around the time yakuza 3 wrapped development, there seemed to be some internal consensus that kiryu shouldn't helm these games on his own anymore; the team thought that some fresh blood could really open up the scope of these games narratively and mechanically and instill a sense of surprise in its audience. and to be clear the series has benefitted strongly from how well it characterizes its protagonists relationships to their environment, but fourteen years later we can safely state that they kind of failed miserably at this task and kiryu is still around. still, this is what makes looking at yakuza 4 and kurohyou interesting - i genuinely have no idea what happened here. yakuza 4 is this insanely unfocused and indecipherable improv mess of 'yes, and' plot developments. you spend the whole game playing through highlight reels of what the dev team thought was cool - they'll hire koichi yamadera specifically to play akiyama ("If Akiyama isn't voiced by Koichi Yamadera then it won’t work! We can't capture his charms!") and then have him make constant metaphors about the animal kingdom, also because they didn't actually have any editors working on the game, they just had a bunch of guys in a room saying 'hell yeah'. they'll walk back pivotal character beats because they don't subscribe to the series' bizarre ideology on who can and can't be a player character. an antagonist will show up in exactly one scene wearing an alternative version of kiryu's suit to show that he's gone full heel and means business. we could literally recap the things that make yakuza 4 ridiculous and i would be here for the next 24 hours.

kurohyou, meanwhile, possesses a jolting sense of restraint. much of this has to do with its comparatively small scope, but even so as an attempt at establishing a new protagonist, there are clear strides to parallel the first ryu ga gotoku. when we first encounter kiryu, he's sacrificing himself by taking the fall for a murder he didn't commit; when we first encounter tatsuya, he's beaten a man presumably to death, and he scrapes up the loose cash he can find and makes a break for it.

all of which is to say that tatsuya starts off as a bit of a psycho - uncharacteristic for this series, to say the least - and the rest of the game is devoted to his character growth. it's parts tournament arc, parts delinquent manga, parts coming of age story, told lovingly through comic book cutscenes reminiscent of those found in portable ops or peace walker. for the most part, it's really solid! no one will be stunned by the direction the story takes but it comes off as tender and earnest; where the fixed camera angles of the ps2 duology reflect its noirish tone, the fixed camera angles of kurohyou's kamurocho evoke a diorama of sorts, befitting of tatsuya's small world and limited interiority. he's a high school drop out who can't really see beyond his fists, and the game manages to eventually channel a level of introspection which feels true to the character.

it sucks that the rest of the game is kind of a first draft. part of why i hold the original yakuza in such high regard is that it's a fantastically realized game that you can wrap up having experienced most of it in between ten and fifteen hours. comparatively, kurohyou has far less to do, but runs for about twice that time. the mini games are much weaker than the standard fare for the series, the absence of taxis makes getting around a bit of a pain, the OST isn't that great, and substories are a notch below the usual degree of quality in spite of how fun tatsuya's interfacing with the world can often be.

kurohyou's strongest draw, then, is its combat - vicious, kinetic, dynamic, and satisfying in ways that the mainline series sometimes can't deliver on. as a def jam fan i felt like i was being pandered to and i'm right at home with AKI/syn Sophia's sensibilities, but it still feels like it's missing something for several reasons. targeting limbs isn't really as important a strategy as it's made out to be; heat faces its most unsatisfying and uninteresting implementation thus far, with nary a hint of resource management to keep players thinking; grabs are too strong for players and opponents alike; for as many fighting styles as there are, some of them are underwhelming and homogenous and all of them are subject to long grinds in order to flesh out; the levelling system is somewhat confused and arbitrary; its differing focus means that some series staples, like long battles, aren't present.

but when it does work...man. so smart to center this game on intimate battles with no intrusion from the UI. performing custom combos and figuring out what works organically instead of queuing up the next tiger drop. relying so strongly on tells in order keep track of your own stamina and to figure out when an opponent might be gassed is a joy. the bosses are a mixed bag because their second phases are all kind of ass, but the bosses that decide to eschew convention via additional parameters (i.e. don't target this opponent's head; you are at increased risk of leg damage) offer very fun twists on the format that you're just not ever going to see in the mainline games.

overall, a great experiment - ten years of thinking about playing this game and now i finally got to play it. satisfying. they should let you cancel attacks using command inputs in the mainline games like they do in this one. sure, they break the combat system on its hinges, but they're pretty fun to execute, no?