Yakuza Review

Friends

Yakuza is a story of a Yakuza gang member called Kazuma Kiryu serving under the Dojima family. Kazuma is known as the "Dragon of the Dojima Family" and is fairly well known. It all starts to go horribly wrong when the leader of the Dojima family is murdered. From there you have to follow Kazuma as he attempts to unravel the myster surrounding the Yakuza and the sudden disappearance of 10 billion yen.

Yakuza is an action/adventure title with RPG elements set in Tokyo. You control Kazuma during the events surrounding the Yakuza and the missing 10 billion yen. Due to the fact that Yakuza has a reasonably well written story I can't go into much detail as to the story, as I feel it might give the whole story away. However the story is reasonably well written and the voice acting is competantly well done.

The gameplay of the game is split into two parts, the adventure side, where you guide Kazuma through the downtown district of Tokyo, going into shops to buy health restoring items, weapons and equipment, and participate in side missions that can occur. During this, you can get into fights from random thugs on the street. This, activates battle mode, which makes it a 3D brawler. The combat system, while simplistic, does have a fair bit of depth to it as you gain experience and power up Kazuma. Kazuma can power up his body, mind and technique. If he powers up his mind, he can gain abilities such as remaining in HEAT mode longer (a specific mode that powers Kazuya up when you hit others and avoid taking damage yourself.) whereas powering up his technique will help Kazuma earn different moves and levelling up his body will give Kazuma more max hp and better evasion abilities. There are also hidden moves thqat you can aquire through various means. Gaining experience can be done in several forms, Eating (which also heals you) can give you a small amount of EXP, completing side quests, winning fights and performing HEAT actions in battle, which are special actions that, although consume part of the heat gauge, give you additional exp and hurt most normal enemies tremendously. Both the adventure and the brawling aspects are very well done and are fun to play through, although the route you take through the story is extremely linear, the side quests do help if you want a break from the main story. The game starts off in Normal mode, however, should it become too hard for you and should you lose 3 fights in a row to the same opponent, the game will ask if you wish to continue the rest of the game in easy mode. I feel that this is a good idea, as it prevents a player from simply choosing the easy option to complete the game.

The graphics are very well done, and the sheer amount of people in the adventure mode part of the game is part of what makes the game great, its very rare that you ever get any slowdown and you only get a very short loading time of about one or two seconds to load a new street. Each bypasser is either walking past, doing their daily business or is actively engaged in a conversation of which a text box sometimes pops up so that you can read what is being said. The character models are very well done, especially Kazuma, which is hardly surprising as he's the main character.

The sounds are great, the music fits the whole game very well, and the voice acting is very well done. The sound effects from the weapons sound like you really are making a real impact on them, this is especially true with the HEAT actions.

The game also has a fair amount of replay value, mainly due to the amount of side quests there are in the game and the locker keys (from which you collect from various locations in the game, that open lockers containing various items.), but other than the side quests and locker keys, there isn’t much else to replay this game for, unless you must absolutely get 100% of the game completed.. After the game is completed, there is adventure mode, which enables you to do all the side quests without the interruption of the games main quests. There is also a battle review mode which is a special battle mode with challenges that pit you against various opponents with various special conditions and abilities.

All in all, Yakuza is a brilliant game, though it does have its faults. The battle mode controls can get a bit out of hand at times (sometimes with you not hitting an enemy due to the nature of the combat.), some of the heat actions require you to be right next to a wall or table and some require you to have a weapon, of which I wish the HEAT actions actually varied depending on the place where they are used (such as sliding one enemy across a bar to throw him into another opponent would have made a nice addition) and sometimes the shifting action doesn’t keep your front towards your opponent all the time which can be aggravating when you want to concentrate your attacks on one person. This game is brilliant, but a few niggles do prevent it from being a classic, though in saying that, there’s definitely plenty of fun to be had playing this.

The adventure/brawler/RPG mix of the gameplay is definitely fun, though it still has its own niggles.

Great sound from both the voices and the sound effects, the game also comes with the original Japanese soundtrack so you can listen to it in Japanese if you prefer.

Adventure mode, Side quests, Lockers and the battle review mode all make for some good replay value, however other than satisfaction, there’s nothing much else to gain from replaying it.

Action/Adventure Games are a mixed bag on their own, but when it also brings in elements of a brawler and an RPG I seem to get a bit sceptical, however I like games with a more serious edge at times, and this isn’t a sequel for any series, so it had a lot to prove, especially when people were bound to compare it with GTA (which is unfair)

A great game, with a few niggles, however it is definitely something you should consider buying should you get the chance.