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The 2001 murder mystery visual novel series known as Ace Attorney is highly influential and maintains a strong cult following. It inspired a slew of more stylish games, but I haven't yet played any that can match it for substance.

The trilogy takes place in an exaggeration of the Japanese legal system, in which trials progress at hyper-speed, and defence lawyers are marginalised and downtrodden in the face of perfection-obsessed police and prosecutors. The jury is a formality; the verdict is all down to evidence and testimony, both of which can be manipulated. Phoenix Wright is a rookie lawyer who establishes a talent for wringing the truth from the most unlikely circumstances, with more than a little help from friends, uneasy allies in the legal system, and beyond. The bewildered everyman struggles to navigate the bizarre people around him, numerous abuses of the legal system, and each trial’s surreal developments, while being hilariously belittled at every turn by just about everyone in the room. However, Wright always keeps his head above water just long enough to piece together the truth and wrench the trial back in his favour. You generally already know whodunnit; the joy of the game comes from methodically punching through every lie so that the judge has no room for doubt - you don't get points for guessing the murder method ahead of time!

Outside of court, you prepare for trials in a rudimentary investigation mode, fading between still environments and talking to one character at a time, examining the scene and confronting people with evidence you've acquired. The courtroom
battles, composed like TV legal dramas, are usually more exciting. Wright’s main weapon is doggedly cross-examining a witness' testimony, pressing them for information where necessary (or unnecessary) and presenting contradictory evidence with a dramatic OBJECTION!. It is a simple and perfect mechanic with the occasional twist to keep you on your toes. The games are mostly not that difficult, but with no text history, it can be easy to get stuck if you miss something while investigating, or load the game after a break and forget what you were doing. The toughest parts of the game will ask you to remember details you might easily have forgotten some time after they came up, or make a creative leap to turn the case on its head. These moments are especially cathartic if you can pull them off, but that wasn't always the case for me. In short, there's no shame in taking notes for this game (but if you can't work out the answer, look at a walkthrough and spare yourself the hell of trial-and-error).

The first Ace Attorney game was built for the Game Boy Advance by a team of only seven people in ten months, and written by series creator Shū Takumi in just three months. There are maybe five animations per character, and they might speak about twelve words per text box - and yet the game conveys complex, affecting, immersive and memorable characters and stories with the best of them. Text scrolling matching the pace of characters’ natural speech is a really immersive touch more VNs should use. Whenever I play I happily spend ages trying incorrect options, trying to ferret out all the little jokes and details the writers have concealed. Not every case feels like a masterpiece - some characters outstay their welcome a bit, and the more “episodic” cases not tied to the main story sometimes feel weaker, but they're probably just overshadowed by the excellent main story cases. The iconic soundtrack covers a wide range of genres; its sad music sounds a bit daft with the chiptuney instrumentation but otherwise it nails the atmosphere of each scene.

This trilogy was the first port of Ace Attorney to modern platforms as well as PC. It contains all trials from the first three games, including Rise From The Ashes which first appeared in the DS release. The HD art is very easy on the eye and faithful to the original, to the point where a couple of facial expressions that looked a bit off before also look a bit off here. These games deserved more than this by-the-numbers affair, though. The new UI does the job and is less brown, but still quite bland. There are no special features included, not even concept art (and I miss the microphone support the DS games had). The DLC is merely a collection of rearranged pieces from the soundtrack. Most frustratingly, there are still many uncorrected typos after all this time, especially in games 2 and 3. Later ports do a better job on these fronts but Capcom should have shown more love to the original trilogy.

Takumi intended for the series to end with the third game, and though he tries his level best to wrap everything up, the series feels like it could go on forever. Thankfully, he came back to write more games in the series, and I hope he'll continue to. I would unhesitatingly recommend Ace Attorney Trilogy to any fan of visual novels, particularly mysteries.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition has been my most played game of the last year by far, yet my group only gets together to play it once every two weeks. At last, a video game has arrived that can ease the long waits in-between, and most importantly, the party will obey me for a change!

Dawnsbury Days builds on the free game Quest for the Golden Candelabra, adding more story, many, many new build options up to level 4, an “Insane” difficulty, a “GM mode” so you can torment friends over Remote Play, and a custom encounter creator. The Profane Barrier DLC can then take your party up to level 8 in a continued and much more ambitious story. Gameplay is predominantly combat encounters broken up by cutscenes and rest points where you can tweak the party before venturing forth again. Pathfinder 2e’s non-combat systems and the Recall Knowledge mechanic don't get as much of a spotlight, and are altered to suit the game’s design, though these work a bit better in a tabletop campaign with a human Game Master anyway.

Effort has been made to save new players needing to delve into 2e’s hundreds of pages of rules. A PDF manual accessible from the main menu details Dawnsbury Days’ rules, including differences from the tabletop ruleset. This would be a rather dry introduction but new players can get to grips with it quite easily just by jumping in. Your available actions each turn are clearly displayed and explained via tooltips, including a breakdown of the chances of each degree of success and the reasoning behind it. The story, particularly the DLC, is a bit of a whistle-stop tour of creature types and gives you a good grounding in how to kick their various backsides. The mechanics are extremely faithful to 2e so if you like your character build you can take it from screen to table with little to no adjustment to make it playable.

In the 2e spirit, customisation is key. There are plenty of ways to express your character mechanically, as well as a selection of premade avatars for them or the ability to add your own. You can change the difficulty before any encounter, and there are even popular house rules that you can toggle in the settings. Players who haven't played 2e before should start at Easy or Medium difficulty. With access to all enemy stats, the game can afford to throw tougher encounters your way. With careful play, attention to enemy weaknesses and decent luck, you’ll generally not have trouble on Medium difficulty. Characters sometimes hint at what strategy to take, often via amusingly blunt fourth wall breaks. At one point in the DLC I was warned about a particularly tricky creature type and able to prepare in advance before the encounter; I would have liked more pre-fight info like that, so my party would start encounters on the wrong foot less often, but at least you can restart. The encounters themselves have a pleasingly wide variety which increases as the campaign progresses and especially in the DLC, introducing hazards, alternate win conditions and optional high-risk high-reward challenges. Most importantly, they all seem feasible for most (sensible) team compositions.

The presentation takes a lot of cues from virtual tabletops, which are a familiar environment for TTRPG players and good for learning. The art assets are a welcome step up from Quest in quality and variety. Dialogue and voice acting has been revisited and improved on - though in many cases the script and delivery are clear and practical at the cost of some personality. My main presentation gripe is that things in combat happen all at once with little visual feedback. This is fine if you're experienced, but otherwise, to process what just happened you’ll often need to read the combat log. Between this, and the need to examine entire monster statblocks in lieu of Recall Knowledge, you may spend a larger fraction of your time examining text than seeing combat play out.

Support for the game is ongoing; the developer regularly interacts with their Patreon supporters and the 2e community, and is continuing to fix bugs, act on feedback (including some of mine; you're welcome), implement more mechanics and character options (including 2e’s mighty archetype rules), and support modders who extend the game beyond its original scope. Via the Steam Workshop, jumping into Roguelike mode as a party of tanuki with portal guns is simple if not totally advisable.

It's a pleasure to see the 2e ruleset finally get a video game adaptation, and valuable that that adaptation is an indie project with lots of scope to be enriched by the community. The icing on the cake is that beyond a faithful technical implementation, effort has been put into making an enjoyable story with satisfying encounter design. All that plus the wallet-friendly price point makes this an easy recommendation for turn-based strategic combat fans, and hopefully a gateway into Pathfinder 2e for some of you!

Infinite Wealth meets series standards for complex, twist-filled drama, magnetic characters, hype-laden music, excellent direction, visceral choreography, ridiculous substories and superlative asset reuse - rather than spend time gushing over those, I’ll discuss what's new.

Ichiban’s life collapses again after a couple of disasters which his infinite charisma somehow can't solve. Luckily, he gets to take his mind off it with a trip to Hawaii. He makes new friends while reconnecting with characters from the previous game - the tenth party member arriving about an hour before the finale - and this giant gang split up to defeat a two-pronged threat in Hawaii and Japan. I’m happy to say the story is easier to follow than the other Yakuza plots I’ve played, but needed polish. I don't normally notice plot holes, but I did here, and some threads resolve too easily, almost as afterthoughts. A decent portion of the game serves as an extended tribute to Kiryu, who spends a lot of time reminiscing about (and spoiling) all the games he starred in, and meeting people from his past. This must alienate players who jumped in at Like A Dragon - like going to a house party, but you don't know anyone there and the guy who invited you is in Hawaii. I enjoyed the Kiryu content I played, knowing what little I do, but skipped a lot of it.

The main location is a slice of Waikiki recreated with as much loving detail as any other locale; the biggest yet but just as dense with content. Beyond the usual diversions, Ichiban can enjoy modern pursuits like seeking love online or underpaid food delivery (barbs about the gig economy don’t sit right in a game that advertises Uber Eats, but hey). There's also a hilarious mini-RPG to play and a wonderful management game which blows the prequel’s out of the water. Exploitation is a common theme - of land, natural resources, labour and so on - against the backdrop of an apparent paradise. Maybe Ichiban should head to Dubai for the sequel!

Combat detaches even further from reality, with most previous jobs carried over, as many new jobs to play around with, and a large list of increasingly barmy new enemy types. Party members can now reposition themselves within a small area to set up moves, so you usually aren't screwed over by randomness as before (but you can be screwed over by having to waste time selecting skills from the full list). However, most group buffs and healing now have a small range. Combat improvement is really nicely tied in with minigames and social interaction with the party. Opportunities for bonus damage are everywhere, and allies often join in when you attack, particularly as you grow your bond with them. I love the increased focus on positioning, especially when area hazards are involved. There's some disappointing dabbling in real-time combat - RGG have spent 18 years refining their combat; here it’s like they've thrown it out and started from scratch. Some old frustrations are avoided: clear warnings about recommended levels help you avoid getting in over your head, and if you're dragged into a low-level random encounter, you can auto-win it.

RGG could afford to make players sweat a bit more, though. By borrowing skills from your characters’ other jobs, it's easy to build a party that covers all major bases, and items are available in ABUNDANCE to find, buy or craft to cover everything else. There's an involved weapon crafting and upgrade system but I felt no need to interact with it until the end because better weapons are bought or found so easily. Just by playing normally you will end up hugely overlevelled for substory battles, making them mostly anticlimactic. The harder modes might address all this - until the New Game+ DLC they're part of goes on sale I can't comment.

Infinite Wealth hasn't defeated Yakuza jank. Jittery animations, rough lighting handling and NPCs spawning and despawning on camera during cutscenes were acceptable in the low-budget era. As SEGA dial up the budgets, and tighten the screws on players with paywalled New Game+ and whatever else they're planning, my patience for things like that decreases. However, the game ran extremely stably for very nearly my entire playthrough. My biggest technical gripe is with voice lines - some lines are too damn quiet even with the music volume regrettably turned down. Come to think of it, at least in the English dub, many lines are in need of another take generally.

I get the sense that Infinite Wealth struggles with how much content it has. English dubbing and text get less consistent over time; various potential interesting scenes are glossed over; many old characters and enemies are crammed back in, which can't be sustainable as the series goes on. The dungeon crawling and real-time combat seem to suffer for it; I wouldn't have minded if they weren't there at all. Nonetheless, for what it gets right, Infinite Wealth is a brilliant new instalment that you won't want to miss.

Golf Peaks is one of a very, very long line of adaptations of golf. In this take on the sport, each level is an isometric course made of different tiles, and you must propel the ball to the flag by playing "cards" to either putt or jump it different distances, so it's the posh person’s answer to Neon White. It gets the brain’s gears turning while being very serene and satisfying. The gameplay is far enough removed from the original game for non-golf fans to enjoy.

I think puzzle games get it just right when they make you think, but don't have you giving up and watching a walkthrough to proceed. Golf Peaks achieves that in a few ways. If you're not getting anywhere you can do some trial-and-error to explore your options. With at most four direction options and only a few available cards, the set of possible paths you can take around the course is fairly small, so you have a good chance of finding the right first moves then putting the rest together in your head. With no penalty for mistakes, snappy undo/restart functionality, and the ability to try other levels if you're stuck, the puzzling is frustration-free. You likely won't get stuck that often either; there were around five levels which stumped me for a particularly long time. It's very satisfying seeing how the strange hand of cards you were given orders itself into an elegant path through the level, often skipping huge chunks of the level which turned out to be red herrings. Whether the developers intended this or not, it's extra satisfying when you manage to complete the level “under par”, i.e. with cards left over (the game doesn't acknowledge when you do this so the reward is purely bragging rights).

Across ten worlds and over 100 levels, you are introduced to new tiles that affect the ball in different ways and quickly leave the realm of ordinary golf, such as ice tiles that the ball slides over without stopping, and quicksand tiles that your ball can roll over but mustn’t stop on. As much as I like the technical-drawing clarity of the art, there are two tile types that look similar but behave differently, which is a little annoying. Each world begins with a few tutorial levels that show you the mechanics of the new tiles without making you think, then the rest of the puzzles apply what you learned while combining them with the mechanics of the previous worlds. I sort of wish the tutorial levels had been merged into one larger level at the start of each world, making room for more proper puzzles, but it does feel nice to start each new world with some quick wins.

It's a great game for playing on a handheld device, with its low intensity, ease of picking up and putting down, and pleasant sound and music. The aesthetic of the levels is so nice I would have liked the UI to look more similar to it, but the UI certainly looks smarter than in earlier versions of the game.
Golf Peaks ticks all my boxes for puzzle games, gives you plenty to get stuck into, and doesn't outstay its welcome, though I’d happily buy more levels if they made them. I recommend it to anyone looking for a quiet, casual puzzler to spend a few hours with.

(From my review of the base game)

Cuphead is topped off by its single DLC which increases the game’s size by about a third, adding a character, more items and seven bosses. While they dial up the small, easy-to-miss projectiles a bit, most of these became favourites of mine. If you love Cuphead, the DLC is a must-play. Studio MDHR won't be returning to the game but they absolutely ended on a high note.

Cuphead’s greatest strength is clearly its style. The visuals are a painstaking tribute to 1930s animation, particularly that of Fleischer Studios. Every frame of the animation is hand-drawn, and beautiful 3D stop-motion is deployed occasionally too. True to its ancestors, it brims with playful details, though these are much easier to notice when watching gameplay than in the heat of the moment. Plenty of unobtrusive references are made to cartoons of the time period, as well as the games that inspired the gameplay. The soundtrack similarly goes above and beyond, almost entirely performed by period-accurate ensembles and composed by a single genius. The default is vibrant jazz and big band, with forays into other genres, and cameos from unconventional instruments. Even the old-timey NPC dialogue (and taunts from the bosses when you lose) is just right.

Thankfully, all of Cuphead’s style is backed up by excellent gameplay. To start, I want to confirm that the game is difficult! I racked up 400 deaths in my first playthrough. In a couple of minutes per level, you'll need to juggle aiming well, dodging, parrying pink stuff, managing smaller threats, and timing stronger moves. The default gamepad configuration makes this unnecessarily difficult. I recommend assigning shoot to a trigger you can hold down, so you can shoot continuously while doing everything else, and assigning jump and dash to adjacent buttons for quick dodging. There is a great variety of options for your loadout. The Peashooter and Spread guns are cheap and reliable and I often returned to them throughout. Some guns I found too fiddly to use, and the homing guns seem too powerful, but they can at least dial your personal difficulty level up or down. There are three Super Arts (strong powers which can be activated when you fill your Super Meter) and several charms (special passives like extra health or a supremely helpful invincible dash) to choose from depending on what aspect of a fight you're struggling with, or just how you like to play.

Including DLC Cuphead contains over 30 wildly imaginative boss fights. In Simple mode, you can play a truncated version of the fight, at a difficulty which new players will soon outgrow. An example is Clip Joint Calamity, featuring two pugilistic frogs; one boxes you with large projectiles while the other complicates things by spitting flies at you, or transforming into a fan to blow you around. If you defeat them like this, you don't collect the contract required to progress. You need to switch to Regular mode for that, which means adjusting to their modified attack patterns and then contending with their true final phase, in which one frog swallows the other and, naturally, they morph into a giant slot machine that spits coins and platform-hazards at you. After beating the final boss you unlock Expert mode, which is unchanged apart from faster and trickier attacks.

Studio MDHR never seem to run out of ideas; every boss has an extremely distinct visual and gameplay identity and is at least as surprising, memorable and fun as the boss described above. The only exception is Goopy Le Grande, a bouncy blue slime with very simple attack patterns. Positioned as the third boss you are likely to play, you’ve already seen so much better, but at least you can get past him quickly. A few boss fights let you fly freely in a plane. These are a grand old time apart from a few phases going on too long, and foreground objects randomly passing by and obscuring hazards, which feels unfair. One boss occasionally freezes your controls, which REALLY feels unfair. The six “Run ‘n’ Gun” sidescrolling levels are slightly controversial but I came to enjoy them; they show a lot of love and creativity while presenting a decent challenge. However, the game is mainly about the bosses, and players may resent needing to do those levels to afford items for boss fights.

If you want a break from your current target, there are challenges in the Achievements, but in-game you can discover hidden treasure, parry challenges, four secret boss phases and some puzzles. You can also try S-ranking bosses; I’m not so obsessed as to do that but thankfully I’m only missing out on some Achievements. Some “sidequests” unlock colour filters; it's a treat playing a fight in black-and-white - if you remember which attacks are usually pink, so you can parry them.

Cuphead is topped off by its single DLC which increases the game’s size by about a third, adding a character, more items and seven bosses. While they dial up the small, easy-to-miss projectiles a bit, most of these became favourites of mine. If you love Cuphead, the DLC is a must-play. Studio MDHR won't be returning to the game but they absolutely ended on a high note.

I can easily recommend Cuphead to fans of shoot-em-ups and other arcade games. It's one of gaming’s greatest aesthetic achievements... but you'll have to be prepared for a serious challenge to enjoy it.

The Undertale worldwide phenomenon is still palpably felt in gaming culture after nearly a decade. Its approachable dorky style, intriguing examination of the role of the player and huge iceberg of memes and trivia make it an enduring talking point in games discussion. It's fair to say that Undertale is a key moment in the medium of video games.

Opening in a tiny window in the middle of your monitor, with a slideshow introducing the story in shades of brown, the game doesn't set great expectations for itself. However, by hanging on for just a couple of minutes it becomes clear that Undertale is doing something too interesting to ignore. Creator Toby Fox is a huge fan of retro games, particularly JRPGs, but has the advantage of working in a relatively modern game engine. Combining old tropes, new tech and Fox's subversive ideas, you are repeatedly lulled into a false sense of security and surprised on many different levels when Fox reveals he is much more talented than he is letting on. Straight-forward top-down maps occasionally give way to beautiful vistas ofdistant towns. Simple bleepy melodies you hear as you play are continually reprised as moving, increasingly epic leitmotifs that become perennial earworms. Even what you think are constraints of the engine are thrown out at some points, just to throw you a curve ball.

The RPG aspect of the game is extremely straightforward; indeed if an RPG concept is introduced it's more likely to be subverted or made fun of than played straight. You have a simple set of stats, which you can boost with a meagre selection of items. There's nothing here for those who want character building and optimisation, but that's not the point; these concepts are more like decoration on top of a different kind of gameplay. Encounters actually play out like tense arcade minigames, with each monster you face having its own creative set of attacks. These can be rather challenging, which is unfortunate for those who struggle with fast-paced gameplay; a dev-permitted fan project is in the works that adds accessibility settings to the base game. You can FIGHT each monster via a rudimentary timed-hit system, but the much more interesting option is to ACT, which opens up a sort of social interaction puzzle. Choosing the right sequence of actions will change the monster's disposition towards you, which is reflected in its attacks, and eventually the monster stops fighting you, at which point you can SPARE them and end the encounter. Your mentor, and even the game's trailer, will always advocate for the latter, but how you handle encounters is in fact entirely up to you.

Most players' first playthrough will be a silly and charming romp through the game's little world. Bizarre, simple-minded characters blunder about as if performing pantomimes just for your entertainment. With liberal use of humour over about six hours, the cast successfully endear themselves to you. The jokes are never crass or derogatory, even if sometimes they lean a little too much on bad puns, or observational comedy about anime or the cuteness of dogs. The game would be worth the price of entry for the comedy alone, but it also has a dramatic depth that you can explore if you want it enough. From the start, the game is watching you intently, blurring the line between player and player character, and responding to your actions. More than any video game that I'm aware of, it challenges the player to interact with it as if they actually inhabit the game, rather than stay a detached outsider. If they do, they'll get back just as much as they put into it. Moments from this game frequently swim back into my mind ever since I first became aware of it in 2015 - even moments I didn't play myself - which is something I can't say about much longer, more complex-looking games I've also played.

The surprises don't stop at the level of the intended gameplay, either. Undertale has inspired such determination in its players that they have replayed and hacked the game to pieces looking for every little detail. The fandom have produced a precise guide to its hundreds of ever-so-slightly-different endings, uncovered all its easter eggs and cut content (with cut characters having sub-fandoms of their own), and created a relentless tide of fan theories, comics, animations, and even the occasional game. I think this is higher praise than anything I can hope to write, so I'll just wrap up the review now. I recommend playing Undertale - or if that's not feasible, at least watching a playthrough - to anyone, even people who don't think they'll like it. Even if it's not for you, you'll see what makes it such a special game.

A certain computer RPG took the gaming world by storm recently, its developers valiantly overhauling the wonky balance and ruleset of the tabletop RPG it was based on, moulding it into a gaming triumph. However, one enlightened group of gamers would have been prompted to ask: where is OUR CRPG? The one that encodes the superior balance, customisation, ruleset and licensing of Pathfinder 2nd Edition? What they might not have known is that they already had Quest for the Golden Candelabra. A level 1 adventure spanning five combat encounters, this game doubles as a P2e tutorial and should take you about an hour to complete if you're familiar with P2e. The developer is hoping to whet your appetite for their upcoming sequel/expansion, Dawnsbury Days, a larger adventure for levels 1-5.

The somewhat functional presentation is something the player will need to look beyond. The pale green UI is at least clear and easy to use but doesn't give the game much of an identity. The simple tile maps do a serviceable job of visualising encounters, but I would have preferred more variation - or even better, since the game looks like a virtual tabletop anyway, a detailed battlemap. Dialogue between characters shows some personality, particularly when the fighter is talking - except for the rogue, who I suspect might be an automaton in disguise. Voice acting for all characters is appreciated but could have used some more energy.

The game has three difficulty levels; I enjoyed it enough to play them all. Players who haven't played P2e before should start at Easy difficulty. My party wiped three times on Medium but that's fine as there are regular checkpoints. It does at least convey that the first level of P2e is one of the deadliest. It's worth checking out the next difficulty up if you beat the game, to see how well you've learned. There are also a few toggles in the options menu for certain rules not applied at all tables; the rules are clearly explained so you can enable or disable these to adjust the difficulty further.

The quest your party undertakes is short and sweet, battling through some kobold platoons in the forests, then going underground to take on some undead, before one last fight to bring home the Golden Candelabra itself. You control a party of P2e's simpler classes - cleric, sorcerer, rogue and fighter - and learn a little about their strengths and how they complement each other. After each encounter, the loot provided is a little bit more than you need, so you have some freedom in character building and strategy. Only the main combat rules are implemented, so to explore P2e's rather exhaustive rules for outside of encounter mode, you'll just have to find a tabletop game... but fair enough; implementing all that is a tall order for any studio.

As a game, Quest is a fun time, but if it aims to be a tutorial for P2e there is more that it could do. The main menu links to a manual PDF where you can read the rules; if you don't read this the game conveys the information via long-winded tooltips. The opening cutscene discusses the power of the heal spell a little and warns against getting flanked, and certain encounters have things to teach you - without directly telling you - about higher level tactics. However, a glance at the screen tells you very little about the state of the game. Seeing how your strategy is affecting the enemy requires sifting through more tooltips. There is also a combat log you can read through to find out what just happened in a turn, but reading PDFs and blocks of text is a very dry way to understand what's going on. This medium provides massive potential, far more than tabletop, to convey information in concise, intuitive and interesting ways, and this game should be taking those opportunities.

After experiencing Quest, I'm looking forward to Dawnsbury Days, and not just because it will be the main P2e video game when it releases. The developer adapts the combat rules very accurately, with agreeable compromises for video gaming, and the sequel will have more base content as well as modding support, ensuring that there'll be much more of everything you like about this game. Technically, Quest gets everything right, but its weakest area is aesthetic appeal. The gameplay is great, but to get players' attention the sequel needs to stand out more, and players need to really see and understand the game's workings, and feel good about them. If the sequel can manage that, it could be a hit.

Anyone familiar with the Yakuza series knows about its tense, complex plots, punctuated by bursts of sheer lunacy yet remaining utterly engaging. It's no small feat to keep pulling out new surprises after 18 years and about as many games, but Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios have done just that. The new series protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, fancies himself a JRPG hero, providing the ideal conceit to make the series more ludicrous and fantastical than ever before.

Like a Dragon marks a shift in the mainline series from real-time to turn-based combat, but it feels like it's been this way for years. With a party of four gameplay becomes more strategic, but fights maintain the energy of classic Yakuza street brawls, with a wide variety of enemies and brutal attacks courtesy of Ichiban's imagination. There are still aspects of real-time; some more wonky than others. During an attack, QTEs can boost your damage or mitigate damage from enemies. You get a free critical hit if you decide to hit someone while they're down. Characters in battle constantly shift position, and you can attack when the positioning is right for major damage - if you can be bothered to wait for that. Bizarre special moves can be performed by your party members, or friends you've met, whom you can summon for a cash fee. Battles are polished overall, but imperfect pathing leads to a fair bit of running into walls and weird ragdolling, and the humour of this wears off quickly.

Each party member has access to several jobs (RPG classes), like chef, musician or fortune teller. As they level up, they gain character skills and current job skills. Characters retain a couple of skills from each previous job they've held; it's worth getting a few levels in every job for each character for basic versatility, and to discover a style you like. I didn't manage to max out a single job before beating the game; maybe in my post-game adventures. You smash your way through about 200 different Earthbound-like social caricatures covering many RPG combat archetypes; these are very amusing until you meet the high-HP tanks that are, like, a drag to get through.

Ichiban retains all Kiryu's best qualities, but with less restrained emotion, an endearing underdog story and a rough but nerdy charm that draws people to him. His lost-puppy devotion to his family drives him to take a hefty jail sentence, and when finally freed, he is a 42-year-old dragon-fish out of water in a world that doesn't remember him. His exploits in Yokohama awaken his supreme gift of the gab and talent for scrambling up from nothing, earning him respect and a name for himself in a few interesting circles. The game spoofs, and celebrates in the main story, the sides of city life that society looks down on when it suits it. Either side of that is a personal story about power, love and ambition. I would have appreciated deeper in-game plot summaries as things do get a little confusing. Despite the rather contrived last few chapters the resolution is very impactful, thanks to the solid characterisation built up in story and gameplay, and the strong direction of key scenes.

Like a Dragon meets the series' high standard of quality, with as much love as ever put into visuals and a cracking soundtrack I just had to stop and marvel at sometimes. Translation is brilliantly natural as usual and the fantastic English voice acting had me sticking with the dub. It was a nice surprise to see that mouth movements match the selected language, so unlike many other dubs, no odd verbal compromises are needed to make the writing fit.

Yokohama has 52 substories and some brand new minigames to discover. The less revealed the better but there is plenty of fun to be had, whether you're defending persimmons, distributing strange kimchi or just trying to stay awake in a comfy chair. The management game has you growing a portfolio of businesses, investing in R&D, funding ventures and hiring and firing. The scope is fairly deep and it's a nice simplification of real business decisions, but its complexity and emphasis on menus means it won't appeal to everyone. Unfortunately it's your best money maker, at a point where you happen to really need ¥3m. Making money over the business period is sadly a chore; you watch a redundant animation then read your balance sheet. The end-of-period shareholder-pleasing is a more interesting arcade game, but I think these two aspects should have had more going on, considering how many times you play them. Avoid the Management Mode DLC if you like the minigame; it provides "Ultra Rare" employees that not only trivialise this minigame but spoil the story too.

Kazuma Kiryu and his peers might be starting to bow out at last, but if anything the series is stepping up a gear. This isn't the best game for newcomers (that's still Yakuza 0) as you won't appreciate the rampant call-backs, but if you like, or think you will like, the world and the wackiness of Yakuza, this is easy to recommend.

Spoils the story as well as trivialising the management mode. I would disable this if I started the game again