cool

Is this anything like yakuza or kenzan?

I need to give the third one another go. I absolutely adore the first, but the second one felt like it overextended itself and wasn't very memorable. I only got maybe an hour into the third before getting frustrated because I had no idea where to find an item necessary to complete a mission, and I never really went back to it.

For those wondering how it plays or why you start over from the beginning when you die, I'll try to summarize the series as best I can.

The games are open ended action games focused around branching paths and heavy weapons customization. They span multiple in-game days of play, with the story progressing every morning, afternoon, evening, and night of each day. Depending on what you're doing at each of those times, the story moves in various directions. The goal in each single playthrough is mainly to find and upgrade as many weapons as you can while playing the game, and once you finish (it's a fairly short game, spanning only several hours), you can then start the game all over with your gear and take the story in a different direction than you did previously. The meta-goal is to see as many endings and learn as much about the cast as you can.

In the first Way of the Samurai the game had 4-5 endings, I believe, and the second had many more, given the span of the game went from three days to eight or so. I think 3 is even longer, with a similar or greater number of endings you can see.

But don't die! If you die, you lose all your items and you get kicked to the start menu. Literally all your progress in the game, no matter how many times you've beaten it, will be lost. Though any costumes, etc. you unlock will remain unlocked.