You are kidding right ?
Turn based Yakuza looks really enjoyable in this video !
Players act like spoiled brats nowadays...
Let's compare here:
The first random encounter here takes 40 seconds to finish. If one was really good at the game, you could make that fight go faster! As for the April Fools fight? It takes a couple of minutes, which is fine for a boss fight or long battle, but even these games are known for having hundreds of hours of content for completionist. I didn't say tens of hours. I said
hundreds. Especially in the case of Yakuza 4 and 5 which, may I remind those new to the series, are games with multiple playable characters (4 for Yakuza 4 and 5 for Yakuza 5) with their own storylines that all converge together in the climax of the series who all have their own substories, renditions of karaoke songs, upgrade skill chains, and even cities in Yakuza 5's case! So this argument that, "oh, they can focus more on side characters" doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.
This gameplay change from action to turn-based would be like if Call of Duty decided to suddenly copy Gears of War for no reason as a main form of gameplay. People complain about that series re-using shit all the time, but the fact of the matter is, in that series, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. How did people react to the era of COD games from Advanced Warfare to Infinite Warfare? Not very positively, that's for sure!
If they wanted to stop working on a Yakuza game, they should just have stopped making games with that branding and made their own Not-Dragon-Quest game and see how well that work out for them. But what can one expect when development costs are too high, a more radical change to the series that put you on the map, which is a very...risky move considering how much development money is on the line here, I can imagine?
At the very least, in the West, this game is apparently being called Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Makes about as much sense as Resident Evil 7: Biohazard if you ask me, but at the very least, it distinguishes this game from the 7 main numbered titles before it, spin-offs not included!
One more thing: we, the players, are also the ones buying the game. If we like something, we'll praise it. If we don't like something we'll criticize it. If a series which has an established identity as a beat 'em up with RPG elements which is another numbered title in Japan and suddenly, out from underneath our feet we're finding out that this game is going to play very differently from the previous games in the franchise? You can't expect everyone to be happy with what is a drastic change in a series identity and tone, especially if the battles are going to have those silly sounds for the random encounters and everything! Just like not everyone cares to play a Yakuza game trying to
desperately get some of that COD Zombie money with Dead Souls in a way that literally almost stopped all westward momentum for this series back in the day that it would take a fan campaign and three years after its initial Japanese release for us to even get Yakuza 5 in English on PS3 back in the day! I don't know about you, but that doesn't speak to players being SJWs as much as them loving what this series was before this game and wanting to experience more of it without having to know the language verbally and written down.
But, what do I know? I'll go and type all this crap out, and someone will act like I'm the asshole even though I have my opinion that ain't changing anywhere close to soon in regards to turn-based combat in a mainstream entry in this series.
