Shooting is kind of awkward, but often packs a real punch. Considering how gun control is Japan is really strict (much like how it's treated in Sleeping Dogs' take on Hong Kong) guns are hard to come by and often really expensive.

There are lots of cool and really brutal looking attacks in this game since 99% of it focuses on hand-to-hand combat. Special attacks often involve situational moves like if you're up against rails or walls, or if the enemy is flat on the ground or near one or more of their hapless friends. The combat however, is in real time with combos involving light and heavy attacks. There's also Club Sega and Don Quixote discount stores. And if you're way too hammered, you can buy some Boss Coffee to freshen up. If you visit a bar, you can buy Jack Daniels Whiskey or Skyy Vodka. But it's the kind of stuff you'd expect in a major city. It's a really well done slice of a city with product placement and advertisements out the ass. You shop at convenience stores, meet shady weapons dealers in back alleys, and train on rooftops or in the basements of dojos. There are random encounters, experience points, skill points, moves to learn, gear to equip, weapons to modify, money to earn, jobs to manage, but all in the setting of a fictional district in Tokyo. The main thing (at least for me) is how the Yakuza games are basically RPGs set in modern day. And the characters always take it really seriously. People kill, get killed, plot, take bullets for others, scheme, lie, conspire, rip their shirts off for dramatic fights, and fake their deaths at such regular intervals that it wraps around to the point of being really entertaining and sometimes dumb. And this game has a great cast from the shady moneylender Shun Akiyama, the gorilla-like hitman Taiga Saejima, the beat cop who bends the rules Masayoshi Tanimura, and the Dragon of Dojima Kazuma Kiryu.Īnd if you're the type to keep up on Japanese narratives, you can rest at ease knowing the plots of these games are always entertainingly ludicrous and convoluted. Bonus points if they're always brushing up against the main plot that eventually draws them in. Anytime you have stories that aren't related to each other that eventually intersect is great. One of my favorite things in video games is when you have multiple playable characters with different views. Yakzua 4 has a distinction from the previous entries as it features four playable characters including Kiryu, and not all of them are wrapped up with the Yakuza. Like any good mafia/organized crime story, he can never stay away for long as people and forces are always drawing him back in. The first three games follow Kazuma Kiryu, aka the Dragon of Dojima, as he tries to go straight without letting the Tojo Clan that raised him fall apart because of his personal honor and dedication to family and other idealized stuff. No, they're about modern crime stories where the main characters are caught up in a lot of Yakuza politics as people and forces make grabs for power inside and outside different crime families with all the illegal nonsense that entails. These games are not about saving the world or even Japan, which is surprising considering this is an action RPG. This is the fourth entry in a long running series about Japanese organized crime syndicates known as the Yakuza. Yakuza 4: The Great Japanese Crime Soap Opera It's got the right amount of seriousness, wacky personality and flashy action.Īnd the game is an action RPG set in modern times if you can believe it.

Yakuza 4 is just the game I've been looking for. And man am I sorry I didn't get this sooner. I was half paying attention at the time because there were other things I was more interested in (and I didn't own a PS3 at the time) but with the dawn of 2014 and the slow launch of new consoles with games that don't interest me, I decided to follow up on some old recommendations. Past that there was a little running around in a nice looking depiction of the streets of Tokyo and a fight with some dumb thugs. I only remember this really long scene of a man talking to a woman in a trench coat who wanted a huge loan in the form of millions of yen. A long time ago a friend of mine sat me down to show a little bit of Yakuza 4.

Yakuza 4 hostess club post game