I am convinced they used the power of the PS2's emotion engine solely with the intention of crafting Kazuma Kiryu into the most handsome protagonist possible at the time. The rest of the game is just a fun bonus they did in their spare time.
The wonderful Backloggd community threatened - that is to say, heavily suggested - that I play Yakuza PS2 instead of the remake, Kiwami. To that I say, screw it, release order supremacy, I will get around to Kiwami eventually. But of course, that means starting with this, the original PS2 release, and I'm happy to say I quite enjoyed it, in spite of everything.
The story is the main draw of the game - well at least, it sure seems to believe that it's the case - and I found it decent, but not particularly sound. It gets a bit too bogged down with filler early on, and a lot of characters go severely underutilised. Heck, it was to the point I found myself completely forgetting about a lot of them over the course of the game, making any reappearances they may or may not make later on more than a little confusing. The emotional hooks are pretty good, but - without getting into spoiler territory - I think it doesn't resolve the plot threads in satisfying ways, and kind of collapses in on itself by the end. So many issues could have been easily avoided, and certain twists are wholly unnecessary and exist purely for shock value.
Main story aside, a big selling point of the games (mainly through the hype given by the fandom) are the substories, side quests dotted throughout the district of Kamurocho that see Kiryu meet all sorts of weird and wacky people with problems that need solving...actually, in the first game, it's mostly just scam artists and guys who want to beat Kiryu up. They get pretty tedious, and can be annoyingly obscure to even find in the first place, and only a few have particularly likable stories - most are just thinly veiled excuses for an utterly ordinary combat scenario.
As for the combat itself, I found it to actually be pretty fun for the time...but I have to throw a few caveats out with that statement. Firstly, Kiryu's starting moveset is pretty dire. Light attacks and a combo-ending heavy attack, as well as a grab. Landing hits builds Heat, a sort of super-mode that stuns enemies easier and allow for Heat Actions that play a nice, brutal animation and deal massive damage. As you gain experience and level up (choosing which aspect of your abilities you want to prioritise) you gain more moves, and more still through a certain tutor halfway through the game. Once your move repertoire is more fleshed out via these means, the combat becomes bloody fantastic. Throws, backbreaking, dodging, it's incredibly well crafted. Well, with the exception of certain bosses that render a lot of your abilities useless, but they're usually not too bullshit. Usually.
The major flaws in gameplay come from two sources. Firstly, the camera. Bad cameras in 3D games were still a thing even into the PS2 era, and sadly Yakuza is among the offenders. While you can center the camera with L2 to match where Kiryu is facing, it only works when you're not locked into an animation, and won't always be where you really want it to be facing. The major failing there is not mapping camera control to the right analog stick, which is used for....uh...absolutely sod all. Well, it scrolls the minimap: a feature I can say with absolute certainty is completely useless in every concievable way. The full map displays the second you hit Start, so I really don't get why they gave such a feature to the right analog stick instead of camera control. More annoyingly, there's no proper lock-on in the game. Holding down R1 will cause you to begin shifting around the direction you're facing, and will sort of lock on to any enemy you're facing, but if you miss a swing or they get too far out of the way, you're back to swinging at empty air again. Add in the fact combos cannot be cancelled, and you have a recipe for frustration that goes to show that the combat system, while almost there, has serious room for improvement.
I had mentioned how fantastically brutal the combat animations were earlier; that ties in to what I think the strongest element of this game is - the presentation. Kamurocho is a smallish hub world for the game to take place in, but it's amazing how much work was put in to make it feel more alive than any GTA game could boast at the time. Lots of low-poly strangers walking around on-screen, people holding conversations that appear as brief textboxes around the edges of the screen (shoutout to that one woman who still doesn't know where she is from beginning to end), people chasing after you begging you to go to a hostess club, a sizable number of interactable NPCs who's dialogue can change to suit current story events, the place is jam packed on first impressions. Stores sell food and medicine that restores Kiryu's HP and even give a little experience, enough to imply that these beef bowls are physically making him stronger. Arcades are home to those accursed UFO catchers, and they're fully functional! Strip clubs, massage parlours, the extensive hostess mini-stories, it's a game that rewards you for breathing it all in.
This extends to the cutscenes too - the direction and animation is superb, and the voice acting - the proper, Japanese voice acting - sells it very well. Let's not forget the sound design, a very underappreciated aspect of making the big, impact punches actually come across as visceral as they are. For a breakout title that noone but Sony seemed to have any faith in, RGG visibly put all they had into making sure that the game made an impact on audiences, and - at least in Japan - it's clearly paid off.
I deliberately try to avoid giving out 7/10s to games, as it's a very cliché score that is often thrown out as a "it's good, but not fantastic" rating, as opposed to acknowledging it as an 8, or daring to give it a 6. However, I cannot in good conscience give Yakuza a 6 given how much it accomplished of what it has clearly set out to do. That said, the story and gameplay issues hold it back from an 8. So, Yakuza gets the ol' 7/10 - exciting, impressive, but significantly flawed. And let me just say, I cannot wait to see how Yakuza 2 improves on everything.
The wonderful Backloggd community threatened - that is to say, heavily suggested - that I play Yakuza PS2 instead of the remake, Kiwami. To that I say, screw it, release order supremacy, I will get around to Kiwami eventually. But of course, that means starting with this, the original PS2 release, and I'm happy to say I quite enjoyed it, in spite of everything.
The story is the main draw of the game - well at least, it sure seems to believe that it's the case - and I found it decent, but not particularly sound. It gets a bit too bogged down with filler early on, and a lot of characters go severely underutilised. Heck, it was to the point I found myself completely forgetting about a lot of them over the course of the game, making any reappearances they may or may not make later on more than a little confusing. The emotional hooks are pretty good, but - without getting into spoiler territory - I think it doesn't resolve the plot threads in satisfying ways, and kind of collapses in on itself by the end. So many issues could have been easily avoided, and certain twists are wholly unnecessary and exist purely for shock value.
Main story aside, a big selling point of the games (mainly through the hype given by the fandom) are the substories, side quests dotted throughout the district of Kamurocho that see Kiryu meet all sorts of weird and wacky people with problems that need solving...actually, in the first game, it's mostly just scam artists and guys who want to beat Kiryu up. They get pretty tedious, and can be annoyingly obscure to even find in the first place, and only a few have particularly likable stories - most are just thinly veiled excuses for an utterly ordinary combat scenario.
As for the combat itself, I found it to actually be pretty fun for the time...but I have to throw a few caveats out with that statement. Firstly, Kiryu's starting moveset is pretty dire. Light attacks and a combo-ending heavy attack, as well as a grab. Landing hits builds Heat, a sort of super-mode that stuns enemies easier and allow for Heat Actions that play a nice, brutal animation and deal massive damage. As you gain experience and level up (choosing which aspect of your abilities you want to prioritise) you gain more moves, and more still through a certain tutor halfway through the game. Once your move repertoire is more fleshed out via these means, the combat becomes bloody fantastic. Throws, backbreaking, dodging, it's incredibly well crafted. Well, with the exception of certain bosses that render a lot of your abilities useless, but they're usually not too bullshit. Usually.
The major flaws in gameplay come from two sources. Firstly, the camera. Bad cameras in 3D games were still a thing even into the PS2 era, and sadly Yakuza is among the offenders. While you can center the camera with L2 to match where Kiryu is facing, it only works when you're not locked into an animation, and won't always be where you really want it to be facing. The major failing there is not mapping camera control to the right analog stick, which is used for....uh...absolutely sod all. Well, it scrolls the minimap: a feature I can say with absolute certainty is completely useless in every concievable way. The full map displays the second you hit Start, so I really don't get why they gave such a feature to the right analog stick instead of camera control. More annoyingly, there's no proper lock-on in the game. Holding down R1 will cause you to begin shifting around the direction you're facing, and will sort of lock on to any enemy you're facing, but if you miss a swing or they get too far out of the way, you're back to swinging at empty air again. Add in the fact combos cannot be cancelled, and you have a recipe for frustration that goes to show that the combat system, while almost there, has serious room for improvement.
I had mentioned how fantastically brutal the combat animations were earlier; that ties in to what I think the strongest element of this game is - the presentation. Kamurocho is a smallish hub world for the game to take place in, but it's amazing how much work was put in to make it feel more alive than any GTA game could boast at the time. Lots of low-poly strangers walking around on-screen, people holding conversations that appear as brief textboxes around the edges of the screen (shoutout to that one woman who still doesn't know where she is from beginning to end), people chasing after you begging you to go to a hostess club, a sizable number of interactable NPCs who's dialogue can change to suit current story events, the place is jam packed on first impressions. Stores sell food and medicine that restores Kiryu's HP and even give a little experience, enough to imply that these beef bowls are physically making him stronger. Arcades are home to those accursed UFO catchers, and they're fully functional! Strip clubs, massage parlours, the extensive hostess mini-stories, it's a game that rewards you for breathing it all in.
This extends to the cutscenes too - the direction and animation is superb, and the voice acting - the proper, Japanese voice acting - sells it very well. Let's not forget the sound design, a very underappreciated aspect of making the big, impact punches actually come across as visceral as they are. For a breakout title that noone but Sony seemed to have any faith in, RGG visibly put all they had into making sure that the game made an impact on audiences, and - at least in Japan - it's clearly paid off.
I deliberately try to avoid giving out 7/10s to games, as it's a very cliché score that is often thrown out as a "it's good, but not fantastic" rating, as opposed to acknowledging it as an 8, or daring to give it a 6. However, I cannot in good conscience give Yakuza a 6 given how much it accomplished of what it has clearly set out to do. That said, the story and gameplay issues hold it back from an 8. So, Yakuza gets the ol' 7/10 - exciting, impressive, but significantly flawed. And let me just say, I cannot wait to see how Yakuza 2 improves on everything.
Reddish
1 year ago