#like if aoki really did take ichis words to heart and starts to actually see jo as his family and as someone who cares about him for him

[todayisafridaynight]

i think i would have gone loco if jo and aoki got to meet up just once after ichi breaks through to him like. the damage to my psyche id have wouldve been immeasurable, irreparable even

[nyxqueenofshadows]

it took me 128 hours, but i finally finished yakuza 7! as always, play diary under the cut (5k words, fyi)

had a lot of fun, there were times i laughed out loud and cried and yeah, adore the ichigang and what they bring to the series. banger of a game

bless ichiban and his big dumb heart

masato is such a dick. reminds me of post-timeskip nishiki a bit. i like how they portray his illness tho (even if they’re super vague about it).

oh speaking of there’s sooooo much cutscene jesus christ. even for a yakuza game this is killing me, even if it’s all very good. feels like i’m watching a tv show at times.

new year’s tacky sunglasses i salute you

the bread cutscene! it really does look great, idk what possessed them to spend as much time as they must’ve done to make one bite of bread look that good but i respect it!

ponytail ichi!! he’s only in it for like 5 minutes but i already miss him

anyway hey adachi welcome to the party now what on earth do you want and why are you pestering him about it this much

this is probably gonna come up again but i feel like i have no sense of how long anything’s gonna take. i’ll be stuck in 45 minute long segments where i can’t save or do much of anything and i can never see them coming even tho i’m what, nine games in at this point?

it’s so weird walking at the bottom of nakamichi street and the don quijote isn’t there. that’s like THE landmark down there for so many games (and in real life!) and for it to be a police station feels weirdly wrong.

arakawa sr what’re you doing man? what’s with the cold shoulder? and why are you buddy buddy with omi now?

ichi and adachi really get off on the wrong foot huh, tho it’s nice to see them getting over that a bit as they work together.

looking at nick ogata it’s kind of easy to see where they were hoping to slot akiyama in. shame, too.

after the first dungeon (and boss) to test me i think i’m getting used to the combat now? obvs i’ve not got a lot to work with yet tho.

so i played the rggo version of ichi’s story like six months ago? so i knew that arakawa sr shooting ichi was a thing, but oh man. he really has no hesitation there does he. fuck. also adachi! i need him back and he’s gone :(((( at least it gave me my equipment i put on him back

nanba! grumpy guy. reasonable tho.

fake money? huh. wonder who put that on ichi. and why, too. is this gonna be to do with that commissioner guy, the one from the cabaret club.

i needed to quit so i skimmed over this a bit (which is a shame cos it was a good bit) but nanba has a criminal record??? tell me more??? (me from later: ohhh he was selling drugs on the black market. nanba... me from even later: BRO WHY)

i’ve unlocked substories! woohoo!

hamako’s great, like her a lot. yeah, show ‘em who’s boss!

wait ryo aoki is leader of bleach japan? that explains a few things. (i had it spoiled for me shhh) also bleach japan guy (kume?) can go die, i hate him. do i get to hit him at some point, please say i do (me, post game: I do, but not nearly enough.)

the bit where nanba and ichi finally get a place to live and sit talking about their dreams and being like fuck it, do what you want hit me harder than i expected. maybe it’s just where i’m at in life (or that i’m a big ol’ sap) but i teared up a bit

adachi’s back in the party, ichi’s got his hero bat, everything’s going great! can’t wait for it all to come crashing down around them when whatever the fuck was going on with the geomijul guy with the crossbow comes back at the party again.

wait wait hold on why did they translate sujimon sensei like that??? he introduces himself as ドクターすじもん and then says people call him すじもん博士（はかせ）so why not stick with that? doctor sujimon and then professor sujimon, it even links back to the pokemon stuff more (professor oak etc.) did they just want the alliteration???

anyway i lost my first fight :((( i went wandering in chinatown and they’re like twice my level up there. bummer. I’m actually gonna have to start saving my money like a real adult :(((

the noise i made when nanoha’s last name was revealed i was like OH? Saeko’s coming, right? We’re nearly there? also as someone connected to care homes if they’re using this as one big scam i’m gonna be so pissed off

IT WAS WORSE tho ngl this doesn’t seem like a sustainable business model?

finally met kashiwagiiiiiiii i love how they completely blow past him being someone you might recognise if you’ve played 0-3, he’s just like yo are you gonna pay this time. also not sure how i feel about gary buster holmes (now actually pronounced gary and not gayry) being in it. they’ve upped his japanese so it sounds even more unintelligible and foreign than his last appearance, and is it not just kind of fan service? like, i like him don’t get me wrong, but did he need to be there

yokohama is  so big :’(

the boss fight/rush/dungeon thing through seiryu hq was actually pretty fun and not too difficult, which was nice. hoshino (no, not the one from judgment but what a twist that would be) has a weirdly incongruent voice but i’m sure i’ll get used to it. also he knows smth, i’m suspicous of this man.....

ALSO what was ichi thinking about when they came out of HQ? he was clearly distracted, but about what?

they really straight up killed nonomiya huh. no amount of ‘he was secretly nice really’ is gonna make me like him tho, he was an arse asdfghjkl

SAEKO she’s here!!!! the scene where she joins the party was really sweet (even if they go from 0 to 100 really quickly asdfghjkl like they met ten minutes ago and then she spilled her entire backstory and now they’re on ‘we’ll never leave you alone again’ terms. okay?)

pun names in substories continue, ofc bubble man is called awano, of course he is

i am not gonna handle this job system well, i can see it coming (edit: actually, I did pretty well. Could’ve been more efficient about it, but overall not bad)

it’s weird seeing things that were in judgment in this game but in completely different places. like, there’s the single chase sequence at the start of the game (were they planning more? it feels like it), the search sequence where you look for nancy, and then saeko’s cheers are very similar to mafuyu’s in that one sequence. i know it’s just classic rgg asset reuse but smth about it feels different here?? (edit: I don’t know what I meant here)

ERI! oh wait i’ve gotta do the business minigame to get her in the party :((( okay plot hold on, i’ve got some grinding to do

so THAT’S how the counterfeit money fits in! assuming the bill ichiban had in his pocket is linked in to this liumang operation.

i’m really liking the longer time to get to know each character and for their relationships to develop. rgg have always been good at that but it feels like they’re really getting chance to shine here

that said i really do hate how there’s no grace period after combat and you can get stuck in a loop of enemy spawns and fights. for grinding xp it’s great but for actual fun? not so much.

is nugget two (aka omelette) just there for fan service? don’t get me wrong i’m very happy to have a chicken wandering the office again, but it’s all i can think about whenever i see her

did the management game up to unlocking eri basically all in one session. don’t recommend, exactly, but it was convenient! i also like that there’s skills linked to doing that, it’s an extra incentive to do it

after several hours of pootling around doing some minor grinding and the part time hero stuff, time to finally finish chapter 5! also why is there nowhere i can buy enforcer gear, i can get stuff for basically every other job except that one, and two of the gear shops on the map aren’t open yet...

mabuchi can GET FUCKED but anyway hi joongi

that dungeon after that, from after joongi leaves to the final boss fight with *checks notes* heavy machinery is so looooong, are they all gonna be like this? it’s just weird cos there’s two save points quite close together and then nothing for like half an hour and three floors. odd design

whoever said zhao is like a gen z majima is so not wrong (tho toned down ofc). wonder what he’s like not in front of a crowd (very good, is the answer)

geomijul let’s goooooo this was a much more enjoyable dungeon than the yokohama one, even with the random where’s wally thing it had going on in the middle.

oh so THEY’RE the ones making counterfeit money! oh! also hi again joongi. so glad i had eri for your boss fight or it might have been a little trickier (even if i had her as idol so i had two idols in the party... oops)

ALSO NANBA WTF i knew he had a sibling (it got spoiled for me :((( tag your spoilers people!!!) but didn’t know circumstances. yikes. so then if the geomijul didn’t take his brother (which seems unlikely) then who did?

it’s not even 2am yet??? guys do you not need sleep????

oh this is a loooong night.

obligatory plot/history dump section, currently feeling a lot like how hiroshima worked in y6 but with somehow more corruption. less murder tho, probably. so by the ijin three working together on their counterfeit venture and sending the money to the governor who gives it to the police this somehow keeps the balance. a balance so fragile that one man dying can upend the whole thing. guys i don’t think this plan was as solid as you thought it was.

i can’t believe i’m about to say this, but as he currently is i don’t like zhao. well no, i *do*, but i also want to punch him a bit which is good, i think that’s how it’s supposed to go.

NANBA COME ON MAN these people are clearly using you as a means to an end

also i’m not happy with how in the translation they keep saying he pretended to be homeless. this isn’t true, both in general and in the jp text. he *was* homeless. it wasn’t an act, it wasn’t a play, it was a thing he did to get what he wanted. he didn’t have a secret second place to live or a job he was doing to keep himself afloat, he was just like the other people in that camp but for the fact that he chose that specific spot and probably did at one point or another have the means to support himself. anyway, rant over

i mean it eri is so fucking op omg she’s never leaving the party

side content is going well, tho i’m getting to the point where i need money to do some of them and i Do Not Have Enough. where am i supposed to get two million yen from, game, why do this to me

i feel like they put ono michio in just cos he’s popular not cos it makes any real sense. like it’s fine, ig, but idk. maybe i’m all ono michio’d out.

i lost my first plot fight.... :((( it’s the one against nanba and ishinoda, i think i got kind of unlucky with attacks cos i didn’t have nearly the same problems the second time round even tho i was equally as prepared.

they literally could have told nanba his brother was alive and well, that would have fixed all of their problems and he wouldn’t have gone ratting out their counterfeiting scheme. guys why didn’t you??? i know they explained it sort of (and they said they underestimated how bad things were) but i still don’t see how denying him what he wanted to know helped anyone in that situation.

obligatory long lore dump via vague torture scene (this is literally the bit with hamura in judgement). i’m gonna be honest i zoned out a bit partway through but i got the gist.

nanba’s not staying :((( i get it tho.

Anyway once again hi joongi welcome aboard! get ready to get put through your fucking paces

wait so the omi were at the liumang restaurant (qijin?) to make an oath with mabuchi, or smth, and then they see him get beaten into the floor and just leave? lol what was the point

NANBA FUCKING CAME THROUGH okay i’ve been won over, sorry i was ever mean to you nanba. i don’t think anyone could refuse ichiban a second time when he looks at you with those big ‘i unconditionally love you’ eyes

mitsu returns too! interesting place to bring him back too, hopefully he comes back again later (…barely. Bummer.)

is zhao a closet tsundere

oh they killed ogasawara? yikes. nanba says it best, aoki’s plan is working really efficiently and really well, i’m almost impressed

i have everyone in the party now! woo hoo! tho it does stand out more than a little bit that everyone has a karaoke song except joongi. i know they fix that for infinite wealth (and it kinda makes sense, ig) but come on let me hear him :((((((

i did not find the yokohama dungeon fun. as a way of levelling up it’s fairly efficient but my god do i not wanna do the whole thing again

(i’m still pootling around in chapter 11 don’t @ me) LAU KA LONG IS THAT YOU i thought he didn’t turn up until gaiden, i got jumpscared by him and his tsukumo hair *some time later* his name’s CHAU ka long??? fucking bite me

finally moving onto chapter 11 can’t wait to do some more plot oh no i’m in chapter 12 and it wants 3 million yen from me. *sigh* back to the grind

masato really had a shitty night in 2001 huh. i mean he’s hardly the nicest guy, even back then, but still. will say tho that the dead guy, suzumori, was literally asking for it. if he’s dumb enough to say shoot me to a guy with a gun then idk what he was expecting.

he and ichiban have the same eyes, i think. aoki’s are smaller than ichiban’s big puppy eyes so it’s harder to tell but i’m pretty sure they’re the same. There’s no reason for this, but it’s there.

having done everyone’s drink links, i think the ending of zhao’s is my favourite (recency bias maybe) but the best overall was adachi’s? difficult to say.

also ‘pan joongi’ has me fucking DEAD some of these party chats are hilarious. i’m gonna find them all if it kills me istg

ichiban holdings nee senbei is DONE so ofc i immediately went to spend all of my money (minus the 3 million yen i needed) on gear. oops. also yeah eri, punch that dude in the face!!!

the cutscene where aoki is bitching to sawashiro about how no one told him daddy dearest was going to sotenbori was weirdly rushed? like not pacing but literally the dialogue would move onto the next bit before he’d finished speaking the lines. is that a glitch or smth? was very off-putting (me from later: most of the cutscenes in that office were like that? And only aoki’s dialogue? Ig my game glitched)

we’re in sotenbori!!!!! it feels so small compared to ijincho but it’s kinda nice. cosy. tho why tf are we starting in the grand, we don’t have the money for this and we’re not even being served by a hostess, why are we here asdfghjkl

doing the entire sotenbori battle arena was both a lot more engaging for me compared to the yokohama dungeon AND much more worth it. good gear, good money, and for levelling people quickly it’s absolutely perfect (at current levels)

man am i glad i did tho that saejima majima fight would’ve been rough if i went there immediately when i arrived in sotenbori. didn’t do too bad tho, lost eri (saejima one-shotted her from full health...) but everyone else stayed up pretty easily.  i find it interesting that after the fight tho majima says やっぱり when he’s talking about them being allies. did he twig it halfway through the fight or did he know already? and how? (the eclectic arrangement of people with ichi was probably a clue but still asdfghjkl) ALSO you’re telling me they were in osaka for two entire years and no one fucking noticed. they were IN OMI HQ to meet with arakawa and no one fucking noticed. (also arakawa says that the only people who know 3jima are there are the people in that room but that’s not true, mitsu also knows. rgg why do you always forget poor mitsu....)

poor mitsu being bullied tho :((( he’s trying his best and ichi is just like nah, i’m coming in whether you like it or not

is it me or is daigo(‘s actor) putting in a better performance in this game than previous ones. idk maybe it’s just cos i’ve not seen him in like three games

i was kind of expecting the fight in omi hq to be longer. huh. ALSO tendo is like i’m jumping sides we’re friends now, and then he vanishes from literally all cutscenes after that moment. i’m not even confident he’s outside of the party combat where the other guys were. so what happened to tendo????? are we gonna see him again or is that it? (foreshadowing is a literary device-)

figures that kiryu comes back and his first line is おらぁ！ asdfghjkl and watase being like who is he? no idea??? fucking got me, bless that man. daigo’s expression in that scene was really good too, seems like he’s the only person that believed kiryu was gone. saejima and majima sure as hell didn’t.

scene with ichiban and arakawa sr on the yokohama dock was excellent. well-written, well-performed just, great cutscene. honestly that entire chunk of cutscene (slightly minus the bit where ichiban runs to arakawa sr’s body) up to and including the scene with sawashiro, ishioda and the execs. really really good

WELL that was a lot of feelings, time to go and do some side shit, ig.

the feelings aren’t over!!!!! No!!!!

sure, let’s go run in the election. why not. it does kind of hurt me personally that ichi and co. are just using this election as a sham to get close to kume and therefore aoki, and while you’re walking around people will be like ‘I’ll vote for you!’ ‘you’re better than that guy!’ and we’re really, really not (in this one single instance. every other time kume can go get fucked and hopefully unlearn all the shit aoki and bleach Japan got him to believe)

hoshino no, you didn’t deserve this : ( sawashiro….

sawashiro’s backstory is all very interesting for pretty much everyone involved (except the women cos this is an rgg game). masato is sawashiro’s son, shit, dude. Ichi does not seem to be taking this super well but honestly, fair! he’s a rough couple of days and now he’s just found out the guy he looked up to this whole time and devoted his entire life to was actually his dad, and probably knew and didn’t tell him. that’s fucked up.

MICHINO SHIRABE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME the pun names in this game istg, this is some ace attorney level shit

fuck the fight with kiryu. it’s just, so not engaging as a fight. partly cos i was a little underleveled I think but also you just end up using like two attacks on him the whole fight chipping away at his enormous well-defended health bar and I got bored. also if I have to hear him say 次は何だ one more time I’m gonna fucking riot. at least his boss theme is the best version of his theme we’ve ever had and one of the best themes in the whole game

I have complicated feelings on kiryu being in this plot at all, tbh. with the context of gaiden ig it’s more forgiveable but it just feels like he doesn’t belong there, y’know? this is ichiban’s story but all of kiryu’s mess and baggage have dragged their way in and it shifts the focus for too long. idk. I was in a bad mood anyway when I played this section so I might be being less charitable than I normally would be. I like kiryu, I like his story, but rn he’s not who I should be engaging with.

okay I’m having fun again now, the other day was an outlier. In retrospect I do like how they integrated his styles and signature moves into his moveset. and the dragon, while utterly nonsensical even in context, looked pretty cool.

anyway I ran the sotenbori battle arena one more time so now it’s time to go and punch ishioda in the face!

had some difficulties with that battle (saeko got stunned early and I had to reevaluate my whole plan) but joongi came through and overall it definitely went easier than the kiryu fight even if the mirror face thing was fucking dumb. I don’t hate it? I don’t think? but wtf was that asdfghjkl

ohhhh, that’s what happened to tendo. ohhhhhh well shit ALSO did ishioda just fucking die. did they leave him to explode on the bomb. guys, guys that’s a crime, guys-

actually really like the cutscene of aoki and his secretary (she has a name, I can’t remember it *cry*), it reinforces a lot about his character and the effect he has on people.

fascinated by the lack of security at this event where the governor of Tokyo is talking. if ichiban had been someone with ill intent aoki would’ve been totally fucked. also nick is back in the main plot, good for him

right, time to go and piss around with the side content some more rather than deal with the implication that date and Adachi are friends

MAKO-CHAN no, not having it. I saw on one of their official streams once, when they were doing the stream every day for like two weeks thing they were doing, Yokoyama say he regretted this and that it was fan service (it was the stream with ushizawa, the jp streamer). I think that’s probably fair, especially cos you don’t get to use new serena as a hideout afterwards. the scene doesn’t really add anything and date didn’t need to be there. having said that, I’m happy seeing him again and it’s kind of funny how short he is compared to everyone else. (as an aside ushizawa had some *balls* to turn to Yokoyama and be like this bit was shit asdfghjkl)

why does the kamurocho batting centre look weird. did they shorten the distance or smth? I swear it didn’t look like this in judgment. and the textures are so low res….

WELL. I’M DONE. FUCK

I liked going up through millennium tower. the floors felt a little samey after a while but it was kind of nostalgic walking through the same place you fight as kiryu in 6.

ig tendo also having the dragonfish tattoo is where they got in that detail from rggo, tho where it was sawashiro there and his was white(?) this time it’s tendo and it’s blue (and uh, not a dragonfish? But you know what I mean). I like how they mixed it in with his moveset and the names of his moves tho, that’s neat.

the tendo boss fight runs a little overlong imho but if you’re levelled it’s so much easier than any of the old guard boss fights. same for both of the aoki boss fights. like yeah, you might get swarmed a bit in that first one, but I never felt like I was in any danger. the QTEs caught me off guard tho, I wasn’t expecting any and then suddenly they throw four at me at once, come on guys asdfghjkl

everything after that HOO BOY I was kind of indifferent on masato as a character up to this point (he had his moments but I was just like blah whatever) but I’ve officially been converted. the writing in that cutscene where ichi yells at him and tries to beg him to start over and onwards from there is so so so fucking good, there’s so much character there and it’s expressed so well. I teared up at points cos ichi is so desperate not to lose anyone else, and despite everything – despite him ordering the death of his DAD – he’s willing to be by him and hold him up for as a long as it takes. it’s such a fucking ichiban moment and it’s played so well, in general and in the performance.

same for the scene at the lockers. I think that, along with the kiryu bit on the roof in 5 (either one, take your pick), is one of my new favourite scenes in the series. it’s heartbreaking.

AND THEN FUCKING KUME okay no I can be calm about it. part of me is like, this is a cop out, this is rgg studios once again having a character die instead of going through the long process of redemption and growth. but part of me is also like no, this is the perfect place to use it. aoki ryo was everything kume aspired to be, everything masato groomed him to be, and he’s absolutely the kind of person who would be sent over the edge by the reveal that aoki wasn’t real. or, well, that he had committed an unforgiveable sin. kume believes more than anything that he is doing the right thing, even when committing murder, because he believes that if he is ‘cleansing’ then therefore he *must* be in the right, no matter the action being done. he turned out exactly like aoki wanted him to, but masato wasn’t prepared for the consequences of that (I think he knew, tho), and that cost him.

I don’t LIKE kume as a character, he’s annoying, but I do think his arc is quite well done and that it’s reminiscent of the real kumes out there.

the last little bit made me cry too, where ichi is on the bridge. it’s the ‘everything sucks but there’s hope there if only you look’, it gets me every fucking time. it’s such a thesis for ichiban as a character, the game as a whole, and even the whole series.

also Adachi gets his moment! good for him! can’t wait for kamurocho to get its next new corrupt police chief asdfghjkl

also genuinely, did they leave ishioda to explode on that bomb. guys, guys that’s a crime, guys-

uh things I wanted uh, mitsu deserved some more dialogue, and I wish joongi and zhao got a bit more plot time after their respective bits. it makes sense to focus on the core four (ichi, saeko, Adachi, nanba) cos you’ve spent more time with them but it does make them feel like set dressing sometimes. eri isn’t even there (I get why but still :sad: ). also nick, the entire time he was there I couldn’t help but think of Akiyama the whole time. thematically he makes so much more sense, and it would give that scene where he calls aoki out so much more impactful. OH and mirror face can fuck off, worst plot twist to appear twice, why the fuck is he there asdfghjkl

OH ALSO the first aoki fight, it’s really jarring when that just has the generic fight theme. like, obviously he gets his own very good theme later, but they couldn’t have come up with one to slot in here? it feels so wrong

saeko DOES kiss ichiban. huh. I thought that was smth they just introduced for infinite wealth but there was actually precedent. kashiwagi being involved is killing me asdfghjkl love that man (oh he does the same for eri, interesting.)

the romance subplots do, on the whole, make me very uncomfortable. Especially iroha’s, she comes on incredibly strong and it’s not super clear he reciprocates on that, plus she’s super possessive and weird and then drops him once she’s got what she wanted. Not good. (one of the ladies does imply he’s more submissive than she expected, so at least there’s that nugget, but I’d rather not have got it like this, thanks). And the ending? What are we going for here, guys? Cos I’m not sure it works!

Dragon kart on the other hand, great fun. A little light on the subplot nonsense (compared to, say, the taxi minigame from 5) and the mini advertisement half-way through for pocket circuit could’ve been skipped, but they’re minor problems. The racers are all living out their shounen sports manga dreams, good for them. The courses are fun too!

Wait no, the party chat about mushrooms has romantic (sub)text and they cut it in the localisation! How dare they deny my Adachi/nanba dreams

What a note to end on asdfghjkl