Working through my Yakuza 6 feelings ⊟
In the last few years, I’ve really come to understand the truth about myself: that I love Yakuza games. They are my comfort gaming. As long as I can get that satisfying heft of a context-sensitive attack at the end of a combo, and a series of dumb side-stories to punch my way through, I am happy. And all Yakuza games let me do that.
So even when I recognize that Yakuza 6 is not my favorite game in the series, it still is one of those games in every way that matters. I love it, even if I don’t love it as much.
This game is billed as the finale of Kiryu’s story – which is one of my main issues with it. While it does tie up Kiryu’s life story, it does so while focusing on a bunch of new characters who have nothing to do with anything that happened in the previous games, only one of whom is Beat Takeshi. If it were an all-Beat cast, I’d be more willing to look past the hijacking of Kiryu’s narrative by nobodies. I recognize that it’s an attempt to cut to the emotional core of who Kiryu is, to reduce it to the basics of Kiryu caring for his adopted family to the point of destroying anyone who would oppose it… but it does so by introducing an entirely new adopted family. It’s a weird choice.
Haruto, though, is wonderful. He’s a very cute baby who sometimes hangs out in Kiryu’s arms, though mostly hangs out in a basket or in the arms of some bumbling, caring yakuza. Janine Hawkins put this better than I could, but Yakuza 6′s version of parenthood is more involved and realistic than the average Dad Game. Like, the tough-guy characters take care of the baby, rather than just fighting around him. There’s plenty of that too of course.
The new engine is another sort of mixed blessing. It’s true that it’s a true open world now, with no load times between fights or when going into buildings – and now there are places like multi-story buildings with different businesses on each floor. But the transition to a new engine also necessitated a reduction of content. Part of Kamurocho is conspicuously walled off, and there aren’t quite as many minigames to enjoy. The new town of Onomichi is tiny and light on content, too – for a Yakuza game, which is to say you can accidentally discover a baseball management game there.
The new engine also updates the graphics. Kiryu’s face is a lot uglier now, which I guess is how the game marks his advancing age, because he’s also able to jump off a building like nbd. The frame-rate has taken a hit and there’s some screen tearing, but in general everything does look more convincingly real than before.
By Yakuza 5, Sega had built up a repertoire of Heat Actions such that I don’t think I ever saw all of them. Kiryu’s combat arsenal is tiny compared to previous games, with a few Heat Actions you’ll see over and over again. Combat is way different now thanks to the new ragdoll physics – now throws are way more useful, as each one will knock over and possibly even knock out anyone else who gets in the way. Bothersome things like blocking and dodging are downplayed in favor of just bowling everyone over. It’s a lot less technical and a lot easier – and less unfair (looking at you, high-level Majima Everywhere). Combined with the lack of loading times, I was literally ending fights while the enemy-identifying text was still on the screen.
I hesitated over even writing this review because it was going to sound negative. The truth is, I’m only able to pick apart things I don’t like as much about this game because I have spent a solid month playing, replaying, and thinking about it. I finished the story and immediately went into a New Game+ so I could enjoy the power-fantasy feeling of absolutely destroying even bosses without breaking a sweat, and so I could replay the weird substories. In particular, one in which Kiryu is drafted to be a local mascot character is among the best Yakuza moments ever.
Doing this substory at night adds a layer of weirdness.
Narratively, Yakuza 6 highlights the very best aspects of Kiryu by, regrettably, ditching pretty much everyone else he knows. It offers a promising new engine, cutting out some of the liveliness grandfathered in from previous games. It doesn’t have everything in the same way 5 or 0 did, merely a lot of things. I still adore it.
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