Superbuu3's review: Yakuza

Ok first off lets clarify. Yakuza is not a japanese version of grand theft auto. For some reason western reviewers, were screaming it was and under that pretense people were heavily disappointed. Yakuza ia actually a RPG/Beat'em up. Now for me this is a great combination. Basically you are in a living breathing japan, this game to me had great graphics for the city this was based in. People move round there are massive crowds everywhere basically if you've been to somewhere in asia thats really busy this will seem amazing to you.

So how does the game play. Basically you are a ex-member of the yakuza who has served time in prison. Basically everything has got all screwed up and you've got to fix it up yourself. The storyline in this game is amazing, I absolutely loved it. The whole gangster thing was great for me. The game is mission based for the most part and you'll be running errands most of the time. The missions are varied and fun, especially the optional ones which can go in a variety of ways depending on if you can be bothered to do them.

While you free roam around the city you will get random encounters, from guys normally chasing after you. A fight will start, for me the fights were great. The reason being that anything in your field of vision can be used as a weapon. You can beat someone senseless with a bike if you feel like it. At first the fighting may not feel intuitive but as you unlock moves and power up you character, you will eventually get a much better feel for it. You can even carry weapons with you to fight with. The weapons even include guns which obviously have limited ammo, but it adds a nice little bit of variety when certain thugs pull out a gun during a fight. There are alos a decent number of swords in the game. For me though the more random weapons were more entertaining. You also have heat moves which allow you to do context sensitive moves. I though these were good fun cause they were all extremely brutal.

While your playing the game you can play various sub games, there's a batting cage game and some gambling ones and there's even some dating side quests, which involve hostesses. This is fairly unique in some of these respects and it gives you the chance to do a few different things in the game. The sheer volume of opponents you get to fight at some points in the game is amazing to see and comparing it to most games which only throw 4 or 5 enemies at you can make you really appreciate what has been done with this game.

This game isn't for everyone, but the sequeal which looks considerably better is coming out soon and due to the great storyline I would recommend you play this one first. People also seem to think this game is similar to shenmue, personally i haven't played that so i can't really say, but that may spark some people's interests.

If anyone has questions feel free to post them here.