Dave the Diver: Ichiban’s Holiday DAVE & ICHIBAN BUNDLE

The Dave and Ichiban Bundle pairs the full Dave the Diver base game with the Ichiban's Holiday Content Pack, a crossover DLC that brings Ichiban Kasuga and the Bartender from the Like a Dragon series crashing into Bancho Sushi. If you somehow missed Dave the Diver, here is the pitch: it is a hybrid action-sim-RPG where you spend your days free-diving a procedurally shifting Blue Hole - harpooning fish, dodging sharks, upgrading gear - and your nights running a sushi restaurant, hiring staff, managing a fish farm, and cooking increasingly complex dishes to earn enough to do it all again tomorrow. The loop is genuinely satisfying in the way few genre mashups are, and the base game alone carries enough eccentric characters and side-quest variety to justify the purchase on its own terms. The Ichiban's Holiday DLC is a much thornier proposition. The good news first: the crossover premise is executed with genuine affection. Ichiban and the Bartender arrive at Bancho Sushi, personalities fully intact, and the DLC leans into beat-'em-up style combat sequences that let you fight alongside Cobra and Ichiban in a mode replayable through the in-game Smartphone app. A karaoke mini-game featuring Ichiban's rendition of the iconic Judgment song is also unlockable and revisitable via the same app, and fans of the Like a Dragon series will feel the care put into both cameos. New sushi bar staff also debut during the storyline, which extends the restaurant management loop in small but appreciated ways. Here is where it gets complicated. The DLC is only accessible after Chapter 5 of the main game's seven-chapter story, so if you are buying this bundle fresh, there is a meaningful stretch of playtime before you even see Ichiban's face. Once you do reach it, the content is short - we are talking well under two hours if you are not stuck hunting Stingray Meat (which hides in the Blue Hole Shallows around ten meters deep and has a notoriously low spawn rate). The VIP mission cooking requirement - Cold Noodles from Buckwheat, Egg, and three Stingray - is where community frustration has been loudest, and it is the kind of ingredient-hunt filler I really wish the developers had smoothed out. The DLC currently sits at a Mixed rating on Steam, with roughly 46 percent of user reviews positive, and the chief complaints are consistent: too short, the limited-time availability creates FOMO pressure, and the new content does not expand the worldbuilding so much as offer a fun but brief fan-service detour. The art style in the DLC segments is praised, and the pixel-art cinematics are charming, though one karaoke video awkwardly cuts back to footage from Infinite Wealth mid-sequence, which feels unfinished. For the bundle as a whole: if you are a Like a Dragon fan who has never played Dave the Diver, this is a reasonable entry point - you get a genuinely excellent base game and a crossover you can treat as a bonus dessert course rather than the main meal. If you already own Dave the Diver and are eyeing the DLC standalone, the value calculation is harder. The charm is real, the beat-'em-up segment is fun for one replay, and the karaoke minigame will make any Like a Dragon devotee grin. But padding a 45-minute story with a rare-ingredient fetch quest is exactly the kind of design decision that makes me want to write a strongly worded letter to the quest designers. The bundle is the more defensible purchase, purely because the base game earns its keep.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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