It’s always a nice thing when a game can come around in such
a long-running series and manage to completely reinvigorate it, and Yakuza 6,
against all odds, happens to be one of those games.
For what feels like the first time in many years, I found
myself not only invested in what a Yakuza game had to say, but also entirely
immersed in its world. A big part of this is due to Yakuza 6’s back-to-the-basics approach; I don’t deny that some fans may mourn the loss of certain
features, and 6 also sidelines a majority of the recent Yakuza games’ ever-growing
cast of characters. But for me, the narrative sidestep serves as a welcome
return to form, allowing the writers to focus almost exclusively on main
character Kazuma Kiryu, telling a refreshingly down to earth story that, I’m
happy to say, comes without the forced J-pop elements and the mandated mini-games
of recent installments. This takes place amidst the most dramatic visual
upgrade seen since Yakuza 3, proving to be the real star of the show and re-energizing
what had otherwise become an incredibly stagnant series.
While I once fully enjoyed the Yakuza games for their involving
storylines, fun combat systems, and immersive cities to explore and interact
with, I’d been growing increasingly tired of what I’d begun to realize was the
game basic gameplay being featured again and again. Yakuza’s 4 and 5 painfully divided their narratives among several different playable characters, while increasing the focus on (what
I found to be) filler content and tedious mini-games mandated by the main
story. Their minute-to-minute gameplay however remained incredibly similar to
what it was from the very beginning, over the years having only tepidly evolved from
there. Last year’s Yakuza 0, as a result, proved to be the first installment
that I had to force myself to finish: a game that, for all its fancy battle
system upgrades, still felt like it belonged on the early years of the PS3, and
even the PS2, in some regards.
Despite all this, Yakuza has always managed to carry with it
a level of fun, with the games being fun enough on a basic level that I couldn’t help but wish they were better. Yakuza 6’s biggest triumph, then, is its much-overdue new
graphics engine, which finally brings the presentational aspects back up to
speed for a far more well-rounded experience than anything this series has seen
in a long time. Kamurocho feels alive in a way that it hasn’t quite before
thanks to some incredible visuals and audio. The lighting effects and
reflections are stunning, and combat as you explore is more seamless than it
has ever been, with the transition from exploring to battling almost an instant
one. Similarly, entering and exiting buildings comes with no load times to
speak of, with it even possible to enter buildings while fighting enemies and
having them follow you inside. The incredible graphical facelift comes with
features that this series should have had years ago; Auto-saving instead of
having to run to a phone booth to save your game is alone a major convenience, and
the ability to Pin locations on your map is a much-overdue feature that makes a
world of difference. Narratively, the removal of the blocky PS2-era text boxes,
which has plagued these games from the start, dramatically improves pretty much
everything about Yakuza 6’s storytelling. Menus have also been completely
revamped, with a mobile phone interface allowing easy access to quest menus,
items, and leveling up screens, which, while not necessarily new (GTA4 did a
lot of this back in 2008) easily puts its presentation far and above that of other
Yakuza entries.
As with part 3’s Okinawa, this game’s Onomichi (Hiroshima) serves
as a relaxing, more laid back and beachy counterpart to the hustle and bustle
of Kamurocho. This new city regrettably doesn’t allow you to enter too many of
its buildings, something the Yakuza games have always struggled with when it comes
to new locations, but the graphics are beautiful and the vibe relaxing enough
that I enjoyed my time spent there as much as I enjoyed exploring the
all-important red light district of Kamurocho, which, as always, features a
true abundance of sidequests to take on, mini-games to play, restaurants to
enter, and various bars and clubs to make use of.
Presentationally, the only thing that hurts 6’s next
gen appearance is an over-abundance of screen tearing and moments where the
framerate falls below its targeted 30FPS. In Kamurocho especially, the
seamlessness seems to take its toll on the engine, with abundant, almost
hallucinatory screen tearing happening any time you approach the entrance to a
building or run through a crowd of people, even extending to just rotating the
camera or scrolling across the map. Yakuza
6’s screen tearing may be among the worst I’ve ever seen, and while this isn’t
something that really gets in the way of gameplay, it’s hard to believe that
such an obvious visual flaw was allowed to exist in the final product. I’ve
read that this is less a problem if played on the PS4 Pro, so if you have the
choice, that would seem to be the best way to enjoy the game, as you also
apparently get a higher resolution and more stable performance on top of it. Still,
it’s unfortunate that fixing or at least reducing this doesn’t seem to have
been a priority for those playing on standard PS4s.
These visual shortcomings aside though, I can’t stress
enough that Yakuza 6 looks and sounds great. Would I have liked a larger area
to explore? Perhaps, but all in all I’m okay with taking a smaller game if
that’s what it took to make Yakuza 6 feel like a current gen product, and, for
the most part, it does.
Combat also sees itself retreat from its complex iteration
in Yakuza 0 to a more basic template reminiscent of earlier entries. Instead of featuring multiple fighting styles, as the recent few games
have had, Yakuza 6 instead primarily focuses on you achieving HEAT mode by
building up attacks, and then unleashing your increased strength on enemies while avoiding their own attacks. It’s simpler but still works, with
the reduction in the number of over the top battle animations and the
fewer weapons available to pick up being the only cutbacks that I think could have
been avoided. Otherwise, the leveling up system is fine, granting you a solid
amount of control over the customization of your character, and there remains
little that’s more satisfying than throwing your enemy to the ground and
mashing a bicycle on top of them, so in that sense, Yakuza 6 certainly
delivers.
As alluded to earlier, the storyline similarly seems
determined to scale itself back from the sprawling, multi-character casts of
Yakuza’s 4 and 5. As such, Yakuza 6 actually feels more like a follow-up to
Yakuza 3 than to those that came since, and I can’t help but think that this
was a determined developer choice; characters and events from parts 4 and 5 drop
off the map entirely for much of the game, making them appear to be largely
unrelated to the series’ present. Yakuza 6, in cutting out a lot of the filler,
is also one of the shorter entries in the series, clocking in at around 25
hours, with a good portion of wandering and side missions tackled to boot. Sticking
to the main quest alone would probably put you closer to 20 hours or shorter,
which still isn’t bad given the length of your average game nowadays; and being
left wanting (just a little bit) more is I guess better than being left wanting
less.
The story itself is solid, featuring some surprisingly
well-directed moments throughout its many compelling cutscenes. From the
beginning, Yakuza 6’s narrative held my interest. Haruka, the daughter-like figure Kazuma has been looking after since the first game, has wound up in a coma under
mysterious circumstances; in addition, she happens to have given birth to a
child. Given the increasingly irritating role Haruka’s been playing throughout the series,
especially in Yakuza 5, her comatose state in 6 alone helps elevate its
narrative above many of its predecessors’. The scenario that unfolds feels both
focused and personal, and while still not holding a candle to that of parts 1
and 2 (the only ones with crime novelist Hase Seishu’s involvement) Yakuza 6’s simpler
tale easily tops the many that have come since. That’s not to say that things
are perfect; the new characters aren’t especially memorable, and their lack of screen
time can make it hard to keep track of some of the game’s villains. Yakuza 6 does
make an effort to shorten the series’ sometimes excessively long cutscenes, but
of course the Japanese-only dialogue means that there’s still a lot of subtitle reading required of the player, and
depending on the size of your TV and your distance from it, reading subtitles
for extended periods of time isn’t always the easiest on the eyes. I understand the budgetary reasons for this, and the Japanese voice acting's universally excellent, so this isn't a huge problem, I just still find myself wishing that there was a way Sega could incorporate an optional English voice track. On a final note, a lengthy mid-credits
sequence also reverses a couple of the story’s more daring plot developments,
but the ultimately predictable ending doesn’t take away from what happens to be
a surprisingly compelling story, even if the series still sadly pulls back when
it appears that it’s about to attempt something truly bold narratively.
All in all though, I was pleasantly surprised by Yakuza 6.
Adopting a “less is more” strategy is always a risky move in a long-running series
such as this one, but in this instance it’s a decision that I feel paid off. I
wouldn’t be surprised if there are fans, especially fans of 4, 5, and 0, who
are bummed that many of the characters and combat mechanics from those games
have had a greatly minimized role in this latest installment. But the slimmed
down and more focused nature of Yakuza 6, including its gorgeous new graphics
engine and a much-needed upgrade of the series’ presentational elements, to me
proved far more important. I’d have preferred a little more to explore, with
more buildings to enter in Onomichi and a Kamurocho that’s at least as
explorable as it was in previous entries, but Yakuza 6, which I’d thought would
be my final Yakuza game, has instead reinvigorated my interest in them. And
that’s a pretty big accomplishment for a series’ 7th major entry,
and definitely a game I recommend to fans of story-driven games and open world beat-em-ups.
4/5
