I was not playing any GTA and in my mind the game is not bad but at the same time not a game that can be considered one the best games of all time. The main success comes from being able to be very successful on the marketing terms and simply being able to perfectly hit "the west consumers taste". In the end it simply was a accumulation of many factors that was beneficial for a certain majority of gamers.

However, to me... it is not on the same league such as a game like "Shenmue", yet this game had a rather mediocre reputation in general and it was considered a "low success". At the time of release, if was one of the most advanced games of all time, yet there was not much of appreciation and it would be difficult even to find someone able to know the name. In comparison, almost everyone know "GTA", it is probably the game with the biggest amount of users knowing it.

Yet, no matter its reputation, this game... even if it would be released on GoG someday, may fail to make it into my collection because it does not pass my sense of a artistically great art. If i have to give some example of a great western art style... it would be the Batman-series or the Fallout-series, not GTA. GTA is just weird and screwed and it lacks the maturity i am looking for when it comes to the entire art-style.

On the other hand, Shenmue and Yakuza, both are a great representation of the "easterns" sense of beauty and in a artistical way beautiful. However... i surely have a different access to a game. If the atmosphere fails to impress me, the game is pretty much doomed... no matter the gameplay and even the story may not matter anymore. Because a game is not a book... a game is ultimately some sort of graphically artistical work with a lot of interaction... so it is way more than words or a story;... which indeed makes its art very vulnerable but if it is a success, it can be a huge achievement because of the complexity involved.

So, ultimately, to me Yakuza "is close to this", but for the masses... generally eastern games are with less success, it was always like that and because the Japanese market was crumbling a lot, Sega and comparable studios will have to reach out "to the west" even more, a difficult task which can very easely fail because of the forced "westernization". For example Final Fantasy 15, which was horrible to me... the Japanese heart got destroyed by this title and the authenticity was lost. Final Fantasy 16 is better, yet still not entirely on the level it has been "at the time of the golden age". However, there is a new market slowly able to become stronger: The chinese market and in the future it will play a important role for many of the "eastern studios". The advantage is that the Chinese are more compatible with the Japanese taste. while in the West... it is clearly a minority.

But anyway, i can clearly understand Sarangs view which is putting Yakuza as a franchise "on the same league" as a GTA; although, just like Shenmue, "being on a comparable league" does not mean there is automatically success. In order to have great success you need to be able to reach someones heart and someones taste. Indeed GTA is hitting the majoritys... in the west, taste and heart... but not my heart and taste, and in general i can not admit "a higher quality".

I still want to remember, the "huge masses" are actually only buying the most popular games... which is just about a dozen every couple of years. All the other games not well known or not well accepted by the masses already got a very hard spot or surely much harder. This is just how the majority is acting and why just a few dozends of franchises, including Cyberpunk and Witcher 3, are the "big rulers" when it comes to the popularity and of course "coins".

Missing content is not always lost content. I've been over this. Sometimes games are better with things removed. Most games are better when achievements are not present. Stardew Valley would be better without the two arcade mini-games (and the achievement-free GOG version is definitively better for not having the achievement that dreadfully pushes people to do them). Y:LAD is better without pachislots. And the couple of songs missing that can be played on the bar jukebox that you can only hear while you're in that stage and while nothing else is happening (basically a music player) is acceptable loss for improving the game by not having pachislots. These aren't karaoke minigame songs, just jukebox BGMs for one room.

And! I don't know how exactly it works, but there's probably another bonus here: Sometimes the shiny spots on the ground in the game world/dungeons would give you pachislot cheat tokens... Without it in the game, they'll probably instead give you other useful consumables instead of the always-worthless-when-you-see-it. Further improving the game by having pachislots absent.

I do agree it's baffling why this release doesn't have it. I suspect, perhaps, the way it was originally coded, Sega had wanted it to have full MTX systems that weren't actually utilized in release, and they'd have had to recode it to make it safe for a GOG release. But whatever the reason, this game is not lacking for its absence. It'd be a different story of this were the job set

Is this a legit joke? The gameplay from GTA3 was not nearly as polished as others, especially Yakuza. The story for
GTA3 is awful in that it felt like a ripoff of "Goodfellas". The LAST thing I want to hear is that a game ripped off a story from somewhere else as I swear I have heard the narrative games don't have a good story or if they do it's ripped off a movie or somewhere else.
Yakuza's story to me feels original and I really find myself engaged. There are many original storied games but GTA3 got so much attention I don't want anyone to think that writing is how video games usually are.

As far as satire I think Saint's Row does it better by a mile.

Lastly I will say something I have always felt about GTA3 and 4, the engine looks like absolute trash, the textures are awful and while the character design is good enough you can recognize the characters as characters visually it comes together in a very Open World but that looks barely passable. I truly hate the RockStar or Take Two look as those visuals can be done much better. I liked LA Noire but even it suffered from the Rock Star treatment. If it's not the engine I would like to see the graphic designer in charge of the visuals be FIRED with extreme prejudice. This comment applies to Rock Star/Take Two respectively and NO ONE else, not Western either. If they fixed the uglyness with GTA5 more then fine.

Honestly I don't think Sega needs to reach out to the West, they need to get back to making great Arthouse gaming that drove innovation during the Saturn and Dreamcast era especially. But in accordance with that they need to have great marketing to draw people in. The marketing was especially awful during the Dreamcast era, as in nonexistent or not understandable. I think at one point EA offered to do marketing for Sega and they should have obliged them. Sega makes good games but the marketing except back during the Genesis days was bad.

As far as China goes I'm not interested unless it's Taiwan and they start mentoring them on how to do RPG's. Korea doesn't need it but dear god I don't CARE about Chinese History in a game if it's presented in a DRY narrative context. Fictionalize things like Konami did with Suikoden and do great writing for the characters in addition. Make sure the gameplay is solid. I believe Taiwan can do it but I don't believe the Mainland can or will be able to until you know who is gone. People can't think creatively or write as well as they could if they are afraid what to say, it will stymie innovation, which brainstorming is a thing for writing too I'm sure.

Another thing: Will this game run on an AMG Ryzen 5600H with its integrated graphics?

You mean the 5600G?

GTA III came out 4 years prior to the first Yakuza. And for its time, it was a revolutionary game whether you want to admit it or not. There's a reason it was one of the best selling PS2 games. It provided a level of freedom no other game could.

You also conveniently forget Yakuza is set in smaller districts while GTA III featured larger urban environments. Of course it's gonna seem like Yakuza has more detail put into it.

As for GTA IV, it has one of the best physics engines out there and there are games that come out nowadays that aren't as polished or as interactive. Liberty City feels like an actual lived in city. For a 15 year old game it's still great visually, especially on PC with everything maxed out.

You're obviously not a fan of the series but to call it "trash" is ridiculous. I just explained why Yakuza can never compete with GTA. That doesn't mean these are worse games. GTA just has more appeal and there's a good reason for that.

But like I said, they're completely different games and shouldn't really even be compared anyway.

Edit: Great, now I got the purple dot that won't go away...

I said looks like trash, I never dismissed the Open World or physics aspect. In fact I remember that's why GTA4 ran better on the PS3 in terms of visual fidelity as the CELL processor crunched those calculations like a pro. I reaffirm still that those textures look awful and it's not just GTA, it's all Rock Star/Take Two that get that awful makeover or maybe it is a limitation of the engine. LA Noire had that look even though it was being developed for Sony or someone else. I swear their group marches in to those companies to give it a look of visual consistency.
With gameplay I was more referring to the direct combat element than anything and it is mediocre compared to other games with a shooting element. It's serviceable.

On the Open World, Shenmue broke that open first but no surprise when Sega pioneers a number of others get credited more instead. Seems to happen often to them. That felt more authentic to me but then again Suzuki was pushing interactivity on that to an insane degree. Granted some of us grew up in that time period so that especially resonates. After all 70's Japan was like 80's level everywhere else.
That is the one sad thing about Yakuza...with all the money it has made they could now pay for Shenmue level detail in a lot of respects.

L.A. Noire didn't use Rockstar's RAGE engine iirc so maybe that's why you liked it better visually than their other games. Though yeah, it still has that unmistakable "Rockstar look" to it. Personally I always thought their games, especially those on the RAGE engine, looked great. Never thought the textures looked bad but maybe that's because I've played them on PC.

Almost.

There's actually 3 different APUs with the 5600 number:
* The 5600U, which is usually found in non-gaming laptops. Such laptops generally don't have discrete GPUs. The main advantages of this CPU are lower power consumption (important for a laptop) and lower heat (also important for a laptop).
* The 5600H, which is typically found in higher performance laptops. Usually, such laptops will also have a discrete GPU. Some mini PCs also use this chop, often without a discrete GPU; I happen to have one of these mini PCs.
* The 5600G, which is typically found in desktops, or sold separately for custom desktop builds. It's the most powerful of these three APUs, both on the CPU and the GPU side.

Gotcha. God I hate the numbering of AMD's desktop vs. laptop cpu's. It's clear as day with desktop then with mobile it gets murky as can be.

Will Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth be available on the release day ( 25 Jan, 2024 ) on Gog ?

Since it has no preorder here and since we're still missing older installments (Judgment, Ishin, Man With No Name), I highly doubt it.

My understanding is that it will be using Denuvo - so it will be highly unlikely to be released here on its initial launch. I'm hoping it gets here eventually with Denuvo removed. Not gonna hold my breath for launch day though.