Yakuza Series: Why I Loved It, and Why I Hate It Now
I started to take Japanese classes before first being introduced to the series. It was back in 2018, when I first got my PS4, I already had an XBOX One, a Nintendo Switch, and a PC, that’s why I was only interested in PS4 only games. According to the website that I now forgot, Yakuza was among the most well-received games there ever was. It described it as “Japanese GTA”, which is complete BS by the way, but it piqued my interest anyways. By then, the latest game was Yakuza Kiwami 2, and the playable games on PS4 was Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami 1, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza 6, and Yakuza Ishin. As a hoarder, I bought all of those games, and since I was never introduced to the series, I didn’t know what game to start with. After reading online, the answer was always to start with Yakuza 0. Yakuza 0 was not the first game to the series, but it was chronologically the earliest, and gives you the bigger picture.
Starting with Yakuza 0 was the best decision I’ve made that year. I won’t call myself the biggest gamer, despite the fact that I have a lot of game consoles. I sure do play a few games here and there, but it’s mostly for the story, and after I’m done with the story, there is no drive for me to finish the game. Yakuza 0 was completely different. Well first, it is in no way similar to GTA in any way, and second, holy crap, the story was perfect.
The story focused on two main protagonists, Kiryu and Majima, both two very interesting and well-written protagonists that is being dubbed by two incredibly talented voice actors. You get to play with these two characters interspersedly, as the narrative changes between them. At first, you would think that their stories are not connected in any way, but as the story progresses, their stories intertwine and becomes one large narrative that is just too addictive to leave it at that.
You know, since I started the game that one faithful night, I haven’t shut down my PS4 at all until I have finally finished the story a week later; until then, I have always set my PS4 to sleep when I was too tired to continue the game. I didn’t want to risk losing any important stuff while I was away.
I firmly believe in the tale of “oversell”, as the seller oversells the product to the unsuspecting customer and the customer becomes disappointed in the product due to being indoctrinated in its “goodness” beforehand. Believe me, I am not overselling Yakuza 0. It is, in my humble opinion, the greatest game ever made. Sure, there are definitely improvements to be made with, as the game’s graphics didn’t age extremely well; but that’s not the point of Yakuza 0. The point of Yakuza 0 is never the game play, the action, it was the story. Well, the action is also extremely fun, but the best part of the game is still its story. The story of Yakuza 0 is extremely well written, and it made me like all the characters, and to be completely honest, it ruined all other Yakuza games for me.
Sure, Yakuza 0 is chronologically the first game of the series, but it had such a great start, all the subsequent Yakuza games didn’t really make all that excited, with the story being stale and unexciting. So yes, Yakuza 0 ruined all the other Yakuza games for me, but that shouldn’t be the reason why you should avoid all the other Yakuza games.
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is one such game. I can comfortably say that Yakuza Kiwami 2 is on par with Yakuza 0 in case of story and narrative. It had an added bonus: the graphics was fantastic. The game was a remake from the ancient Yakuza 2, but it was built on the latest game engine developed by the RGG Studio, and it had the amazing story from the old game and the latest and greatest game engine, so it is extremely immersive.
The next, I must say, are the Judgment games. “Judgment” is a spinoff from Yakuza using the same settings and the same engine. There is no crossover between Yakuza characters and Judgment characters, but the story is set in the same universe; hell, it’s set in the same town. You play as a private detective/lawyer, Yagami, portrayed by an actual well-known star, Kimura Takuya, and solve the case that remained a mystery that clouded Yagami’s legal career.
On my PS4 game timeline, the first three games that I spent the most time on are:
1. Yakuza 0
2. Judgment
3. Yakuza Kiwami 2
Even though I called myself not the biggest gamer, but I still play other games. One notable outlier is the Marvel’s Spiderman game, which happens to be the only game that I’ve ever got a platinum trophy for completing every quest and every achievement. For a game that I received a platinum trophy on, it didn’t even crack the top 3 games that I spent the most time on, you can see how much fun I’ve had while spending time in the Yakuza universe.
One interesting trivia about my love of the Yakuza games. In the game, when the Yakuzas express gratitude or just as something they say they say ご苦労様でした, meaning something like “you did a good job, thank you”. I’ve heard it from anime as well, so I thought that was something that regular people should say to each other. I was taking Japanese classes at the time, and I would say this to my Japanese professor, Sumitomo Sensei, at the end of every class. Finally, one day, she stopped me, and told me that I should not say this to any one, because it carries the meaning of superiority and blame. Yakuzas say it and it’s fine, but when it’s regular people, it could be very demeaning. That’s when she told me to use the more polite form “お疲れ様でした”, a less demeaning way to mean the same thing. Anyways.
So why did I spend such a long time blabbering about my favorite game and game series? I’ll give you a list of my ranking of all the Yakuza games and you’ll see.
1. Yakuza 0 (duh)
2. Judgment
3. Yakuza Kiwami 2
4. Judge Eyes (Judgment Sequel)
5. Yakuza 6
6. Yakuza Kiwami
7. Yakuza 3, 4, 5
8. Yakuza 7
See something wrong? Yes, I’ve ranked the latest and last Yakuza game I’ve played, Yakuza 7, to be the worst of all of the games in the Yakuza universe. The story wasn’t that bad, no, it was actually quite enjoyable. Despite the protagonist switch from Kiryu Kazuma to Kazuga Ichiban, Kazuga is not a hatable guy. I enjoyed his storyline and his personality. No, it’s the gameplay switch that made me hate the game so so so so so fucking much.
All the Yakuza games before Yakuza 7 are all real-time action combat, which means that a click on the controller corresponds to an action that the character acts on in the game. For example, one click on the button “O”, the character punches. This style of combat, the real-time action combat, is what defined the series, and is part of what made the game so appealing to me in the first place.
As Kiryu was officially retired in Yakuza 6, and the “Godfather of the Yakuza series” himself leaving the studio, the game studio changed course and made the decision to switch the game from real-time combat into turn-based combat, something unimaginable to us old Yakuza fans.
The beauty of real-time combat is that you can beat the game with just skill. There’s no need to level up or use any of the power-ups if you’re never hit by the other side, since you’re good enough to defeat the enemy anyways. With turn-based combat, however, that all goes to shit. If you don’t level up in a turn-based combat, you will never progress onto the next round because just on numbers alone, the enemy is unbeatable. With turn-based combat, you need to give commands to the player character for them to perform certain actions; but after your character performed those combat actions, it becomes the other side’s turn to perform combat actions, and if their numbers are high enough, they can finish you with just one turn, giving you no opportunity to continue the fight.
For this reason, I have always avoided turn-based combat games, no matter how appealing the subject matter is to me. Yakuza 7 is the only game that I willingly chose to subject that game style on me. When the game first came out, I purchased the PS4 version from the HK store; but by then, I sold my PS4 in anticipation of the new PS5 that I thought I would be able to just buy from the shelf, so for a full year, I didn’t have a Playstation console to play with.
When I finally got my hands on a PS5 when my friend Qianqian’s brother used those scalping software to become a scalper and I bought one from him with extra money, since it’s been one year since my purchase of the game, I forgot that I owned the physical disc. That’s when I bought the PS4 version again. It’s only after a day that I found out that I already own the game, so I contacted the seller asking them to cancel the order, but the damn HKers refused to do so, so I had to give them more money in exchange for a PS5 version of the game just so I won’t waste money on the same exact version twice.
So when I first started the game, I had a significant learning curve. I’ve never once touched a turn-based combat game and not deleting it like 20 minutes afterwards, but due to my love and dedication for the series, and the story of Yakuza 7 was not boring at all, so I powered on. About 3 hours into the game, I was doing fine; all the combat back then was not too hard, and I could finish them albeit with not much HP left.
It’s not when I encountered the first boss. I could not, for the life of me, get through. No matter how many times I’ve tried, since there is no way that I could avoid being attacked by the other side, I would receive the extra brutal beating from the other side anyways while my character only does meager damages on the opponent. Then it came to me; this fighting style is all about grinding. There is no way for me to continue on with the story if I do not quit this specific boss fight, go back outside, fight every street hooligan I could see, level up, and restart the boss fight from the very beginning.
That very thought enraged me. It really enraged me to the point that I didn’t want to like the series any more. It was my favorite series because of the action combat, and the only reason I bought Yakuza 7 in the first place was because it was my favorite series. Now the new studio head is using his penis to stir the pot and produced such hot garbage that it made a Yakuza fan like myself hate the game so much because it is basically unplayable.
What is the fanbase of the game to the new studio head? Did he seriously not consider the fact that what will the old Yakuza fans who are not good at turn-based combat do with the new system? To get new fans of the series, the best they could do is to alienate the old fans? To get new fans of the series to enjoy the game with a new fighting mechanism, is it the best way, the only way, to do so? Why the fuck would you do that to me??
Yes, the game has garnered positive reviews from old fans who knew how to play in the new fighting mechanism, and new fans who were drawn into the game due to the new system; but what about the old fans who hate turn-based combat like me?
In the end, that boss fight broke my interest of the game, and I ejected the physical disc and put it on the shelf. But the story was still very interesting, and the boss fight was supposed to be progressing a cliff hanger, so when the game came on PC, I bought it again. Yes, I bought the game 3 times in total, but that’s the last time that I will ever spend a dime on the series. Why did I buy it again on PC? On PCs, you can use cheating software like trainers. Since the only reason that I bought the game again is to finish the story, I set my attack to infinite, so as soon as I input the command to attack the opponent, the opponent is defeated. Yes, to even finish the game, I have to use a cheating software to end the combat from the beginning. This is just sad.
I did finish the story, but like all the other non Yakuza games, as soon as I finished the main story, I shut the game down and never opened it up again.
When the latest Judgment game, Judge Eyes, was introduced, I got excited again. Judge Eyes still uses the same old real-time action combat from the previous games and the fighting mechanics are still top-notch. It just made me even sadder, because the only way I get to experience the old Yakuza experience is through the spin-off, not the main game.
That’s when I swore to myself that I would never touch a new Yakuza game if the current studio does not change course and move the main game back to real-time action combat. It alienated too many old fans to receive the current effect, and I do not appreciate this effort to make the game unplayable for me.
So yes, this once my favorite game series and game universe, will not receive another dime from me unless they reverse course and go back to be the Yakuza game that I fell in love with.