Yakuza

The Good
I'm not that very much into brawlers. I want games to tell me a story and to use this mediums mechanics to do so. Most fighting games fall short of that. Yakuza doesn't.

I enjoyed Yakuza a lot. The fights were fun and learning new combos and moves kept me at the otherwise repetitive action of random fights in the streets. The boss fights on the other hand were nicely crafted in terms of presentation, setting and strategic challenge.

I liked the different environments you got to visit as Kojima. They never felt out of place or just like another stage for the next fight. Instead they always made sense in conjunction with the progress of the story.

The characters were well portrayed and made me relate with and care for them, their feelings and their fates. But foremost they were believable. They had motivations, human motivations: misplaced trust or loyalty, love, responsibility, greed, and yes delusions of grandeur...

The story was engaging in a way you'd expect from a good Yakuza movie. It kept me going through one more fight, one more setting...

The most important thing: I had fun being Kojima. I liked being a stubborn guy with an antiquated sense of loyalty. I enjoyed being a bad-ass fighting machine nobody could really step up to. Yes, of course he goes down because of some stupid, old stereotypes he still believes in. Yes, the world is not black and white the way he wants it to be. And yes, he has to pay for holding on to some romantic views. But that's what good stories are about: About the consequences people have to face.

The Bad
I didn't like the washed out graphics the city you had to spent a lot time running through was made of. I know the PS2 graphics engine can do better. Although the graphics made the city seem rainy and somewhat sorrowful - which made sense for the atmosphere - I found them overly dull and boring in the long run.

For my taste the dialogues were sometimes just to much. The habit to repeat every question or statement that was just said made me reconsider the games target audience: robots? preschool children? people with serious mental afflictions?

I didn't like the number of unavoidable random battles in the city streets. Sometimes I just wanted to know how the story goes on or finish my next quest. But I had to go through stupid and useless battles.

One line of quests I started to dislike as the game progressed was the Haruka line. You can use one character only so many times as a hook for a plot twist or a quest. She is the main character but some small quests were just to tedious.

The story ending was completely plausible and wasn't out of place in any kind. But for my taste it was just a little bit to cheesy. I like my stories with a more darker and mature touch.

The Bottom Line
Yakuza is a rare combination: A fun brawler within an authentic Japanese setting and a nice Yakuza story.