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Honestly I am glad I spoiled this game for myself by watching Cvit's video on it in YT. I feel like I don't want a 3rd Judgment game. 7 to me was so good man, a unique direction with a new character, where they could be infinite potential for future games. Then Gaiden and 8 happened... Gaiden is a glorified Yakuza 6 DLC sold for $50 with a mediocre story until the beautiful emotional ending. But in general ever since the end of 7, they've been milking Kiryu's character more and more, furthering RGG's cowardice to DO SOMETHING NEW!!!
But a more nuanced complaint is that I can understand it's sort of time to move on to something new, as long as there's some closure on the old set of characters. Problem is, there really hasn't been, for some reason. 6 was an unpopular ending for Kiryu, 7 barely had him in the game, Gaiden was fun but had to keep him separate from everyone he ever knew and loved, and now we have this game, which has been the best attempt so far, but mostly in its Kiryu side content. Kiryu's last monologue is wasted on Ebina-no-nobody, and there is no grand reunion at the end to follow up on the end of Gaiden. And we have to guess that he even survives.
And this isn't even getting into the unrequited popularity of Majima. His best moments are in Dead Souls. A proper passing of the torch should probably have seen Gaiden as a more serious effort in settling Kiryu down, and had a lot more Majima in it (maybe even playable Majima), separating the entire thing from this game. I applaud the way they translated Kiryu's combat to this system, but that's about it. Anything else that's good about Kiryu's involvement here probably would have been better served a part of Gaiden. This probably would have helped them craft a more focused story, because they had some great writing in some of the characterisation in this game, but the overarching story is a mess, and the villains don't feel fleshed out at all. At least we got Yamai out of the deal.
Sorry, I guess I wrote you my review of the game.
Yakuza 9: Arakawa's secret adoptive son that he was raising to take over shows up
Yakuza 10: Arakawa donated to a sperm bank a few times and Ichiban has even more siblings
Yakuza 11: Arakawa had a brother who shows up and becomes Ichiban's 3rd father figure.
Yakuza 12: Turns out Arakawa didn't die and simply had amnesia and ends up running a bar in Osaka
Yakuza 13: Yuriko Hikawa has an unrequited lover who shows up and assassinates Arakawa
Yakuza 14: Arakawa is alive somehow and is evil? Turns out to be an advanced robot and AI. Arakawa becomes digitally immortal by the end of the game.
Yakuza 202077 spinoff: Arakawa ver.17.982 must guide Kiryu Kazama's newly born middle-aged clone through the dystopian Kamurocho of 202077. "The more things change, the more things stay the same."
What can I say that it isn't said already? I agreed with what people said. Yakuza 8 story wasn't enjoyable.
Gaiden should have the subtitle "the man that sucks as hiding" because he is just Kiryu with glasses, but he at least denied that he was Kiryu. In 8 it seems that he forgot to stick to his fake Joryu name.
And with the ending it seems that Daidoji is like "well, he stopped Ebina, so we are cool if Kiryu's stats to tell everyone he's alive". Well, maybe he is closer to death this time or maybe not, but it seems like Kiryu said "f* it, don't care about daidoji anymore. I can beat them if they touch any of my loved ones" and Daidoji as implied in his sections is giving him much leniency.
Don't apologize. This is great stuff.
They basically need to **** or get off the pot with regards to Kiryu.
Poker has a thing called "tells". RGG's are all over the place since LAD7 that Ichiban is not as popular as his supporters want him to be...because otherwise they wouldn't keep feeling the need to bring Kiryu back...and back...and back...and back.
They've had off ramp after off ramp to completely cut the cord and move on and haven't taken any of them. To me, that indicates a lack of confidence in the franchise without him.
Most likely they've done some sort of market research that indicates that there's a whole lot of series fans that just aren't onboard with a post-Kiryu future.
LAD7 was kind of marketed a bit like Yakuza 0 was: as a fresh entry point where people who weren't really invested in the franchise before could get in without feeling completely lost. A fresh start if you will. A reboot. And that is why you get a lot of new fans dipping in and seeing if it was something that they could be invested in going forward.
So you had the new fans added in on top of the longtime fans who are showing up to see if it is worth continuing to follow. But I don't think they're completely confident that they can keep the old fans happy without Kiryu and that's why his parts have been GROWING, not decreasing, ever since LAD7.
He's the sole protagonist of Gaiden, and gets more or less equal billing/screen time here in LAD8 after barely making a cameo appearance in LAD7. Heck, he's in both the final scene of the game itself...and the final cutscene of the game. In both the ending of the actual game (the final fight of the game), and in the ending of the game's actual storyline, it ends not with Ichiban but with Kiryu.
If you've been following my posts, my feelings are pretty obviously Kiryu > Ichiban and I'm more than happy to continue with Ichiban finding a happy ending and us transitioning back to the main protagonist of the entire series.
But it is clear that RGG is in a tough spot in terms of franchise direction.
They could always bring him out of retirement for Gaiden-esque mini-brawlers if they want to, and some more Yakuza 0 flashback types would be very welcome, especially something covering the early '90s. A lot of interesting stuff happened there that's only had passing references in the series. Maybe some actual time spent characterising Yumi for a change. And as we're on the topic, I'd love a Kazama game set even earlier than 0, much as I doubt that will ever happen. Not sure what's going on with Judgement but replacing Yagami with an Akiyama who gets frequent Kiryu cameos is another option that sounds great to me. They really do have options and it's frustrating to see them not seeing that. (Yes, Yagami lost me when he lost his judgement in Lost Judgement, and no, that doesn't mean Kuwana is my lord and saviour; give me Akiyama, Kaito, and Higashi, please.)
But I do love Kasuga and his crew. I kind of resent that Kiryu got his leftovers in this game so to speak, even though I love those characters. Because Kiryu has loads of friends and loved ones and it felt a little shoehorned in that these people he met last week taught him how to have friends when he's been touching people's lives for 50 years. But that aside, no problem with more games like this one being the main series, as long as they tighten up the story like in 7, and they should probably keep Kiryu separate. Just write him respectfully when he's around and I'm good.