This is partially a review of the game itself but also a bit of a PSA about the fan translation of the game that was released a few months ago.
The game itself is better than I was expecting it to be. The combat is a pretty different system that attempts to make it much more like an actual MMA game with different fighting styles and making each one play a bit different. The story (as far as I got, I quit after about 10 hours due to technical frustrations- more on that later) is largely unremarkable. You play as Tatsuya (who I did not find to be particularly likable) and you fight people until you learn to become a better person while also discovering a secret plot within the Tojo Clan. The vast majority of side content is untranslated which is unfortunate because I think that is where the Yakuza games hold quite a bit of charm and where some of the most interesting world building is done.
Now, about the fan translation. Enough of the game has been translated where you can play through the entirety of the main story but most things outside of that have been left untranslated (and because of how the translation was done, the original Japanese text has been replaced with asterisks, meaning you can't even get a rough machine translation without a Japanese version of the game). That on its own wasn't enough to dissuade me from trying the game out but the translated version also has a lot of technical issues. Several segments of the game crash, opening certain menus can cause crashes, starting certain substories can cause crashes. Most of it can be worked around but it because so tedious and frustrating to deal with that I eventually tapped out and decided to wait/hope for a better and more complete fan translation to appear in the future.
So, overall, I would only recommend playing the game through this fan translation to the most diehard of Yakuza/RGG fans. Are you absolutely desperate to return to Kamurocho one more time and are willing to put up with all kinds of technical issues? Well then this game is there for you.
Maybe the most unfortunate thing is that I highly doubt this game will ever get a re-release or a remake. In interviews, it's never been brought up whereas RGG Studio have talked about wanting to do something for Kenzan and Ishin. So it seems this game and its sequel may be lost to time.
The game itself is better than I was expecting it to be. The combat is a pretty different system that attempts to make it much more like an actual MMA game with different fighting styles and making each one play a bit different. The story (as far as I got, I quit after about 10 hours due to technical frustrations- more on that later) is largely unremarkable. You play as Tatsuya (who I did not find to be particularly likable) and you fight people until you learn to become a better person while also discovering a secret plot within the Tojo Clan. The vast majority of side content is untranslated which is unfortunate because I think that is where the Yakuza games hold quite a bit of charm and where some of the most interesting world building is done.
Now, about the fan translation. Enough of the game has been translated where you can play through the entirety of the main story but most things outside of that have been left untranslated (and because of how the translation was done, the original Japanese text has been replaced with asterisks, meaning you can't even get a rough machine translation without a Japanese version of the game). That on its own wasn't enough to dissuade me from trying the game out but the translated version also has a lot of technical issues. Several segments of the game crash, opening certain menus can cause crashes, starting certain substories can cause crashes. Most of it can be worked around but it because so tedious and frustrating to deal with that I eventually tapped out and decided to wait/hope for a better and more complete fan translation to appear in the future.
So, overall, I would only recommend playing the game through this fan translation to the most diehard of Yakuza/RGG fans. Are you absolutely desperate to return to Kamurocho one more time and are willing to put up with all kinds of technical issues? Well then this game is there for you.
Maybe the most unfortunate thing is that I highly doubt this game will ever get a re-release or a remake. In interviews, it's never been brought up whereas RGG Studio have talked about wanting to do something for Kenzan and Ishin. So it seems this game and its sequel may be lost to time.
DarkStar
2 years ago