Recent reviews by Sky~

This game gave me severe anger management issues.

You can beat people up by breakdancing, become friends with a guy named Mr. Libido, and hire Steven Spielberg, Michael Jackson, and a chicken to help manage your real estate business.

If that wasn't enough to sell you, I guess I'll go in-depth as to why I love this game.

Yakuza 0 is one of the best games I've ever played. A 10th anniversary project and prequel to a series that never really took off in the west for some reason, it's the perfect starting point for newcomers to become introduced to Yakuza's world and characters. It takes full advantage of its status as a prequel to give both newcomers and long-time fans a greater understanding and history of characters that never got enough screentime or development in later games, as well as a healthy introduction of new characters that influence this game’s main protagonists and who they will become later in the series.

The main story of these games plays out like a crime drama movie that are popular in Japan, focusing on the human struggles and relationships of men with good hearts bound to a life of crime, conflict, violence, and sacrifice. Yakuza 0 is the series writing at its absolute peak, a culmination of RGG Studios ten years of experience and improvement in their field. Set in 1988, the era of Japan’s insane bubble economy, the game’s colourful atmosphere and distinct 80s references gives the setting a unique, bright and carefree personality that can be felt through both narrative and gameplay. You’ll alternate every two chapters between Kiryu Kazuma, the series’ main protagonist up to Yakuza 6, and Goro Majima, a fan favourite recurring character who makes his first playable debut in the main series. Both stories are seemingly disconnected, yet equally intriguing tales of two men caught in a conspiracy of murder accusations, underworld power struggles, land disputes and the assassination order of a traumatised blind woman. The story has a great balance of mysteries, revelations, and drama that will pull you in and leave you on the edge of your seat, desperate to push forward and witness how it unfolds. It all culminates in an extremely satisfying finale, leaving you with a strong attachment to the characters whose stories you’ll inevitably wish to see more of, and before you know it you’ve become a Yakuza fan. The greatest strength of a prequel is the reward of knowing there’s a huge series following in its wake for you to enjoy. Thankfully, in the 15 years Yakuza has been around, there are plenty of games for you to continue the saga.

Undoubtedly, those who are at least familiar with the series have probably at least witnessed through social media the various wacky aspects these games have to offer. How could a serious crime drama described just above, manage to be so bizarre at the same time? This is the true beauty of Yakuza, and a huge reason why people keep coming back to it. Outside the main story, the main hubs of these games offer an insane amount of content to explore despite being relatively confined and smaller than other traditionally open worlds games such as GTA. In the districts of Kamurocho and Sotenbori are optional substories, minigames and expansive side content that offer a more lax, humorous, and playful side to the game’s world. Instead of representing the mundanity of the real world with, well… mundanity, Yakuza instead chooses to have as much fun possible with its representation of normal, everyday issues people have with life out in the city. Through exaggerative, bombastic, and cheesy scenarios, Yakuza lets us witness the protagonists unwind for a bit in their attempts to help others in the city. We get to see different sides to both Kiryu and Majima as they pass time doing karaoke, manage their real-estate business and cabaret clubs, customize toy cars in a surprisingly addictive and expansive racing minigame series, etc. If you ever find yourself exhausted or feeling down over the main story’s drama, there are loads of distractions and funny encounters sprinkled throughout the game for you to distract yourself with and cheer yourself up. Few games have ever made me crack up as much as the Yakuza series has on a consistent basis.

The gameplay is that of your average brawler. Admittedly, it falls under the same concept as other brawlers, which is mashing one button for a combo and then another button as a finisher. But what makes Yakuza 0 stand out are the different fighting styles both Kiryu and Majima have. Each character has 3 different styles they can switch to in battle, which both have their strengths and weaknesses. The unique animations and upgrades these styles can receive provide a great source for player expression and can keep combat from getting too stale and repetitious by alternating between all of them. You can equip and purchase weapons outside of battle or grab new ones from the field of each fight. The main attraction of Yakuza’s combat, however, are Heat Moves, and there are tons of them. Throughout combat, a gauge will fill up under your healthbar, filling it up will allow you to unleash a devastating attack under specific circumstances. Some of these attacks are just outright bizarre to watch play out, but they’re extremely satisfying and never get stale. There is also a 4th style you can unlock for completing each character’s business side story, and they’re a joy to use. Outside of combat are an insane amount of optional minigames you can toy with for extra rewards. They can range from karaoke, disco dancing, bowling, darts, customizing and racing toy cars, mahjong, gambling, etc. They all play and function extremely well, and it’s clear a lot of love and effort went into making them to further immerse you in the game’s world. But the main highlights are Real Estate Royale and Cabaret Club Czar, Kiryu and Majima’s business stories respectively. I ended up with a crippling addiction to these and put progressing the main story off for a long while just to grind them to completion. The sheer amount of content this game offers is incredible. My 120 hour playthrough in total had me experience the main story, complete every substory, unlock every ability for both Kiryu and Majima, finish both Real Estate Royale and Cabaret Club Czar, and win every possible Coliseum tournament. For the asking price of £15, I feel like I got away with bank robbery.

Visually, the game looks great for a late PS3 title. It definitely doesn’t impress by today’s standards, and runs on an older engine that has now been abandoned in favour of the Dragon Engine(see Kiwami 2), but the cutscene visuals still look great. Main character models are very detailed to the point of being able to uncomfortably count the pores on a man’s face when there’s a closeup of them in a cutscene. There are a solid amount of customization options in this port, so it should run well on older PCs with low settings. When it comes to audio, I don’t think I can gush any harder for this game’s soundtrack. Seriously, just listen to it on Spotify if you have no money to buy the game. It’s incredible.

Overall, I implore you to give this game a chance. This series has gone under the radar for far too long in the west, and this game single-handedly brought in a new audience that allowed for an increase in localization efforts at Sega for later Yakuza games, remasters and remakes. This is one of Sega’s most consistent and quality franchises, and it deserves all the success in the world. Yakuza 0 is where you should start, and if you like what you played, then I’d recommend moving onto Kiwami, which is a remake of the first game, where the story follows up after 0.

Hi, this is a rewritten review I planned to make months ago after the first set of patches were released following the game’s poor release. My initial review was not a positive one, and as someone who never wrote a review for a Steam product until then, I only felt compelled to write it as someone who loved Chrono Trigger so much, and felt it deserved better. After playing through all the endings after most of the patches had been applied, I once again feel compelled to review the release for those who were dissuaded at first. I hope this review will be helpful and informative to those consider giving it another chance.

After a far from stellar release, Chrono Trigger for Steam has since been subject to multiple updates after the initial backlash from fans and players alike. After all these patches, is it safe to say Square addressed and fixed these issues plaguing its poor launch? For the most part – Yes, it has.

For one, you can now switch the games visuals back to its lovely pixelated goodness. The “High Quality” ugly filtered sprites are no longer the only way to view the games graphics. Before the patch was released, a group of modders were working on this themselves, titled the “Chrono Trigger Restoration Project”. In appreciation of their efforts, I just felt like giving them a little shout-out. Thankfully it wasn’t necessary for them to have to finish the project, but it just went to show how much people wanted the originals graphics. The game now looks as good as it once did, with Akira Toriyama’s character designs and the vibrant, gorgeous environments and landscapes that perfectly represent each time period in the game’s world translating beautifully to its pixelated visuals.

However, it wasn’t just the filtered graphics that wound up making this game feel like an ugly bloated mess when it released on Steam. The games UI was abysmal, and made it abundantly clear the release was a copy/paste from the mobile version. Now, I don’t think that porting a game to PC from mobile is inherently bad. It just means that you have to make the necessary adjustments to the game’s settings and presentation for stronger hardware and larger displays – which they didn’t do. Playing this release on launch was incredibly jarring, particularly because it made no effort to hide that it was designed for mobile. The buttons and layouts looked as though they were expecting you to press your fingers against your monitor just to navigate the menus and battle options. Thankfully, the recent updates to the UI has made it much smoother to navigate, and looks much more suited to the displays we use. Some people have issues with the healthbar that follows the characters sprites in battle, but I personally prefer having it there since the alternative would be to just look over at the numbers, and I find that it takes me longer to understand the status of my characters in the heat of the moment, especially in an ATB system where you’re constantly trying to stay in rhythm. However, it should definitely have a toggle option for purists, or hopefully modders might discover a solution.

For those who are familiar with the DS version, the bonus content from that version is available here from that version, such as the Dimensional Vortex and Lost Sanctum dungeons. This doesn’t include the Arena of the Ages, however, which was a minigame centered on monster training/raising by pitting them against. It wasn’t a particularly interesting or engrossing minigame, so I could care less about its exclusion. The translation for this release is based on the DS versions script, rather than the Ted Woolsey translation of the SNES release. As someone who’s first experience with Chrono Trigger was with the DS version, I can’t say I’m one to get too upset about this decision. I’m fairly certain that there are mods out there to restore the games script to the old translation for those who desire it.

One of the most bizarre problems this game had when it first launched on Steam was the font. It was actually mind-bogglingly absurd how any release of this game could have such a flat, unfitting font to provide text. Even for a mobile release it wouldn’t have been acceptable there. The new font however is definitely more reminiscent of its DS release, and it just fits the text boxes more. This might be an issue for those who find the new font to be quite difficult to read, as it was intended for a handheld port. The DS versions font was also different from its SNES counterpart, which was designed with a larger screen in mind. Hopefully some update or mod can come along and adjust the games texts for different preferences, as there’s always room for improvement.

Another thing I noticed was that they updated the games animated cutscenes, which returned from the PSX release. On launch, the quality for these animations looked awful. They were blurry and just didn’t fit the resolutions of a monitor. They now look much better, and they’re a joy to view in their uncompressed motion. Unfortunately there are two missing scenes – “Robo in a Fix” and “Life Skips a Beat” are both absent in the PC version. I was never able to find out the reason for this, whether they didnt have access to the uncompressed versions, or it was just simply negligence, I can’t say for sure. It’s not the end of the world and I’m not too bothered by it, but I just thought it was pretty weird. Also if you missed the “Limited Edition” of the game, don’t worry about it. They’re just wallpapers you can find online along with a video file featuring a letter from the games composer, Yasunori Mitsuda. It’s just a short 5 song playlist from the games soundtrack, and the letter itself pretty much just says ‘Chrono Trigger good. Thank you for playing.’

In conclusion, Chrono Trigger for PC doesn’t really add anything new to the game, but perhaps it doesn’t even need to. I know longer consider it the “Wrong way to play Chrono Trigger”. It’s the game we love through a different a lens, and the view from that lens is dependent on your eyesight, or in this case – perspective. It bodes well that the team which released this version in such an ugly state was at least willing and capable of turning it around. If Chrono Trigger taught us anything, it’s that it’s never too late to fix the consequences of past actions. I’m not sure if the team behind this release was also responsible for the Steam versions of Final Fantasy 5 and Final Fantasy 6, but those games are also in dire need of fixing. I hope this company will soon realise that the PC crowd having a real “elitist” attitude when it comes to ports of classic titles isn’t out of spite. We just want a playable version that respects our preferred hardware, and that classic titles beloved by the community receive the treatment they deserve.

If you have any questions about this release that I either failed to mention or is just a general curiosity, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try and answer what I can. Have fun.