Now Playing — Yakuza 6 : The Song of Life

Where I played — PlayStation 5

Kiryu’s final outing as the primary protagonist is his best

Simultaneously a strength and a weakness — the Yakuza games never really change all that much. Like series protagonist Kiryu Kazama, they are an unwavering constant throughout the original run of titles (Zero -> 6). The tropes are almost comforting ; you’re going to go see the information broker known as the Florist, you’re going to hang out with Date @ Club Serena, you’re probably going to fight someone on the top of Millenium Tower. The gameplay changes in minor ways, but ultimately is still best enjoyed as a buffet. The main course is the combat/story-telling, but be sure to pace yourself and try out all the side-activities and nightlife that Kamurocho has to offer.

RGG Studio clearly got sick of the routine as well, and tried to shake things up for Yakuza 3/4/5. Yakuza 3 switches the primary location to Okinawa where you’re taking care of orphanage kids for the early chapters. 4/5 changed things up by letting you play as other protagonists for large swaths of the game. These are all interesting ideas but ultimately I felt that 4/5 suffered from a lack of focus. You want to spend a lot of time with one character so you can level them up, get good with their skill-set, and properly invest in their skills. 4/5 were LONG games, and were incredibly uneven in terms of quality. Yakuza 5 features a very strong opening section playing as Kiryu, but the later chapters where you play as Saejima are absolutely the worst chapters in Yakuza history. High-highs but very low-lows.

Yakuza 6 I think smartly returns to Kiryu as a solo protagonist, and focuses on a plot that is less about the usual inter-political Yakuza drama, and more about how all that stuff plays into Kiryu and his personal relationship with Haruka, his adoptive daughter. Yes there is drama between the clans but everything is properly spiced with things that motivate YOU the player. Several motivating mysteries are presented at the beginning of the game, and just as you get the answers you’re looking for, the game masterfully presents a new intriguing mystery to string you along. This, along with a shorter runtime compared to 4/5, I feel leads to the strongest central story in Yakuza history.

Going into Yakuza 6, I was expecting a “Metal Gear Solid 4” style wrap-up for Kiryu. I was expecting every loose plot-point to be wrapped up, for fan-favorite characters to make unexpected returns, and to see Kiryu get a definitive and final send-off. This game was marketed as Kiryu’s swan-song, and the end of this era of Yakuza. If I hadn’t been told that going in, I wouldn’t have really felt that way by the end of the game. A constant rule of this franchise is that if you don’t see someone get shot between the eyes, they are probably going to still be alive…no matter how improbable it seems. Kiryu gets a send-off, and a reason to walk away from everything, but he did largely the same thing at the end of Yakuza 2 AND Yakuza 4. I don’t see why anyone would buy the idea that we’re never going to see this protagonist again.

I would say if there’s one disappointment I had with the story, it’s that your gang of allies are largely new ones established in this game. If this was truly the wrap-up on the first era of these games, I want my immediate party members to consist of fan favorite characters / throwbacks / nods to other games in the series. Again, not to compare it to MGS4, but that game did the same thing way better. Having Raiden/Meryl/Johnny all come back to fight with you at the end just felt amazing. This game desperately needed it’s “Rex vs Ray fighting on Shadow Moses Island” chapter, and it never came.

Majima and Saejima only show up in the last few minutes of the post-credits scene. Dojima is AFK until the final moments. Why can’t these guys be in my party? Where’s the Florist? Where is Kaoru? (the female cop that disappeared at the end of Yakuza 2) WTF ever happened to Tanamura / Shinada? Akiyama is in this game for like an hour, tops. The pocket racer guy from Yakuza 0 shows up in an awesome side-quest, but I wanted like 10x that amount of throwback/nostalgia bait. YES I am a sucker for this stuff, and I feel stupid for feeling this way, but it’s how I feel. Kiryu getting almost killed towards the end would have been so sick if a whole crew of memorable characters came to save him. The most you really get is Date, but Date is in EVERY Yakuza game for hours and hours…I don’t need more of him.

To me, this was such a missed opportunity, but the story we DID get instead was the most focused and satisfying in Yakuza history.

The rest of the game is standard fair. The combat system is back and better than ever. People complained that they took away all the different fighting styles, but in my opinion that’s always been sort of a distraction. The combat isn’t all that deep at the end of the day, and the fun of it is watching Kiryu do all the crazy heat-action animations. I like dumping skill points into one primary tree and watching Kiryu get better at the stuff he’s been doing for many years. I don’t need some weird breakdancing fighting style, or to switch between light and heavy stances. This isn’t DMC3, I’m here to watching him beat people with bicycles…I don’t necessarily want to be learning all these mechanics. The fighting is too sloppy to support that deep kind of mechanical interplay.

The side activities are varied and high-quality. In particular I loved the baseball simulation…which finally gives you a way to put to use the skills you hone at the batting cages. There’s also a side-activity where you’re managing an army of dudes that’s very reminiscent of Fort Condor from the original Final Fantasy 7. This is good too, but I think a step down from the best Yakuza side-stuff like baseball or cabaret club management. Another highlight is the spear-fishing which plays out almost like a light-gun arcade game.

Overall I think Yakuza 6 is the strongest game in the main franchise up to this point. People cite Zero as the best, but I’m not huge on the protagonist switching, the different fighting styles, and I think the plot of Zero is largely standard Yakuza-fair, in that it’s more about the interpolitical turmoil of the clan, and less about the personal stakes for Kiryu. Yakuza 6 takes a step in the right direction of focusing on character OVER plot, and that’s always a good way to go for video game storytelling.