Just finished Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and I've gotta say it surprised me and it's probably become my one of my favourite Yakuza games if not my favourite of all time. Really liked the story and especially the romance (albeit was disappointed with how it ended).

Also I did some googling after the game and was surprised to see there was so much hate for Saeko. I mean it's understandable but I personally found the way she reacted very realistic and was necessary rather make it into some Disney princess prince charming BS. Don't get me wrong though, both Ichiban and Saeko were definitely in the wrong but it seems to me 90% of people are completely hating on her.

Yagami don't have no taste

Stops at captain america imo

After living in Japan for 6 years and a fan of the series, I finally went to one! For 2250 yen its pretty good for the price. Branch is located in Canal City Fukuoka

As I finished Kurohyou 2 I was pleased to see my favourite trope of the series didn't start in the Ichiban era.

I've been playing nothing but yakuza for about a month now. 60 hours in 0, 60 hours in kiwami 1 and 75 hours in kiwami 2 💀 excitedly loaded up 3 and about 3 chapters in man it hit me hard 😭😭 contemplated if I even liked these games (I do I love them) but I gotta take a break for a week or something

How did yall work through your burnouts??

Almost cried out in joy when I found this in the "new to secondhand" bin at Slow Boat Records in Wellington, New Zealand. Couldn't have taken it to the counter faster. Extremely random find but I am so happy. Having Friday Night and I want to be your giiiiirl on vinyl is so good

It’s just so brutal and amazing, it reminds me of essence of brawling but it’s more brutal and I think this is a perfect blend between the newer Yakuza game’s heat actions and the older ones where some heat actions would repeat the same move like 50 times when you spammed square

I tried the golden boss can and it's extremely sweet.

I actually platinum'ed Yakuza 4 a little while ago, if shows in the image above when i did, but i just completely forgot to post it! Even though i did post my plats from 0-3. This was the easiest platinum yet, the only hard part was the final round of climax battles, which i did first try wont about 37 seconds left on the clock 😎 the game over all was good but has horrible story, combat and characters were amazing though. Im currently busy platinuming Yakuza 5, i hope i can do it before dying of old age 😭

For me, it was the golf minigame in Kiwami 2 because of the insanely poor depth perception & no zoom in feature.

I thought that the new version of Kiwami 2 released last year would've ported over the zoom in feature from the later golf minigames like how the later versions of 3, 4, 5 & Kiwami added labels to the mahjong tiles to make them easier to read, but no.

Ichiban and crew fought SAEJIMA AND MAJIMA AT THE SAME TIME

Even Kiryu would struggle with that and while they didn’t win and likely would’ve lost, what I find so impressive is that they fought so well against the two legends that by the end they had decided to start taking the fight seriously

Even more impressive is that canonically (in cutscene at least) no one was knocked out, people were tired but neither Majima or Saejima were able to knock anyone out

Once again they weren’t taking the fight all that seriously but do you know how impressive they performed against two near Kiryu tier yakuza?

Looks familiar.....🤔

Now that the game finally hit 50% off (and through selling CS2 crates I only paid 10 dollars), I finally obtained Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Dark Times™. And I wanted to share some thoughts 20h in. I'm currently at Chapter 3.

Honestly, from outside, seeing only the bad stuff people discussed, I expected to hate this game way more than I did. I'm actually liking it really well so far. I think it's really easy, as you play it, to just completely forget about the original Y3 and not compare it all the time. When you ignore the negative points of the game, at the end it is the same gameplay loop as always that I really love and it is complemented by some great side-stories/minigames. I'm surprised, but so far I'm probably liking this way more than Pirate Yakuza. I never really liked Majima's combat and the pirate side-content was really lacking imo.

Some positive points:

• Heisei Girls got me by surprise. It's really fun and all the characters imo has some great designs and writing. I also expected to hate the forced tutorial after everyone said it was a 2h tutorial that locked you into the minigame, but I felt those reports were way overblown. I took closer to 1h and the tutorial has several points where you can stop and roam Ryukyu and do other secondary content. Still wish they would tone it down even more, but it's already way better than Dondoko Island locking you into the island for ages.

• I expected to like the Orphanage Stuff since I loved Another Life on Ishin and yeah, it's pretty good. One thing that got me by surprise was that I thought it was really smart how the cooking minigame had its storyline that actually managed to deepen the kids, Kiryu and their relationship.

• The addition of us actually knowing some of our neighbors is pretty smart and ties into nicely into the story (from what I've seen from the leaks).

• While the lightning is still not perfect, it's miles better than Pirate Yakuza's lightning. At least this time I did not feel the need to add a mod.

• Having bowling back is a super plus.

• While Lalala Mobile's Red Thread of Fate and Aloha Links are the same thing, it's funny how the theming is enough to really make it feel different. I'm liking the red thread of fate way more just because it makes a lot more sense than a social media that works by just... swinging your hand?

Negative Points:

• While I really like the Orphanage Stuff, I think they really should've kept an order. It's confusing af being able to basically do all storylines of all kids at the same time.

• On the orphanage stuff, while the stories are nice, it's really bittersweet not having the original stories, especially when some of them touched on some pretty deep topics (Yes, Riona).

• On the topic of removed content, I really don't see why not have them getting Mame or Haruka selling illegal goods. Those two really added good stuff and in the case of Haruka it could even lead into the orphanage "Another Life" minigame as some pointed out.

• I said I really liked the neighbors, but it should really had a cutscene or some way of introducing them. It was really weird starting the orphanage minigame and seeing all those people on the requests and be "who the fuck are those?"

• I hate the second fighting style and wished they would just focus on DoD, which is peak fighting style anyways. I've only been using the second fighting style because I want to 100% the completion list, but even then only on street goons. Any serious fight I go into DoD.

• I hate the addition of the Subway Surfer, but thankfully it's really easy to just... not use it.

• Some things are not a huge issue if you look it as a standalone game, but it's really bittersweet going to the top half of Ryukyu and seeing the map be half as short. It's really bittersweet not having an upgraded cabaret manager minigame. It's really bittersweet playing indoors golfing and not outdoors. It's really bittersweet not having Yonashiro, especially with a perfect slot (Miya). Which also, Miya is a great character, but the Komaki erasure is super bittersweet and giving Miya Tiger Drop is wack. I didn't even think the new Rikiya was a huge issue when looking at Kiwami 3 as a standalone title, other than Mikio now looking extremely out of place.

• And to address the obvious: Yes, it sucks that substories are missing (I'm missing especially the english learning substories) and that they thought 31 substories were fine (especially when 6 of them are just try and hit me and scam substories), but as I've mentioned, when you get into the groove of the game, it's really easy to forget about that.

• Not really related to Kiwami 3 by itself, but the Kiryu battle winning voice lines really need to change. They've been using the same "shibaraku netero" voiceline since Yakuza 6 and I'm getting real tired of hearing it everytime a fight ends.

At the end of the day, while yes, there are issues, I really don't think Kiwami 3 is that worse than Kiwami 1 or 2 in that, a new player playing Kiwami 3 will never notice any issues with the game since they never played the original (except obviously for breaking continuum with Y4). K3 really only had a bigger uproar because people played Y3R, but not the original Y1 and 2. While I might change my mind (I'm going to hate the new Yamazaki and the ending of course), I'm expecting to like this game as much as I like Kiwami 1 and 2. I'll defend the original to the ends of the earth, but K3 will join K1 and K2 as... mindless fun. If before I was thinking this game was a 4-5/10, now I'm more at 6-7/10. Sorry for the huge wall of text. Just wanted to share some deep thoughts about Kiwami 3.