Yakuza Impressions

After hearing that it was a Shenmue-like game, Yakuza caught my interest. It also seemed to be one of the few Sega games to come out lately that didn’t suck. That was really all of the info I had about the game, but after playing it, I can see some of the Shenmue comparisons. Really, the game is a beat-em-up, like Die Hard Arcade or even Zombie Revenge, with exploration areas to get to the action.

Shenmue was about being able to explore everything, for better or for worse, and getting caught up in everyday life. To really enjoy the game, it had to be played with a “stop and smell the roses” attitude. Rush through the main objectives and the game could last about 10 hours. On the other hand, spending time talking to characters about finding sailors, going through every drawer in the house, or standing in a parking lot hitting the punch button repeatedly is not everyone’s idea of a good time. The pace was definitely slow. (Warning: Intentionally bad sentence ahead.) The game tried to mimic reality and the reality is that reality is really sometimes boring. The fighting engine was great, at least for the few fights in the game. I haven’t really made up my mind about QTEs yet, but they seem to be finding their way into more and more games (like Resident Evil 4).

Yakuza seems to take Shenmue and redirect its concepts towards action. You can’t go and walk into every single building, but for every building you can get inside, there’s something to buy or do (as opposed to hearing how they didn’t see anything unusual on the day with the strange weather). Fights are way more frequent and follow the standard beat-em-up more so than Shenmue’s VF-based style. Grab objects and beat people up just like the arcade games.

The story seems pretty important to the game, even though I’m having a hard time keeping all of the characters straight. Hopefully on the second time through, it’ll be easier to recognize people. The voice is acting is better in Yakuza, even though the number of f-bombs in the dialog seems overkill. That said, it’s nothing spectacular.

At this point, after only a couple hours of play, I’d rate the game 8/10.