Board 8 > Aww Yeah Platinum #159 GET! - Yakuza 3

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.truetrophies.com/game/Yakuza-3/trophies?gamerid=5932&showall=1

The first in my line of catching up on my unfinished games that start with the letter Y. I really want to play Yakuza 6 this year so to do that I need to play the rest of the games in this series after playing 1 and 2 on PS2 last year.

Overall the big showcase here was this was the series moving to HD and having the new behind the back camera. Everything else from the battle system to the menus was lifted almost exactly from Yakuza 2.

I liked the Okinawa segments and Kiryu running the orphanage and helping the kids with their problems because that was the part was definitely different from past game. The plot and villain weren't as strong as 1 or 2, but they still had a lot of cool moments especially in the final few chapters, but the ending was a bit of a cop out.

Best Bro Rikiya best non-Kiryu character in this game you will be missed although I marked out for Andre Richardson's surprising english voice acting as well.

Apparently this platinum is one of the harder ones of the franchise (I think the other tough one is supposed to be 0?) so I'm glad I was able to get it out of the way. A lot of the minigames I would told would be too difficult or take forever I felt weren't too bad, even learning how to play Hanafuda (like how I learned to play Mahjong in Yakuza 2) wasn't too bad.

The main aspects of this platinum are as follows:

- Complete the story
- Complete the story on Extra Hard mode
- Complete all 101 substories
- Defeat all 20 Hitmen
- Picked up 30 pieces of garbage off the street
- Completing the trophy requirements in all 16 minigames
- Performing various feats in the minigames
- Run 42.195km.
- Open up lockers 1-10 in both cities
- Broke 100 weapons in battle
- Knocked over 100 pedestrians
- Accumulate 10,000,000 yen.
- Meet all 4 Masters
- Order the most expensive item(s) in all restaurants.
- Claim victory in all Coliseum tournaments.

Final time was about 80 hours and I look forward to seeing where the series goes from here
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good now it's time for Celceta
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but what if I did Onimusha 3 inbetween that
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ninkendo posted...

The plot and villain weren't as strong as 1 or 2,

Fuck you Mine was great. Guy just loves his husbando too much and suplexes a guy off a skyscraper to make up for it

he's still pretty good! World record german suplex was a shining moment
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still waiting for the resident B8 Yakuza fanboys themselves @voltch and @Xiahou_Shake to hear what their thoughts on the game were either now or at the time they played them.
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*poof* I've been summoned!

Yakuza 3 is a really nice game for what it is. Stuff like Okinawa, retired Kiryu and the orphanage are all pretty much perfect for a game that ushered Yakuza in to the world of HD. The low-level Yakuza struggle that the story starts with is also a nice breather after the full-blown (and amazing) ridiculousness of Yakuza 2's conspiracies, but by the end of the game things end up getting insane and twisted anyway, lol.

Revelations were an A+++ addition and the new camera was one of the big leaps in the series as far as immersiveness goes. Honestly there wasn't a jump that big again until Yakuza 6's seamless world.

Bosses were SUPER gimmicky but honestly I kind of like that since it makes them more memorable. I can't remember a bunch of Yakuza 4's bosses but I definitely remember Mr. Bath Towel ripping an unrealistically large decoration off the wall to smack me with it.

My big complaints (all the cut content aside, which is exclusively a western problem) are the generally weaker story, the game largely casting aside what really made it special (Okinawa and the kids) and the pervasive feeling of "this is our first HD game, guys!" What I mean by that last one is there are a ton of plot points in this game that feel like they were only brought up so they could introduce old characters in HD. Lau Ka Long comes back, Kazama/Fuma has a clone brother, etc. Many times these reintroduced characters don't even do that much, so it feels even more "whatever."

I've already typed way more than I intended to and any further comments would extensively involve future games so I should probably cut it here. >_> Basically I like Yakuza 3 for a lot of things but it still manages to be one of my least favorite games in the series. Keep in mind this is my favorite video game series so that still means I like it quite a bit, lol.

"Beautiful Eyes"
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Xiahou Shake posted...

Bosses were SUPER gimmicky but honestly I kind of like that since it makes them more memorable. I can't remember a bunch of Yakuza 4's bosses but I definitely remember Mr. Bath Towel ripping an unrealistically large decoration off the wall to smack me with it.

This too even though I just played them last year I barely remember any of the boss fights from the first two games except for majima and the Final Bosses but a lot of these felt unique
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Xiahou Shake posted...

"Beautiful Eyes"

Still a top 2 scene in the series

hey I have a question

do you sleep
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I slept 9 hours last night!

But before that I had been suffering terrible headaches for like the past 3 or 4 days due to atmospheric changes from the oncoming storm and I was only sleeping 4-5 hours a day
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Yakuza 3 from a gameplay standpoint was maybe the best leap a Yakuza game has made until 0 came along.

It kept mostly the same aesthetic as Yakuza 1 & 2, but with PS3 visuals, the new camera angle was a good addition, being able to move through the city without waiting a bunch was great, fights being quicker was another nice bonus. On top of that, Yakuza 3 felt like it built on the good additions 2 made, with better sidequest stuff

The first Yakuza game felt like it took itself a little too seriously, but 2 onwards you started to see the segregation between the serious stuff and the Yakuza whacky Japanese morning drama stuff. 3 took that to the next level. The increased amount of good, fun minigames was another bonus, even taking into account all that was removed. I think another aspect I enjoyed, was how this was a direct sequel to two.

They easily could have gone the GTA route and kept the PS2 and PS3 universes separate, but 3 just expands upon what they tried to do in 2, but with a somewhat lighter tone outside of story stuff.

The problem was the story, very early on they ditch two of the best characters Y2 had that could still be used in Yayoi and Kaoru. Ryuji was a great character, but he was dead. The first 2 games had established a pretty darn strong cast and pretty quickly the only guys left are Daigo and Majima, the rest were either killed off or shipped off.

Goro's character was undergoing that transition phase, from crazy loon to actually the most complex character in the Tojo clan, but Daigo comes off as lacking for the leader of the clan. This does get fixed later on, but it feels like the story lacked the same punch 2 had.

Lower stakes, a nonsense real estate plot, a mediocre final set of villains, overly long exposition scenes, there's just a lot that drags the game down story wise. Y3 made the lore feel tired just as it was entering a new age. 4 and 5 pretty much fixed all of those big problems, but 3 is the least memorable entry in the series. The best stuff (for story) might be the prologue that made so many quit!
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