Stick with it though, and these scenes serve well to really build up the backstory and familiarize you with these new characters.Īlongside the familiar face of series staple Kazuma Kiryu is Masayoshi Tanimura, a corrupt police officer and heavy gambler hostess club owner and loan shark, Shun Akiyam and former Yakuza and escaped prisoner, Taiga Saejima. For some people this will undoubtedly be a really hard grind, especially when you hit sections where Sega has over-complicated things and characters just jabber away for the sake of it, adding nothing at all to the plot. This largely involves sitting through reams of un-skippable text translated into English from Japanese.
Yakuza 4 hostess no 1 full#
Yakuza 4 is just like the other games in the series in which you need to invest a lot of time to get the full experience.
By playing through individually with each of these characters you get to experience one of the finest aspects of any Yakuza game – its colourful characters and the way the writers draw you into the game world so incredibly well. All four stories intertwine, and although it takes some time to get there, the way that each character’s destiny links and how everything comes together proves to be a real highlight. And it really is worth exploring these different characters. Yakuza 4 is already likely to take up 20 hours+ (a conservative estimate) of gameplay time, so the replay value is taken to an unprecedented level with these four new story arcs. Though gameplay will be instantly familiar to fans of the series, the big change this year lies largely in the storyline, and the fact that you can now play with one of four characters. Fortunately, the game largely paces itself well between lengthy cut-scenes and the ability to explore or take part in one of the dozens of fights you’ll inevitably get caught up in. The fact that you never really know what you’re going to be doing next – whether it be scouting for girls at the hostess bar, chasing a punk down a side alley after stealing your wallet, or fishing for eel and prawn in the middle of night – is part of Yakuza’s appeal. Disappointingly, Sega hasn’t come close to pushing the power of the PlayStation 3’s GPU, but Kamurochô is still a dazzlingly bright, effervescent city and an appealing place to explore. To the naked eye not much has changed visually from Yakuza 3. As such, Yakuza 4 is essentially Yakuza as you probably already know it a familiar and enjoyable mish-mash of brawler, Japanese eccentricities and general oddness. Yakuza 4 slots quite comfortable into that same cult classic bracket without ever really breaking a sweat, or trying too hard to be any different to its predecessors. It’s really this combination of the Japanese experience and hard-hitting combat – as well as the enticing neon-lit location (based on Tokyo’s Kabukichō district) – which makes the Yakuza series a cult favourite among many gamers. These authentic characters worked perfectly alongside the eccentric gameplay and brutal violence.
The dubbed English translation of character’s voices in the first Yakuza game was quite horrible, but in Yakuza 2 the authentic Japanese experience was complete with a cast of believable characters that spoke in their native language. From Japan’s obsession with karaoke and girls in school uniform, right down to the captivating, quintessential Japanese soundtrack – made up purely from home-grown musical talent – Yakuza 4 couldn’t be more Japanese if it tried and it’s all the more better for it. Some six years after its original debut in Japan, Yakuza is still a sprawling, action adventure full of bizarre mini-games, violent combat and cinematic quick time events (QTEs.) Likewise, its storyline is still rich with the country’s history of the infamous Yakuza gangs, while its colourful aesthetic and unorthodox side-quests represent the colourful culture of its people perfectly. You’ve got to admire how Sega has yet to pander to western tastes and mass appeal by watering-down the quirky, Japanese-flavoured Yakuza experience.
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