Just finished it last night! Sacrificed some sleep because of the final boss, here is my quick review.
Great points
- Bosses, highlight of the games and perhaps, along with Yakuza 3, MadWorld and kinda Bayonetta, the best boss battles this generation, forget the Grand Lancer, but some of these bosses are damn fine to fight and enjoyable to fight!
- Level variation and progress, this was great, never felt I stayed in one location too long and felt the story kept going like a great action film from the 90s
- Some of the characters are brilliant, especially love Cain, guy needs his own spinoff game
- The action setpieces are great stuff and helps the vary the game, plus fantastic to look at!
Good points
- Took me about 8 hours to complete on Survivor (The game's hard mode) settings, must have died about 15 times in there
- There literally are new enemies even towards the final chapter, really the game never gets staled and sort of laughs at games that indeed wants to limit itself to 15 odd baddies a game
- The script has numourous moments of good humour and dialogue is often quite good!
- Few of the onrail sections are great, though one particular one almost outstayed it's welcome (To be fair, playing it on hard probably had the effect)
- The atmosphere that is produced through the art direction really does suit this future Tokyo very well!
Bad points
- Disappointed in how the game concludes itself, seems a bit last minute and all and probably the weakest ending in all of the team's game (And I include Kenzan and Of the End in that) story was underwhelming too (Felt it needed another chapter or two)
- Felt a few of the characters were underdeveloped, compared to Yakuza's NPC characters are given even more backstory, disappointed in this
- Framerate drops on the Playstation 3 version
- Unlike the Yakuza games, there is no challenge box in Binary Domain so the replayability is on the short side (There are collectables in the levels though)
So in the end... I think an 8/10 (Excellent) is deserving of the title and probably my favourite third person shooter this generation, highly recommended for anyone who wants to shoot things.
In terms of favourite game out of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio? Still think I prefer all four of the mainline Yakuza titles though! Just felt this game missed that extra chapter or two to push it above and beyond. Still eagerly look forward to a sequel if they made one, but since it's a failure, more than likely that will not be happening, oh well!