Movement and Strike Timing Fix the Old Turn-Based Sluggishness
The left stick actually matters in combat this time around. In the previous game, your characters stood in place like cardboard cutouts and waited their turn. Here, when your turn starts, you get a free-movement ring to jog around before pressing an attack button. If you walk up close to an enemy, your hits land heavier with proximity bonuses. If you line up your angle, you knock a punk straight into his buddy or send him flying into an oncoming car.
Controls respond the instant you press a face button. The button prompt for the Perfect Guard mechanic has a clean window that rewards genuine reflexes rather than vague guesses. Pressing the guard button right when a pipe swings at your jaw cuts the incoming damage down to nothing and prevents you from hitting the concrete. Attacks do not suffer from floaty tracking or awkward dead time. You hit, the hit connects, the target stumbles back, and the next turn cues up immediately.
Kiryu and Kasuga Give Hawaii Real Weight
The story splits between Ichiban Kasuga and Kazuma Kiryu. Kasuga brings his loud, goofy energy as an underdog trying to do right, while Kiryu carries the quiet fatigue of a guy staring down his final days. That contrast runs through the entire script. It takes the crew from Japan over to Hawaii, which changes the visual tone completely. You trade grey asphalt and tight alleyways for bright beaches, wide sidewalks, and coconut trees.
The English voice track is fully voiced and handles the tonal swings well. One moment Kiryu is quietly reflecting on his past, and ten minutes later Kasuga is hiring bizarre bums off the street for street fights. The voice direction matches the mouth flaps cleanly, so you never get taken out of cutscenes by mismatched pacing. Characters look solid in motion, and face models hold up under direct sunlight without the weird skin sheen that shows up in messy PC ports.
Outlandish Jobs and Environmental Weapons
Combat runs on odd job classes, but the physical feedback remains solid across all of them. When you pick up a bicycle or a street sign off the sidewalk to crack an enemy over the head, you feel the weight behind the swing. Heavy weapons have longer windups and longer recovery animations, while quick strikes recover fast enough to keep party combos flowing.
You also get ridiculous summon-style moves and over-the-top party skills. The animations for these skills carry proper momentum. A dropkick lands with a sharp camera snap and heavy audio thud, not a mushy visual blur. Even when the battlefield gets crowded with four party members and five street brawlers, targeting stays readable. You can always tell which opponent has an active guard up and which one is wide open for a back attack.
A Massive Map Packed With Distractions
Hawaii is huge, and you spend hours wandering off the main story path. Between hunting down Sujimon encounters, managing side content, and testing out mini-games, the map never runs dry. Most side activities feel deliberate rather than like cheap filler dumped onto a checklist.
My only serious complaint sits with the retail packaging. Locking New Game Plus behind the pricier Deluxe Edition bundle at launch is a sour move when the base game already runs for $69.99 on Steam. The core campaign here has plenty of meat, but locking a standard replay feature behind a paywall leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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Nice to see a review actually talk about the combat instead of just skimming it. That stuff about directional knockbacks giving strikes real physical weight sold me on trying this one out.
The movement rings remind me of dorm nights back in '99 (on the old Trinitron) when we'd pass the controller around (Soul Calibur mostly but sometimes Tekken 3) and argue about ring-outs (my roommate swore Yoshimitsu's suicide move was a legit strategy). Seeing that spatial crunch in a turn-based thing now (Ichiban's bat swing having actual knockback direction?) feels like the genre finally caught up to what we were imagining in the hallway between classes. Hawaii looks gorgeous on my Steam Deck too.
tbh the ng+ lock is exactly why i wait for sales now lol games used to respect your time and money
NG+ paywall is the only jumpscare that got me. Seventy bucks and they still want more for the replay.
The camera trouble indoors reminds me of the old days when we'd wrestle with the view in tight corridors. Don't let it discourage you young folks, the outdoor brawls are a joy. - Robert
Nice to see a review actually talk about the combat instead of just skimming it. That stuff about directional knockbacks giving strikes real physical weight sold me on trying this one out.
ur right about the pattern recognition thing but the window feels inconsistent rn sometimes i perfect guard a heavy and the next identical startup gets me hit anyway
dude the movement rings make every fight feel like a bar brawl where you actually have to think about where you stand instead of just mashing attack and the active guard timing is so satisfying when you nail it honolulu looks insane on my steam deck too
NG+ paywall is the only boss fight I cannot brute force (my wallet disagrees with the deluxe tax)
The active guard timing feels pretty spot on with the animations. But man, the physics get weird indoors. Sometimes enemies just slide around on the floor like they're on ice instead of hitting the wall right.
Locking New Game Plus behind the Deluxe Edition is such a scummy move. It totally ruins the replay value for anyone who just bought the standard version. Why gate that behind a paywall?
@mkc78tbh the ng+ lock is exactly why i wait for sales now lol games used to respect your time and money
@mkc78locking NG+ behind the deluxe edition is pure scummy behavior. charging $70 for the base game just to find out you cant even replay it with your endgame stuff unless you drop extra cash is wild. guess im just doing everything i possibly can in a single standard run.
Ichiban more like Ichi-BAN me from putting this down! Kiryu's still got that dragon punch energy though. No spoilers but the karaoke minigame absolutely destroyed my emotional bandwidth.
The camera snagging on indoor corners during chaotic fights... that's the one thing that pulls me out proper. You're in the flow, positioning Ichiban for a knockback chain, and suddenly the wall eats the view. Happened three times in the first chapter alone on my end. Honolulu outdoors runs buttery smooth though...
@coppery'all ain't kiddin about that camera snag brother. happened to me inside that pawn shop on River Street, Ichiban winding up for a knockout blow and suddenly i'm starin' at drywall texture while three goons rearrange my face. fixin to throw my controller through the monitor. honestly reminds me of wranglin' two toddlers through the cereal aisle at HEB, you think you got positioning locked down then bam, someone's got a box of Froot Loops upside your head and the other's screaming about the cart wheel. Honolulu outdoors though? buttery smooth like you said. took a bicycle tour just to look at the water rendering at sunset. worth the seventy bucks just for that.
Proper disappointed about the New Game Plus lock mate. Back in the day you'd get the whole game in the box (manual and all, proper thick booklet with character bios and move lists) and NG+ was just there waiting for you. Now it's tucked behind a Deluxe Edition paywall? Reckon that's a proper shame for a series that's always respected the player's time. Combat looks crisp though, active guard timing adds a proper layer.
@peter griffins kneengl the ng+ paywall is total bs but the active guard is tight. you cant just mash the button, you actually gotta watch the enemy startup animation. review says quick reflexes, but honestly it feels a lot more like pattern recognition to me. indoor camera snagging during multi-target brawls is definitely annoying though.
@peter griffins kneeThat NG+ lock is definitely a publisher move. It sucks that it's not in the base game.
@peter griffins kneeSega really charged $70 for the base game just to lock NG+ behind the deluxe edition lol. Pure greed on the publisher side, completely ruins what should've been an easy day-one purchase.
The movement rings remind me of dorm nights back in '99 (on the old Trinitron) when we'd pass the controller around (Soul Calibur mostly but sometimes Tekken 3) and argue about ring-outs (my roommate swore Yoshimitsu's suicide move was a legit strategy). Seeing that spatial crunch in a turn-based thing now (Ichiban's bat swing having actual knockback direction?) feels like the genre finally caught up to what we were imagining in the hallway between classes. Hawaii looks gorgeous on my Steam Deck too.