#original: tehsnakerer

[incorrectpnatquotes]

Max: Yeah, I can't call what you're saying "punchlines". There is no punch when you're this loquacious. I mean a dull thud at best. Johnny: And you come off like a tryhard who uses words like loquacious.

[peemanne]

rgg game osts ranked Yeah.................

LONG ASS POST AHEAD!!!!!! BAH!!!!!!!!!!!

for context awhile back a yakuza discord server i'm in had a music discussion thread open up and we were invited to make simple little tier lists for the game osts to start it off. it was supposed to be just the tier list but i eventually spiraled into a whole ramble. whoops. so i might as well just paste it here with a few additions so the rest of you can see it yippee!!!!!!!!!!!!

will be providing my reasonings and then my highlight tracks. i'm gonna provide convenient youtube links to all the songs mentioned so if you wanna check one of them out feel free to just click the hyperlink

and yes this is ordered in tiers. the personal highlights aren't though

>Yakuza 5 is my personal top 1 OST overall, but it's seriously close. I can't tell you enough how much of a nut I am for this series and its music. Yakuza 5's ost is, in my eyes, the most consistently hard-hitting amongst all of RGG's catalogue. The street fight themes are all amazing, the boss fight themes hit hard and pump you the hell up, and this also has the one of the best B-sides out of all of them, with stuff like Baka Mitai (fun fact, Saejima's is actually considered the original version, Kiryu's "Taxi Driver Edition" actually uses a different key to fit Kuroda's voice), the songs from Haruka's section, and even the jazzy bar themes. 5 hits that perfect balance of quantity and quality, and also happens to fill like half of my workout playlist.

Personal Highlights:

The place where I used to be

Daigo's western theme

Victory Road

and of course The Battle for the Dream

>I am such a sucker for Yakuza 4's music direction. As Tehsnakerer said in his Yakuza 4 video, this is the first truly GREAT soundtrack, and I'd have to agree. The jazzier style of music on showcase here fits this series- and this entry ESPECIALLY- like a glove. This is such a quality collection of sounds. Featuring the best panic themes, the best chase themes, and some iconic street battle themes. 4's direction makes it stand out even more amongst RGG's catalogue, and I couldn't be happier about it. Also, this game gave us Machine Gun Kiss and Pure Love in Kamurocho, which are two of my favorite karaoke tracks in the whole series.

Please bring back Pure Love in Kamurocho for a modern title, RGG. I'm begging you.

Personal Highlights:

Solitude

Receive and Bite You

Infinite Handcuffs

yeah yeah fine For Faith

Why couldn't they use this for the actual cover instead of the weird one we have now like come on this looks so much better

>Is anyone gonna disagree with me when I say Lost Judgment is easily the best out of the more techno-focused soundtracks? They handle it perfectly here, with tracks that grab you by the throat like K.O.G. and Dig In Your Heels, utilizing the electric sound with effortless grace, while still having enough variety throughout to keep it from getting stale. I also found the B-sides here surprisingly strong alongside the main game, with the school stories giving us a nice variety of music to work with. The boxing ones and Toward To The Skyline are what I'd highlight in that selection.

Personal Highlights:

In the Groove

Unwavering Belief / Dig in Your Heels

Final Destination

1811

>Gaiden oh my gah......... Despite the shorter game, I seriously dig the tracks on display here. It's so consistently amazing, and does a great job of servicing both the legacy of Kiryu, and giving us some Good Shit™️ for the newer faces. This is also when I really came to appreciate the cutscene tracks: Wounded Beast is such a kickass track that you'd be forgiven for thinking it plays in an actual fight, and Psycho's Prelude is an amazing hype-up track for an even more amazing boss theme. Also worth mentioning there's like a gajillion coliseum tracks in this one. Have no idea why but y'know I appreciate it. It's cool.

Personal Highlights:

Psycho's Anthem

Deadly Struggle / Fleeting Dream (HAKANAKI YUME)

Bring It On (best street fight track to date i'm not taking notes at this time)

Un altro appassionato

>0 has One-Eyed Assassin so it automatically goes here. The rest of the tracks are decent too ig 🙄 There are a few sort of those "eh whatever cool skip it" tracks in here which hold it back a teeny bit in my eyes, but this is still a really solid collection overall, and also gets props for being Kiwami's soundtrack if it was good. I'm kidding of course but 0 handles it pretty well for the most part. I find 0 is at its best music-wise when they either go all-in with the techno, or shy away from it almost entirely.

Personal Highlights:

Make You Free

Both Receive You remixes (The Subtype and ~Tech Trance Arrange~)

Interplanetary Spark

Reign

>Yakuza 6 has Lots of Lights so it automati I think 6 does a really good job at telling a story through its music. You have tragedy being painted in Fist Law and DESTINY, you have sheer anger and brutality being portrayed in Body and Soul, and you can even find it in the street themes with the feeling of "I am completely done with all of this bullshit" in KAMURO again. I also wanna say this has some of ZENTA's best work, which I really really REALLY appreciate.

Personal Highlights:

Lots of Lights

DESTINY

Bloodstained Philosophy (coolest name for a track i can't lie)

Theory of Beauty

>Judgment immediately does a great job of differentiating itself from the Yakuzas, and it's apparent as soon as you get into the street fight tutorial. The OST does a great job of painting Yagami and the overall bleaker picture of the game. Where some battle themes in the main series feel like a victory lap, JE instead sometimes has you feel like you're on the backfoot. Lambda, Hyenas Wheezing, and Rake Your Inside are all tracks that make you feel like an underdog, and give you that strength to power through what seems like impossible odds. It also has Flower of Chivalry so it aut

Personal Highlights:

Encounter ~ Keihin Alliance

Hyena's Wheezing

Penumbra

Destination

>Like a Dragon (/7) is another heavily techno leaning OST. If you asked me about it a few months ago, I probably would have put this higher. But now with IW out, I've started to see more of 7's OST's flaws. There are few tracks that are either weirdly low-energy, or feel a little generic and mesh together with the rest of the soundtrack, or at worst, both. But 7 still has quite the number of solid tracks, and those that stand out REALLY stand out. Shoutout to one of the most unique long battle tracks in Enter the Tiger.

Personal Highlights:

Brutality

Receive You The Hyperactive

REIWA LABYRINTH

ism

>Yakuza 3 acts as a sort of bridge between the rough, almost grunge-like sound of the PS2 era and the cleaner compositions of later entries. And I think it does both of those styles pretty well! It also starts to experiment with electric sound a little more, while still keeping the heavy guitars 1+2 are known for. The best are obviously composed of the tracks that do both. They even keep the unintelligible English lyrics in some tracks, what's not to love?

Personal Highlights:

Lyricism Without Tears

Clay Doll On The Cradle

Fly

D2A BABY YEAH BEST THEME EVER MADE D2A D2A D2A D2A

(2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

>Atmosphere is a large part of the PS2 era of Yakuza games' identity, and the music is a pretty large part of that. Yakuza 2 has an aggressive, grungy sound that pairs perfectly with the brutality of the game. You'll find some of the most of the most rough sounding songs in RGG's catalogue in here, and it's just so good in a way that isn't really replicated in the more modern entries. Also one of the tracks (Block Head Boy) samples Wu-Tang for some reason and I find that very funny.

Personal Highlights:

Evil Itself

North Menace

Hit & Kill

Outlaw's Lullaby (I still think the Kiwami 2 remix is the better of the two but this one's still SO good please listen to it if you haven't already)

whatcho beautiful ass staring at kaito my king >Kaito Files has like 6 tracks. They're all pretty good tracks, but that's like 6 tracks. Come on. Anyways, it's basically just more LJ music, so uhhhh yeah peak

Personal Highlights (plural would be like all of them)

Blood-Drunk Master Theme

>Kiwami 2. Yeah this one falls into the same trap as 7 does, but with less of those "This is the greatest thing to grace my ears" tracks. It still has some of them, though. The best remixes here are the ones that touch up and make completely sure that what the original has is intact: Lullaby of Outlaws and A Scattered, Eternal Moment are both fantastic in that regard. This also has a decent chunk of completely new tracks, presumably because they couldn't get certain composers back. You have stuff like the amazing triple-part track that plays in the Kamurocho Hills segment, Rebellious Phase which is decent, and the randomly amazing Break Off. Still a crime Evil Itself was snubbed like that smh.

Personal Highlights:

Lullaby of Outlaws

A Scattered, Eternal Moment

Kamuro Hills

Update with Gunfire

(1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

>Unfortunately, like with most aspects, Yakuza 2 does everything the first game did better. Still though, some quality tracks here. Yakuza 1 doesn't have too much to work with, but it still does utilize its few track slots well. From long-standing iconic tracks like Receive You, to Funk Goes On, and even the off B-side tracks like Singin' Bass, there really isn't a miss in here, just moreso a lack of super standout tracks. There's still quite a few to love despite that, of course.

Personal Highlights

son of a gun

Turning Point

Receive You The Prototype

Funk Goes On

>kiwami 1 ost snorkkkkkk mimimimimimimim snorkkkkkk mimim Alright I'm exaggerating, but I still think it's pretty weak in comparison to the rest. There's a lot of tracks that just feel kinda butchered to me? And it's not like the new tracks are particularly standout or anything. The tracks that do work are genuinely really good: Ideal For Violence is uhhhh perfect, Get Over It is a really strong long battle theme, Pray Me ~Revive~ is on par, if not arguably better than the original, and For Whose Sake Kiwami matches the sorrow of the original pretty well. But then you have stuff like Funk Goes On 極 which feels weirdly weak, Receive You the madtype which feels sorely outclassed by like, every single other Majima Receive You, and what would be arguably the strongest track, Receive You Reborn, doesn't even show up outside of Japanese versions. Kiwami isn't all bad, hell, there are some really good standouts here, but it just can't really compare to the rest in my eyes.

Personal Highlights:

Ideal For Violence

Get Over It

Amusing Octagon

Everlasting Spirit

>Infinite Wealth sits in haven't listened enough of solely because I haven't finished the game and thus haven't touched any track past Kooky (UPDATE: now any track past Impregnable Triangle. I'm planning to do the finale by this weekend). By any other metric this would have shot UP. I ADORE this OST. The cutscene tracks, the generic battle themes, the boss themes, the B-sides, they're all so excellent. This inadvertently made 7's OST worse for me because of how much better it handles the techno.

Personal Highlights:

Brutality ~Rebuild~

Impregnable Triangle (Fun fact: this track uses the time signature of 3/4, which is a waltz. I'll let you fill in the blanks for what that means for the theming.)

Kooky

Slugfest (Yamaniacs stay winning what can i say)

ok so uhhh apparently i hit the character limit lmao. didn't even know this site had one. uhhhhhh will continute in a reblog it's just kurohyou and ishin anyways

[r-a-nima]

Saturday post time!

I’ve got an odd one for you all.

I have a bizarre fascination with the game, YIIK: A PostModern RPG. I’ve never played the original version that was initially released. I have yet to purchase it despite reviews starting to lean a little more toward positive as the updates to the game’s story and gameplay come out.

But I HAVE seen two different 2+ hours videos about the games by Tehsnakerer and Running shine that are unambiguously some of my favorite things ever.

So a while back (quite a while as I didn’t even put a date on it as you will see) I decided to pull on a thread of info and design a fan character for a game I never played and have only seen two videos about, this thread being that the main character Alex had a sister who is probably his older sibling, the game doesn’t do a good job establishing who’s older.

Here she is:

She is Alison Eagleston, the older sister of Alex, the game’s protagonist. As you can see, I humorously called Alex “Alex YIIK” as a reference to a YouTube channel dedicated to memes about YIIK that I am subbed to.

I didn’t add much to stats aside from how old she is. But for her background specfically, I imagined her as being incredibly disappointed in Alex due to how she believes he’s done nothing with his life and is wasting his time doing his stupid quest. She would be the most vocal about his selfishness and one track mind.

This point onward is spoilers for the game, but she would’ve joined the party if only if Rory is still around by a certain point in the game and her abilities would revolve around her being a sort of “speaks with her fists first” gal. I imagine her using brass knuckles or a bat and her mini game for attacks being timed punches/smacks with a bat.

Eventually a big plot twist about her and Alex would’ve been revealed and it ironically would lead to them reconciling as siblings, though she wouldn’t help him with his final battle cause she would stay behind for their mom.

That’s honestly a lot for a character who doesn’t really exist in the game. At least, as far as I know. I could be wrong, as I once again haven’t played the game and have only seen bits and pieces of people playing it post the updates. I do unironically hope to try the game myself at one point, though I know I won’t have the same experience as many others did in the days when it first released.

Still, I did like this piece I did. And I’m happy it turned out as well as it did, especially cause this one was before I decided to dip back into the basics for sketching as practice.

That’s all! Okay see ya next week!

[incorrectpnatquotes]

Lucifer: So if you want to know why I'm such a killjoy, you now know exactly who to blame... Lucifer: ME!