The Yakuza are perhaps best defined as various tightly knit Japanese criminal organizations having a ritualistic, strict code of honour.
This is the essence of SEGA's Yakuza franchise, with Yakuza 3 being the latest in the series. The game is set around Okinawa and Tokyo, with the player taking the role of Kazuma Kiryu, who has recently been promoted to the Fourth Chairman in the Tojo clan. Since the end of Yakuza 2, Kazuma has decided to quit life in Tokyo and start up an orphanage in Okinawa. The game begins after a brief introductory movie with one of the Tojo members and Kazumas close friends involved in an assassination attempt over the selling of the land where the orphanage is based.
The game is set over 12 chapters, with the initial three based around the orphanage, the reason for which will be clear if you’ve played the first two games. Rest assured however that if you haven’t, there are two movies to watch first on the disc, both of which combined would only take about 20 minutes to sit through. Unfortunately, this early part of the game could be off-putting to newcomers of the series due to various menial tasks and a lot of aimless running around. It isn’t until the end of the third chapter that the game gets up to speed with the introduction of the first boss battle, which admittedly is a huge amount of fun.
Environments in the game are based on real locations and are packed full of life, and despite the game being old (it’s obvious this was in development in the PS3’s early life), still make you feel like you’re a part of this community.
Tokyo especially is a neon paradise with many strip clubs, arcades, restaurants as well as places for pastimes such as batting cages, bowling alleys, gambling, pool halls, darts, karaoke and even a virtual fighting simulator (not to be confused with SEGA's flagship Virtua Fighter). These can all be played at any time within the game, and some even tie in with side missions. There are over a hundred side missions which can be played during the course of the story, or as a ‘Premium New Game’ if you are to complete the main story. There is also the chance to play a ‘Premium Adventure’ which includes everything except the story, so completionists can go back and complete anything missed the first time around.
The reason behind Yakuza 3 taking so long for a Western release was largely due to translating the game. With over 350 characters, there is a lot of dialogue subtitled both in cut scenes and during the game with no English option available for the voices. This isn’t really a problem - indeed it makes the game feel more authentic - but unfortunately during the middle of a cut scene there is a tendency to switch to in-game, which requires a button press to proceed through the subtitles before setting up another cut scene. It really slices up the atmosphere and detracts from the overall experience. Additionally, during phone calls you receive you can press R3 on the controller to ‘auto-play’ the conversation, but at no other time can you do this.
There certainly is a lot to do in the game, although some problems persist. Random battles can happen too frequently, and it’s very rare to be able to escape from them. Usually once someone decides they want to pick a fight with you, you're too close to the action to escape. Thankfully the fighting is thoroughly enjoyable, with many moves and combos available as you level up your character or find new weapons which can be bought, made (go go homemade nunchukas!) or taken from downed opponents.
Another problem which isn’t really noticeable until you have to follow someone is the so-called ‘analogue’ movement. Sure, there is freedom to move in 360 degrees, but the actual movement seems to involve half of the sticks movement allocated to walking one speed, and the other half for running. There doesn’t seem to be any gradual change in speed - which simply feels outdated - and what’s worse is that the game teases you with a sprint option which is only available in chase scenes via the R2 trigger and not functional any other time.
The minigames (of which there are many, listed above) vary from mediocre to very enjoyable. Probably the worst culprits in the game are the bowling and karaoke. Bowling requires a couple of button presses and largely down to timing as a bar swings left to right quite swiftly, and karaoke is similar to those music games where you press a button to the beat (although they often don’t feel natural to the progression of the song). The gambling games are no different to most other games we’ve seen in the past with Roulette, Texas Hold ‘Em and Blackjack - as well as a few Japanese dice games.
Aside from a few clear negatives, Yazuka 3 is actually very enjoyable if you don’t count various poorly implemented side quests. We can be grateful that there aren’t too many of these and at least they all reward you with experience points to spend on upgrading your fighting skills. The overall game can be completed around 20-30 hours if you just hammer through the main story but if you choose to try and complete everything then you can expect to be there for a good 100 hours. There were a few features in the original Japanese release that were cut from the Western version, but these missing features don’t detract from the game and in all honesty, if they weren’t mentioned online you probably wouldn’t even know they existed. There were a few reasons circulating for the cuts but cultural differences appear to be the main one SEGA cite.
There really is a lot of content in the game once you add up all the mini-games, side quests, story mode, epic boss battles, customization of weapons and armour as well as places to visit. It’s really hard to define the game to one particular genre due to the variety available, but an action-adventure RPG would probably be most fitting. If you like your games huge with a sort of sandbox feel to them then you definitely can’t go wrong with Yakuza 3. There is lot to do as well as a few added extras in the local release which unfortunately weren’t available in the review code I received. One hopes that the recently released Yakuza 4 in Japan will be released locally a lot quicker than this version especially as a fifth game has just been announced.
Definitely recommended.
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