Game:

Yakuza (2005)

Category:

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Duration: 3:33:20

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Originally recorded: May 19, 2023
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Well, my work *sort of* paid off. I did manage to do all of the remaining substories and unlock the last of Komaki’s techniques this time, but given one final hurdle, I think I’m going to rely on the donor save next time to finish up this challenge – for reasons I’ll explain a bit later.

Ironically, while I originally meant to start with “The Truth About Her”, I actually stumbled upon a couple more substories on my way there. Fortunately, since I knew what to do this time around, I didn’t actually screw up… but it’s safe to say that I definitely prefer how later games in the series handled the substories. At the very least, it was interesting to finally sit down and play all of them in the original Yakuza, though from what I’ve been led to believe, it sounds like the future RGG Studio would go on to add the quality-of-life updates found in modern entries as far back as Yakuza 2. I can say for sure that they were present in the remaster of Yakuza 3, which was otherwise identical to the original PS3 release (aside from some removed content). In fact, it’s funny that I bring that up now: I actually ended up discussing the removed substory from Y3 Remastered during my playthrough of “The Truth About Her”.

I also did the final substory with major story cutscenes this time around – “The Truth About the Fake Mizuki”. This was the other major substory that I heard was “butchered” in Kiwami compared to the original PS2 release of Yakuza. But while Casino Royale was outright removed from YK, the criticisms leveled at how it handled “The Fake Mizuki’s Truth” is a bit more… superficial. Pares’ owner had a completely original design in the PS2 version, while YK used a generic recurring design for the character. As far as I can tell, that’s the reason why the original version was superior. I can kind of understand the backlash in this regard, but much like with Casino Royale, I guess I just can’t be too bothered about the changes here. That being said, maybe I’m more apathetic to these changes because I played Kiwami before the PS2 version. Since I played Yakuza 2 before its remake, I have to assume that I’ll probably be significantly more invested in whatever changes YK2 makes to the original.

While there’s only really one hurdle left before I can reach the secret boss, I’ve decided to fall back and use the donor save, as I originally intended. The problem is the hurdle itself: I’m going to have to build at least 30 levels to unlock the last of Kiryu’s techniques. Most guides recommend going for 60 levels to max out health as well… and frankly, if I was going to max out the other two categories, I’d probably just want to do Soul to be safe. Given I’ve exhausted all of the non-story experience drops, that means that I’d have to spend hours grinding with battles to get all of the experience I need to unlock the final substory. Honestly, I wonder if the developers realized their folly with Adventure Mode in Y1, which is what led them to turn it into a sort of “sandbox post-game” in later releases, as opposed to a story-free mode. Honestly, the fatal flaw of missing out on so much experience makes me think that the reports I’ve heard that Adventure Mode got refined as early as Y2 were true after all. As such, after recording this session, I prepared the donor save I procured as a last resort for prime time. So I’ll be using that for the next (and likely final) session. But while I do plan to fight the secret boss in the “suggested” (read: cheap) way, I will also try to show off the various attack phases afterwards, just so that that final session doesn’t feel like a waste of time.

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