Battle Chef Brigade (PC): Part of a balanced meal

So every so often, in between streaming planned games on my rinky dink little channel, I will toss out a poll or ask for random suggestions for stuff to play.  Sometimes I get good ideas, other times I get random stuff out of the blue. This one was suggested to me by a friend and while the title rung a bell, I knew it was a game I had never played before.

But I knew that Amazon Prime had been giving away a bunch of games to Twitch Prime users, so after getting the suggestion I took a look and lo-and-behold I actually had a copy of the game. Never downloaded once and never played. So I figured why the hell not?

BATTLE CHEF BRIGADE (PC)

Taking place in a fantasy setting, the story of Battle Chef Brigade takes place in the nation of Victusia. A world where the fantasy races were once overrun by monsters, a group of people discovered that not only could monster meat be edible, but can also be deliciously prepared.  This group eventually became an elite brigade of individuals who would be known as Battle Chefs.

For the past 100 years, people from all over the land would meet in the capital city to compete for their right to join their ranks. This is done so in a tournament when aspiring chefs are given a time limit to hunt for and prepare a specific monster type, while also catering to the individual tastes of their judges. Those who progress would earn their right to join the Battle Chef Brigade.

In the Windy City off the main continent, A young girl named Mina lives a happy but unfulfilling life working at her family's restaurant. She is a very good cook, but she longs to be more creative and experimental with her cooking. She dreams of one day leaving home and joining the Brigade, and practises her cooking and magic daily to do so. And when the tournament finally comes around, she swindles the money she needs to take her chance at entering the tournament.

If that sounded to you like I was describing a fantasy version of Top Chef on Bravo, then you would be absolutely correct. That is almost exactly what this game is. It's a bit of a mish-mash of gameplay elements but when put together it certainly comes out interesting. I would say that it breaks down into 3 major elements to its palate: Story, Cooking, and Hunting. 

Typically, between the chapters and during the town segments of the game is where much of the characters and plot get fleshed out. Everything operates on the 2D plane if you compared it to the town segments of Dragons Crown you would be in the correct ballpark. I don't want to say it does the visual novel approach because It doesn't use that specific style. It would say that it's a more comic book style of delivery the way it's presented, but with the anime inspired characters I would say that visual novel isn't a stretch either. 

When in town, you can talk to and challenge other chefs and people to cooking battles, work side jobs to earn some extra money, and use the shop to buy new recipe books a cooking equipment. There are three major tasks you can do, two of them for cooking and one for hunting.

The cooking mechanic in this game is done via a puzzle mechanic, although the rules of this change depending on what cooking task you are doing between battling, research, and making money. Typically you add you ingredients which have a set of colored circles representing elements of wind, fire, and water. To make a quality dish, by spinning them in squares of 4 you line up 3 of the same element together, causing them to merge into one LV2 core of that element. Those LV2s can then be done again to become a LV3. You want to squeeze in as many as you can while using the ingredient given in the battle rules, while having more of the judge's preferred element.

As you play through the game, it throws in other pieces that can affect your dish like poisoned pieces that explode if jostled too much, cracked pieces that can break after three moves, bones that can be turned into wild card pieces, and so on. Some of these can be maneuvered or changed on their own, but sometimes you might need to use an additional cooking tool to remove them. Some tools have very specific uses, others will provide better bonuses while you cook.

But the ingredients are not just provided to you, oh no, you have to go and hunt for you ingredients. So if you leave your Kitchen just to the left, suddenly you are in a 2D hack n' slash game in the vein of Muramasa: The Demon Blade or probably more appropriately Dust: an Elysian Tail.  You run and jump along multi tiered levels hacking, slashing, and casting spells at monsters and why they die they drop a series of ingredients to bring back. You can only hold so much but you can make multiple trips at the start to have a cache ready to go.

Because of the radical and jarring switch, it can lead to a hilarious moment for someone who might not be paying attention. I had a friend watching me stream, she looked away for a second and I had gone from cooking with a pan, to jumping around throwing whirlwinds at a dragon. It's both sweet and savory as it was ridiculous and fucking awesome.

Combat is kept relatively simple with one button for physical attacks and one for magical that have different effects depending on what direction you are pressing, which allows for just enough nuance for you to really sink your teeth into combos to find something you like to do. In my case I love to combo followed by a sweep that causes knock up, then jumping after them for a air combo. I am all over combat like this like butter on a baked potato.

Now if these were the only two elements in the game this would probably be enough to carry the game, but I mentioned before that they spice up the cooking mechanic with the different jobs you can do. Basically it changes the rules. When doing cooking research, you are given a set score and set ingredient and you need to figure out how to match that score using only what you are provided with. You can do it as many times as you like, but you need to strategically move things to get the best possible outcome without wasting any of your pieces.

The other is basically working as a short order cook, and here the woman who runs the restaurant is not looking for haute cuisine. These are people who know what they want and know what they like. So you are given puzzle, and they just want you to match the pieces as the customer asked for it. Some of them are pretty easy to do, some get more involved, and you want to get them all out as fast as you can so you can earn more tips over the course of your shift.

There is also a hunting task to do, but it ultimately doesn't change the core combat mechanic. You usually are just provided a goal of how many to hunt, or what specifically to hunt. But it does push the story further with a specific character, so it's a nice little side dish on top of making some money with it. 

As I write this review, I learned that there is apparently a whole number of game modes I didn't even notice when I started playing. The game also features a split screen multiplayer mode, online leader boards, a free play mode, survival mode, restaurant rush, and "break the dishes" mode. That is actually a pretty meaty amount of content outside of the main story. 

I seriously had no idea these existed till I started writing this. 

I really don't have very much to complain about on this one, really. Just a handful of minor complaints. To the game's credit it does have a very unique and well designed set of characters. Everyone who has any kind of major speaking line is very much distinguishable in their appearance so there is little room to confuse characters. That being said? There is a sore lack of actual animation of this. 

Picture a series of hand drawn anime cels, and then give those characters a series of different poses and facial reactions. It really does go back to the visual novel appearance without the tight zoom in over the text box. Characters just jump from pose to pose, which again fits with the comic aesthetic it appear to be going for.  But when you jump into the combat portions of the game you will notice that while there are definitely more frames for animation for some of the actions, it definitely does have a 8 or 16 bit RPG animation style. The run action might be just 3 or 4 frame cycled through. The plus is they move fast enough and fluidly enough with the controls that while it's noticeable, it's not jarring of off putting. 

The music really isn't anything to write home about. This is really a big kneecapping of the fantasy genre as a whole. Unless you have a truly unique melody that catches the ear and keeps in fresh in your head, the all fantasy themed game music is really just going to sound bland. Everything feels fitting about it, but none of it is remarkable. 

The voice acting a strange mixed bag. I don't know how to explain it. The voice acting is well done. It's competently delivered with out feeling to cheesy or hokey. But there is a roughness to it that makes it feel unpolished. I don't know if I can describe it, it feels like the audio is not mixed properly. Lines are delivered with the gusto, but perhaps without an understanding of what it is they are actually reading the lines for.  Sometimes dialog feels too abruptly cut, sometimes it feels like voice lines are too loud for the scene.  There's just an...... off-ness about it. You'd have to hear it to get what I mean. 

I would very much like a clearer understanding of what catering to a judges taste actually means during the actual cooking battle portions. One person will tell me to cook with wind, so I will prepare a dish that is filled with LV3 wind pieces, and then in my judging she'll fucking complain about it. Bitch, have you tried to instill dragon's flavor in the air? It hasn't really affected my ability to progress in the game, but I don't know if I actually understand what I am being scored on. 

Now, from where we stand you are probably thinking sounds pretty stupid. And I'm not going to lie to you I was right there with you. As I was streaming through the first few chapters of the game, I certainly was having fun with it, but it was always prefaced with a laugh about how dumb this game was. But at the end of chapter 2, I got slapped with a story line twist I did not see coming. I closed my stream short after that, but after maybe about 30 minutes I couldn't help but want to see what was going to happen next.

The game pretty much had me at that point. I had to go back for seconds because after that first taste I was hungry for more. I gave up the premise of making it the next weekly stream because I couldn't wait to get back to it. It was genuinely fun to play by not taking itself too seriously, yet earnestly delivering its tale it was impossible to not fall in love with it or its characters. 

At the time of writing I haven't finished this one because I have so many other games on my plate, but I absolutely intend to finish this one. Like I have alluded to at the start of this review it borrows a some tried and true game elements and doesn't really reinvent the wheel, but the obscure combination hack n' slash and puzzle with a fantasy cooking theme that they put together some how managed to fit together beautifully. 

It's campy, has fun characters, fluid combat, an engaging puzzle mechanic, and a surprisingly deep and interesting storyline. It's because of all these that I'm willing to give Battle Chef Brigade a recommendation. Is this a world beater that will be showered with accolades? Of course not, but it currently sells for 19.99 on Steam, PS4, and Nintendo Switch and you will definitely get more than 20 bucks worth of entertainment out of this one.

I give this game 5 star review on Whelp!.... Get it? Cuz it's fantasy? And Whelps are baby dragons? Ehh? EH??.... Ok... I'll stop now.

"You need to prepare a dish with fire, wyvern blood, pixie wing and your mystery ingredient..... CHICKEN!"
"FAAAACK. What the fuck is chicken?! How am I supposed to work with that?!"

Yakuza 6: Song of Life (PS4) - A retrospective on the series as a whole.

It's baffling to me that I have worked on this blog for as long as I have. As I've told before this blog was started actually as part of a masters course project. Seemed easy enough, start a blog and make a post. I play video games, so why not talk about a game I really liked? That game was Yakuza 4.

Since then it's a pretty winding road for the franchise (originally known as Ryu Ga Gotoku) as a whole. After a lukewarm launch and niche audience, interest in western releases waned for Sega and they basically gave up after the very poorly received zombie offshoot, Yazuka: Dead Souls. Thus began the 3 year fight to try to get Yakuza 5 released to the west. Once that battle was won, they tried again by releasing the prequel game Yakuza 0.

THAT was the game really allowed the tires to dig into the western soil and get some tread going. Now people were at the start of the story, and with the release of the Kiwami games, people are getting to experience the full story now. For those like me, this culminates with today's entry and the newest installment of this long running franchise. I've fallen too far behind to give each game a proper review. So instead while covering this one, I will speak on the franchise as a whole. Be warned: There may be spoilers ahead.

YAKUZA 6: SONG OF LIFE(PS4)

Yakuza 6 picks up mere moments after the ending of Yakuza 5 with longtime protagonist Kazama Kiryu bleeding out and injured in the streets after his last over-the-top battles with the Tojo and Omi when he is found by and finally reunited with Haruka. Haruka after winning a contest to become an idol and had just formed a supergroup with rival group T-Set, had just admitted to a live audience her guardian was former Yakuza, and publicly announced she was quitting the entertainment industry before running out of the Tokyo Dome.

While Kiryu was recovering from his injuries, he was approached by the police about his responsibility to the public damage that was caused with his battles with the Tojo and Omi clans. Instead of fighting back or using connections to get out of jail, he instead opts to do his time, and get out with a clean slate. When he does, he can return to the Sunshine Orphanage with Haruka and live as a family with the children there waiting for him.

But when he finally makes it back, he comes to find out that Haruka has left. She wanted the press and reputation of her ties to Yakuza to not hinder the other children's opportunities. Kiryu returns to Kamurocho to try to pick up her trail, only to find she is comatose from a hit an run accident and that she apparently had a son. With only a trace amount of leads, Kiryu takes the child and heads out to search Kamurocho and Hiroshima to find the alleged father of the baby and to find out who hurt Haruka and why?

As you saw in the last year end wrap up, I showered a little praise on both Yakuza 0 & Yakuza Kiwami for being standards of excellence in gaming. I have played nearly all of them available to me at this point, and outside of Yakuza: Dead Souls (a non-cannon offshoot, mind you) almost all of them rank equally in how they are built. Primarily because despite being a long running series, there really isn't a lot that changes in the core formula of a Yakuza game. It's the main reason most of them haven't gotten full reviews.

When you first look at screens and game play footage, you would assume its in that open world vein that you may expect Grand Theft Auto to fall under. And while to a small extent this is true for a basic framework for missions, this really isn't at all how the Yakuza franchise plays. It's more of a blend of sandbox, beat em up, and rpg if I had to narrow it down. As you walk around town you cant just start creating mayhem (because Kiryu is an honorable criminal?) and start smashing people. In this series combat appeared almost like random battles with thugs coming up with laughably obscure reasons to attack you. In Yakuza 6 this was made a bit more seamless by skipping the dialog to make it feel more natural.

The combat of the Yakuza franchise is really the bread and butter and this is why you play. It's a variant of the standard 3rd person action game and typically sticks to a light attack, heavy attack, grab/weapon, dodge convention. It can lend to button mashing if that is your style of play, but it goes to great pains to show you all the various combos and heat moves you can unlock that really can open up your strategy when you play. It's primary selling point is the heat mechanic: As you deal damage to enemies you raise a heat bar, and once it reaches capacity you would be surrounded by a flame like aura. When in the right situation, you will be prompted with a heavy attack prompt that will go into a brief but visceral animation of your character dispatching an enemy in brutal fashion. These are the heat moves and they are hard to watch at first but oh... so satisfying.

And there are TONS of ways to do these moves and they change by what you are standing by, what character you are using, what weapon you are holding, what stance you are in, if your heat gauge is full to certain levels. Its almost like a puzzle game itself to try to find and perform all of them, and its actually rewarded because the Yakuza games tend to be known for 100% completion excess.

Heat move from Yakuza Kiwami

The fighting styles in this game are also generally the same across the board but there are instances in which it does change where it makes sense. Typically the fighting style changes when you are playing different characters, and that works because naturally each character would fight differently. Seijima, a character from Yakuza 4, is a burly beast of a man so naturally his fighting style are big hulking swings and smashing heavy weapons to Kiryu's straight forward aggressive striking style. Akiyama is known for being suave and deceptive, so he uses a fighting style that employs kicks and tricky moves.

The times where this didn't happen for example are in Yakuza 0 & Kiwami respectively. Which almost make sense where this is the beginning of the timeline. Kiryu and Majima are still cutting their teeth in the yakuza so they actually employ 3 fighting styles you can change between as they develop their signature style. Since they are the only characters in those games, this mechanic works because it allows variance to the game play without forcing the game to take the narrative off the primary characters.

Combat suffered a little bit in Yakuza 6 because with the step up to PS4 hardware caused a step up in graphical display and game performance, and I feel to make time for all the rendering the move set was cut back a bit. It was still fun to do and visceral as ever, but it certainly felt lacking in comparison the rest of the series as a whole. The bottom line though is for skill, quick paced combat with a weighty feel to it? The Yakuza franchise nails it on that front.

Another trait that this series is known for is the straight jacket wearing level of distraction this game provides. See, the focus of these games is the primary narrative which sometimes can be a little bit samey. But in between the major story moments of the game, you get explore the streets of Kamurocho. This is actually a fun little recreation of actual Toyko red light district Kabukicho. And it features all the distractions you might expect from a downtown district of Tokyo: streets filled with restaurants, arcade games, gambling parlors, hostess clubs, night clubs, stores and filled with actual Yakuza members.

In this specific series of games, almost all of these are interactable, like an inception of games. Sega has on more than one occasion put in older games within Yakuza.  So I would stop my progress in the game so I can play Taiko Drum Master, Virtua Fighter, or Out run. Sometimes there are side quests with random NPCs involved with these, but 90% of the time they are thrown in there as just extra bullshit to play with while you do. You might think why would you put in there then if it doesn't mean anything, but I can't tell you how easy it is to sunk into other game instead of moving on. The number of distractions only increased with each installment of the game (Yakuza 5 had so much side shit they could be sold as separate games) before finally dialing back some in Yakuza 6.

As mentioned prior there is a fair amount of side questing to do. A lot of the times this will just involve you having to go to a place and beat somebody up, but a lot of these are a way to introduce some of the mini games. Most of these provide experience bonuses to level your character faster, and some of them will unlock item rewards. None of them are required to actually beat the game but the experience helps as bosses will force you to get more skillful in your fighting.

Although some are really fucking out of place. Most egregiously, and I've talked about this before, is the required hostess club missions in Yakuza 4. In a game where I am suplexing someone onto a bike rail and them smashing his friend with the actual bike, being forced to stop so I can play Pretty Pretty Princess THREE TIMES is incredibly jarring and unnecessary. One time made sense for story context, three times was just ridiculous and excessive. But if you wanted to get the completion, you had to do this with like six girls. No thank you.

I'm not kidding. In the midst of the story of crime, betrayal, and honor you
need to take 3 breaks to make sure your hostess fashion is up to snuff.

Or like in Yakuza Kiwami, I'm being constantly hounded and mugged by Majima, but then suddenly he stops because he feels he needs to be better than me at pocket cart racing. What?! Perhaps this is a way of leading horse to water as it were for getting the player to notice and try these mini games, but honestly in the game that lets you go out and explore what there is it see, I can't image there is much a need to make the player try them. A friend I recently turned on to the series told me she couldn't progress with the story because she was enjoying the side questing too much. So yeah, not a big problem on that front.

From a graphics perspective, the Yakuza franchise made some strides when going from the PS2 to the PS3, and from that point on has remained incredibly consistent on that front. Once they had down their design in Yakuza 3, the character appearance never really changed. They just continued to overhaul and tweak it's visual design to where we are now with Yakuza 6 where all the textures have damn near photo realistic skin imperfections and lifelike glisten to sweat and tears. I found myself on more than one occasion marveling at how good the series has come to look.

Actually, looking at it now Yakuza 1's graphics really laid the foundation well.

There has to be a degree of motion capture as well because the most recent iteration of this game featured a number of NJPW wrestlers and Kiryu had busted out more than one pro wrestling move into his new arsenal on more than on occasion. But more so than that is this is the first time I recognized a character as an actual personality as one of the primary characters in Yakuza 6 was famed Japanese actor Takeshi Kintao who you may know from the new Ghost in the Shell movie, The Blind Swordsman, and probably most famously Battle Royale.

Additionally, the Yakuza games are somewhat of a fun time capsule for this depiction of contemporary Tokyo. with Yakuza 0 it starts off in the 80's where outfits are garish, technology is dated, and clubs had very different visual stylings to them. And as you play through the series you always stay in, or wind up coming back to Kamurocho. Kind of like Nier:Automata you could argue that by reusing the same map it feels cut and paste, but really I always feel nostalgic and familiar with the streets, and enjoying finding what stayed and what changed.

Majima's "Breaker Style" from Yakuza 0

This series soundtrack tends to be fairly complimentary as well. 90% of the time you probably wont even notice the OST as much of it shifts from droning overbearing ambiance for it's dramatic moments, and a hard rock bed during fight sequences. You will notice more iconic sounding theme in the bigger moments of the game where you have long drawn out action sequences, and each game usually has some big main theme that goes down during the fight sequences of the game. Yakuza 4's "for faith" for all 4 final boss sequences is still hands down the best. In each game only a few tracks will truly stand out, but all of these OSTs are ones you can toss on a playlist and get lost in while you do stuff around the house.

But most importantly of all for the Yakuza franchise, is that if there is any one selling point above all else is that this game has some truly exceptional story telling. Throughout the series and primarily in the early stages of the franchise, the narrative is based around Kazama Kiryu and Haruka Sawamura. Despite being in and out with the yakuza, Kiryu is still a pretty predominant figure in it's politics and despite his best efforts seems to constantly drawn into the fold be it power struggles, murders, or turf wars.

Much like the setting the game takes place in, I love the dedication to the development times of the games in correlation to the characters. This isn't as notable with most of the cast but is primarily noticed with Haruka. When you first meet her in Yakuza 1/Kiwami is only 9 years old. By the time you see her in Yakuza 6 she is almost 20. When you look at the development times of the games, she is always aged just as old as you saw her from the last game release over the course of the entire franchise. You basically get to see her grow from child to adult through the series. Resident Evil 6 did this with Sherry Birkin, and that is a chronology continuity I have always appreciated seeing when it comes to storytelling.

Haruka: Age 9 as of Yakuza: Kiwami

Haruka: Age 18 as of Yakuza 5

Yakuza 4 set off as a branching point where we started to deviating from Kiryu as the primary focus, introducing us to a wave of new characters and stories to follow before branching back to our stalwart hero. With new characters allowed to take the stage, we are now starting to see a bigger focus on new fan favorites like Akimaya and Seijima in 4 and 5, and Majima in 0, Dead Souls, and the upcoming Kiwami 2 remake. So while Yakuza 6 marks the end of the Kiryu arc, there is plenty of people who could carry the story if need be. But not Tanimura, that character basically vanished after having a lead role in Yakuza 4.

Ultimately though, this series is crime drama through and through. So despite reasonably stable starting off points for the story (usually a murder), there will be so many twists and turns during the course of the story, that you will never really know what to expect by the end of it and some of it can be pretty ridiculous. Well, that's not entirely true. When talking to a friend, I described what I call my "Shirts off, Shit's Serious" rule. You always know when a fight is important contextually, because MAN do the dudes in Yakuza love to rip their shirts off to show off their bitchin' ink jobs on their back.  When you see guys ripping off their shirts and jackets in one seamless transition, you know things are about to go down in a big way (this is extremely hilarious in 4, where 8 people do it in one segment).

There are a small handful of complaints I can make. Like I mentioned before, fights in these games almost have a very Final Fantasy random battle feel about them, as people stop you on the street to make some ridiculous commentary about why they are going to kick your ass before having a fade transition to the battle sequence. This was worked out in the newer games, but it certainly can affect the pacing in some of the earlier ones. Although I have to admit I loved some of the sillier reasons people would fight me.

If you are a player who is obsessed with 100% completion, best of luck to you because this game fucking counts everything. Fighting styles, scores in arcade games, money won in all casino games, eaten every one of the food items in the 100's of restaurants, dated all the hostesses, and on and on and on. My first play through of  Yakuza 4 I want to say ended with just under 90 hours of game play. By the time I was all said and done with it, the game told me I had just under 25% complete. That is literally insane. Its even harder with some like Yakuza 0 where you have to buy properties to complete that quest, but the game or map doesn't actually tell you which you bought or which you own.

I mean if Akiyama was courting me, I'd have full hearts too.
Dat Mauve blazer. *swoon*

It definitely suffers from the tropes of Japanese story telling sometimes. When watching cut-scenes of conversations they tend to repeat a lot of the same things they said to each other while pausing for effect or making confused sound effects. You will always have some low level shouty grunt losing their shit over the smallest perceived slight, and the antagonists in these series are usually so cartoonishly evil you can basically pick them out the moment you see them for the first time.

Also if you are like me and not starting with the actual beginning of the storyline (I started at 4), the beginnings of all these games are going to be confusing as hell because they will make reference to characters, clans, locations, and events that tie to the previous games. While it is confusing, once you learn the major players specific to the title and what the main plot of the game is, the back story isn't as necessary as you can focus on who you do know. It will all eventually tie together.

And this is somewhat of a personal gripe but if you are going to give a me a karaoke minigame to play, why would you only provide two songs? This is something that is consistent in like every one of these games and I have no idea why. The dual layered blu-ray disc is huge. I'm not saying pull a whole tracklist of DDR in there, but I don't think 5 or 10 total songs is asking a lot. You expect me to play them more than once if I'm doing the hostess club dating, some song options would help that.

It also will throw you to the wolves with some more traditional Japanese gambling too. Most of the games you might recognize from a usual casino, some you might recognize but not know how to play like majong or pachinko. But some of these games can be very, very culturally unique and require a lot of re-reading of the rules to go back to even get a loose idea of how to play it. I've played Majong for like 12 hours and I still don't eff'n understand that game.

Was this good? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.

Lastly, and my biggest complaint: where the fuck is Yakuza Ishin!? Done in the same mechanics of the traditional series, it is a set period piece where the characters are used in historical japan. Basically the same kind of game only with samurai instead of gangsters and swords instead of fists. I've seen trailers and gameplay and this game looks fucking fun as hell, but because its knee deep in Japanese history they won't localize it because they don't think Americans would understand it. Bitch, we love Kung Fu movies, Anime, and now have a burgeoning K-pop community. How about you let us decide what we do or don't want. Thankfully, with the sudden growing success of the series, the hard no they were giving us about localizing it seems to have changed to a maybe. I have a small hope.

I really don't know what else I can say about this franchise other than its one of the best series I've ever played. None of them are perfect, but I love these characters, I love this universe, I love the music they use, I love the mind numbing amount of distraction, I love the brutally visceral combat, I love the drama, I love the idea of smashing a bicycle over a thugs head before smashing his friend with one of the wheels. I love that you fist fight a fucking bear. I love the Yakuza games.

You can read this review and apply basically everything I've said to any of them. I think they are all great and if slathering this series with praise isn't enough for you to give one a shot, then I don't know what else I can do. With the resurgence this series has been getting, we are getting a Kiwami 2 remake and remasters of the remaining titles on the PS4 so you have no excuse, because they will all be available in one place. Pick any of them, it won't steer you wrong.

Except Yakuza: Dead Souls. Don't pick that one.