The fourth game just came out in the States a week or two ago, but I'm
just now finished with the third, which was released here last year. A
year late seems like the right way to play this series - it's too quirky
and occasionally clunky for me to justify paying $60 for the experience
when it's brand new, but as a budget purchase a bit later, it's
definitely worth it to experience the series' oddness and charms again.
The jump to current generation hardware doesn't do much to change the
general gameplay, though the upgrade in visuals and putting the camera
behind Kazuma instead of in static places when exploring is certainly
welcome. Like in Yakuza 2, you spend the game bouncing between
the franchise's trademark location of Kamurocho and another, in this
case a city and nearby beach on an island in Okinawa. The differences
between these locations are much greater than the differences between
fake Tokyo and fake Osaka in Yakuza 2, not just in the look of the place
but what you tend to actually do there, which makes it a more distinct
entry in the series with more diversity of tone.
The third game finds Kazuma finally retired from gang life, and running
an orphanage by the beach with Haruka. Of course eventually stuff
happens that pulls him back into the criminal underworld he's been
trying to leave for years, though the story spends a significant amount
of time just having you help out and watch over the kids in your care,
to a surprising degree for a series best known for having you punch the
hell out of a lot of dudes. All of the kids get developed and fleshed
out a bit, and the laid back tone the game takes on in these sections
was pretty refreshing after something like the desperate suicide mission
in Mass Effect 2. The game never totally abandons this either,
always giving you little bits of flavor in between all of the violence
that gets going as the story kicks into high gear. I didn't think the
overall plot was quite as good as earlier games, not having the first's
emotional connection between Kazuma and the villain or the second's
outright insanity, but it's still a capable, generally entertaining tale
of betrayal and corruption with a few moments that stick out. The
ending kind of pulls a switcheroo for no reason, and it can get
embarrassingly over-the-top here and there, but it's all forgivable.
The gameplay is pretty much exactly what series veterans probably
expected, though I was a bit disappointed by how similar it felt to the
PS2 games. The combat system in the series has always been fairly fun,
but a bit shallow in its execution and frustrating when it tries to
actually challenge the player. Kazuma has the same attacks and movements
he always did, and they added a number of new features like
customizable weapons and some new context-specific moves, but it's still
pretty much the same system they've always had, and it's wearing a
little thin after a new generation of hardware and three games. It's not
annoying enough to truly damage the experience, but it's always a pain
when an enemy just seems to block everything you do and you have to find
whatever single technique will be effective at all against him. I like
how the random fights now transition directly into the combat mode
without a loading screen, but I wish they had pushed the whole thing
farther than that.
When you're not fighting dudes you're generally running around in
whatever city the game wants you to be, looking for the next plot
trigger, though this is where a lot of the fun is, because there's
always tons of things to do besides find the next cut scene. There are
people to help, side quests to do, shops to buy items from, and mini
games to play. I think it's stupid that Sega removed some of this
extra content from the American release because they thought we wouldn't
understand it if it was "too Japanese" or something, because if we're
already playing a game with subtitled Japanese dialogue we're probably
okay with it. But the truth is, I never really felt that absence because
there was always more new stuff to do if I wanted and I hardly
scratched the surface.
So the game gives you all this stuff to do, and occasionally something
in the story will force you to a new location or change things a bit so
you have to fight or sneak through the city before dropping you back
into the regular game. It's a simple formula that generally works,
though there are occasions when it all feels a bit dated. Plot bits
awkwardly transition between text boxes and full voiced dialogue, and
the implementation of a bit of action will be sometimes seem poorly
though out, things like that. But while it's not the most advanced game
there is, its flaws didn't annoy me very much, even if they might have
placed a cap on how much I really could have been into the experience.
The Yakuza series is in this weird place where it's half big action game
and half quirky Japanese oddity, and definitely has a weird charm to
it. I wouldn't be surprised to find myself talking about the fourth game
a year from now.
