Another year, another Yakuza. Crazy to think I've been keeping this tradition of mine going for the past 7 years at this point.
It's definitely scaled back from the 5th game in terms of content, but honestly I felt like that was for the better. Yakuza 4 and 5 were getting to the point of being a bit overly bloated with content that it kinda muddied the actual connecting plot imo, so to focus solely on kiryu and his journey between two different towns a la the games previous to 4 was a solid move. The actual gameplay is still the same as always in the series; beat up dudes, explore wonderfully modelled Cool Japan, do wacky sidestories, crime drama, the whole nine yards are still here.
The Dragon Engine looks as breathtaking as always, I kept being blown away by the usage of lighting and how good the character models looked. The game likes to simulate that kinda lens flarey type effect that bright lights in darkness have and it looks REALLY good imo. I spent a lot of my time just admiring the visual fidelity of everything, and the game getting FPS boost on Series X is always welcome. I'm certainly looking forward to playing the dragon engine games that are on modern hardware just to see how much more the visuals can improve.
The storyline though, is a bit uhhhhhhhhhhhhh
It's supposed to be the end of the Kiryu saga, but didn't really focus on much of the things that Kiryu had done in the previous games. Similarly to Yakuza 3, Kiryu finds himself inducted in a local Yakuza group (who me and my friends have dubbed "bozo gang"), and tbh how much you like these random dudes and their antics of questionable intelligence will make or break your enjoyment of the game. The character writing in this game isn't really BAD per se, but it's definitely strange. Apparently there's a different writer for this compared to the previous game, and it kinda shows. Kiryu acts quite differently from how I would have expected him to in certain scenes, almost to the point of being a borderline parody of himself. The substories are also significantly longer in this game which makes the classic yakuza problem of substory jumpscares all the more annoying. I guess at the end of the day the plot was still entertaining to me, but I definitely couldn't take it nearly as seriously as the previous 5 games just due to how off the characters were acting.
In short, yea. It's more yakuza. Yakuza is like pizza; even when it's questionably written, it's still pretty good. I'm glad that they decided to go back to a more streamlined shorter pace for this one though. Can't wait for the next ones to be just as short! (pray for me in 2026)
It's definitely scaled back from the 5th game in terms of content, but honestly I felt like that was for the better. Yakuza 4 and 5 were getting to the point of being a bit overly bloated with content that it kinda muddied the actual connecting plot imo, so to focus solely on kiryu and his journey between two different towns a la the games previous to 4 was a solid move. The actual gameplay is still the same as always in the series; beat up dudes, explore wonderfully modelled Cool Japan, do wacky sidestories, crime drama, the whole nine yards are still here.
The Dragon Engine looks as breathtaking as always, I kept being blown away by the usage of lighting and how good the character models looked. The game likes to simulate that kinda lens flarey type effect that bright lights in darkness have and it looks REALLY good imo. I spent a lot of my time just admiring the visual fidelity of everything, and the game getting FPS boost on Series X is always welcome. I'm certainly looking forward to playing the dragon engine games that are on modern hardware just to see how much more the visuals can improve.
The storyline though, is a bit uhhhhhhhhhhhhh
It's supposed to be the end of the Kiryu saga, but didn't really focus on much of the things that Kiryu had done in the previous games. Similarly to Yakuza 3, Kiryu finds himself inducted in a local Yakuza group (who me and my friends have dubbed "bozo gang"), and tbh how much you like these random dudes and their antics of questionable intelligence will make or break your enjoyment of the game. The character writing in this game isn't really BAD per se, but it's definitely strange. Apparently there's a different writer for this compared to the previous game, and it kinda shows. Kiryu acts quite differently from how I would have expected him to in certain scenes, almost to the point of being a borderline parody of himself. The substories are also significantly longer in this game which makes the classic yakuza problem of substory jumpscares all the more annoying. I guess at the end of the day the plot was still entertaining to me, but I definitely couldn't take it nearly as seriously as the previous 5 games just due to how off the characters were acting.
In short, yea. It's more yakuza. Yakuza is like pizza; even when it's questionably written, it's still pretty good. I'm glad that they decided to go back to a more streamlined shorter pace for this one though. Can't wait for the next ones to be just as short! (pray for me in 2026)