Yakuza

Yakuza, known in Japan as Ryū ga Gotoku (translated to Like a Dragon in English), is an action-adventure game developed by Amusement Vision and published by Sega. It was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2005 in Japan and in 2006 in Western territories and is the first installment in the Yakuza series.

In 2016, a remake titled Ryū ga Gotoku Kiwami (Yakuza Kiwami, the Japanese word Kiwami standing for Extreme in English) was released in Japan for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in 2016, with a 2017 release for the PlayStation 4 following on the rest of the world, and then on Xbox One and PC.

Plot
October 1, 1995: on a stormy autumn night in the Tokyo entertainment district of Kamurocho, a mustached yakuza family boss lies dead on the floor of his darkened office. The lightning punctuates his features, most notably his broken glasses, through which the bullet that killed him went before entering his head. In front of him stands a grey-suited young man, murder weapon in hand. A posse of police officers swarm into the office, weapons drawn, and order the man to drop the gun. The black-haired young man complies, turning around to reveal his face.

The dead man's name is Sohei Dojima. The grey-suited man, Kazuma Kiryu, is not the one who pulled the trigger on his own patriarch. Rather, the deed was done by his sworn brother Akira "Nishiki" Nishikiyama in order to protect their childhood friend Yumi Sawamura from Dojima's advances. Knowing that Nishiki's sister is gravely ill and needs to be looked after, Kiryu takes the fall for him and serves 10 years in prison for a crime that is not his own.

Ten years later: Kiryu is released from prison into the middle of a crisis within Japan's biggest yakuza organization, the Tojo Clan. Ten billion yen has gone missing from the organization, igniting a power struggle. On top of that, Yumi has gone missing, and Nishiki, now a powerful patriarch of his own yakuza family, is out to kill him. Now, Kiryu must unravel the threads holding these mysteries together with the help of Haruka, a young girl caught in the eye of the storm.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Deep and compelling storyline about a former yakuza having to solve a mystery behind the death of the yakuza chairman.
 * 2) Great graphics for its time.
 * 3) The game accurately recreates Tokyo's Kabuki-cho district.
 * 4) The game's design is that of a smaller open-world similar to what Shenmue does with lots of restaurants, Arcades, Bars, a strip club, and convenience stores that can all be entered, making it feel all the more like a living, breathing city.
 * 5) Players can complete Substories, centering around NPCs when encountering them in the city, allowing the player to help them with their problems and learn a bit more about their lives. It also works as a great way to do world-building, allowing you to get an idea of what Kamurocho is like and the people that inhabit it outside of the main story. Some Substories will even give answers to certain plot points like who the fake Mizuki was.
 * 6) As you defeat enemies in battle, you'll earn experience that you can use to upgrade Kazuma's attributes such as Health, Attack strength, and how quickly the Heat gauge fills up.
 * 7) When an enemy is knocked down, low on health, or when there's an opportunity for one depending on the situation, Kazuma can initiate a Heat Action which allows him to perform a very powerful attack that's extremely satisfying to pull off and cool to look at.
 * 8) Similarly to Resident Evil, Payphones (your primary place to save your game) act as Item Boxes too, allowing to store all your items and weapons there.
 * 9) You can acquire items that can be used as Gear and Accessories, all of them being really helpful, as they can give Kiryu unique buffs.
 * 10) Excellent soundtrack.
 * 11) There are coin locker keys around the streets of Kamurocho, which go to specific coin lockers near the Millennium Tower. Inside these coin lockers, you can get items such as Gear and weapons.
 * 12) Amazing voice acting (at least for the Japanese dub).
 * 13) When you beat the game, an option in the Main Menu called Premium Box will unlock, which allows three different options:
 * 14) * Adventure Review (Premium Adventure in Kiwami): Allows the player to play Substories without advancing the main story.
 * 15) * Battle Review (Climax Battles in Kiwami): This includes fighting enemies and/or bosses either under a time trial or with restrictions.
 * 16) ** Completing all missions in the Battle Record with S-Ranks rewards the player with the "Master of Fighting" option for the main campaign, allowing Kiryu to use HEAT actions without having to fill the bar.
 * 17) * Video Review (Replay in Kiwami): Allows the player to watch all the cutscenes.

Kiwami

 * 1) This remake drastically improves upon many aspects of the original.
 * 2) *The visuals have been enhanced to look closer to that of the modern Yakuza games.
 * 3) *Substories are expanded upon and resolve any plot holes from the original game, making it more connected to its prequel, Yakuza 0.
 * 4) *The movement has been improved allowing for more fluid movement compared to the more stilted almost tank-like controls of the original.
 * 5) *The fighting system has been updated which incorporates the Skill Trees and Heat Actions from Yakuza 5, alongside the multiple fighting styles from Yakuza 0.
 * 6) *Lots of dialogue has been re-recorded (replacing the really bad English dub of the original).
 * 7) *New additional cutscenes are introduced to expand on the storyline.

Overall

 * 1) Padding: Chapter 6 could very easily be cut out of the story without changing much of anything. It basically boils down to Kiryu helping both The Florist and Date out with some family troubles that have no connection whatsoever to the main narrative.

Original

 * 1) While it was good for its time, the PS2 version can be considered as inferior in comparison to the Kiwami remake. Most notably:
 * 2) *The fighting mechanics can be clunky, mainly because of the movement.
 * 3) *It has frequent loading times.
 * 4) *Certain Substories can only be completed during a specific Chapter and are therefore missable. Although you can play them when playing Adventure Review, it's still an issue nonetheless.
 * 5) *There were also had some plot holes in the story such as the reason why Sera sent an assassin to kill Kiryu while in prison.
 * 6) *Getting Haruka's Trust to SSS rank is very frustrating. At Chapter 7, you can hang out with Haruka and do activities to cheer her up, which leads to the Haruka's Trust mechanic. Each rank obtained will have Haruka give Kazuma an item, but getting to the highest rank is very difficult because of two mini-games.
 * 7) **The first is where you have to go to the Batting Cages and hit ten Home Runs on the Beginner course. This isn't bad at first, and in fact, quite easy, but you will later have to go to the Batting Cages again, this time on the Major League course and get a perfect game, which is the second hardest course in the batting cages.
 * 8) **The second is at Volcano. This is where you're supposed to play on the Pachinko machines (or more simplified, at the slots). The first time you do this, you have to get a 777, which isn't easy, but still doable. The second time, however, requires you to get 3,000 medals, which is very difficult and time consuming. You can get a tailsmen for slots, but it barely helps and if you enter Volcano with it and leave, it gets blown away, meaning it's gone for good.
 * 9) **The worst part of all this is that if you play the Japanese HD version on PSN (Ryu ga Gotoku 1 HD), there's a trophy for getting her trust to SSS rank and the reward Haruka gives (Haruka's Marbles) is worthless since all you can do is sell it, and you don't get much money from it. This trust system and methods to raise it are much easier now in the remake, and adding on to that, it doesn't interfere with the main story, and is accessed on Premium Adventure.
 * 10) *While the game thankfully didn't suffered from Westernization (basically a Japanese game being taken and changed in a way that it pretends to take place in America as an effort to relate to the Western market, with Ace Attorney being a good example of that), it had one major flaw that ruined the game's dialogues: The English dub. In a nutshell, it wasn't well received, and in fact, extremely hated by veteran fans, due to all of the characters sounding extremely off with American voices (almost like as if they are Americans who look Japanese and immigrated from America to there), and the fact that the game takes place in Japan. This means that the voice acting is very hit-or-miss, as other times it can be quite good, like Mark Hamill as Goro Majima, while other times, it can flat out sound off, like with Bill Farmer as detective Makoto Date. The dialogue also has a bizarre amount of profanity, which the Yakuza series isn't, and has never been known for. It even goes as far as using a slur (specifically in the early parts of the game where Kiryu has to get in contact with Kazuki of the Stardust host club, but gets stopped by one of the hosts, Yuya, who thinks that Kiryu is a Yakuza. The specific line of dialogue which Kiryu says towards Yuya is the following: "How many times I gotta tell you? I'm not yakuza! Are you retarded, or just deaf?".
 * 11) * Once again though, Kiwami replaced it with the re-recorded version of the Japanese voice acting, and since then, the franchise has never got any other official English dub, at least until Yakuza: Like A Dragon released into the market (which, unsurprisingly, is miles better compared to the original Yakuza).
 * 12) *Due to the limitations of the PS2 and the need to render the world, a number of NPCs will have low polygons to the point to where they look like they're from a PS1 game.
 * 13) Many of the missions in the unlockable "Battle Record" require the player to fight as an underleveled Kiryu against late-game bosses along, low health or strict objectives which can really frustrating. Some missions of note are a no damage mission involving the car chase with Snake Flower Triad, a mission where Kiryu may only use parries, and missions where you cannot lose HEAT to name a few. S-ranking these missions can also be a challenge, requiring the player to defeat foes in quick amount of time and avoid incurring large amounts of damage.
 * 14) Kyohei Jingu's boss fight is a real struggle. Not the boss himself, but the soldiers that accompany him that will do everything to keep you from touching him. They will occasionally shoot at you while you're distracted with one of them, making it hard for you to deal with them one at a time. Even if you take them out the first time, they'll shortly regain consciousness and fight you again at full health. Even if you try and target Jingu first, he'll run away from you and leave you open to his mooks all the while taking pot shots at you. Kiwami makes the fight even more difficult, which gives Jingu an explosive he can throw at Kiryu that can be hard to predict, and getting hit takes off a huge chunk of health.
 * 15) * Similary Kazuto Arase. He wields dual handguns and dodges around the arena so incredibly fast he's nearly impossible to hit by the time he activates heat mode for the last stretch of the fight. In Kiwami this is compounded because he'll often go into healing mode right after draining your heat meter with a bullet so you can't use a Kiwami finisher on him.

Kiwami

 * 1) There is an annoying mechanic known as the Majima Everywhere mechanic, where Goro Majima actively stalks Kiryu around the map, showing up extremely frequently and everywhere (hence the name of this mechanic), which, as mentioned, despite being easy at start, starts to ramp up the difficulty (especially at later Ranks where Majima uses much stronger combat styles and has more health bars), and was perceived as annoying by many players, especially a problem when playing on Hard or EX-Hard difficulty. To make matters worse, it's mandatory to deal with, as abilities and upgrades for the Dragon of Dojima fighting style can only be unlocked via this mechanic.
 * 2) * To be honest though, it at least does make sense to why this mechanic exists (Majima wants Kiryu to get stronger and regain his abilities after his time in prison), and most of the moments related to this mechanic are quite funny.
 * 3) The cutscenes brought over from the original game reuse all the same animations one-to-one, but with the new Yakuza 0-style assets and designs overlaid on top. The result is everyone's expressions either being stoic, pissed off, or just plain weird at times, and Haruka especially looks less like a child and more like a creepy doll, alongside stiff animations that simply weren't intended for higher quality models. Nishikiyama's new cutscenes detailing his descent into villainy look like they're from an almost completely different game as a result.
 * 4) * It's painfully obvious that Yui and Rina used photographs of their IRL counterparts for their facial textures, to the point that they look only slightly better than Face Raiders.
 * 5) The game is noticeably harder compared to the original or Yakuza 0.
 * 6) * Bosses and several enemies are immune to flinching, and can easily escape in the middle of a combo just to attack from behind with their own. They are far more aggressive, do more damage, and attack more frequently when in large groups. Kiryu is also much more prone to being stunlocked, although some late upgrades help alleviate the pain somewhat. Some of his moves and styles have also received a nerf, and Heat moves will do less and less damage the more they're used during a fight. The game reminds you regularly that ten years in the slammer really did a number on Kiryu's strength, and you'll be feeling it like hell. Another reminder that early-game Dragon of Dojima is severely underpowered, so if you want to pull some sick combat with powerful moves, you're out of luck.
 * 7) * The Akai Brothers in Chapter 8 are extremely difficult to beat. The younger brother moves far faster than a guy his size has any right to and will constantly pummel you, and that's when he's not constantly getting you into a grapple that will either make you waste a few seconds trying to get him off of you, or open you up for attack from the elder sibling. Speaking of which, the elder brother isn't much better; since he's using Majima's Breaker style, he can easily smack you around with multiple blows and stunlock the player, will dodge damn near every attack you throw at him just like his brother and, when knocked down, can get up damn near immediately and get a couple of extra hits off with his wake-up attack. Both brothers will also gang up on you even if you try to focus all your firepower on just one of them. Couple that with the aforementioned boss healing (which will extend the length of the fight even further) and you've got a fight that more inexperienced Yakuza players will struggle to defeat, even if you've been keeping up on upgrading Kiryu's abilities.
 * 8) * Charon Martinez from the coliseum. He appears as early as in the E Rank tournaments and despite being an early opponent, is incredibly hard to defeat, that even maxed out Kiryu with all Dragon of Dojima upgrades is still having trouble defeating him. Despite his giant size, his fighting style is graceful and confusing to read at times as his fighting style is based on Lao Gui, an assassin and a final boss and he deals massive damage with each strike, even rivaling many S ranked opponents. In early game, his presence guarantees a loss and makes grinding for Komaki's paintings (especially if one is focusing on getting Tiger Drop, one of the most powerful moves in the entire franchise, as soon as possible) a pain in the butt.
 * 9) * The car chase level. The chase starts out manageable until the Triad comes with their truck, where you have to take out two triad members who are armed with a rocket launcher and machine gun respectively, and have lots of health meaning that you be emptying out your gun several times to take one of them out. Not helping matters is that you still have to take out the normal goons chasing you. Oh, and after that, you'll have to take out the truck driver who too has a lot of health. But by then, you'll probably be low on health which leaves you an easy picking for the driver, whose ramming deals a lot of damage. This is especially egregious for those playing on Legend difficulty, where you need to know all patterns, as one hit on Kiryu is a guaranteed death, and failing the level will have them get an instant Game Over and restart from the previous save point. The problem? Your last save point would be before you go to Yokohama, meaning that you have to fight through the Snake Flower Triad and Lau Ka Long all over again.
 * 10) * The Weapon Master GP in the Coliseum. You're limited to using weapons that do laughably low damage (significantly less than you'd deal bare-handed, in fact) and lock you out of nearly all of your special moves. You can't even get the Komaki style bonus to katana attacks with the wooden katana because you're also locked out from switching to the Dragon style. This makes the huge healthbars you're dealing with an incredible slog to grind through. Downplayed if you use the brass knuckles since they just default you to Rush Mode with slightly more damaging punches and certain unique heat actions though that's entirely dependent on whether or not you're used to fighting in Rush Mode against tough bosses. You'll probably have to fall back on repeated Heat Actions with diminishing returns against some of the tougher bosses so it's still a pain regardless.
 * 11) There are noticeable lack of details in certain cutscenes and substories that Kiwami had suffered through than the original.
 * 12) *When you head to Utabori's place in Chapter 7. Kiryu's tattoo artist has a room flooded with posters of his work acknowledging that the posters inform about the tattoo artist's life in the original and yet the Kiwami version has only one poster in the room making it completely empty, soulless and forgetting about the tattoo artist's backstory.
 * 13) *When fighting Majima at the batting center in Chapter 5. The reflections on the floor was gone in Kiwami.
 * 14) *The grafitti artist substory also suffers from a lack of detail while it's at an angle and were not able to see through in the original you're still able to see and get the idea of the son's artistic skills from the graffiti like you usually see from a street text in New Jersey now in Kiwami it's just an orange squiggle that loses track of the idea of what the son is trying to point out.
 * 15) *The most damning comparison lies with the it's presentation of the game revolving around with the Fake Mizuki substory. This is one of the most atmospheric and emotional scenes in the original it perfectly captures the feeling of regret and sorrow through it's shot composition and by setting alone it's a beautiful scene but in Kiwami it lacks the shot composition and beauty that the original had plus the cheesy guitar string added in the end of the substory creates the cheapness of this recreation making it disappointing.

Reception
Yakuza was heavily acclaimed in Japan for combining innovative gameplay with cinema-like story telling and character development on the back of Japan's criminal underground. Yakuza received generally positive reviews among Western critics earning a 75 out of 100 in Metacritic.

IGN praised its combat system and sense of style but criticized its tedious gameplay and thought "the city actually feels alive."

Newtype USA called it "the adult-themed spiritual successor to the Dreamcast's Shenmue series" and found that the fighting system would interest many players. GamePro similarly compared it with Shenmue based on the amount of subscenarios.

GameRevolution praised it as "From an audio/video standpoint, Yakuza is exceptionally well-produced. Although the cut-scenes are all use the in-game engine, the complicated facial expressions are shockingly intricate and colorful, while some of the floral tattoos look too good to be true.", but criticized the number of random encounters which resulted in a large amount of loading times. He also criticized the simplicity of the fighting system and few notable issues with GameTrailers agreeing on the difficulty in centering on an enemy. The amount of sidequests available received generally favorable response, but complained there is not much not to do in the streets "besides look for people who want to talk to you and begin missions". Delivery of the English voice acting was also praised.

1Up.com wrote it was an "incredibly realistic and accurate portrayal of Tokyo's Kabuki-cho district" and saw the potential of the fighting as it often earned the player money which can be used to buy items in the city.

UGO Networks praised the seriousness of the story as the game "respects and appreciates yakuza culture and its often forgotten roots in the samurai tradition/bushido code" and thus lamented the lack of the Japanese audio.

GameTrailers wished for a Japanese audio option, despite noting the English dub did a fine job.

GameZone called it an "epic story that will keep you exploring the world filled with criminals and Kazuma's only friends who will help him along the way."

Eurogamer commented on the narrative praising the contrast between Kiryu's kindness and Nishikiyama's brooding.

Sales
The game sold 232,650 units in Japan during 2005. In 2006 it shipped 345,323 units. Due to its commercial success on the Japanese market, Yakuza had a PlayStation 2 the Best edition on October 26, 2006, and an exceptional reprint on December 6, 2007. In contrast, this Asian long seller title never had a Platinum or Greatest Hits re-release on the western markets. The PS2 version had sold over 1 million copies

Game Tips

 * If you don't want to deal with Random Encounters while exploring the map, try to get items like the Beads Of Good Fortune, Tattered Scarf, and Silent Shoes, as they will give buffs that will decrease the frequency of random enemies on the map, decrease the range that they will see Kiryu, or even prevent any enemy from appearing in the map.
 * Once you start Chapter 6 and head for the Purgatory, you will encounter an old man known as Sotaro Komaki at the west of the park near the fountain (north of the park in the original version), who has seen Kiryu's fighting skills at the fights in the Coliseum (during the events of Chapter 5), and asks him if he wants to become his apprentice. Whatever you do, accept his offer, as he can teach Kiryu new moves to unlock and use for the Dragon of Dojima fighting style.
 * In a nutshell, Bob Utsunomiya (in the case of the Kiwami remake, he's known as Kiwami Bob Utsunomiya). You can find him at the Tenkaichi Street Entrance, where you can spend your CP to upgrade abilities or new equipment, or get the Kiwami Packs he offers. He is important if you want to do anything with him, so keep that in mind.
 * Try to stack up on Health items, especially Staminan (and most specifically Staminan Royale). While you can still get other items such as food and other variants of Staminan, most of the items won't help you recover a lot of Health and/or Heat.

Videos
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