This review contains spoilers
I think Yakuza 8's tone is best summarised by a multipart sidequest, where an old man asks you to comfort his dying wife by finding a way to make it snow in Hawaii. By the end of it, Kasuga is on a rooftop throwing handfuls of shaved ice with a gang of naked nappy fetishists.
Fun is fun. It is. It can be difficult to enjoy when we're more interested in the serious stuff, though. For Kasuga, Yakuza 8 really works. After all the homeless villages, abandoned buildings and sewer dungeons of 7, it's great to see him having fun in friendly, sunny Hawaii, pressing the Aloha Button to befriend everyone in town with his infectious enthusiasm. This is still an RPG, which only makes sense for the man who found his role models in Dragon Quest. It's really weird to use this game to attempt to tell a very significant chapter in Kazuma Kiryu's story at the same time.
I'm not saying they did a bad job of it. Just weird. In its later sections, the story gets quite relentless in recalling events from previous entries, and paying homage to the earliest games. So it's weird that he's doing it all as an RPG, imagining aggressors as Dragon Quest-style monsters, forming a party of Ichiban Kasuga's friends, and keeping everyone who ever held a personal significance to his past at a distance. It never really convinced me. I didn't fear for his life. They'd surely be doing better by Kaz if these were to be his final moments.
Yakuza 8 also pairs Kasuga against a new rival character of dubious morals. It's easy to see what they're doing. Kasuga inherited Kiryu's earnesty and selflessness, and Majima's larger than life personality. That leaves Yutaka Yamai with Kiryu's seriousness and Majima's unpredictable scariness. The two have a fairly similar dynamic, and it could feel like we're retreading old ground before long, but it still feels fresh right now. It's still surprising when scary Yamai goes against the odds to do a favour for Kasuga. With Majima, there was always a sense that it was fun for him to keep Kiryu-chan around, and maybe he was toying with him. If Yamai does it, it's because there's more humanity to him than he lets on. I don't know how deep you can mine that, but it didn't take long for Majima's shtick to get comically worn out, either. That kind of worked, though, as he became a lovable irritant against Kazuma's stoicism. I guess Yamai could serve to pull Kasuga back in line if he's going off the rails, but that's all up in the air at this point.
Anyway, story and tone aside, the game is fun! That's what they're going for, here. Bright, cheerful holiday setting. There's a Crazy Taxi homage food delivery minigame, a Pokémon Snap parody where you photograph wandering perverts, and an enormous number of big daft sidequests. It's quite happy to get loud, stupid and obnoxious, but it works when it's paired with characters you really like and believe in. Even the most lowbrow public event can be fun if you've got good friends with you. Again, this is more Kasuga's game than Kiryu's, though the message of opening up and putting your trust in others does play into his story, even if it's a little awkward in a game that's this Kasuga-hued.
It's a bit all over the place, really. A game this enormous lies on its variety, but it undermines the tonal shifts quite often. There's serious stuff here, and curiously, a lot of overlapping themes with MGS1. The failings of nuclear waste disposal, the discovery of a vengeful brother, and a new generation of soldiers/yakuza in a world that no longer needs them. Besides that, it's quite refreshing to see a Yakuza take on American culture, with its racist police and cruel disregard of the homeless. It's fun to see these topics covered by a series with this kind of poetic melodrama and infallible heroes.
Seeing a Yakuza game that primarily takes place in an English-speaking country is a real sign of how far the series' global popularity has come. They've incorporated American writers and voice talent in a way that would have seemed inconceivable back in their struggling PS3 days. There's a fairly absurd conceit that pretty much everyone in Hawaii is a fluent Japanese speaker, and the game pretty much forgets the dynamic of non-English speakers exploring an American city after a few hours. The Japanese audio track has a fairly awkward approach to it, really. Characters who are written as bilingual sometimes have separate actors for their English and Japanese dialogue. A few of the bigger characters have their Japanese actors record both parts, and some of them are supposed to be native-born American citizens. Suffice to say, they're not very convincing, and the subtitles are doing a lot of heavy lifting. If you want to play a version of this game with fully coherent English dialogue, there's a full voice track just for you. I'm just glad these games give global audiences a reason to become Akio Otsuka fans.
Even if they don't really work for Kazuma's part of the game, I still find the RPG parodies cute. Some of the Pokémon stuff, about how Hawaii is a "different region", "blessed by the Sun and the Moon" made me smile. They're working overtime, not only translating in-jokey dialogue for Japanese fans who know Pokémon, but turning them into jokes based on how the franchise has been presented in the west for the last 25 years. Yakuza localisation staff ought to have the same level of societal respect as astronauts and medical scientists, and I'm totally in their camp when they do something corny and absurd like explaining that Sujimon are dubious figures who make people around them "Super Jittery". Thousands of white guys know how to play mahjong because of the boundless effort of these professionals. We should embrace their sweatiest reconstructions of stupid Japanese puns.
Yakuza 8 is huge, features multiple cities, and a bunch of optional content. There's one that overwhelmed my playthrough, though, taking me out of the thrust of the story for almost a full week-
DONDOKO ISLAND
Dondoko Island introduces itself as a straight-up Animal Crossing: New Horizons clone. It's a tropical holiday resort that you have to help to rebuild. You catch fish and insects, chop down trees, break rocks and construct furniture to sell to the shop. It makes no secret of its inspiration. It's a blatant parody. The shop even swaps out its three pieces of furniture on display each day. It's once the grounding has been established that it really shows its true form. You're attempting to make the island as pleasant for visitors as possible, to get cash. This isn't Animal Crossing. It's an old Maxis/Bullfrog PC sim game on top of Animal Crossing. It's frighteningly addictive. Each day is a rush to collect resources, construct souvenirs and attractions for the visitors, and defend the island from fly-tipping pirates. There are actual real-time fights in this, though they're simplified to one-button attacks and dodges to keep things snappy. You have a life-bar, and if the enemies do too much damage, you might want to call it an early night to fully recover. You'll also want to upgrade your tools to fight and mine more efficiently as you make the most of each day. The days last about 10 minutes a piece, and feels ever more frantic as your resort and visitor numbers expand. Got to fill out that daily checklist, gather the resources for that dream project and maybe even fix up your house a little, if you somehow find the time somewhere. You try to be as efficient as possible, but there's no chance you're getting everything done. Thankfully, there is a definite end to the expansion and subplot. A point where you can call your work done, and return to the main story. Even after that, though, it remains one of the easiest sources of income in the game. When you're short of scratch for a new weapon, it's very easy to jump back on Dolphine and sink a few more days into island management.
Yakuza 8 is fun. It's mock-significant, and having finished it, I don't know how much of its story will have long-term impact. We got a few new characters out of it, and some more depth to their relationships, but they continue to kick the can down the road with Kazuma Kiryu's hypothetically inevitable departure. I never felt like Kasuga's crew were the most important people in Kazuma's life, or that the new baddies really held that much personal significance to him. If we're going to get Kazuma Kiryu stories, they'll need to be in Kazuma Kiryu games. As good as it may be, it just doesn't fit into an Ichiban Kasuga one. I never thought I'd end this asking for another Kazuma Kiryu game, but we're not ending his story like this.
Fun is fun. It is. It can be difficult to enjoy when we're more interested in the serious stuff, though. For Kasuga, Yakuza 8 really works. After all the homeless villages, abandoned buildings and sewer dungeons of 7, it's great to see him having fun in friendly, sunny Hawaii, pressing the Aloha Button to befriend everyone in town with his infectious enthusiasm. This is still an RPG, which only makes sense for the man who found his role models in Dragon Quest. It's really weird to use this game to attempt to tell a very significant chapter in Kazuma Kiryu's story at the same time.
I'm not saying they did a bad job of it. Just weird. In its later sections, the story gets quite relentless in recalling events from previous entries, and paying homage to the earliest games. So it's weird that he's doing it all as an RPG, imagining aggressors as Dragon Quest-style monsters, forming a party of Ichiban Kasuga's friends, and keeping everyone who ever held a personal significance to his past at a distance. It never really convinced me. I didn't fear for his life. They'd surely be doing better by Kaz if these were to be his final moments.
Yakuza 8 also pairs Kasuga against a new rival character of dubious morals. It's easy to see what they're doing. Kasuga inherited Kiryu's earnesty and selflessness, and Majima's larger than life personality. That leaves Yutaka Yamai with Kiryu's seriousness and Majima's unpredictable scariness. The two have a fairly similar dynamic, and it could feel like we're retreading old ground before long, but it still feels fresh right now. It's still surprising when scary Yamai goes against the odds to do a favour for Kasuga. With Majima, there was always a sense that it was fun for him to keep Kiryu-chan around, and maybe he was toying with him. If Yamai does it, it's because there's more humanity to him than he lets on. I don't know how deep you can mine that, but it didn't take long for Majima's shtick to get comically worn out, either. That kind of worked, though, as he became a lovable irritant against Kazuma's stoicism. I guess Yamai could serve to pull Kasuga back in line if he's going off the rails, but that's all up in the air at this point.
Anyway, story and tone aside, the game is fun! That's what they're going for, here. Bright, cheerful holiday setting. There's a Crazy Taxi homage food delivery minigame, a Pokémon Snap parody where you photograph wandering perverts, and an enormous number of big daft sidequests. It's quite happy to get loud, stupid and obnoxious, but it works when it's paired with characters you really like and believe in. Even the most lowbrow public event can be fun if you've got good friends with you. Again, this is more Kasuga's game than Kiryu's, though the message of opening up and putting your trust in others does play into his story, even if it's a little awkward in a game that's this Kasuga-hued.
It's a bit all over the place, really. A game this enormous lies on its variety, but it undermines the tonal shifts quite often. There's serious stuff here, and curiously, a lot of overlapping themes with MGS1. The failings of nuclear waste disposal, the discovery of a vengeful brother, and a new generation of soldiers/yakuza in a world that no longer needs them. Besides that, it's quite refreshing to see a Yakuza take on American culture, with its racist police and cruel disregard of the homeless. It's fun to see these topics covered by a series with this kind of poetic melodrama and infallible heroes.
Seeing a Yakuza game that primarily takes place in an English-speaking country is a real sign of how far the series' global popularity has come. They've incorporated American writers and voice talent in a way that would have seemed inconceivable back in their struggling PS3 days. There's a fairly absurd conceit that pretty much everyone in Hawaii is a fluent Japanese speaker, and the game pretty much forgets the dynamic of non-English speakers exploring an American city after a few hours. The Japanese audio track has a fairly awkward approach to it, really. Characters who are written as bilingual sometimes have separate actors for their English and Japanese dialogue. A few of the bigger characters have their Japanese actors record both parts, and some of them are supposed to be native-born American citizens. Suffice to say, they're not very convincing, and the subtitles are doing a lot of heavy lifting. If you want to play a version of this game with fully coherent English dialogue, there's a full voice track just for you. I'm just glad these games give global audiences a reason to become Akio Otsuka fans.
Even if they don't really work for Kazuma's part of the game, I still find the RPG parodies cute. Some of the Pokémon stuff, about how Hawaii is a "different region", "blessed by the Sun and the Moon" made me smile. They're working overtime, not only translating in-jokey dialogue for Japanese fans who know Pokémon, but turning them into jokes based on how the franchise has been presented in the west for the last 25 years. Yakuza localisation staff ought to have the same level of societal respect as astronauts and medical scientists, and I'm totally in their camp when they do something corny and absurd like explaining that Sujimon are dubious figures who make people around them "Super Jittery". Thousands of white guys know how to play mahjong because of the boundless effort of these professionals. We should embrace their sweatiest reconstructions of stupid Japanese puns.
Yakuza 8 is huge, features multiple cities, and a bunch of optional content. There's one that overwhelmed my playthrough, though, taking me out of the thrust of the story for almost a full week-
DONDOKO ISLAND
Dondoko Island introduces itself as a straight-up Animal Crossing: New Horizons clone. It's a tropical holiday resort that you have to help to rebuild. You catch fish and insects, chop down trees, break rocks and construct furniture to sell to the shop. It makes no secret of its inspiration. It's a blatant parody. The shop even swaps out its three pieces of furniture on display each day. It's once the grounding has been established that it really shows its true form. You're attempting to make the island as pleasant for visitors as possible, to get cash. This isn't Animal Crossing. It's an old Maxis/Bullfrog PC sim game on top of Animal Crossing. It's frighteningly addictive. Each day is a rush to collect resources, construct souvenirs and attractions for the visitors, and defend the island from fly-tipping pirates. There are actual real-time fights in this, though they're simplified to one-button attacks and dodges to keep things snappy. You have a life-bar, and if the enemies do too much damage, you might want to call it an early night to fully recover. You'll also want to upgrade your tools to fight and mine more efficiently as you make the most of each day. The days last about 10 minutes a piece, and feels ever more frantic as your resort and visitor numbers expand. Got to fill out that daily checklist, gather the resources for that dream project and maybe even fix up your house a little, if you somehow find the time somewhere. You try to be as efficient as possible, but there's no chance you're getting everything done. Thankfully, there is a definite end to the expansion and subplot. A point where you can call your work done, and return to the main story. Even after that, though, it remains one of the easiest sources of income in the game. When you're short of scratch for a new weapon, it's very easy to jump back on Dolphine and sink a few more days into island management.
Yakuza 8 is fun. It's mock-significant, and having finished it, I don't know how much of its story will have long-term impact. We got a few new characters out of it, and some more depth to their relationships, but they continue to kick the can down the road with Kazuma Kiryu's hypothetically inevitable departure. I never felt like Kasuga's crew were the most important people in Kazuma's life, or that the new baddies really held that much personal significance to him. If we're going to get Kazuma Kiryu stories, they'll need to be in Kazuma Kiryu games. As good as it may be, it just doesn't fit into an Ichiban Kasuga one. I never thought I'd end this asking for another Kazuma Kiryu game, but we're not ending his story like this.