Tag Archives: Yakuza

Yakuza 6: Song of Life — Issue 53

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Yakuza 6: Song of Life

Sega, 2016

Yakuza­’s swan song

Ah, Kiryu Kazu­ma. Sega’s leg­endary for­mer mob­ster turned hero is a liv­ing video game leg­end. Every time he defeats a heinous col­league from his past, he wants to go back to his hon­est life of tak­ing care of his fam­i­ly of orphans. Sad­ly, no mat­ter how much the Drag­on of Doji­ma desires peace, new ene­mies arise with grand delu­sions of pow­er to rule Japan in pub­lic and its under­world of crime. As always, Kiryu saves the day at sig­nif­i­cant risk to his phys­i­cal and men­tal health. This time, those threats hit home with even greater secrets and risks that could unleash pos­si­ble civ­il war in the crim­i­nal under­world (Again? Yes, again) in Yakuza 6: The Song of Life.

Tak­ing place after the events in Yakuza 5, Yakuza 6 has our hero doing three years in prison. Var­i­ous crime groups such as the Saio Tri­ad and the Jing­weon Mafia have tak­en advan­tage of the Tojo Clan’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. When Kiryu is released, he finds out that his ward Haru­ka Sawa­mu­ra, who was a ris­ing pop idol, sud­den­ly retired and moved to Onomichi city in Hiroshi­ma where she has an infant son, Haru­to. Kiryu then dis­cov­ers that Haru­ka is in a coma at a Kamuro­cho hos­pi­tal after a hit-and-run acci­dent. With these explo­sive ele­ments plus a mys­te­ri­ous secret in Onomichi that could cause a rag­ing gang war through the coun­try, Kiryu once again sets out to stop those who bring harm to his city and his family. 

The con­trol in pre­vi­ous Yakuza games that won me over remains and is improved thanks to the rebuilt Drag­on game engine. When not in fight­ing mode, Kamuro­cho has been giv­en a refreshed, crisp view. I appre­ci­ate the detail in Kiryu’s fight­ing scenes; he can use weapons to do mas­sive dam­age and look nice while doing so. Anoth­er new fea­ture is item stor­age. While stats must be increased to be able to car­ry more items, Kiryu can now use his smart­phone to hold var­i­ous food and health items and lev­el up when­ev­er he gains expe­ri­ence points. I espe­cial­ly liked the idea that Kiryu can obtain cer­tain drinks from vend­ing machines, includ­ing beer, which will increase his fight­ing pow­er. I also love the clan bat­tles fea­ture where Kiryu can form a group to take down var­i­ous char­ac­ters in a time lim­it and win cash and expe­ri­ence for his fight­ers. And I also enjoyed the Club Sega sec­tion where I could play arcade games like Hang-On and Vir­tua Fighter.

The music is excel­lent and var­ied, mak­ing me feel that I’m watch­ing a Yakuza movie than play­ing the game. If the game’s excel­lent detail to vital areas of game­play was not enough to sell me on it, I was stoked to find that Kazuchi­ka Oku­da of New Japan Pro Wrestling and acclaimed actor/comedian Beat Takashi made appear­ance as main vil­lains in the game.

How­ev­er, as much as I love the game, there are some neg­a­tives in Yakuza 6 that did­n’t make me stop play­ing entire­ly but gave me some pause. Dur­ing the fight­ing scenes where Kiryu gets ahold of an ene­my’s weapon, he dis­patch­es them in true Yakuza fash­ion, vio­lent and, at times, gory and dis­turb­ing. It was a bit much for me and seemed kind of unnecessary.

Anoth­er thing that both­ers me is the ram­pant and obvi­ous Sony prod­uct place­ment. It takes away from the game a lit­tle bit because it’s dis­tract­ing and is also unnec­es­sary. I know I’m play­ing the game with a Sony prod­uct; I don’t need it shoved in my face con­stant­ly that this was orig­i­nal­ly a Sony exclu­sive game.

Final­ly, there is a side quest that Kiryu can’t turn down. It’s not real­ly a side quest but the game tries to present it as though it is. That’s annoy­ing. If you want me to do the quest, just mark it as manda­to­ry and move on.

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is a mag­num opus to Kiryu Kazu­ma, but it also marks an evo­lu­tion point for the series. Although Kiryu is no longer the pri­ma­ry pro­tag­o­nist, he has been in new Yakuza games such as Like a Drag­on. For now, Kiryu and com­pa­ny can take a well-deserved break with this chap­ter in the life of the Drag­on of Dojima.

Yakuza: Dead Souls — Issue 39

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Yakuza and zom­bies mix well

In my vast inven­to­ry of inter­ests, mafia movies are one that would make me curl up on a week­end after­noon with pop­corn, drinks and oth­er treats in hand. While I know that some famous mafia movies and tele­vi­sion series are being devel­oped into video games, Sega’s Yakuza series is already a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of action, adven­ture, and the mafia. I was thrilled to com­bine my love for the series with zom­bie ele­ments in Yakuza: Dead Souls.

Set a year after the events in Yakuza 4, an unknown dis­ease out­break in the dis­trict of Kamurochō has affect­ed its res­i­dents, turn­ing them into zom­bies through bites. As a result, the Japan­ese Ground Self-Defense Force has been called in to assist with the slow and expand­ing quar­an­tine. Dur­ing this chaot­ic time, cer­tain ene­mies of the Tojo clan have arisen to take advan­tage of Kamurochō’s suf­fer­ing. The fate of Kamurochō and Japan rests in the hands of four men: Shun Akiya­ma, a loan shark try­ing to save his sick recep­tion­ist; Goro Maji­ma, a feared yakuza and con­struc­tion com­pa­ny own­er who is fight­ing his own infec­tion; Ryu­ji Goda, a dis­graced yakuza and takoy­a­ki chef whose clan has a tie to the out­break; and, series pro­tag­o­nist Kiryu Kazu­ma, who runs a children’s orphan­age and returns to Kamurochō when his adop­tive daugh­ter is kidnapped.

Dead Souls is an open-world game that com­bines action, adven­ture, and sur­vival hor­ror ele­ments. The plot is one akin to samu­rai movies where there are four chap­ters with four parts for each char­ac­ter with the final chap­ter reserved for Kiryu. Con­trols for move­ment and the game cam­era are sim­ple with the ana­log sticks. You will also be giv­en “mem­os,” a list with spe­cial sec­tions to teach you basics such as using weapons, eva­sion, and close quar­ter com­bat, which help when fac­ing off against the legion of zom­bies. I appre­ci­at­ed the abil­i­ty to lev­el up each character’s attrib­ut­es through use of soul points that upgrades abil­i­ties to car­ry more items, improve knowl­edge of zom­bies, weapons mod­i­fi­ca­tions and pro­tec­tive gear, and mas­ter advanced close quar­ter com­bat techniques.

As the game pro­gress­es, your cur­rent char­ac­ter will be assist­ed by three NPCs: Reiko Hasekawa, a researcher who offers infor­ma­tion and rewards for com­plet­ed tasks; Gary “Buster” Holmes, a firearms expert who helps the pro­tag­o­nists and their tem­po­rary com­pan­ions with gun train­ing; and, Ren­ji Kamiya­ma, weapons sell­er and mod­i­fi­er of weapons and pro­tec­tive gear who can also be used as a pawn­bro­ker to buy rare items.

I also appre­ci­ate the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of var­i­ous zom­bie ene­mies; that orga­ni­za­tion method can help you plan the appro­pri­ate strat­e­gy or sim­ply avoid con­tact with them. While you’re run­ning around Kamurochō, pay atten­tion to the music. It’s one of Sega’s best sound­tracks in the mod­ern era and puts the Yakuza series among Sega’s go-to ros­ter of great soundtracks.

The graph­ics are OK for the time when it released. It’s good for an open world game, though there’s room for improve­ment. Though, com­pared to oth­er games at the time, Yakuza: Dead Souls doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly out­shine the com­pe­ti­tion; it just mere­ly com­petes. The only real prob­lem I have with Dead Souls is the inclu­sion of sce­nar­ios where you must chase down peo­ple while fend­ing off zom­bies. I know a yakuza got to make his mon­ey, but Sega was putting these char­ac­ters in dan­ger­ous con­di­tions with­out any pro­tec­tive gear, which is slight­ly unrealistic.

Dead Souls is great to play on a day off or slow week­end, though I would offer two pieces of advice: Do not play late at night, and do not play while COVID-19 is still around. It’s a nice attempt to mix mul­ti­ple gen­res. I can say this with no doubt: Sega’s got a smash hit ready to secure all bags and show its com­pe­ti­tion why it does not pay to under­es­ti­mate the Yakuza.

Fun Facts:

* Yakuza is the term giv­en to transna­tion­al crime orga­ni­za­tions based in Japan. They are also known as” boryoku­dan,” which the Japan­ese police advise for pub­lic media to use when cov­er­ing yakuza-relat­ed sto­ries. The yakuza also call them­selves “ninkyo dan­tai,” or chival­rous groups.

* Accord­ing to Japan’s Nation­al Police Agency as of 2020, there are at least 25,900 active yakuza mem­bers, despite rigid leg­is­la­tion aimed to com­bat yakuza involve­ment with the Japan­ese pub­lic. These mem­bers are account­ed among the three major yakuza fam­i­lies: Yam­aguchi-gumi, Somiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai.

* Yakuza groups have been known to oper­ate in major U.S. cities and use Hawaii as a hub to con­duct var­i­ous legal and ille­gal enterprises.