I like the way Yakuza feels. The Yakuza Feeling (TM) is a very precise atmosphere. Silly and serious, clever and stupid, dramatic and light. It dances so deftly between those two extremes, its a tone that can only be accomplished through years of franchise building. By this entry, the story barely grazes my thoughts. I'm here for the Vibe.
Its interesting to see how the vibe has changed in the Old Yakuza vs Modern Yakuza. In many ways, not by much. Kiwami 1 and 2 try to cover up some patches, but they ended up more obviously exposing how thin many early substories could be. These games have hundreds of substories, but the depth leaves a lot to be desired compared to later entries. In Yakuza 3, when it doesn't have to clash with the presentation of Modern Yakuza, these substories aren't as annoying for their simplicity. Its all pick-pockets and con men, but the writing is sharper. More self-aware, more interested in leaving something memorable here. Its not quite Modern Yakuza Substories, but the steps are being made.
When I'm not thinking much about the story, I'm left to think about the Yakuza Feeling more. There's a lot of redundancy to Yakuza 3, things Kiwami 1 and 2 cut out. Every enemy encounter prefaced with a threat, ended with an apology. Several restaurants only allowing you to consume one food at a time, often followed by several dialogue screens about payment. Hitman missions end with a "thank you for capturing the hitman, let me take you to the base" combined with a teleport to the base, followed by a "excellent work, here is your money." It'd be seemingly simple to cut out the chafe and streamline some of these incidental moments to speed up gameplay. Modern Yakuza largely has. Except, that mundanity is kind of what the Yakuza Feeling revolves around. Those precise moments of in-between shape how real this world actually feels. The franchise knows this is a Video Game Ass Video Game but it takes so much effort to make the world feel well-realized. Developed with care. Little interactions that could only happen if the world felt real. Modern Yakuza may have figured out how to keep this atmosphere while leaning more into the Game Feel of it all, but there's something to be said about the classic structure of the franchise.
Yakuza's relationship with gender is fascinating in a different way. Women, broadly speaking, fill archetypes. Mother, daughter, lover, and some slight distinctions in-between. With the hostess minigame, a selection of fashionable women are the majority of the game's female characters. At the same time, Yakuza wants to be an empathetic franchise, even if its not equipped to be as empathetic as it wants. Yakuza Kiwami 1 dabbled in this with its own hostesses, particularly Rina Rukawa. Rina identified as a lesbian and Kiryu is plenty respectful of her lifestyle. He encourages her not to give up on women when another relationship breaks down and Rina starts debating on defaulting back to men. Still, it sort of feels like Rina is still attracted to men and the game never touches the idea of bisexuality. Its hard to tell if the game expects her to "grow up" and settle down with a man like Kiryu or not. So it exists in this odd zone of empathy but through a limited lens of the world.
Yakuza 3 hostesses have this same kind of dynamic, presenting simple archetypes but nonetheless interested in expressing empathy anyway. One hostess in particular, Miyu Shiraboshi, is a new hostess to Remastered. Miyu is a single mom who is delighted to talk about her son once she realizes Kiryu won't judge her for it. Miyu's struggle is fascinating, outlining how she can't even tell her employers about her child for risk of a sudden firing. Yet she also doesn't have much to talk about outside of her son, placing her as a Mom archetype above all other facets of her life. Even so, there's some radical about how the game is willing to present her as an attractive character because she wants the best for her son, not in spite of her motherhood. Other hostesses have issues with life goals and the risks of admitting to their hostess work to judgmental outsides. The game isn't quite ready to grapple with those problems as a systemic issue, inside focusing on foolish one-shot antagonists who can be easily beat down. But even so, I still really adored Miyu's characterization through the generally odd framing. She was just really endearing.
Although, Miyu also sparked odd characterization from Kiryu. He insists on describing Haruka as "like a daughter to me," unwilling to fully label her as his kid. By all intents and purposes, she is his kid. His entire orphanage is really all his kids, all of them with unique problems and personality traits that take up several hours of story. The game presents him as an awe-inspiring father figure, but is wary to actually call Kiryu a dad. The game already shuffled Sayama off to the land of never relevant so Kiryu could be single. Perhaps the franchise fears committing Kiryu too much to a stable life. Once he's a dad, its harder to justify his numerous misadventures. Forcing the definition of his family into this murky line might be their best idea of keeping him an available protagonist. Although, maybe that murkiness is intentional. Kiryu's not the best communicator even at his most enlightened, and the mistakes he's made wraps around every scheme in the series. His inability to fully commit to retirement is his greatest, most dangerous flaw. Even in a comfortable minigame romancing hostesses, Kiryu can't just be one thing.
Anyway, the most fascinating hostess among the pack to me for its Gender Dynamic is Yui Hatano. She's a mess. A party girl who gets blackout drunk, destroys most of her relationships, a person who hates to be questioned by anyone. Giving any kind of contradictory response to her immediately drops your relationship hearts, while agreeing that everyone else is to blame for her misfortune gets those big hearts. Yui's route is the only substory with only negative results: you must pay 300,000 yen to repair her damages. Once the payment is made, Yui suddenly apologizes to Kiryu and remarks with wonder: "I can finally apologize to someone." I love any character who's self-aware about their issues but doomed to never stop themselves, but that's not necessarily a characterization I'd define to Yui. A lack of apology isn't her biggest problem. Once again, the game is empathetic, but what its empathetic to is just so fascinating and hard-to-pin down. The actual issues of the characters are so hard to fix and hard to communicate, the game sometimes points to new problems to fix instead of the root issue, if there's even a root issue to point at to begin with. Its bewildering. Its fascinating. Its kind of just, what Yakuza does, for better or for worse.
Part of my generally pleasant feelings towards the game owes a lot to modern modding efforts. Kiryu's great, I love the doofus. But I just feel way more gender euphoria when I slap on Sayama's model onto his. I can understand why it might be dysphoric for most people to hear Kiryu's deep grunts out of Sayama's mouth. But for me, there was something empowering about it. No one reacted oddly to "Sayama" as a mighty paragon of this world. She was simply the trustworthy warrior that the streets of Tokyo feared to offend. It whips. For a franchise that's often so mired in Gender, forcing the world to have a complete non-reaction to Protag Sayama does a lot to salvage my ability to enjoy the game regardless. Hard to review this neutrally with that bias in mind. Kind of don't care. Game feels radical. That's all I need.
Its interesting to see how the vibe has changed in the Old Yakuza vs Modern Yakuza. In many ways, not by much. Kiwami 1 and 2 try to cover up some patches, but they ended up more obviously exposing how thin many early substories could be. These games have hundreds of substories, but the depth leaves a lot to be desired compared to later entries. In Yakuza 3, when it doesn't have to clash with the presentation of Modern Yakuza, these substories aren't as annoying for their simplicity. Its all pick-pockets and con men, but the writing is sharper. More self-aware, more interested in leaving something memorable here. Its not quite Modern Yakuza Substories, but the steps are being made.
When I'm not thinking much about the story, I'm left to think about the Yakuza Feeling more. There's a lot of redundancy to Yakuza 3, things Kiwami 1 and 2 cut out. Every enemy encounter prefaced with a threat, ended with an apology. Several restaurants only allowing you to consume one food at a time, often followed by several dialogue screens about payment. Hitman missions end with a "thank you for capturing the hitman, let me take you to the base" combined with a teleport to the base, followed by a "excellent work, here is your money." It'd be seemingly simple to cut out the chafe and streamline some of these incidental moments to speed up gameplay. Modern Yakuza largely has. Except, that mundanity is kind of what the Yakuza Feeling revolves around. Those precise moments of in-between shape how real this world actually feels. The franchise knows this is a Video Game Ass Video Game but it takes so much effort to make the world feel well-realized. Developed with care. Little interactions that could only happen if the world felt real. Modern Yakuza may have figured out how to keep this atmosphere while leaning more into the Game Feel of it all, but there's something to be said about the classic structure of the franchise.
Yakuza's relationship with gender is fascinating in a different way. Women, broadly speaking, fill archetypes. Mother, daughter, lover, and some slight distinctions in-between. With the hostess minigame, a selection of fashionable women are the majority of the game's female characters. At the same time, Yakuza wants to be an empathetic franchise, even if its not equipped to be as empathetic as it wants. Yakuza Kiwami 1 dabbled in this with its own hostesses, particularly Rina Rukawa. Rina identified as a lesbian and Kiryu is plenty respectful of her lifestyle. He encourages her not to give up on women when another relationship breaks down and Rina starts debating on defaulting back to men. Still, it sort of feels like Rina is still attracted to men and the game never touches the idea of bisexuality. Its hard to tell if the game expects her to "grow up" and settle down with a man like Kiryu or not. So it exists in this odd zone of empathy but through a limited lens of the world.
Yakuza 3 hostesses have this same kind of dynamic, presenting simple archetypes but nonetheless interested in expressing empathy anyway. One hostess in particular, Miyu Shiraboshi, is a new hostess to Remastered. Miyu is a single mom who is delighted to talk about her son once she realizes Kiryu won't judge her for it. Miyu's struggle is fascinating, outlining how she can't even tell her employers about her child for risk of a sudden firing. Yet she also doesn't have much to talk about outside of her son, placing her as a Mom archetype above all other facets of her life. Even so, there's some radical about how the game is willing to present her as an attractive character because she wants the best for her son, not in spite of her motherhood. Other hostesses have issues with life goals and the risks of admitting to their hostess work to judgmental outsides. The game isn't quite ready to grapple with those problems as a systemic issue, inside focusing on foolish one-shot antagonists who can be easily beat down. But even so, I still really adored Miyu's characterization through the generally odd framing. She was just really endearing.
Although, Miyu also sparked odd characterization from Kiryu. He insists on describing Haruka as "like a daughter to me," unwilling to fully label her as his kid. By all intents and purposes, she is his kid. His entire orphanage is really all his kids, all of them with unique problems and personality traits that take up several hours of story. The game presents him as an awe-inspiring father figure, but is wary to actually call Kiryu a dad. The game already shuffled Sayama off to the land of never relevant so Kiryu could be single. Perhaps the franchise fears committing Kiryu too much to a stable life. Once he's a dad, its harder to justify his numerous misadventures. Forcing the definition of his family into this murky line might be their best idea of keeping him an available protagonist. Although, maybe that murkiness is intentional. Kiryu's not the best communicator even at his most enlightened, and the mistakes he's made wraps around every scheme in the series. His inability to fully commit to retirement is his greatest, most dangerous flaw. Even in a comfortable minigame romancing hostesses, Kiryu can't just be one thing.
Anyway, the most fascinating hostess among the pack to me for its Gender Dynamic is Yui Hatano. She's a mess. A party girl who gets blackout drunk, destroys most of her relationships, a person who hates to be questioned by anyone. Giving any kind of contradictory response to her immediately drops your relationship hearts, while agreeing that everyone else is to blame for her misfortune gets those big hearts. Yui's route is the only substory with only negative results: you must pay 300,000 yen to repair her damages. Once the payment is made, Yui suddenly apologizes to Kiryu and remarks with wonder: "I can finally apologize to someone." I love any character who's self-aware about their issues but doomed to never stop themselves, but that's not necessarily a characterization I'd define to Yui. A lack of apology isn't her biggest problem. Once again, the game is empathetic, but what its empathetic to is just so fascinating and hard-to-pin down. The actual issues of the characters are so hard to fix and hard to communicate, the game sometimes points to new problems to fix instead of the root issue, if there's even a root issue to point at to begin with. Its bewildering. Its fascinating. Its kind of just, what Yakuza does, for better or for worse.
Part of my generally pleasant feelings towards the game owes a lot to modern modding efforts. Kiryu's great, I love the doofus. But I just feel way more gender euphoria when I slap on Sayama's model onto his. I can understand why it might be dysphoric for most people to hear Kiryu's deep grunts out of Sayama's mouth. But for me, there was something empowering about it. No one reacted oddly to "Sayama" as a mighty paragon of this world. She was simply the trustworthy warrior that the streets of Tokyo feared to offend. It whips. For a franchise that's often so mired in Gender, forcing the world to have a complete non-reaction to Protag Sayama does a lot to salvage my ability to enjoy the game regardless. Hard to review this neutrally with that bias in mind. Kind of don't care. Game feels radical. That's all I need.