#majima in this game especially is just. something else. I think he’s allowed to be more unhinged than in any other game for much longer than | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

atanx · 11 months

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Just finished Yakuza 3 so here's some of my thoughts:

BEAUTIFUL EYES

Richardson and Kiryu talking at each other in different languages was so funny to me. Like they don't understand each other yet stubbornly keep talking as if they did XD

RIKIYA DYING WAS SO UNNECESSARY FOR THE PLOT WHYY like Kiryu has GOT to get rid of his stupid habit of leaving defeated enemies to their devices around various lethal objects (especially guns). Because they always, ALWAYS get back up. I'm not saying he should kill them. But like secure them in SOME way. Start carrying around some rope or something. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried.

Damn, Mine, babygirl, you are so beyond fucked up you need therapy BAD

Poor Daigo like imagine getting shot, being in a coma and you wake up on a rooftop in fucking december, toes freezing off, falling off of a hospital bed and immediately being greeted with the sight of several gun wielding assholes. You shoot them, still confused about what's going on (why tf is your father-figure of sorts there? Why is the dude u wished was ir boyfriend there? WHY ARE THEY SHIRTLESS AND BLOODY). Then ur crush starts spouting cryptic shit, the dude you shot somehow still has fight in him and to save you, your crush charges at him, getting shot multiple times and then tells you that he doesnt deserve to live before throwing himself off the roof. You've been awake for three minutes.

Also Haruka slapping Mine was EPIC. She should have kept going, kicked Mine in the shin, bitten his arm etc all feral foaming-at-the-mouth chihuahua mode

Also Mine feeling good about himself for having slapped a teen back. A grown ass adult. Like damn dude has issues

I'm stilk very upset about Rikiya. Like one moment I would run away from him in the Kamurocho streets and giggle with a warm feeling in my chest when he'd scream "ANIKII!!" and then the next he fell victim to this stupid gimmick of defeated opponents not being taken care of properly

I honestly feel like that gimmick is so overdone at this point

I think I did something wrong during the final boss battle because Mine was constantly going into this Jojo's bizarre adventure pose and regenerating health AND I had to do like the exact same QTE cutscene like four times even though I never failed it (besides the first time)

RIGHT I ALMOST FORGOT my steam screenshot folder is prob like 90% just various Majima facial expressions because I enjoyed them so much. Reminds me of that post going like "while older character models are kinda eh Majima's crowfeet in them slap!" and I really agree. I'm playing the games chronologically and when I got to YK2 something about Majima just looked extremely off but I couldn't put my finger on it. I think that's it tho they ironed him out and took away his wrinkles :(. Like obvs the model is still good it was just a weird change that I'm not sure why they implemented it. Anyway the Y3 Majima expressions are fucking precious especially the grins

Also pink truck scene probably best scene in the game it was so cute the way Majima was worried that he accidentally ran over Kiryu <3

I took way too long to finish this game because the old graphics are kind of jarring especially considering I played Judgement and Lost Judgement at the same time, but it was still a pretty good game. (another contributing factor was that for some reason the game doesn't allow me to do anything else on my PC besides access the taskbar while I'm playing it so taking short breaks is harder. The game literally does not allow for any apps to show up on screen) I'd really like a YK3 I think that would be epic especially to get an updated Rikiya model (I think there's an updated Mine model in Ishin? Idk anyway just more modern graphics would be really cool)

I can continue with Y4 now, which I'm really excited for because I've hears quite a bit of stuff about Akiyama and Saejima and this will be like the first proper contact with them and their storylines. I've actually started Y4 already and Akiyama has major cat energy to me

#yakuza #rgg #yakuza 3 #spoilers #yakuza 3 spoilers #my rants #More like my gamereviews lol

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itsybitsylemonsqueezy · 4 years

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Oh gosh i literally LOVE your analysis thank you. And what about Majima??

Awww, thank you very much ^^; I’ve been having a good time writing these, I”m glad people are enjoying them. And everybody’s free to ask for seconds too, if interested. *breathes deep* Hoo boy, you pulling out the big guns there. Okay lads, settle down, it’ll be awhile.

character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS

I would give my life for Majima Goro. But I won’t because that would trigger him to fuck and back. Best boy, golden son, I am mad fucked up about him. I don’t even have time to explain all my feelings about Majima fucking Goro. You can tell because I can’t go a single fucking post without mentioning him. *whispers* I love him.

ship with: Y’know how sometimes things are popular and you don’t get why? This is not one of those times. It’s cliche, but Kiryu Kazuma is the popular option here For A Reason. Like, I started Zero not knowing a fucking thing about Yakuza, as I think many do. And I wasn’t at all sure how Majima and Kiryu were going to be with each other, I had heard that they were the going ship and that seemed legit enough. Kiryu’s a nice boy, Majima’s a nice boy, they’d probably get on. But you make it through Zero and they don’t meet, not even once. They vaguely hear about each other and if they thought enough about it, they’d probably figure out that each other was holding the other half of their story, but there’s only that 5 second meeting in the epilogue, after the entire game is already fucking over and... Oh Shit.

That, my many gendered gentry, was an imprinting in live time.

But first, let’s back up a second, because I bet you’re all wondering about the Other important love in Majima’s life. So Makoto, Makoto... As I discussed in my Saejima post, after Anagura, Majima is living to die. That’s it, that’s his only goal in life, to get back into Tojo and wait there so his brother knows where to find him when he comes to kill him. He’s not looking for any other attachments in life. Because that’s the way Majima loves, body and soul, his whole existence dedicated around one thing. And he’s already signed himself up for sacrificing himself as repayment for Saejima’s sins and wasted years in prison. But then this... tragedy happens. This hit that isn’t a hit, this villain that’s really a victim. Everything goes wrong and Majima is left with do I commit the unthinkable to shorten my wait for my brother or do I forgo my brother’s rightful revenge to save this innocent? And Majima can’t. He can’t.

He could never kill and he can’t turn his back on someone who needs help. And she does need him, specifically, there’s no one else. Anyone else couldn’t be trusted, or if they can be trusted, they’re dead. Majima is the only person he and Makoto can trust so he’s just here, doing his best, trying to keep her alive in the face of everything he wants and all the power and hate the underworld of Japan can offer. He would sacrifice his one goal of staying alive for his brother if it means keeping Makoto safe. Is that love? Oh yes, but not the livable kind. You don’t come back from that kind of dedication. Majima loves Makoto as gods love: completely. It is without judgment and without reason. That’s not the love of one finite person to another finite person, admitting, exploring, and cherishing all the flaws and limits therein, it’s not even the love of a parent to a child or vice versa. It is infinite love, all-consuming and all-destroying. It is not cognizant of personality, worthiness, or risk. It just is. In many ways, Majima does not know Makoto, he doesn’t see her, neither, ironically, does she see him. These are not two equals of mutual interest enjoying who each other is. This is a far less personal and far more profound experience. It’s like a calling, a quest. And it’s not something a stable relationship can be built on because it doesn’t actually have anything to do with who Makoto is in her day-to-day life or who Majima is in his embodied, finite experience. This is love as a philosophical point, as a moral decision.

It is the greatest thing I’ve seen in my life that he lets her go. That sort of love will destroy you if you let it, it crushes your existence, your personality and sense of self, entirely into that of another. And you can’t live as a part of someone else, you cannot actually live for someone else, not sustainably, no matter how badly you want to. It’s the strongest thing I’ve ever seen done that Majima has the power to walk away from her and walk away from that sweet, blinding death. To choose a finite, flawed, embodied, but his own individual existence rather than let himself be consumed in an idea. And that they walk away from each other where they can both survive it. Where the idea of what was and what might have been doesn’t drive them into despair of all earthly, finite joys. Because who would choose to have a normal, dirty, working life where you are required each day to be an individual with your own wants and desires that are spurned and rewarded by turns of luck rather than the pure, golden existence of perfect moral agape? And I’m so glad that they walked away before they could be blinded by it, again, ironically enough.

But the fact that Majima is capable of that level of love is truly terrifying. And then how fascinating that he walks away from it. That he chooses a harder, darker life that will have the normal range of joys and disappointments. The restraint it takes. The incredible, unbending sense of self and to decide that there are selfish, individual things worth caring about, even if you had the chance to become selfless for the rest of your life. I don’t think we talk about or think about that Majima walking away there was a moral choice. He wasn’t walking away from happiness, he was walking towards a different happiness. And, most importantly of all, even though he is still waiting to be killed by his brother, the fact that he walked away means that Majima is much healthier and much less self-destructive than he was at the beginning of Zero. He could have escaped it all if he went with her. But he doesn’t. And that fucking blows my mind.

I love that Majima grows after Zero. That his absolute nihilism changes as he allows himself to care about people again, maybe even care about himself again. Especially after Shimano’s death, he starts to develop relationships and things that he cares about as soon as it is safe to do so. He decides that he isn’t going to waste away waiting for his brother, he will live in this time, even if it has an expiration date. He will build something he cares about. And I think, in no small part, knowing Kiryu gives him the courage and the will to do so.

Because Kiryu is this shooting star in the dark night of Majima’s world. He is this mighty pillar standing amidst slag and waste. Kiryu does things that are right because they are right, with no thought to his own gain or risk. Kiryu does things that are right at tremendous personal risk and will fight through people trying to stop him. And Kiryu will win. Not only does Kiryu agree with the way Majima thinks and feels but, mother of god, eh actually has the power and strength to survive.

Think about that. You’re Majima Goro and every day since you became yakuza, you have been kicked down, tortured, and abused just because you wanted to do the right thing. You have watched countless friends, allies, and enemies be shot and killed in front of you because they were trying to do the right thing. You have no choice but to do right in the secret places of your heart, to do good only in ways that can never be traced back to you, in ways no one would confuse for being good, kind things. Because it will get you killed, or worse, it will get the people around you killed. It’s not paranoia, you’ve seen it happen, your nightmares are filled to the brim with the blood and horror or good people dying just because they were good and it’s your fault, it’s all your fault because you didn’t warn them, you let them get close, you let them see you were a good person and you can NEVER. EVER. let that happen to anyone again.

And then there’s Kiryu. Stupid, mutton-headed freak with the arms of a lumberjack and a heart as white as lilies. He’ll be dead tomorrow, you know it. He’s too good, he’s too kind, and he’s not afraid. He’s not damn near afraid enough. He has no idea what’s waiting out there to snap him to pieces. But he’s there tomorrow. Not even a scratch on him, still standing, still strong. You try to warn him, you try to beat him in a way he can survive so that he learns to never try to be good again. But he beats you. He actually fucking beats you and what the fuck are you supposed to do with that? He’ll still die anyway, there’s no way he’ll live where so many have been slaughtered. And he’s still there tomorrow. You pester him, you follow him, you watch him closely, to see what he does, who he is, how is it he’s still alive? It must be some trick, he’s either not as good as you think he is or not as strong or, or... something! Because it’s impossible, it’s impossible that anyone could, that anyone could...

And he smiles. He smiles at you, like he can see right down to that tiny, beating, pure heart you’re trying every second to wrap in barbed wire. And you’re done. You’re fucking done for. He smiles and... it’s all fucking over. Whatever happens now, whether he dies or lives, it’s too late. He’s everything you ever wanted and it breaks you that he, somehow, wants you too. Because who would smile at you if they didn’t know you? Oh, he’s dumb as rocks still, but... the way he looks at you, in those moments when you fuck up, in those moments that if someone was watching, they would see you. And he sees you. And worse, he thinks he likes it. And... oh god. You love him. This will all end in tears.

But it doesn’t. Kiryu’s alive and the same and that’s... that’s wonderful. And that’s the love of two people, two people who see each other and know each other and, god help them, like each other. Despite it all, the risk and worry and the problems, they just... get along. That’s why I ship it.

(I also ship Kiryu/Majima/Tachibana sometimes and we’ll save my essay on that for an entirely different post.)

brotp: Saejima Taiga, obvs. I will not repeat my sentiments on why that’s the brotp here, there’s the Saejima post for that. But I also put Nishida and Kage right up there as Majima’s best bros. You got Nishida out here doing his best to keep his boss from dying and facilitating Majima’s ridiculous courtship ploys and trying to articulate Majima’s feelings for him when Majima Won’t because Nishida cares So Fucking Much about Majima. And he knows that Mjima hates it when people care about him, he knows Majima actively does tno want you to like him but... Nishida’ worked with him for too long not to know what a good, kind person Majima really sis, even if he’s trying his best not to show it. And god damn it, but Nishida’s not going to let him live in misery when he’s got a heart of gold like that.

And Kage too, he and Majima look out for each other. They enjoy the odd cage match and a morose drink of fine liquor. They’ve both seen tragedy in their lives and Kage tries his best to convince Majima not to give up all hope. That Kiryu boy, he really likes him. Even Kage can see it. He’d be happy to... no, no, alright. Just thought he’d say.

Because Majima has that effect on people. He makes friends wherever he goes because he’s a good time, he’s generous and kind and has a knack for picking up people who are down. And he’d do anything for you if you didn’t have a friend in the world. He has so much love to gives and slowly, slowly, with time and healing, with the death of Shimano and the return of his brother, slowly Majima is allowed to feel safe in loving people once more. And it warms everyone’s heart to see him happy and whole with a family and friends. Everyone he’s touched just wants him to be okay, after all he’s done for the world, please, just give him this little bit. It’s all he ever wanted.

general opinions: I Am Love. I LOvE HiM. I lOVe. I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE. I Love HIm. *sobs*

#Majima Goro #There's more to say. There always is. But I'll cut it there for today #Yakuza #ask Lemon #blurred-voices

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reshrodancer-blog · 5 years

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The long awaited Yakuza 0 review

To make things clear, this is my first Yakuza game. I haven’t played any other ones and i’ll most likely compare the game to Far Cry 3 or Nier: Automata since i’ve played those games recently and are fresh on my mind. There’ll be slight spoilers for the first 3 chapters. You can skip this part if u don’t wanna hear about the pacing problem. I’ll put the different parts into segments like i did the first time. Starting with the story, the biggest problem that the game has is it’s pacing. I guess it’s kinda unavoidable to not have pacing issues since you play as 2 different characters and their events unfold in different speeds, but the start is a real mood killer. The game opens up with you playing Kiryu in a high tension cinematic, then just makes you walk around with your best friend for like good 5-10 mins. After some bullshit, the game ramps up and gives you, probably, the best fighting gauntlet in the game, and a fantastic boss fight at the end. Next chapter, running around and doing fetch quests for buncha homeless people, the “fighting gauntlet” in this chapter is non existent, and the boss fight is less than stelar. The first boss fight has stakes, Kiryu knows the character for a while, and we’ve had enough time to get to hate him. The second one, the stakes are considerably lower and we get like 2 scenes with the character, which is obviously not enough time to flesh out the character, and the reason for fighting him is kinda dumb. We beat the boss, have a talk and the chapter ends. Next chapter begins with quite a long cutscene, following bunch of unrelated characters, this is obviously made this way to make Majima’s(second MC), reveal as big as it is, considering the following games, but i haven’t played any of them so the bait didn’t work. The game doesn’t shy away from re-using bosses multiple times, but the reusal doesn’t bother since most of the have a huge role in those current events and the title card before each bossfight makes it very much worth it. Otherwise, the game has a great story, the characters are well thought out, kinda 1 dimentional but they do their job GREAT. The twists are good, and the ending might be a bit bitter-sweet, it still is a good wrap-up to everything. The game has horrible pacing issues in the first few chapters, the middle’s pretty decent, and gets kinda bad towards the end but not as bad as the first part. That’s the story-based pacing issues. The gameplay part doesn’t get any better during the main quests all you do is: 1.watch cutscenes 2. fight. That’s all there’s to it, no different minigames, considering there’s shit ton of it in the game. Well except 3 parts of the game where u play Karaoke twice and a toy grabbing machine once and well, 2 “stealth” sections”. And the last problem that the story holds is the presentation, there are 4 different ways the game presents it’s story: 1. Fully animated cutscenes with voice acting, 2. In-game-engige with voice acting, 3.In-game-engige with no voice acting, 4.weird visual novel style. My problem with this begins with the fact that the fully animated cutscenes are not that long, also there are multiple time where the game switches from animated to engine to animated again. I know the game is made with a low-budget but these are still problem. Second problem being the in-engige cutscenes, the amount of animations the in-engige cutscenes have is pretty low, and it gets obvious pretty fast, the characters start doing the same movements and this might be a problem of mine but some of those animations really annoyed me. I don’t have any problems with the visual novel style, except that it’s not used a lot during the game, maybe about 5 times in the whole game. To leave the story part in a high note, the voice acting is amazing, you can feel every bit of emotions whenever characters talk and it enhances the story by a thousand easily. Huge amount of work is put into the side content into the game, considering Kamurocho and Sotenbori are basically few streets big, it’s filled with stuff to do to the brim. Starting from Karaoke to bowling, from western gambling to japanese gambling and 100 different substories, which are well-written. It has it’s cheesy moments but the writers knew about that fact and double downed on it which just makes it much better. The amount of care that’s put into the mini-stories is amazing, you do different things almost every time, it doesn’t have the same problem as the main story. Comparing this to smth like Far Cry 3, Yakuza 0 beats the game with ease. FC3′s side quests boils down to, go shoot ppl and fetch smth, i’d give’em a pass if they were well written but the story in the side quests is dogshit. Here’s an example: A lady asks you to check a plane wreckage, you go inspect the place, a man asks you what you are doing, you tell’im about the lady and he goes “There’s no lady in this village”, quests ends. Like what the fuck is that supposed to be, that’s it, no conclusion, Jason doesn’t question it, nor does he react. Meanwhile in Yakuza 0, you teach a Dominatrix how to act dominant, kids see you doing it and the game turns that awkward situation into a lesson for the dominatrix. The problem lies in the fact that non of the side quests have voice acting and they use the in-engine cutscenes. But i can forgive that for being amazingly entertaining. And the reward you get from the side quests are worthwile, almost everything in the game connects to something else. The biggest side-quests in the game are Kiryu’s Real Estate plotline, and Majima’s Cabaret Club plotline, which is the main way of making money. Both have similar story beats, both has to fight against the best 5 respective businessmen. Kiryu’s job is to go around buying real estate and turning it into profit. This takes a long time and you aren’t doing anything to make the money, you buy the land and wait until the money flows in. Meanwhile Majima has a minigame where you have to keep the customers and your hostesses happy. The way you acquire managers and security for kiryu, and hostesses for Majima is through substories, which also tie into a lot of the minigames in the game, like dancing, fishing and such. What people complain about is the fact that you make the most money from Kiryu’s story while doing nothing, meanwhile you make 1/10th of the money with Majima since you actually have to pay attention for that. But i think the fact that those 2 thing contradicting each other works for it’s favor, you can swap characters after the game’s main story ends, you can send your advisors to collect the money and swap to Majima to do his part of the story. And to kinda offset the money problem early game, Majima’s upgrades cost considerably less than Kiryu’s. The upgrade system, i think it’s pretty bad. Most of the upgrades feel insignificant, for someone who’s new to the game i don’t think they’ll remember most of the combos that you unlock and the ones they’ll upgrade doesn’t change much aside from “deal more dmg”, “get more heat”. And the weird upgrade grid that the game has just adds unneccesary confusion. The fighting on the other hand. The fighting is great, the hits have weight to them. Every hit gives off a great visual and audio feel. The heat actions are over the top and gruesome. The game has 3 different styles for each character: Balances, fast and weak, strong and slow. Kiryu’s styles are more “practical” meanwhile Majima has the more “fun” styles. But both have broken styles which just makes the other styles obsolete. You can unlock a 4th style for each character if you complete the business subplots. One big problem with the balance of the game comes from the healing system. You can hold 20 healing items which heal the character for 75%. You can get these the moment you are allowed to roam the world, there’s no lock behind these and make the game a cakewalk even on the highest difficulty and ruin the mood of the game quite a bit, especially on bossfights. Imagine having 20 health bars, meanwhile the bosses have 2 to 6 maximum. Hence why i decided to handicap myself and only you maximum of 2 healing items per fight, after that each fight felt like a challenge and the victories felt a lot more impactful. But i shouldn’t be handicapping myself to make the story games feel more impactful, the game fails at that pretty badly. But if the game has a great soundtrack, even the most unbalanced fights can feel epic. And needless to say, Yakuza 0 has a phenomenal soundtrack, each fighting style has a different music tied to it, almost all of the bosses have music attached to them and the way they are integrated into the fight is fucking amazing. Especially towards the end, the music reaches amazing heights. Doesn’t matter how dull the fighting gets, the music will keep you pumped up until the last second you play. And you will get bored of the fighting, if you want to 100% the game. This game has one of the worst 100% metrics. The game makes you do EVERYTHING and sometimes do stuff multiple times. It took me 186 hours to 100% the game. Did i get frustrated of how bullshit the gambling is ? Yes, absolutely. The way the game adds up your score is when you stop playing certain minigame. This automatically sets your brain to quit the moment you go below the number you started with, so u quit after winning a round or losing a round and it becomes quite frustrating after some time. Catching every fish, playing every song in disco, beating up 200 enemies which each style, which one of them is unlocked really late into the game, you’ll get sick of it. And like i said before, there are japanese gambling minigames, like koi-koi and mahjong. I love Mahjong, it’s fucking fantastic but Sega could’ve done a better job if they wanted to include a japanese minigame with japanese symbols in the game. Thankfully this is fixed in Yakuza 6 and i’m glad. There are a lot of flaws with the game, but i love it without any doubt. The way the game captures the Japanese environment and culture, the amount of stuff you have in the game, the out of this world soundtrack, the high points of the story, the way the different side contents bleed into each other without any problems, and i’d recommend this game to everyone. 9/10

#yakuza 0 #review

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