Is it too easy ?

[nikolaLTP]

Greetings esteemed colleagues
Without spoilers of any sort can you help me with some takes and informed opinions from those who played game and previous turn-based.
This in only Yakuza game that I didn't play main series or spins . All 10 or 11 of them I liked and even worse (Yakuza 2 prob) is more than good IMO .
What I didnt like about original LAD 7 is too often non challenging combat , loads of health items and such.
So what would you say is this more strategic , does the game makes you think more about what move you are going to take , is it at least somewhat decent challenge . It doesn't have too be hard just not TOO EASY.
I will play Y8 it is just the question now or should I wait for some sale or price cut .

[Sedgendary]

The game is on par with LAD 7 I wouldn't say there are any particularly hard fights as long as you know what you are doing

[Sentient_Toaster]

Player has a fair bit of control over this, because it's up to the player whether he skips side content initially and rushes into through the main story vs. exploring more and ending up way over-leveled / over-geared.

Haven't finished things yet, but even the first stages of the Hawaii map are 'interestingly' laid out because you can be dealing with enemies > level 20 not that far from where you're basically... 'based' out of (Revolve Bar) shortly after you first arrive, while you need to go a bit into the story to unlock a district where the recommended level is ~13.

Fight on the streets very near the bar, maybe the enemies are level 8; go to the beach area not far from the starting zone, and again you can hit level 20+ enemies fairly quickly. Since as usual there's no "doom clock", and most enemies respawn, you can grind for XP, money and crafting supplies if you want... while the game designers can't assume that the only people who'll be playing will be doing so to a huge amount.

The combat is a bit more tactical vs. the previous iteration because you have control over movement and it matters (e.g. some skills use line or circle AoEs, you can do additional damage by knocking enemies into other enemies or knocking enemies to where an ally will get a free attack, etc).

As for healing items, I'd argue that the non-turn-based games starring Kiryu made it easier on you, because you could pause battles to use as many healing items as you could carry (which could be a lot, in the Dragon Engine games) and then immediately resume beatdowns. In the turn-based iterations, using a single item in combat costs that character his entire turn, so it needs to be balanced against the opportunity cost of whatever else you could be doing.

[nikolaLTP]

OK Thanks. In same games you have limited health items but you can gear up on food and eat ten lunch boxes so you are right . You loose move in turn based at least . It is what it is. I want to play Dragons Dogma 2 or this but DD2 is wiser to wait and play a game in a decent state .
I will go for it and buy the LAD 8 .

[imag2OOO]

Originally posted by Sedgendary:

The game is on par with LAD 7 I wouldn't say there are any particularly hard fights as long as you know what you are doing

imo its much easier then the 1st lad except the 3 legends at once fight {which is arguably the hardest fight in the game} the movesets are just so much better in this game and paired with the fact u can line up moves now u can kinda decimate enemys

also all males now have the rng {up to} full team heal/dmg move "breakdance delight" which makes dps/healing balance kinda broken

[Valk]

Difficulty here vs Y:LAD? This is almost certainly the easier game, but not in the way you might expect.
There's two main differences in the difficulty:
1) Post-Game. The True Final Tower in Y7 is FAR harder than the DLC dungeon here, thanks to some significantly tougher fights, and the fact that it has a far higher stat gate to even attempt.
2) Grind. This game is significantly less grindy than the Y7, as job levels are mostly for the skills and not the stats anymore, and the actual exp scaling on them is far lower. You only need to level up a couple of jobs for your extra skills now, and can then just sit on one job for the entire rest of the game.

Whilst it isn't innately tied to difficulty, the other significant difference is simply how tanky everything was in 7. Plenty of battles were just gigantic HP bars without much actual difficulty to the fight. This is mostly gone here. Hell, if you even overlevel yourself or your gear even slightly, you reach a point of taking down pretty much everything that isn't one of the last few bosses in the game in only a couple of hits.

[imag2OOO]

Originally posted by Valk:

Difficulty here vs Y:LAD? This is almost certainly the easier game, but not in the way you might expect.
There's two main differences in the difficulty:
1) Post-Game. The True Final Tower in Y7 is FAR harder than the DLC dungeon here, thanks to some significantly tougher fights, and the fact that it has a far higher stat gate to even attempt.
2) Grind. This game is significantly less grindy than the Y7, as job levels are mostly for the skills and not the stats anymore, and the actual exp scaling on them is far lower. You only need to level up a couple of jobs for your extra skills now, and can then just sit on one job for the entire rest of the game.

Whilst it isn't innately tied to difficulty, the other significant difference is simply how tanky everything was in 7. Plenty of battles were just gigantic HP bars without much actual difficulty to the fight. This is mostly gone here. Hell, if you even overlevel yourself or your gear even slightly, you reach a point of taking down pretty much everything that isn't one of the last few bosses in the game in only a couple of hits.

also the grind is lower now that u dont have to do the sotenbori run like 50 times for perm stat items since item cases are everywhere now

[Valk]

Originally posted by imag2OOO:

Originally posted by Valk:

Difficulty here vs Y:LAD? This is almost certainly the easier game, but not in the way you might expect.
There's two main differences in the difficulty:
1) Post-Game. The True Final Tower in Y7 is FAR harder than the DLC dungeon here, thanks to some significantly tougher fights, and the fact that it has a far higher stat gate to even attempt.
2) Grind. This game is significantly less grindy than the Y7, as job levels are mostly for the skills and not the stats anymore, and the actual exp scaling on them is far lower. You only need to level up a couple of jobs for your extra skills now, and can then just sit on one job for the entire rest of the game.

Whilst it isn't innately tied to difficulty, the other significant difference is simply how tanky everything was in 7. Plenty of battles were just gigantic HP bars without much actual difficulty to the fight. This is mostly gone here. Hell, if you even overlevel yourself or your gear even slightly, you reach a point of taking down pretty much everything that isn't one of the last few bosses in the game in only a couple of hits.

also the grind is lower now that u dont have to do the sotenbori run like 50 times for perm stat items since item cases are everywhere now

Well yeah but those were far less important than raw levels in 7, especially for final tower.

[dsagent]

Yeah some of the random encounters on the streets are harder than the story bosses. I don't think I ever died to a story encounter.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Originally posted by dsagent:

Yeah some of the random encounters on the streets are harder than the story bosses. I don't think I ever died to a story encounter.

It also seems that the substory etc. fights can also be significantly higher-leveled than the main story quests that are around when you unlock 'em, it seems. I had a fight with a trio of level 31 masked gunmen before finishing Chapter 5; and early in Chapter 6 before doing anything plot-related, some bar conversation led to a 2-on-3 fight against level 33 enemies.

[Valk]

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

Originally posted by dsagent:

Yeah some of the random encounters on the streets are harder than the story bosses. I don't think I ever died to a story encounter.

It also seems that the substory etc. fights can also be significantly higher-leveled than the main story quests that are around when you unlock 'em, it seems. I had a fight with a trio of level 31 masked gunmen before finishing Chapter 5; and early in Chapter 6 before doing anything plot-related, some bar conversation led to a 2-on-3 fight against level 33 enemies.

I think this is partially just due to the way substories work though. Most of said high level ones that you can access far earlier than you'd expect to be the right level for are part of longer substory chains. I believe they made this change to allow you to do them continually due to how in the older games you'd sometimes get kinda lost as to which substory chain was which when it was 5 parts all separated by main story progress, and then having decoupled a lot of them from the previous spawn conditions which potentially meant if you missed even a single substory when it first spawned, you could potentially lock yourself out of the entire chain until premium adventure.