Yeah I know that enemy though I didn't know he appears 4 times in that dungeon. A shame that the other fights in that dungeon are so annoying and most other encounters don't even give 10k XP.

Nevertheless, I had to grind the Battle Arena for the rare materials in order to strengthen my weapons. The floors 11-14 gave me exactly what I needed and I won almost every encounter in 4 turns and received 50k+ XP for each (more with the right gear for XP grinding).

Only played around 3 hours of Code Vein but I'd say it's doable since your A.I. friend is rather capable.

It depends on the game but sometimes I choose the easiest difficulty to beat a game. Though, I usually go for the medium difficulty setting.
With the exception of CoD, I never choose anything above normal. Basically for the same reason Spade mentioned. Too many games too little time.

I've always just had the assumption that easy modes were there for really young children and for people with no gaming skill. After reading through the last couple of pages, all I can say is that I'm really, very, very disappointed in some of you.  Words alone can not express my befuddlement.

I no longer feel bad for my gaming performance or with games taking me twice as long to complete.  I will take my extensive backlog over whatever the crap I just read.  At least I can hold my head up in pride.

Some of you need to be whooped backed into shape.

Funny part is that in real life situations, the average "I only play games on hard difficulty" player is probably much softer than the average "I have no time for this" player.

Easy difficulty players would end up injuring themselves if they'd try to break a controller. Bet they bite through plenty of pacifiers though while throwing a tantrum.

I can sort of see both sides of the argument when it comes to games and difficulty.

On the one hand, I absolutely think it's great when developers make an effort to include various difficulty modes, and other accessibility options that enable not just players of varying skill levels, but also with actual physical disabilities, to play and enjoy these games. It's commendable, and I got absolutely nothing but respect for anyone who puts a lot of work into making sure that their game is able to reach people who are often forgotten, or purposefully not catered to. There should absolutely be entertainment options for everyone out there.

On the other hand....not EVERYTHING has to be for everyone. All devs don't need to cater to people who like - or in some cases require - easy/highly accessible games. It's like with different genres, and types of entertainment. Everything isn't for everyone. I don't expect everything to be made in a way that appeals to me personally either, and that can range from big, overarching design choices, to relatively small nuances in a product that just don't end up working for me. Just because I may feel a certain way about it, doesn't mean that said product doesn't have it's own highly viable place in the market, or that it's a lesser product for not going out of it's way to make certain development decisions that might get me personally to reconsider my stance on it.

I think it's good for a healthy games industry that there be opportunities out there for everyone to make the kind of games they really wanna make. If that means someone wants to make an incredibly accessible mass market game, that can be easily played by as many people as possible, whether that involves the simplest of mechanics, or highly complex mechanics that you've somehow managed to simplify in a way that opens up an entry point for just about anyone who might every want to give it a go....fantastic. Have at it. If it means you wanna make a much more niche, highly focused game, that you know is going to alienate, or otherwise put off a big chunk of the maximum possible market, in favor of hopefully really delivering for that smaller subsection of the potential audience....that's cool too.

If FromSoft, as an example, feels that their games simply NEED to be hard, because that is their vision for their games, and they want whoever plays them to feel like they're really going through the fire, and conquering a challenge that is difficult to X degree...wherever FromSoft sets that bar...it's their right to do so, and it's the market's right to reject said design approach if there's no audience for it. But if there is, and said audience is big enough for their approach to be commercially viable, and perhaps even growing, then it's not really for anyone else to say with some kind of moral authority that this approach is wrong. There may be a lot of other games out there, that even on the hardest difficulty (if there are difficulties to be chosen), are considered too easy by certain people, and it might bore them as a result. Is it within their right to demand that the devs go out of their way to make those games harder in some way? I don't think so.

* me looking at the thread not having a strong opinion on difficulty settings in games *

I usually just play on normal/default, except Halo always on legendary. Or if I'm trying to get an achievement.

Time for the big Yakuza: Like a Dragon review.

I'm glad they decided to create a new area for the game. Yokohama's Ijincho district is quite a big place and offers some variety from the usual Sotenbori and Kamurocho. Yet it feels a little empty compared to those places. Some more stores and minigames would've been nice.

Story-wise the game starts off slow but I found it to be enjoying... up to chapter 12 where IMO almost everything falls apart.

What I loved about the game was the English voice overs. That was something that always pissed me off in previous Yakuza games. Not only does it have them, the cast is absolutely fantastic. Adachi's voice being my favourite.

The battle system is fun, the main characters are likeable as well. Yet the game still has lots of flaws. All of them are pretty minor yet when combined they do have a noticeable impact on the game.

- Enemy spawn. Image you want to walk from one end to the street to another. Some don't have enough space to dodge enemy groups so you're pretty much forced to fight them. After they're gone, another group can spawn just a few meters in front of you. And again and again.

- No indication of enemy stats. Some can have a huge health bar and yet go down in one hit while others have small health bars and can take 5 attacks without going down, all in the same battle, even the same level. What's the point? Also no symbols to see their resistance. Sorry but I can't remember all 252 different enemy types and their resistances.

- Taxis. Why do you have to find and use them in Ijincho to make them available. Why isn't it enough to just see them from a few meters. Annoying and honestly it took way too long for me to realise that. At first I thought I could only use taxis in certain sub regions because I haven't progressed far enough in the story.

- It's a nice idea being able to craft and improve weapons but at the same time it's disappointing that you can only improve one certain weapon of a job and not the rest. Or hell ANY armor.

- Ichi's personality stats system feels underused.

- The need to level each job individually is painful and slow. Jobs also have a bigger impact on stats than your regular level so I never wanted to change my job.

- camera in battles can be too slow when switching from one guy to another which might result in you not being able to block at the correct time.

- no save points in the majority of "dungeons", which can take an hour to beat. Then add 30min of cutscenes and you're forced to play for 90min without saving. At that point you're praying that there won't be a power outage or console shutdown due to overheating etc.

- don't trust the power description of your attack when you select them. I Saeko's case, her first water magic attack (light damage) was far stronger than both water magic attacks that you unlocked later even though they were supposed to do more damage and also used more MP. This is true for every character.

- It's extremely hard to judge how big the AOE of such a type of attack will be as there is no indication. Constantly moving enemies doesn't make it any easier

Due to all these things, I can't give it a 9 or anything higher than that. I very much enjoyed my time with it (roughly 65 hours) and I'm glad they didn't use the same old fighting system of previous Yakuza games.

8.5/10

My cents:

I agree with most.

Story wise well it is Yakuza, the locker bullshit annoyed me more and most Yakuza games can be silly or stretching so long.  

Those enemies spawns annoyed me to but you can run away (if the character is not blocked by a wall or enemy) and you have the amulet that let's you walk freely.  I prefer it like this instead of random encounters. (Honestly Yakuza 5 was the worst with enemy spawns).

The enemy types didn't bother me because plenty have a similar type of weakness and except for like 10% of them you can get trough with physical attack/types of attacks.

I liked the 'find the taxi' system and you can always use the app, the map isn't that big.  

Felt like the ichiban personality stats were used fine, more were welcome but I liked the 'sorry you can't come trough here if you don't have confidence lv6' and your attacks get better/stronger with your personality stats.

Jobs leveling is slow trough the main story but to beat the final boss you don't need to do much grinding and the last city dungeon is great for leveling up almost to the point of breaking the game.   What is underused is that different types of jobs unlock special abilities.  I was suprised to use the foreman job and unlock abilities to break trough walls and unlock special stores.

I was glas with my series X and that quick resume is a thing because it was so helpfull in those long dungeons, could not really read the loading tips tho...The game loads so fast.

I really liked the battle system it isn't great but their is so much stuff to unlock also poundmates were fun (and so many hidden ones).

Also I enjoyed the size of the game and the minigames. Stuff like DK was a surprise for me and for a minigame they put a lot of stuff in it. Management mode was to long to complete especially for the achievement but oh well I am happy i did.  Quest Hero was also a nice addition. Collecting album cd's like Persona 5 but also many sega classics was fun as an older sega fan =p.

If their next game would be Yakuza like a dragon 2 I would be very excited.

Edit:  Should mention it again but RNG should not be included in games.  If you have the ability to encounter someone with only a 0.5% possibility....Well it sucks and only waste times.

Signed up for the Halo insider program before E3 because I was expecting them to announce it then.