Yakuza 3 review

With all factors weighed in, Sega made it difficult for me to love Yakuza 3. Again, we get an inferior version of the game, which has arrived much later than the original Japanese release. It looks dated, gameplay gets repetitive; the whole thing just doesn’t feel like the evolution that we all wanted…and yet I still enjoy it.


Simple question to tackle then: why?

For those uninitiated, the Yakuza games are an interesting blend of Grand Theft Auto with the elements of JRPG styling, stirred into a complex Japanese mafia plotline. Yakuza 3 has Kaz, our well known protagonist from previous iterations make his return. He’s left the mafia lifestyle to move to the sunny beaches of Okinawa to sport some pretty sweet Hawaiian shirts; you can tell the developers have taste!

Faster than you can say “exposition,” a military base/resort is planned to be built on Kaz’s home/orphanage, his friend is shot by somebody who looks like his dead dad, and all hell breaks loose within the Yakuza.

The story is an interesting one to say the least, and there is a whole lot of quirkiness as we’ve come to expect from Sega. Dig a little deeper, and the beauty of this title comes from not the story; but the fact that the story is only part of the picture (well 11%, counting it from the completion percentage after the story). There is plenty for you to do after the 20+ hour storyline: go to a karaoke bar, go to the Sega Arcade (with emulated classics), go play golf, the list is endless. You really do get value for your money with Yakuza.

Presentation hits and misses to say the least. The cut scenes are slickly directed and push the story along with great sound design and visual flair. However, delve into the gameplay, and you’re treated to conversations through text. I’m not condemning this; text works for some games. But I found myself skipping through these sections more than not, and getting aggravated at the fact that you can’t skip the entire conversation, just each line of text. The graphics are also a little dated: robotic character movement and blurred textures plague certain sections; but it fortunately doesn’t get in the way of the immersion.

But this is saved, somewhat, by the gameplay; which is exactly what we have come to expect from Yakuza. The overall free-roaming exploration sections give the user limited control: the bread-and-butter of it comes in two parts. There are a large amount of ‘mini-games’ (I put it in brackets because many are much bigger than your average mini-game), and each of these have a dedicated control style that is fully-fledged and easy to get used to. This perhaps one of those moments where quantity does add more than quality.



And secondly, the fighting has been tweaked in certain areas to make a much more robust gameplay mechanic when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. Plenty of violent moves can be inflicted with your own fists and weapons. Combos are simple, yet have a complexity that encourages exploration and experimentation. These sections get repetitive; but the joy of playing them lasts longer than you expect it to though. Plus the enemies that you fight don’t actually die…I’m really not kidding about this! You curb stomp them, break their necks, and upon succeeding you’re greeted with the same animation of the enemies limping away. It just feels really weird to have quite a violent game about the Japanese mafia and not have anybody dying.

So the question still stands: why? Why, with the check board dotted with many cons, is this game still a standout enjoyable experience? Yakuza 3 is a similar proposal to having a friend. On the main hand it’s nice to you with an immersive experience; but there’s the little bits that just annoy the crap out of you! However, like a bear to honey, you’ll always come back for more…you may see all the bad things on paper; but this is much more of a game where you have to put yourself in the drivers seat to see the attraction.

An interesting title to say the least, with a good story, enticing gameplay, and some utterly crazy humour to boot! Well worth a look.