Welcome to the first of 7 posts detailing my thoughts on the Yakuza games from Sega. The first entry will be detailing my thoughts behind the 2016 remake of Yakuza, or better known in Japan as Like A Dragon, originally released in 2005 on the PlayStation 2. I played this on a PlayStation 4 as I will the rest of the games.
I just beat
Yakuza Kiwami, and I have a lot on my mind. This is easily without a doubt, one of the most enduring video games I have ever had the chance to play, and probably one of my favorites, of all time. There's so many ideas that go into it, whether it'd be the story, the random substories, the mini-games, etc., it's all done with a clear level of passion by whoever was developing the game, and it brightly shines as the in-game indicator for a MesuKing Card or a random locker key. It all culminates into this brilliant package that I absolutely can't stop being obsessed with it. I might as well get the negatives out of the way first, and the most obvious being the combat system. The combat system in this game is utterly awful, un-redeeming and not fun to learn or deal with. When it comes to boss fights at the end of each chapter, the difficulty is upped by 300% and it's pretty much impossible to beat, which I discovered, was on my end. I didn't realize the game actually wanted you to learn a good amount of each fighting styles around chapter 11 when I was too far in, and have been using the Brawler style all the way up to that point and got pass with it. If I learned this earlier on, it wouldn't be such a problem, but as it affects the entire game for me, I do believe it raises a problem for me as it left a negative impression for me. Words really can't describe how many times I was frustrated while playing in my 34 hour play-through, but to give rough estimate it was an hour total where I was just extremely frustrated and almost quit playing, but I'm glad I pulled through because the ending was very satisfactory. Another thing to mention is that during fights, if you're not quick enough, you can get bombarded with 3 different enemies attacking you at the same time giving you virtually no response time for anything coming at you. It's very tiring to deal with. Another thing that relates to this though is the random encounters on the street walking around Kamurocho, which by the way, is a wonderful city but I'll get to that in a bit, they're around every street and it's very annoying having to run into the same enemy every few seconds, who overall don't really add anything of note to the game. That's about as far as the negatives go, but for positives, there's a ton of them. I think the most positive aspect of the entire game is the story, it's a very strong one. The way it's written catches your attention immediately and draws you in, I won't say much on it as that would possibly delve into spoilers but it left me crying at the end of the game, which is always a good sign of a great story. I was hooked on every single second of it because every line was delivered perfectly. The voice acting is another amazing aspect of the game, as each line was delivered with some type of passion put into it, you could actually feel the emotion of whichever character was speaking, whether it'd be in game, on the streets walking around when the 47th character running at you to fight, or even the hostesses in the hostess clubs. Speaking of hostess, the scope of what you can do in this game is nothing short of incredible, there's so many substories (I will get to those in a second), and mini-games. Each mini-game is spread throughout the map, in one spot you have the Club Sega arcade, and the other karaoke. It's very easy to get wrapped into in the game as I often spent hours and hours doing various things around town (I played Bakamiti in karaoke way too many times to count) and forgot the main focus of the game at times. Most of the time the spots relates to these substories, which are also very distracting but in a good way, there were multiple times I was running around the area just to do the substories. I have a few favorable ones that I can remember, such as the one where I had to get a business man toilet paper, getting seduced than robbed which led me to unlock the casino, another one I picked up a phone off of a dead person to find a cellphone to find out someone was trying to get me, and another one was this girl looking for her purse that had an outfit for it because she was lying about her age to her boyfriend who ended up being an enemy I fought before, you get the picture. There's around 80+ in the story and it'd be wonderful to get through all of them, they're pretty fun to do. I personally spent hours trying to grind karaoke and the hostess clubs, which both I succeeded that, almost getting a perfect score in a few karaoke songs, and got rank S with both of the hostesses, Yui and Rina. The city of Kamurocho, based on the real Kabukicho district in Tokyo, is a very pretty map, with the colorful lights of the signs you pass by, and how red it is throughout. It's all pretty wonderful stuff and fits my love for cities at night, the detail in each street whether it be the trash on the sidewalks or the various street signs, it's all pretty wonderful to gawk at while playing. It's a very spacious area too, with a ton of places to walk around and I've spent many times walking around. My final point to mention about the game is the Majima Everywhere system, and all I can really say is that it's a fun way to boost stamina and fighting ability, however, it can get a little annoying. With all of that being said, Yakuza Kiwami might be one of the best games I've ever played. Its beautiful story and play style encapsulating it being perfect for what it is. The strong story and addicting style of gameplay leads you playing for hours on end, as I've spent up to 12 hours playing in one sitting. If it weren't for the combat, this game would be a perfect 5/5, but when taking that into consideration, the game is a 4.5/5.
The movie adaptation too is pretty great, wonderful performers, almost perfect writing, and great pacing. However, the changes they made of trying to condense this movie into 2 hours is really strange, they made some choices that makes no sense like starting the movie on the mission where you have to find dog food, and having no build-up towards the ends so it didn't have much of an impact. But for being directed by the legend Takashi Miike, it has his signature style and comedy which makes up for the weird choices. 4/5.
P.S. I would've gotten this post out yesterday but I wanted to review the movie too as I didn't know about it until the day I started this post.
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