Friday, March 20, 2015

Ryu ga Gotoku Zero random thoughts so far


I'm now 66 hours into the game. Minus the 8 hours on the time wasting Vita app, that's 58 hours. About the halfway point. Currently in chapter 7 and I'm going to take my time and enjoy Majima's kyabakura management adventures.

Yes, that is Uehara Ai and yes she actually speaks her lines.

= One of the main reasons Ishin sucked is that Sega made getting experience much harder and wanted to encourage grinding. To solve this problem, Sega have introduced two money making not so minigames in Zero, Money Island for Kiryu and kyabakura for Majima.


- Unfortunately, Kiryu's money island is boring is hell. After you've set up your managers and security people, you need to go away for a time period for your money to build and you can only claim the money and change settings from the office. Its just too tiresome running back and forth. Sega should have made Kiryu be able to offer instructions from a phone booth.

+ At least the characters that act as Kiryu's advisers/managers/security are from the subs stories.


+ Majima's kayabakura management is pretty fun. Most importantly, you don't have to kill time waiting for money to roll in. You don't need to wait between sessions.

This is Yuki, the only non JAV platinum hostess in the game and her spoken lines are so much more natural than Uehara Ai's.

=I like Sega's approach to make it easier to make money but seriously Kiryu's money island is a freaking time waster.

- I would prefer not to do the money island minigame but my character feels so incomplete because you hardly make any money from sub stories. In fact you only just items and sometimes nothing at all!


+ Kiryu's substories in chapter 2 are some of the best I've ever seen. Its very similar to Shinya Shokudo, short stories about random stuff and one of the reasons I enjoy the series. Of note is the S&M sub story and the high school kid who suspects his girlfriend story. They are even more memorable than the baby sub story in RGG2.

- Unfortunately, the quality of substories goes downhill from there especially for Majima and it was on purpose so that Kiryu can write postcards to a radio program. (hard to explain without spoiling too much)


- Natsume Yuuki's sub story is just that she works at a disco. You order a drink from her and then you get access to her video. How lazy is that?


+ Majima's story is very exciting. His serious character is so different from what he becomes and I like his tortured soul aspect.


- Kiryu was already superman at age 20. 20 year old Kiryu is not much different from old man Kiryu.

+ But when he's with Nishiki, they are an interesting pair.


- Telekura was not as exciting as I had hoped. The answers are all the same so they had to make the words difficult to read to make it challenging. WTF.

- So the PS4 can take pictures during gameplay but not during cutscenes? WTF.


- Too many assets reused for both storylines eg disco. Feels too much like padding for the sake of padding.

+ RGG is the only game with dating gameplay elements that features realistic women and not anime characters.

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