The combat is simply terrible so far... what gives?

[Burger McFries]

I'm at the Kuze fight and so far the combat feels totally random... Sometimes my hits will connect, most of the time they don't, I'm constantly fighting with the camera and the dodge timing quite frankly isn't making any sense, I'm constantly getting baited into thinking I have input when I don't, i.e I will dodge an attack, turn around to hit and press X only for nothing to happen & then I get hit by an attack combo with 0 telegraphing. The fight should be easy but the movement is just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ janky. What am I missing here? And does the game get better or should I just drop it now?

[k♛]

Is this your first time playing a game like yakuza? Because I thought this was the case too when I played the boos fight over a year ago. I hope you didn't give up. It gets better.

[Lar Dass]

You are very weak, slow and sluggish at this point. The first boss fight in these games are *meant* to be considerably harder than the rest

[Mary]

Personally, I feel that the combat is fantastic so far! Especially that fight against Kuze; the lockon bit felt sort of unnatural at first (Especially with a keyboard), but taking it nice and slow and turning off the UI and all that stuff almost made it feel like I was playing a movie. XD I guess over time you get used to how the animations play out.

[MyBanan]

Seems like a skill issue to me

[Zaxx]

The jank will annoy you (especially the camera) but if you keep at it you'll get used to it and eventually everything will fall into place. Just take it slow, keep unlocking abilities and thank your luck for not starting with Kiwami like I did. After suffering through that game's progression system I feel like a champ in 0 from the beginning, I'm like "wow, you don't have to unlock your basic heat attacks in this game?" :D

For bosses it's a good idea to use the Rush style at the beginning of the game, that gives you plenty of room to dodge.

[Burger McFries]

Originally posted by Goro Majima:

Is this your first time playing a game like yakuza? Because I thought this was the case too when I played the boos fight over a year ago. I hope you didn't give up. It gets better.

Yep. People talked the game up like it's the second coming of Christ so I came into the game expecting a little more than a janky beat 'em up.

Originally posted by Setouchi Mary:

Personally, I feel that the combat is fantastic so far! Especially that fight against Kuze; the lockon bit felt sort of unnatural at first (Especially with a keyboard), but taking it nice and slow and turning off the UI and all that stuff almost made it feel like I was playing a movie. XD I guess over time you get used to how the animations play out.

Originally posted by My Banan:

Seems like a skill issue to me

Originally posted by Zaxx:

The jank will annoy you (especially the camera) but if you keep at it you'll get used to it and eventually everything will fall into place. Just take it slow, keep unlocking abilities and thank your luck for not starting with Kiwami like I did. After suffering through that game's progression system I feel like a champ in 0 from the beginning, I'm like "wow, you don't have to unlock your basic heat attacks in this game?" :D

For bosses it's a good idea to use the Rush style at the beginning of the game, that gives you plenty of room to dodge.

Sounds like the game just isn't for me then, I was expecting tight combat and at least lip syncing during the cutscenes. I'll watch the cutscene compilation on Youtube instead and seek a refund, hopefully Like A Dragon is better

[HoloLiveSonic™]

Originally posted by < blank >:

Sounds like the game just isn't for me then, I was expecting tight combat and at least lip syncing during the cutscenes. I'll watch the cutscene compilation on Youtube instead and seek a refund, hopefully Like A Dragon is better

well like a dragon is a rpg game, completly different form the others

[Devsman]

Originally posted by Lar Dass:

You are very weak, slow and sluggish at this point. The first boss fight in these games are *meant* to be considerably harder than the rest

That's a really weird design decision...

[Mary]

Originally posted by < blank >:

Sounds like the game just isn't for me then, I was expecting tight combat and at least lip syncing during the cutscenes. I'll watch the cutscene compilation on Youtube instead and seek a refund, hopefully Like A Dragon is better

There's lip syncing in a lot of the cutscenes. :O They just have a bunch of different styles of cutscene for different moments/situations.

[Zaxx]

Originally posted by < blank >:

Sounds like the game just isn't for me then, I was expecting tight combat and at least lip syncing during the cutscenes. I'll watch the cutscene compilation on Youtube instead and seek a refund, hopefully Like A Dragon is better

Well if you want better production values like what you see in western AAA titles then Yakuza is absolutely not the series for you. The point of these games is the great writing and storytelling, the weighty combat and the exploration, they will never really wow you with graphics and all that fluff. So if you can't take it that some of the cutscenes won't have great lip syncing or that substories will lack voice acting then yep, time to move on.

I will say that I wanted to drop Kiwami after around 10 hours too but somehow sticked to it at the end and it was a great decision even if it was very frustrating to get used to some of its aspects. That's just hard to do if you're coming from something like the Arkham games with their stellar camera control, great auto targeting and easy to grasp crowd control mechanics. Yakuza can feel super fluid too though, you just have to work on it rather patiently.

[Kaxology]

The camera is something I've had my gripes with as well, sometimes being somewhere you can't see and dodge properly but the combat is more akin to a fighting game than a beat em up. If you expect to win in boss battles, expect some movement recognition and punish accordingly, the game doesn't reward being mindlessly aggressive (at least on normal and above) like other beat em up but rewards patience and tactical like a fighting game so that's not your cup of tea, you probably won't enjoy the series.

[lucas]

you wlll git gud with time
there's nothing gravely wrong about the time

[MisterPool]

Originally posted by Zaxx:

Originally posted by < blank >:

Sounds like the game just isn't for me then, I was expecting tight combat and at least lip syncing during the cutscenes. I'll watch the cutscene compilation on Youtube instead and seek a refund, hopefully Like A Dragon is better

Well if you want better production values like what you see in western AAA titles then Yakuza is absolutely not the series for you. The point of these games is the great writing and storytelling, the weighty combat and the exploration, they will never really wow you with graphics and all that fluff. So if you can't take it that some of the cutscenes won't have great lip syncing or that substories will lack voice acting then yep, time to move on.

I will say that I wanted to drop Kiwami after around 10 hours too but somehow sticked to it at the end and it was a great decision even if it was very frustrating to get used to some of its aspects. That's just hard to do if you're coming from something like the Arkham games with their stellar camera control, great auto targeting and easy to grasp crowd control mechanics. Yakuza can feel super fluid too though, you just have to work on it rather patiently.

Why would you expect lip synching? Every title in this series was a Japanese release first. Even Y7/Like A Dragon. Localization for this series has always been overdubs with subtitles. None of the animation has ever been redone to synch up with another language. If that's your expectation then maybe stay away from non-western games altogether.

As for graphics, the entire series was PS exclusive (PS2/PS3/PS4) for many years. Kiwami and Kiwami 2 updated the two PS2 titles, Y and Y2, for PS3 and PS4. The remasters of Y3-Y5 brought the remainder of the PS3 titles to PS4 so the entire story could be played on that platform. All of these are console games that have been ported over to PC, so expecting western AAA PC quality graphics is unrealistic.

Keep in mind that this is a 15 year old series and set expectations accordingly.

[Zaxx]

Originally posted by wearthekilt:

Why would you expect lip synching? Every title in this series was a Japanese release first. Even Y7/Like A Dragon. Localization for this series has always been overdubs with subtitles. None of the animation has ever been redone to synch up with another language. If that's your expectation then maybe stay away from non-western games altogether.

Dayum, even after all these years I can get surprised about just how bad people are at understanding what they read, especially when it comes to context. Come on, I clearly didn't share my personal opinion but tried to emphatize with the OP's expectations regarding production values.

[Mary]

Heh, something funny that I noticed, randomly; even while walking around in the middle of playing, your character's mouth is synchronized with his words if he's speaking to another NPC, like around the start of Chapter 5 for example.