Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Excellent Black Friday 2021 Video Game Deals Already Available

 Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with:
Nov 192021
 

Black Friday isn’t until next week, but the sales have already started to appear. This is a great time to find a good sale on a game you’ve been waiting on, or maybe start your holiday video game shopping.

Looking around, I’ve already seen a lot of great deals (some on games I love, some I intend to buy), so here are the ones that stood out to me the most:

Yakuza and Judgment

Best Buy has some notable Yakuza deals, specifically Yakuza: Like a Dragon for $19.99 (PS4, PS5, and Xbox One), Judgment for $19.99 (PS5, Xbox Series X), and Lost Judgment for $29.99 (PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X).

Amazon also has that same Lost Judgment PS4 deal.

I haven’t played Yakuza: Like a Dragon or Lost Judgment yet, so usually I wouldn’t promote them specifically like this, but my experiences with the series so far have left me confident in them. As for the first Judgment, I absolutely loved it, and you can check out my review here.

Resident Evil

The Resident Evil Village sale at Best Buy jumped out at me right away, since it’s on sale with a free steelbook for $19.99 (PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X). While I might have had some mixed feelings about Village, I can’t deny that it’s worth it at this price.

The Resident Evil 2 remake is also on sale for $14.99 (PS4), and that’s one that I loved.

The World Ends With You

NEO: The World Ends With You is on sale for $29.99 at both Best Buy and Amazon, although only the PS4 version so far.

Trust me, this game is fantastic, and it’s a shame it hasn’t seen more attention. Where is my review, you might be asking? I finished the main game a while ago now, but I still have to wrap up the post-game. After that, I’ll definitely share my thoughts.

Nier

Nier Replicant is on sale for $29.99 at Best Buy (PS4, Xbox One) and Amazon (PS4, Xbox One).

I haven’t finished Nier Replicant yet, since I took a break from it for personal reasons, but keep in mind that I thought the original Nier was incredible, and Replicant just takes that same great game and makes it even better.

Persona

Persona 5 Royal is on sale for $24.99 at Best Buy and Amazon. Best Buy also has a sale on the sequel/spin-off Persona 5 Strikers, $29.99 for the PS4 version and $34.99 for the Switch version.

While I didn’t get to Persona 5 Royal yet, you can read my glowing review of the original, and I also found Persona 5 Strikers to be a great game and sequel.

13 Sentinels

Best Buy also has 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim on sale for $19.99.

This game is a masterpiece. If you aren’t familiar with 13 Sentinels, take a look at my review, and then go grab it in this sale if you enjoy story-driven games!

Kingdom Hearts

The Kingdom Hearts All-In-One Package is on sale at Best Buy for $19.99. This collection includes everything from the 1.5, 2.5, and 2.8 collections, and Kingdom Hearts III, so it’s pretty much all of them except for Melody of Memory. Alternately, Kingdom Hearts III is on sale on its own for $9.99.

That Kingdom Hearts III deal, at least, is also at Amazon for both PS4 and Xbox One.

I have too many Kingdom Hearts reviews to list them all here. The sheer number of Kingdom Hearts posts should give you an idea of how I feel about these games. And yes, while some people criticize Kingdom Hearts III, I personally loved it.

First-Party Switch Games

GameStop put several Switch games on sale for $26.99, but I avoided it since their definition of a “new” game can be… lacking (lacking a case, for example). However, Amazon has now matched it.

Switch games you can get for $26.99 include Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, which I highly recommend, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which I will someday return to for my remaining routes.

Conclusion

More sales might well appear as we get closer to Black Friday, so I’ll keep this list updated!

(For my part, I picked up Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Catherine: Full Body, and Paper Mario: The Origami King, so hopefully I’ll have played and reviewed them in a reasonable amount of time. If I haven’t touched them by next Black Friday, yell at me. …I picked up both Golden Wind anime volumes, too.)

Yakuza 8 Plans, Judgment’s Future, Unannounced Titles Planned

 Video games  5 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Nov 172021
 

Back in October, an announcement from Ryu Ga Gotoku posted on the official website confirmed both that the company was being restructured and also that the next Yakuza game was in development.

Yakuza 8 (although who knows what they’ll title it in the west, since Yakuza 7 became Yakuza: Like a Dragon) has now been mentioned again in a new interview with director Masayoshi Yokoyama in this week’s Weekly Famitsu, translated by Gematsu.

In it, they first mention that the restructuring is normal for a company like this, and then confirm that Yakuza 8 will follow Ichiban as the main character again. It also will be “set several years after the story of Yakuza: Like a Dragon.”

(Yakuza games often take place in the year they’re released, so that makes sense.)

Since Yakuza 8 was already confirmed, of greater interest to me is the mention of Judgment. He says that Judgment is “very important” and goes on to say that they will “actively challenge [themselves] to create new titles, not only for Judgment, as circumstances permit.”

Now, I read that in an optimistic way. I interpreted “not only for Judgment” to mean a new Judgment title is all but confirmed to happen eventually, which made me happy that the rumors of the series ending were false.

…But most people online, it seems, interpret it in the exact opposite way and are upset that this interview confirms Lost Judgment is the last game in the Judgment series. This seems largely due to VGC reporting that Yokoyama said they would “cherish” the series and then recounting the earlier rumors. In my opinion, the lack of the “not only for Judgment” quote and the repetition of the rumor makes the outlook sound more negative.

Meanwhile, Twinfinite claims Yokoyama said he has high hopes for the Judgment series continuing, but there wasn’t a specific quote.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, you might be asking why I haven’t played my much-anticipated Lost Judgment yet, and that’s because I decided to finish the Yakuza series first due to Lost Judgment including a spoiler for Like a Dragon.

(It’s killing me; I want to play Lost Judgment now.)

One final interesting piece of information from the interview is that “unannounced titles outside of both series are also in the works.”

That could refer to more spin-offs, being outside the mainline Yakuza series, or another licensed spin-off like the Fist of the North Star game, or maybe even a whole new IP. Whatever it is, RGG Studio has proven to me that it’s something I’ll want to keep an eye on.

Here’s hoping we still have a chance of getting Kenzan and Ishin in the west…

How do you feel about the latest updates from RGG Studio?

Norn9: Var Commons – Romance and a Vanishing Plot

 Reviews, Video games  1 Response »  Tagged with: , ,
Nov 152021
 

We’ve got one last review that came too close to October to be written after I finished the game, this time for the otome visual novel Norn9: Var Commons.

I picked up Norn9 for one simple reason. The main theme was composed by Nobuo Uematsu.

I know, that’s not a good way to decide on a game purchase, but that’s how I ended up with a copy of Norn9, and this year I finally decided to play it.

Unlike the previous otome games we’ve discussed, Norn9 has multiple protagonists. In fact, you initially play as an elementary school boy, who is going through his normal life when he suddenly finds himself seemingly in the past, and then is picked up by a futuristic flying ship.

You’re introduced to this ship and the people on board through his eyes before you get a choice of which character to follow next, one of three young women who are the actual protagonists.

Each protagonist in turn has three love interests, so while nine love interests feels like a lot, it works well being split across three heroines.

These characters all have psychic powers of one kind or another, and they’re on a mission for an entity known as The World, on their way to receive orders about how they’ll use their powers to maintain world peace. This is a pretty intriguing setup, which makes it all the more disappointing that the plot just sort of fizzles out.

Most of Norn9 does not deal with the main plot at all. The end of each route returns to the overarching story to wrap things up, some more than others, but it often felt rushed to me, like it didn’t want to dwell on the plot too long.

And the epilogue, meant to clear things up, left me feeling even more confused on some points.

So let’s talk about the romances. Like I said, there are three protagonists and nine different love interests. The heroines all have distinct personalities, which was nice, and there was decent variety among the love interests. Some were more memorable than others (okay, I admit, it’s been just over a month and I’ve already forgotten a good number of them) and the actual character writing was generally solid.

Norn9 had a lot of funny moments and romantic moments that made me enjoy playing it, but everything about the story just left me feeling like it was incomplete.

Now, there’s a fandisc/sequel that supposedly fixes a lot of these plot issues and tells a good story. Unfortunately, it was never translated. Here’s hoping that one of these days they decide to give Norn9 another shot and translate the fandisc here as well! I didn’t have the best time with Norn9: Var Commons, but I enjoyed it enough that I’d pick up the fandisc if it ever comes out.

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