's it done. 02:19:14.28 Dave Yeah. 02:19:14.49 DeadbeatpunK That's the old Yakuza way. 02:19:16.86 Dave Yeah. But, and so like in the middle of the game, this guy was one of the primary antagonists. just once it's revealed that he was tricking Ichiban the whole time he was like the biggest asshole in the entire game like he's yeah he's awful um but Ichiban always called him his friend because he was his friend his first impression of him was this is my friend so he's always going to be his friend even when he's yeah even when he's throwing a grenade at him he's still his friend uh yeah the Labrador thing so 02:19:30.45 DeadbeatpunK Oh, big time. 02:19:47.81 DeadbeatpunK It's the Labrador thing. ah 02:19:56.59 Dave There's the ending for that. It's a good point. I think your observation there is good that this is the only way that this could have ended with Ichiban being the way he is, I suppose. 02:20:12.13 DeadbeatpunK It was a bit on the nose. It was very second coming at this point. It was almost like a biblical figure. 02:20:18.17 Dave Yeah. 02:20:19.85 DeadbeatpunK But I thought it was a very big moment and it kind of showed how the series has matured lately over the last few releases. 02:20:20.29 Dave Then we get the... 02:20:25.89 Dave Yeah. I would say so. And we praised a little bit of more mature character writing in Gaiden with Kiryu. And I think that that definitely continued into this game for sure. And then we get the real ending, which is more of that Hollywood yakuza melodrama, in which Haruka and Haruto go to a hospital. They're visiting somebody um and they ask, you know, the bed is empty. Where is he? He's not there. 02:20:57.57 Dave And you look at the bed and the name on it, and it says Kazuma Kiryu on it. And so for a split second, you're like, ah, fuck. Did Kiryu die off screen? But he's gone to a chemo appointment. 02:21:07.82 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 02:21:11.28 Dave And so he goes into the office, the doctor asks him his name, and he dramatically turns to the doctor and says, Kazuma Kiryu. And that's that moment, like the, again, the John Wick, I'm back moment. 02:21:26.29 DeadbeatpunK but This game gets praise for its animation a lot, but 02:21:31.23 Dave Yeah. 02:21:33.23 DeadbeatpunK I hear you looking up at the doctor and that glint back in his eye and that hard stare that we know so well. 02:21:39.58 Dave Yeah. 02:21:39.57 DeadbeatpunK I say, yeah, he's back. He's there. 02:21:43.08 Dave Yeah. So absolutely. 02:21:44.02 DeadbeatpunK There's a fight to be had and he's ready for it. 02:21:46.78 Dave The spark is back for sure. And like a little bit of a drama, we'll just say a little bit of extra drama, um, unrealism. are unrealistic things like sickness, but it's just like, you see the scene, you're like, Oh, well, Kiryu is going to be cured by the time the next game starts, you know? So he was, he was given six months to live at the beginning of the game. 02:22:18.54 Dave He was, you know, keeled over, uh, unable to walk halfway through this game. 02:22:23.84 DeadbeatpunK you 02:22:25.56 Dave That never really came up again for the rest of the game, despite the amount of fighting and stuff that happened. And then at the end, he goes in to do the treatment. 02:22:34.23 DeadbeatpunK Well, at this point, he does look quite a bit older. So we don't know if there's been a time lapse here, what has transpired in the time. 02:22:42.19 Dave Yeah. 02:22:43.12 DeadbeatpunK But I mean, there's a lot left unsaid with this one. 02:22:43.45 Dave Yeah. 02:22:47.11 DeadbeatpunK There's bound to be repercussions. How did he get away from the agency? 02:22:51.95 Dave Yeah, well, that's the thing. So my speculation for the next game is that this is going to be like what's currently going on in the John Wick movies, where it's the world versus John Wick. And I think that the next game, it would be really easy to set it up as, okay, the Didoji know that Kiryu says that he's back, he's broken the agreement, so they're coming after him. 02:23:19.19 DeadbeatpunK you If this is a key or you that isn't yet back to false trends, he could be still receiving treatments. He could be recovering. 02:23:27.04 Dave Yeah. 02:23:28.38 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. Do you think they'll ever make another one? 02:23:32.96 Dave ah Yeah, exactly. I think the series is definitely done on this cliffhanger here. So um yeah, just one more question for you here. 02:23:38.54 DeadbeatpunK All wrapped up with a nice little bow. 02:23:45.61 Dave Do you think that Kiryu has overtaken Ichiban as like the driving force in the stories here? 02:23:55.09 DeadbeatpunK No, I don't. Again, it's great to see him back. At one point, I was disappointed that he returned after Yakuza 6. I thought, you do not need to do this. 02:24:02.58 Dave yeah 02:24:04.79 DeadbeatpunK But with what they've done with the character, nothing short of superb. No, in my eyes, Kiryu and Ichiban stand shoulder to shoulder. Kiryu only reached the ending. He got, you know, that tearful apology for nothing he personally did wrong. 02:24:21.15 Dave Yeah. 02:24:22.46 DeadbeatpunK That was Ichiban. 02:24:24.75 Dave Ichiban influenced him. 02:24:24.64 DeadbeatpunK The two have, yeah, I think they both taught each other. Let's not forget Kiryu stopped Ichiban from killing the man with his bare fists in the last game. 02:24:35.54 Dave yeah 02:24:36.74 DeadbeatpunK It's very mutual that they have learned to be better people through each other. So it's not just passing a torch, it's not as simple as that. It has been a two-way street. 02:24:48.51 Dave yeah 02:24:49.45 DeadbeatpunK And while I can't, the hand and heart say that Ichiban is now better than Kiryu, I just can't. I would like to see them both starring roles again. 02:24:59.36 Dave Yeah. I think they definitely will be. The ending of this and the way that their stories went in this just kind of got me thinking like there was a about halfway through this game I felt like Kiryu's story was like way more interesting than Ichiban's and then Kiryu's story in here ends on this very clear you know kind of a cliffhanger but it very clearly sets up what could be the story in the next game. 02:25:18.06 DeadbeatpunK Hm hm. 02:25:29.26 DeadbeatpunK I think with Ketuban, his story's not over, he still has Arakawa's dream of all the out-of-work Yakuza they still need somebody to provide for them. 02:25:39.54 Dave Right. 02:25:41.28 DeadbeatpunK So his story still has so much to go on. He had a mission and he completed that mission and that was what he had to contribute to the overall narrative. 02:25:52.45 Dave Yeah. 02:25:53.38 DeadbeatpunK Kiryu, we were worried, this was his end, this is a life stage, this is 02:25:56.26 Dave Yeah. 02:25:59.04 DeadbeatpunK So many years coming to a point. And then we are Kiryu fans. We've known them for longer. Newcomers, would they feel as strongly this way? 02:26:08.04 Dave Yeah, it might just be because the way that this ends, like you said, Ichiban very neatly finished this chapter of the story. 02:26:17.65 DeadbeatpunK but 02:26:18.45 Dave And Ichiban's story in the next game is going to start fresh from something, right? 02:26:23.32 DeadbeatpunK Yeah. 02:26:24.74 Dave Kiryu's is going to be a continuation of this. So maybe like Kiryu overtaking Ichiban is the wrong way to phrase it. Maybe I just, you know, it's much easier to be like, oh, this is where Kiryu's is going, and it's gonna be a serious thing. 02:26:38.61 DeadbeatpunK Hmm. 02:26:41.04 Dave It's gonna be like this whole agency versus him, and then Ichiban's gonna help him while doing his own thing, something like that. 02:26:46.13 DeadbeatpunK Hmm. 02:26:49.87 Dave So I don't know, I think that kind of like you said, there's been multiple times when Kiryu's story could have ended, some might say it should have ended, But he didn't. And then what they turned that into has been really, really good. So the studio deserves our trust in what's going to come next. Like I have almost no doubt it's going to be really good. So, you know, just speculate at this point. 02:27:18.70 DeadbeatpunK I will definitely be pre-ordering the next one as soon as it comes along. 02:27:23.39 Dave Yeah, for sure. So this has been a good time, man. Thank you for taking ah two and a half hours to run through this really, really long game. There's a ton of stuff that we didn't talk about, but I think we hammered on the most important stuff from the story. 02:27:37.10 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, we weren't going to do a series. it's You can't beat every story. 02:27:42.21 Dave if I had time for another podcast, it would be like a slow book club play through of the Yakuza series. You know, give Yakuza zero 10 to 15 episodes and so forth. 02:28:00.11 DeadbeatpunK Did you play well on Steam Deck? 02:28:02.39 Dave That's true. Yeah. 02:28:03.16 DeadbeatpunK Oh, it could be done. 02:28:04.50 Dave If, uh, if I have time for that time, when I become a full-time podcaster and can do whatever the fuck I want. 02:28:11.12 DeadbeatpunK Yeah, get on that Patreon, people. Come on, make it happen. um 02:28:14.14 Dave There we go. Nice, uh, nice alley-oop, uh, with that finished there. So anyway, man, thank you for taking the time. This has been a pleasure as always. 02:28:21.82 DeadbeatpunK Thank you for the invite, Dave. Always a pleasure. And thank you for listening. 02:28:24.94 Dave Yeah, so, yeah, exactly. Thank you everybody who has made it to the end of the podcast here. If you listen to the end, as always, you are my hero. And I will give one more plug at the end to check out WTFDYW, see a little bit less effort there. I've been practicing in my head as we've been talking about the story. 02:28:44.60 DeadbeatpunK Oh, practice. 02:28:46.64 Dave A little plug to check out the show. It's good, good ah good laughs, good people, good conversations, different topics every time. 02:28:52.10 DeadbeatpunK Filthy language. 02:28:55.49 Dave ah Yeah, a lot of filthy language, but you'll have that. So um down in the show notes, again, you'll find a link to that show. It's a good time. And as always, tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.