True Ukrainian
Arcane
Well, I finished the main story at least, still got a lot of substories and stuff but I'm strapped for time so I couldn't focus 'too' much on side stuff (Though I did get like 20 of each protag's substories and the first districts of each business done). Impressions follow
Was kinda miffed that we fought Kuze no less than 5 times but never got a chance to kick Sagawa's ass. Glad the ending was happier than I thought it would turn out, I figured Makoto was going to be killed especially since, IIRC, she's not mentioned in later entries. I know Majima's oath brother comes to prominence later in the series because he's supposed to be one of the playable characters in Yakuza 5; least I recognize the name from the same place where I heard Y5 has 5 whole cities/protags to mess with. Otherwise, I was pretty much expecting a lot of the characters in this game to disappear, from prior experience with the series. Still, some of the twists were pretty well done and not entirely predictable even going in as a series 'vet', I guess.
I'm still not entirely convinced that the Majima in this game is the same Majima from 1 and 2, but I guess his grief at having to leave Makoto behind to prevent her from being dragged into the underworld any further and the influence of Sagawa, Nishitani, and Awano led to him becoming the way he is. I was also expecting Majima and Kiryu to meet during the main storyline as well, if I recall correctly in the original Yakuza it's fairly heavily implied that Majima already knew Kiryu before the events of that game well enough to respect him, and he also seemed like a killer whereas he never crosses that line in 0. He's also far more unhinged in the original...but, I guess the remakes probably fix that discrepancy by highlighting more of his character arc in the...what is it, 15-16 years between 0 and 1? 0 is like, late 80s, right?
also thought that the western releases always missing out on the hostess dialogues, at least in the entries I've played besides 0, wasn't anything to get too disappointed about. But running the cabaret club has changed my opinion; they're small and inconsequential but I did find myself enjoying the special training sessions with the platinum hostesses I've recruited so far.
anyways can't wait to get to Kiwami, but it's gonna be a bit. Work is about to take up a lot of my time and I also want to finish the side stuff in 0. But, as an aside, has anyone actually gone through and played Y6? I've heard things about pretty much every entry except that one, which flew under my radar completely. Did it turn out good? I just have this nagging feeling like, because it's 6th in the series it likely follows the trend of practically any other long running series where the narrative/gameplay quality declines significantly from the original entries. But it IS Ryu ga Gotoku, so maybe it defied that.
The impression I got was that leaving Makoto behind was only the start of Majima's problems. Majima only really snapped after his unhappy marriage when his wife aborted their child without telling him about it. He went full wife beater and thrashed his ex-wife within an inch of her life. All the disappointment in his life turned him into the mad dog.