- Yakuza authentically re-creates the city streets and illicit haunts of Tokyo’s nightlife district — with memorable characters, a gripping story, deadly fighting, and deep gameplay
- Engrossing storyline packed with complex, captivating characters — more than a dozen intricately detailed chapters as the complex web of the Yakuza unravels
- Players can string together attack combos to take out multiple enemies simultaneously in street brawls or grab and use in-game objects to defeat opponents
- Add strength, stamina, and skills through combat; Build skills and attributes by gaining experience, accumulate weapons and items, engage in numerous side missions, gamble, interrogate and bribe informants
Product Description
Yakuza is your entry into a society where respect and honor holds great importance. Kazuma is a former rising star in the Yakuza who is rebuilding his life after serving a 10-year prison term for murder. He suddenly finds himself caught in a spiraling underworld plot involving a mysterious girl known as Haruka and a missing $100 million. Kazuma must use his fists and his wits to stay alive as he unravels the complex web of truth and lies that surrounds the notorious… More >>
Yakuza is a good game with some very fun elements, but suffers from camera and loading time issues.
In the game you are wandering around the Japanese entertainment district and getting into random fights. The only major problem with the overworld is the constant loading time. After 5-10 steps the camera switches to a different spot as you move down a street and loads up. Another few steps, more loading. Some street punk challenges you to a fight? 20-30+ seconds of loading time.
The fight control system is a bit cumbersome – you will often land the first punch of a series and then finish your combo by wildly swinging at the air. The camera is an issue since it mostly stays in place or shifts slightly while you are moving, rather than get behind you. You get used to the combat system quickly and some of the new abilities you can gain (like the ability to kick in any direction at the end of a combo) are designed to counter the flaws in the system. The real shining star in fights is the ability to use almost any item as a weapon: bikes, crates, signs, pipes, etc…
The story is a bit hokey and the voice talent sounds bored and passionless. Also there was no need for the amount of F-bombs that this game drops. I mean seriously, we get it – you are M for mature, but if there was no cursing I wouldn’t be surprised at a Teen rating. Nothing more graphic than your average fighting game.
I look foward to Yakuza 2 (maybe in 07?). I have heard they got rid of most of the loading time, though I wonder why they couldn’t have gotten rid of it here. If you don’t get frustrated at the combat or long loading time than this is a great game.
Rating: 4 / 5
I really enjoyed playing Yakuza. The designers have taken a typical Japanese entertainment district and transported into the game, complete with convenience stores, hostess bars, strip clubs, pawn shops, etc – right down to the drinks machines on every street corner. They’ve also taken the criminal world of the Yakuza, stereotypes and all, and transported it into the game. Maybe it’s because I live in Japan, but I got a real kick out of playing the “bad but honorable” main character in such familiar surroundings. The only real flaw is the camera control — the camera gets flaky every once in a while. The player should have full camera control and the auto control could have used more polish. Also, the game earns it’s M rating mostly due to language and sexual content and parents should exercise caution when considering buying it for children.
Rating: 4 / 5
I will concur with some of the other reviewers that say that this game is not quite what it could be. The gameplay is somewhat repetitive, but in a way that most brawler type gameplay is. It’s a fun repetitive. It also has a nice modern-RPG feel to it, with the inclusion of certain aspects like buying food in restaurants or convenience stores to recover health, experience points, items, and the way money tends to work in the game. It’s very cut-scene heavy at times, but the story and voice acting are surprisingly good, considering how bad both of those aspects have gotten to be in most recent games.
What I want to praise this game on the most is the detail and nuance with which it recreates its aesthetic setting. This was done absolutely superbly — possibly the best representation of a real-world locale I have ever seen in a game. To compare, it is not as massively-accessible as the Grand Theft Auto games (San Andreas most of all), not as block-for-block tightly researched as True Crime or The Getaway, but it absolutely feels like the parts of Tokyo it sets out to feel like and it portrays not just a landscape that looks real but a living-breathing urban organism complete with crowd ambiance, realistic store fronts, and plenty of shops and businesses that can actually be accessed during the game. It makes the locales in the other games I mentioned feel generic and stale. I can’t give this game enough praise for this aspect of its execution. It would be nice if the camera could be freely rotated while you wander around in the city (it can be rotated during battle sequences), and I would have liked the addition of some means of real-time transportation around a larger physical area (namely vehicles, whether cars or a subway), but it’s easy to ignore the lack in these cases by how much is delivered within the lush, zoomed-in frame the game designers decided to take. I’d really like to see this game set the standard for future instances of games that have a player traveling around a large-scale urban setting (like GTA, The Getaway, True Crime, whatever) in terms of NPC activity, ambiance, and detail.
Why I don’t give it five stars is because I think that this is the only part of the game worth praising so heavily. Nothing else about it is bad, but if it didn’t have the fantastic attention to detail in setting and aesthetics, it would almost be a mediocre game. Gameplay consists of walking, brawling, and RPG-style two-or-three choice multiple-choice dialogues that effect side stories and certain scenes (something I’m happy to see in a game considering that the industry seems to stopped including details like these), and that’s about it. The fight system is fun but could be better. All in all a good start for a franchise, and a real breath of fresh air cross-genre piece that’s somewhere between Grand Theft Auto, River City Ransom, and Shenmue.
Rating: 4 / 5
Yakuza follows the life of Kiryuu Kazuma, a Soldier in a prominent Yakuza family. After his beloved Yumi is kidnapped and nearly killed by the Oyabun of the family, Kazuma covers for the murder of the Oyabun by one of his friends. After emerging from prison 10 years later, the story really begins, as Kazuma searches for Yumi, and 10 billion yen stolen from the Yakuza families, while fighting off other Yakuza out for revenge, not to mention his former friends, who’ve turned into cold blooded monsters while he was incarcerated.
Anyone who has played the Bouncer or Fatal Fury, or any other progressive brawler will like this. The controls are overly simplistic, but it does present a challenge if you don’t play it smart. People will jump you in groups of twos and threes, and attack with enviroment weapons such as chairs and golf clubs (You’re in Japan. Golf clubs count as part of the environment pretty much). There’re many well done special attacks, and your character progresses at a decent pace, learning new attacks and abilities.
The problems are more with control and camera work. The camera is somewhat static and oddly placed at times, and is impossible to move at times. The fighting controls are somewhat haphazard, and you frequently launch attacks at an enemies side rather than striking them. Some aspects aren’t explained well, and you could easily be lost in the new cultural concepts of the Yakuza, not that it makes any difference to the game itself it seems, but it’d be nice to know why you are getting bows and groveling one moment, and bullets in your back the next.
Overall, the game is solid, with a good story, and rather inventive sidequests, though the constant attempts at mugging get old very quickly (who in their right mind robs a gangster to begin with) and several moves are fun to watch (the special attacks with the Thermos and the umbrella in particular). Considering this is retailing new now for around $20, it is worth the price.
Rating: 4 / 5
Ever wanted to live the life of a yakuza enforcer without worrying about losing a finger due to a moment of dishonor? Yakuza for the PS2 gives you the closest experience you’re likely to have. This blend of Shenmue with a GTA-lite touch (eat to regain health) immerses you in a sprawling Japanese city that has you trying to solve the mystery of what happened to your old “family” and who stole 10 billion yen of yakuza money. Along the way are side missions, mini-games and random fights with street punks to help build up your stats. Wander the streets, romance some ladies, beat the snot out of some thugs and play some games or gamble – it’s all good.
As other reviews have noted, the fighting engine is a bit whack but is easy to compensate for after a few battles (and to be fair in comparison, it’s still better than melee fighting in GTA although there is no lock-on feature). Locking into certain animations when you miss your target can leave you open to counter attacks, but the same goes for your foes, so it all balances out in the end. The battles are still a lot of fun, whether using strategy or button mashing to eliminate your enemies. And of course it’s always fun to pick up objects – bikes, lanterns, metal pipes, golf clubs, etc. – to beat your smart-mouthed opponents into subservience.
As also noted in other reviews, this game is rated M and NOT for kids – primarily due to the language. Seriously, many of the characters drop the f-bomb every three to five words in a sentence – it’s almost as if Quentin Tarantino wrote the dialogue. Overall however, this game is a fun romp through gangland Japan. A sequel is set to be released December 2006 in Japan and should appear in North America late 2007 – hopefully the minor problems have been fixed. Either way, I’ll be looking forward to playing it when it arrives.
Rating: 4 / 5