I’m right at the end of Yakuza 6 now – at the last point at which you’re free to roam prior to entering into the finale. I’ve stopped for a bit because it will make me a little sad to have run out of Yakuza games to play again but since I’ve pretty much all but completed it, I thought it time to sit down and splurge out my thoughts.
As with all the Yakuza games I’ve played (Zero, Kiwami, and now this) there’s a general trend of slow start, and then around the mid-pont, the story really heats up and pulls you in. I still maintain that Zero does this the best of any of those three – in part because the jumping between Kiryu’s and Goro’s story constantly keeps things fresh, and when those two stories begin to cross-over things become doubly interesting.
But Yakuza 6 is a magnificent game – most of my criticisms are down to personal taste. For example, I enjoyed building Caberet Clubs with Goro and acquiring properties with Kiryu in Zero a lot more than playing the baseball ‘management’ game or the clan battler in 6 even though those two games are significantly more fleshed out.
I prefer the controls for the baseball batting game in Zero than 6. I prefer the telephone game in Zero to the Internet chat-room of 6 – the former is funnier, sillier, and requires some (albeit not much) skill rather than the impossible-to-fail mechanics of the chat-room which gets very tedious very rapidly. There’s no bowling, no arena (that I’ve found), no Pocket Circuit, no disco dancing, no grabby games and I miss all those aspects tremendously. The control system of the darts game has made it easier – once you’ve got the best darts it’s basically impossible to not go out in six darts in a game of 301. In fact, I’ve found the game as a whole considerably easier than either Zero or Kiwami – I spent some time trying to figure out whether or not the design itself made things easier, or whether three games in I was just better at it. I’m pretty sure it’s the former.
Regardless of how you feel about the videos you unlock in Zero by collecting the telephone cards of sexy Japanese ladies, this mechanic of completing an album is compelling. If you give me a collection to fill, I’m motivated to fill it – regardless of what it is. In Yakuza 6, there are no such collectables unless you count the ghost photos. But given that these don’t fill out a collection, or even an “x out of n” number, I’m not motivated to hunt for them in the same way. The sparklies you find around the map almost always end up being junk clutter which you sell for an entirely useless amount of money.
Just like in Zero and Kiwami, there’s tough boss characters roaming the streets – in Zero it was Mr. Shakedown, in Kiwami it was Goro. Unlike those two games, fights with these characters is by choice only which removes any kind of threat or panic from roaming around, and fights with them (although they get progressively tougher) remain fairly easy. You could chalk this up to Kiryu simply being a tougher character at this stage in his life, so it makes sense in terms of story but produces a less exciting game as a result.
What I have discovered, upon revisiting Zero recently, is how much I miss the photography in 6. I’ve spent a quite ridiculous amount of time in 6 getting stupid selfies with the various mascots around the city, and also a collection of photos of Kiryu standing next to toilets. Don’t ask me why.
So that’s all basically a bunch of thoughts about all the side-questy stuff. The actual meat of the game, well, this is as up to snuff as you’d expect. I’ve really enjoyed the father themes the whole story revolves around. I particularly love the relationship between Kiryu and Makoto Date (detective spin-off game with him, please). And even though most of the game concerns new characters rather than bringing past-favourites back to close the book on them, these new characters are terrific and, to me, it makes sense to do this given this game is designed to give closure to Kiryu’s story. Throwing other main established characters into the mix would dilute this, in my opinion, regardless of how much I’d like to play another game with a Goro as strong as he was in Zero.
The advances of Yakuza 6, though, really do make a huge difference. There’s a lot more voice acting – in Yakuza Zero almost all side quests were silent with text displayed. The lighting, particularly at night time, is gorgeous. Being able to enter buildings seamlessly makes a huge difference and the fact that a lot more buildings are enterable, even if they don’t contain much in the way to interact with, makes the map feel larger. I love that cars now drive along the roads in the map, and it amuses me that the drivers will honk their horn when held up by a bunch of quite obviously Yakuza having a fight in the middle of the road. Were I that driver, I would sit there patiently and hope they didn’t notice me. You’ve got balls, driver.
Ultimately, the Yakuza games do a really great job of building a world and including activities and quests which make sense in terms of the time period the game is set in. But, to me, my experience of playing these three Yakuza game just cements how much more interesting I find the slice-of-Yakuza-life during the 80s than modern day. I would really, really, like them to revisit these periods in future games.