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.

Yakuza 5 (PS3): This Blog Has Finally Come Full Circle

Way back in 2011, there was a guy who had an assignment in one of his graduate college courses. The assignment basically wanted this guy to create and make a post on a new blog. That student decided since all he really did with his free time was play video games, he would make his blog about game reviews. And for the first review he did, he decided to do it on a highly under-appreciated gem on the PS3. A game by the name of Yakuza 4.

That was five years ago. I have been basically barfing text onto this thing for minimal traffic because it was a great way to put my thoughts on games into words. Some of you have stuck around from the beginning. A couple of you might be newer readers, and the other 97% of you are google bots clicking my images. Either way this blog has finally come full circle. After years and years of begging, emails, and tweets (that I didn't do) the west finally convinced Sega to release this installment of the game outside of Japan. Three whole years I waited for it, and now I have it. Let's get to it.

YAKUZA 5 (PS3)

As has become the norm, the story of the Yakuza franchise has been broken up in multiple chapters divided up amongst longtime protagonist Kazama Kiryu, his adopted niece/daughter Haruka, Yakuza 4 returning cast members Taiga Seijima and Shun Akiyama, and new character to the series Tatsuo Shinada.

Kiryu is currently living away from the sunshine orphanage he runs and is working as a taxi driver in the city of Fukuoka. After a less than chance meeting with current Tojo clan head Daigo Dojima, Kiryu learns that the leader of the Omi alliance is on his deathbed, and when he passes war will break between Tojo and Omi once again. Dojima looks to build his strength to prepare for the coming war, but inexplicably goes missing. Kiryu is once again yanked into the affairs of his former clan to try to set things right.

No matter what Kiryu does, he just can't seem to stay out of things.

Haruka has also left the orphanage in Okinawa after being scouted by a talent director by the name of Mrs. Park. She currently is living by herself in Osaka and is working and training to become a pop idol. She is gaining in popularity and has been making a name for herself in a televised idol show called the Princess League but the road has not been easy for her as she is trying to juggle training for stardom on top of adapting to a new school with none of the people she knows and loves around her.

Seijima has willingly surrendered after the events of Yakuza 4 after having his previous prison sentence commuted and is currently serving a two year prison sentence in Hokkiado. He is nearing the point of his parole for good behavior, but life inside prison has been difficult as groups appear to be out to get him, and nearing the end he hears some troubling news about his blood brother and friend, Goro Majima.

Akiyama is still the eccentric proprietor of Sky Finance money lending. Giving out exorbitant sums of money with no interest or collateral in return for it, and instead forces people do seemingly odd challenges or tests to earn their loan. He arrives in Osaka on business business trip to open up a new branch of Sky Finance, when he receives word that one of his clients with 300 million yen loan has turned up dead.  Being in town, he goes to investigate the circumstances behind the death.

Shinada is an adult entertainment writer who is basically scrapping a living. He lives in a shack, is behind on his rent, and is in some serious financial debt with a shady lender. His real problem is he is serving a lifetime ban from professional baseball for gambling and game fixing. He only played one at bat where he hit a game winning walk off homerun, and immediately took the fall for cheating. Now a mysterious client is willing to pay him a significant sum of money to try to learn the truth behind what really happened that game. 

Shinada is one of the more sympathetic characters in the Yakuza universe.
Just an honest guy caught up in a bad situation.

So obviously, the zombie infested events of Yakuza: Dead Souls clearly were not considered canon, so the game picks up a few years after the events of Yakuza 4, although in this installment we actually have the story take place in a number of different locations over the course of 5 cities. That's actually a pretty significant jump in space from Yakuza 4 which was held specifically to Kamurocho. The good news is despite having more characters to control all with different motivations, the story in this one felt a lot less convoluted. They pretty much punch out why each character is motivated in a single line: Kiryu is trying to stop a war, Akiyama is investigating a murder, etc. etc.

At its core Yakuza 5 doesn't shake up the the formula of its base gameplay if you are a regular fan of this franchise. It plays as kind of this hybrid of an on foot Grand Theft Auto style sandbox game fused with elements of JRPG styled "random battles" with a 3rd person brawler style of combat. If you have played any of the previous Yakuza games outside of Dead Souls this won't come off as a radical change of pace.

Yep, Seijima's insane superhuman strength is still on display.

But at the heart of Yakuza game is its ability to cram as much different possible shit into its package, and its even done so more here. I think I have discovered the proper way to explain this. The Yakuza franchise is like a Sega singularity. It is a swirling vortex at the center of the Sega universe and any game that exists under their fold eventually has bits and pieces forcibly drawn into the Yakuza games to contribute some of its own to the new iterations. In short, there is even more off the wall shit that you have to do in Yakuza 5. Some of it story related, some of it optional.

To give you a brief rundown, here are some of the things I have done in the first 40 hours of play: beat the shit of a lot of people, played Taiko Drum Master, worked as a Taxi driver being scored by my ability to obey the laws of the road, lost 50k on a pachinko machine, drag raced against a gang of sexy female street racers, broke out of prison, eluded my pursuers while riding a snow mobile, played Virtua Fighter 2, got into a fist fight with a grizzly bear, hunted for deer, took part in a comedy troupe audition, guest starred on a tv variety show, performed a j-pop rhythm game concert for a crowd of screaming fans against a rival act who performed simultaneously, went bowling, shot pool, threw darts, participated in multiple handshake events, received beauty tips from a transvestite, dance battled strangers on the street, swung someone by their shirt collar spine first into a light post, and a shit ton of other things I am not remembering.

You seriously fist fight a goddamn bear.  Seijima is a bad dude.

Yakuza 5's ability to cram so many different methods of gameplay into a single game is mind blowing to me. The only comparable game that I can think of that does that much is obviously Grand Theft Auto but even that franchise doesn't put in other games from its parent company within its own game. Honestly it makes reviewing a game like this difficult for me because I like to go into detail on how the game plays and how well it works, which I can't really do with Yakuza 5 because the game is constantly throwing so many different elements at you, you are constantly learning new controls. There is almost too much.

So lets focus on the main mechanic of the game: the fighting. This was always the Yakuza games bread and butter and for the most party it hasn't changed here. You get jumped by some random shlub on the street and the pass pedestrians for a ring for your and your attacks to fight in. You get a series of Light and heavy attacks that when pressed in certain order execute different move types, you can lock on and block, you can dodge, there are weapons scattered about the street that you can pick up and wail one you opponents with. Essentially the core of the Yakuza fighting engine hasn't changed.

All of the characters have unique tricks for fighting, but none of them slug it out better than Kiryu.

Fighting charges up your heat gauge, and when you hit a certain point you and you are in the situation that fills certain conditions, you and nail a heat move for big damage. I will say that the visceral of the heat moves do feel like its been somewhat turned down, but not a lot. Make no mistake about it, there is nothing easy to watch about a guy pinned on his knees and getting repeatedly kneed in the face before taking a massive kick in the neck. (But somehow also always fun to slam a bicycle on someones chest and jumping stomp on it.). I think its the lack of blood or teeth flying out of a dislocated jaw that was so prevalent in Yakuza 4 that is making it easier to stomach.

There is now also an additional red heat gauge that gradually builds over the course of several fights. This can be used for a big essence attack that usually can bring down a group of baddies (or a single enemy depending on who you play) for massive damage. There are also a few little tweaks to the combos which give you a little more to try out, but if you have played the Yakuza games before the combat doesn't change all that much. It doesn't have to because its works.

Which is funny when I think about it, because when I compare the button layout to the recently reviewed Senran Kagura: Shinovi Vs I find myself wondering what is it about that game that made the combat feel a bit more bland, while Yakuza's feels so much more skillful. Perhaps because Yakuza's is a bit more precise. Blocking takes effort, and you can't really mash at random to pull off the more damaging combos, and the multitude of different heat moves you can do the punish your opponent makes the game's combat blow open even more. Perhaps it felt like I was just performing the same combo in Senran Kagura over 15 characters, and I feel like I'm mixing them up more in Yakuza 5.

People still attack on the street for some of the most ridiculous reasons and they are just as hilarious this time around as well, but I think they got the sense that they were getting annoying to some people because now a number of them just transition right into the fight sequence without hearing Johnny Nobody explaining his imagined slight against you.

Way back when I wrote that first review for Yakuza 4, I had one major "complaint" about the game, and that is was that seeming out of the blue in this convoluted story of seedy gangsters betraying each other I had to break in the game to make a girl looking for a major loan play pretty pretty princess dressup at a hostess club 3 tortuous times. I suppose it gave context to how Akiyama does things, but it was insanely out of place and took a bit longer to do than I cared for. I couldn't blame anyone if they stopped playing the game because of it.

You may not run them anymore, but you can still go to hostess clubs to go on dates.

Yakuza 5 steps it up a notch by giving you a whole new insanely out of place chapter. Now lets be clear here, Haruka has been around since the very first game of the franchise and she deserves to be a part of the narrative as much as any other character does. But she's not a grizzled veteran of the yakuza, she's not a debonair bad ass money lender, she's not a thuggish ogre who took out 16 people at once, or any of the other character types that have graced this series. She's a young girl growing up.

So I guess the play to make her relevant was to send her down the route of a pop idol. So while she does have some major events that happen with her that do pertain to the story, all of her missions involve game modes that are a major departure from the combat. For lack of a better way to explain it, it seems like Haruka's chapter is a means of getting the player to try the minigames Yakuza 5 has to offer. Some of them are original just to her like all the dance performances, TV appearances, and so on. But some of them are just ways to get you do things you could already like shoot pool or throw darts.

Who am I kidding? I am a sucker for a rhythm game....

It's almost as if Yakuza 5 is afraid you might miss all the extra stuff you can do in the game, so it gives you Haruka's chapter to make sure you don't miss any of it. That being said, I didn't feel it was as much of slog to get through than the hostess club thing was. And its actually in Haruka's chapter that kind lays the whole foundation for why Akiyama gets involved, which of course ties into Seijima's chapter and... well you see how this works out. Yakuza is always pretty good at weaving together a compelling narrative.

Naturally, as with any game there are a handful of things that I didn't much care for. Most obviously in the case of Yakuza 5 is how fucking long I had to wait to get it. THREE YEARS! Come on Sega! Sonic is a dead horse that does not draw appeal anymore. Give it up. Please start localizing the quirky and different, the tired and overused just leads to disappointment.

Accurate depiction of Sega western localization announcements. 

I mentioned that this installment of Yakuza felt like the combat is less visceral. And while yes I felt it made the combat easier to stomach and get through, it was that sense of violent uncomfortableness that kinda made it original. It made the actual combat feel like it had some weight behind it. To give an example, say you play God of War: from the press of the start button your gutting and disemboweling people pretty much at the moment you take control of the game, and inside of minutes you become desensitized to it. The weight is gone, it becomes meaningless because that's the norm.

Now say take a take a game like Heavy Rain: there is some violence, but virtually no combat. Only on a few pivotal scenes you're character takes excruciating damage, and he reacts accordingly. Its absolutely brutal and almost impossible to watch. Because you barely see it. I feel that's the balance Yakuza 4 had managed to strike. The combat is regular, so you wail on baddies and its not unsettling because its what you do, but those finishing heat moves are cringe worthy because they are a quick snap of brutality in an otherwise "video gamey" fight. I dunno, This is just a personal nitpick.

This might be the first time I've said this but I think Yakuza might actually be trying to do too much now. I love how much extra stuff they put in these games and it really is become a bit of a staple to the franchise. But I like them more as extras. When you try to put them in as required story mechanics, it feels like you are trying to pad out the playtime. You are building this really interesting narrative of betrayal and impending gang warfare, so I feel the grizzled battle hardened Yakuza member doesn't really need story segment where he needs to fish for trout. Let me know the extras exist, but don't force me to put off the story to do it.

This is why this review has take so long to put out. I had the game purchased and was playing it way back in October or November of last year. At time of writing I've got to be close to 60-70 hours of play time, and I am still working my way through the final chapters of the game. Unless I make a conscious effort to skip side missions, the progress has been slow. And slow progress is big reason games get put down. A game should never feel like a slog to complete.

Yes, I still make time for bowling. Shut up. 

Being digital only kind of sucks. I prefer a physical release with case and instructions but at this point I was willing to take this game in any iteration I could get my hands on. Unfortunately even with my download speed, a 60 something GB download is a bitch and a half to wait for to download and install. My heart goes out to those with slower download speeds and god forbid data caps/overages.

While the story is less convoluted, some scenes do run longer than I feel they need to. This has always been a bit of an issue with the Yakuza games because there are so many repeated points and pauses for reaction when they could be getting to the point. There is a particularly tortuous scene near the end of Shinda's chapter where he's basically held at gunpoint for no joke 10-15 minutes. It drones on forever like a scene out of Metal Gear when the point could have been made in a few lines. But then again, if you have played any of the previous Yakuza titles this will not be something that surprises you.

I very much enjoyed the story, but a little editing down couldn't have hurt.

The game eventually brings you back to Kamurocho, which has been the main location for the most of the Yakuza series and honestly, I was kind of  disappointed when it did. When I was playing at all these new locations it felt like the story was evolving. But finishing here makes me feel like I'm playing Madden: Yakuza Edition. The city hasn't changed, everything is where it was. I've been here for 3 games now. I was kinda enjoying having new maps to learn. It just kind of makes the game feel like a copy-paste after such a strong start. So when I finally got back to Kamurocho, I just skipped all the sidequests because I just wanted to finish the game.

This continues to bug me, but for some reason I never feel the character models look good for the average. All of the man characters look very human and realistic. Yet any somewhat major NPC for the story just doesn't look natural to me. For lack off a better of a better explanation they feel some what slapdash and quickly put together. I guess on the whole its not too much of an issue, but when you are doing romance missions at a hostess club, its in full frame and just looks bad. Now, I know they are actually interviewing Japanese hostesses for later installments of the game, so maybe this will be fixed in the future.

Obviously, Haruka doesn't fight. So the game has dance battles to give you conflict when wandering.

Handshake events just feel like the worst thing in the world.

So I guess the ultimate question is, did it live up to 3 years of expectations? Well, yes and no. Did it provide me a new Yakuza storyline with new characters, locations, and plot twists? Yes, it certainly did on that front. Did it give me new gameplay mechanics: Yes, it added it multitude of different things to shake up the regular sandbox play. Did I get my money's worth? I would say 60+ hours is money well spent for a video game.

But at the same time, the longer I played it, the more it felt like I've played it before. It probably would have had more punch if the play time was shorter. There are lots of new minigames, but they feel shoehorned in. It didn't feel like it changed enough. I think I would have really liked the not localized Yakuza Issin because that turns the game into a period Samurai piece. That would have shaken up the whole formula and made it new and interesting. I would have been into that. But continuing the modern day narrative requires more change to keep it interesting. It started stronger but had a weaker finish.

That being said, Yakuza 5 is another satisfying installment to this series. The game is still very good despite starting to feel a little repetitive. It has no shortage of different mini games to play so there are a lot of different distractions. But I do think the game is going to need to change soon lest it wear itself out for future installments. Fans of the series will play it. I enjoyed and recommend it, but you could get a similar experience from Yakuza 4 for 20 bucks.

T-Set, you were horrible twats. I will never forgive you.