Yakuza

"Yakuza, here to fix your beat-em-up needs."

Yakuza is basically your modern-day brawler game, brought to you by the good folks at Sega. The title's name represents the Japanese mafia, who you will be dealing with a lot as you play through the game. As you can imagine, the broad nature of the game's world leaves the game open for so many possibilities, and thankfully Sega did a fairly good job of bringing everything together into quite an enjoyable game.

Story: 8/10

I really liked the story presented in Yakuza. You take on the role of Kazuma Kiryuu, a young yakuza member known as the “Dragon of the Doujima Family”. The story focuses not only on the underground world of the Japanese mafia, but also on the relationship between Kazuma and two of his closest friends: Akira Nishiki and Yumi Sawamura. After an incident where a high ranking mafia member is murdered, Kazuma spends 10 years behind bars. When he gets out, he learns that 10 billion yen has been stolen from his former clan and that Yumi has gone missing.

The story is presented very well, though I found it rather hard at times to keep track of all of the different family's (clans) that Kazuma interacts with and what their motives are. It can also be hard to know exactly what you need to do or where you need to go at times, though those times are rare, thankfully. Overall Yakuza presents a great story focusing on the yakuza world which ends in a dynamic clash that the player really can't predict.

Gameplay: 7/10

The gameplay, of course, consists of Kazuma brawling his way through hordes of either yakuza members or various street gangs, always with a given destination or mission in mind. Kazuma possesses a variety of moves to use against his opponent, consisting of weak or strong attacks which the player can string together to form various combo's. Upon defeating any enemy, Kazuma is awarded experience points based upon how tough the enemy was, which he can spend to upgrade one of 3 attributes: Spirit, Technique, or Body. Upgrading these techniques will make Kazuma stronger by granting him new techniques, improving various existing techniques, or increasing his health. Kazuma can also lock onto an enemy and learn how to dodge his enemy's attacks.

Throughout the game you can also find and use a wide variety of items as weapons, ranging from a random orange traffic cone to a dead enemies hand gun. There are many, many different items you can use as weapons in the game, but your enemies can also use most of them as well, so be careful.

Aside from completing the games storyline, Kazuma can also freely explore the district that he lives in, participating in a variety of minigames such as the batting cages or gambling. There are also quite a few optional missions that you can complete around the city. Your main mode of transportation will be just to walk or run everywhere, but there are three unmovable taxi cabs that will drive you between their three locations. There are also two female-escort type places that Kazuma can visit in order to try to get various girls to become interested in him, and while it costs a lot of money to pursue the girls, there is no real reward for doing so.

Overall, the gameplay is fun, but it can get pretty repetitive after awhile, especially if you just fight enemies around the city over and over without trying to advance the games plotline. I also found the female-escort side quests to be very bland and unrewarding, so it's best to just skip them altogether. I would have also liked to see a few more fighting moves from Kazuma, as you'll most likely find a good usable combo and stick to it because there is no reward to trying anything different.

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics in Yakuza are fairly good, especially all of the cutscenes in the game, which look beautiful. The bustling city is filled with a lot of people, many of which will spout various lines as you pass by, some of which may be related to your current mission. Despite the huge size of the city, and all of the people in it, moving from area to area in the city doesn't really require load times, but you will have a slight pause as the camera changes. Getting into a fight, on the other hand, require quite a lengthy pause as the game loads up your opponents and changes from your usually top-down exploring view to an over-the-shoulder fighting view.

All of the fighting animations run smoothly, and every single character that I can remember in Yakuza looked great. The one thing that I didn't like graphic-wise is the animation used when Kazuma runs. It looks unnecessarily drawn out, almost as if he's trying to leap a certain distance at a time. Than again, they also like to use drawn out movements when Kazuma fights as well, so at least the two things are in sync with each other.

Music/Sound effects/Voice actors: 8/10

The music in Yakuza is mostly forgettable, but you'll probably always be able to remember the music that plays as soon as you get into a fight nevertheless, as you'll be hearing a lot of it as the battles load. Despite most of the music being forgettable over time, it does its job in adding to the atmosphere of the game. The sound effects are fairly standard fare, thankfully everything sounds like it should and you'll enjoy listening to people groan and moan as you land your punches.

The voice acting in Yakuza is awesome. It's defiantly a high point of the game. Kazuma sounds great, as do all of the other high-ranking yakuza who you'll encounter. I should note, though, that this game contains a lot of swearing. These thugs really like to talk trash, giving you even more of a reason to fight.

Re-playability: 7/10

After you beat the game, there's not too much of a reason to continue playing. As I mentioned earlier, you could complete all of the optional side quests or partake in the various mini-games that Yakuza has to offer, but that's about it. There are also a couple of shops around the district that Kazuma lives in where you can buy health drinks and various weapons and armor, but the game isn't so difficult that you need to rely on these things. I should also add that there is a sequel released for this game that has already been released in Japan, but not yet in the United States, so if you enjoy Yakuza, you might want to look up its sequel.

Overall: 8/10

Yakuza feels like the rightful successor of the beat-em-up genre. It has a great story with engrossing gameplay, with only a few minor flaws. I would defiantly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good story to go along with their fighting game and I believe you can find it fairly cheap nowadays. Have fun and keep playing!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/08

Game Release: Yakuza (US, 09/05/06)