I got covid twice in 2023 and the second bout was far worse than the first. Its possible, then, that my attempt to play Yakuza 6 in a week was a number of things. Ill-advised. Dangerously exhausting. Experience hampering. Unhealthy. Something like that. I tried to alternate days between this and Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, but I truly hit a feeling of hatred to Yakuza I never reached before. I had started Y6 because I needed a vacation game. I needed the mindless repetition that I've found so soothing in previous entries. Instead, I hit one of my lowest existential lows I've ever hit. Taking five days away from it before I entered endgame was the correct move for me. I found joy again in the baseball minigame and I wrapped up the final boss with general positive outlook.

But with all that in mind, with all my understanding of how my illness and angst definitely impacted my mood and perception, I still kinda think this game isn't very good.

Hiroshima is a fun setting. Placing Yakuza in a small town is the sort of direction I'd want to see more from. Intimate little stories about locals and their daily troubles is a different vibe from the constant hustle and bustle of Kamurocho and I think its a good place for the emotions of this franchise to go. Yet, the substories don't really lean into that intimacy. The wider story about the power of the Shipbuilding Company and its impact on the local economy, that's good meat! But shockingly, when I think of Yakuza stories about tight-knit communities, the Yakuza 3 substories easily outpaces Yakuza 6's just sort of banal local oddities. There's some fun gems, but its hard to feel like that they add to defining Hiroshima. Kamurocho is a place where anything can happen. Transplanting the high concept substories into Hiroshima without putting in some work into defining the daily life of the setting sort of takes me out of the process.

The minigames of Y6 can't help but feel weaker in other aspects. The hostess dates have shrunk in complexity and scope. In previous entries, hostess dates followed a steady path. You gain hearts, you build trust, and you gain short conversations about the personal life of the hostess. There's an arc to unravel. In Y6, every conversation is randomized in all your interactions, regardless of your heart rankings with the women. As a result, there's no real sense of progression or growing trust. You can learn about hobbies or favorite foods, but you can't learn about past traumas or insecurities. One of the hostesses is a professional wrestler, a storyline that only amounts to "I must keep fighting for my fans." I dislike criticizing something for what it isn't, but previous hostess minigames would often involve subplots with rivals or evil boyfriends or family troubles, slowly padded out over different dates. The hostess minigames were always a completionist obligation for me more than anything, but striping down the story advancement only made the process more tedious rather than less. What am I advancing towards if there's nothing interesting to talk about until the end?

This feeling of absence permeates through Yakuza 6's main story. For what's supposed to be an attempt to wrap up Kiryu's story, the game is shockingly disinterested in revisiting much of the franchise's history. This isn't always a dealbreaker. Yakuza is a soap opera, the rules change depending on what's narratively convenient. Sure, Kiryu could meet with the Florist of Sai to uncover the entire plot of the game. But that wouldn't allow for the game's wider story to unfold. Thus, Yakuza 6 kind of just pretends the Florist of Sai doesn't exist.

There's other areas where the game abandons different parts of the franchise history. The cast of Yakuza 3 get very little focus, with the Ryudo family nonexistent and the Morning Glory orphans quickly vanishing as the plot kicks off. There's a baseball minigame that doesn't even think of referencing the baseball protag Shinada of Yakuza 5. Entire sections of Kamurocho are suddenly blocked off in ways they never were before.

But most frustrating to me is the general arc of Haruka. Its hard not to feel like the franchise didn't know what to do with Haruka after Yakuza 2. In a lot of ways, the devs often struggle to fit a whole woman in their minds. Women are Lovers, Mothers, or Daughters. Haruka of Yakuza 1 and 2 was a sharp, savvy young girl who enjoyed sneaking into gambling dens and playing dangerous odds. Yakuza 3 and 4 demonstrate a dramatic shift as Haruka becomes more of a caretaker around the Morning Glory Orphanage. Yakuza 5 toys with the idea that Haruka still possesses that savvy edge, but its not behavior she's allowed to display frequently. She expresses it in soft, passive kindness towards everyone around her. She doesn't get to fight with the big boys. She sits off to the side. This isn't to say Haruka's character only has value when she's as violent as the men. But its hard not to feel like she's been cordoned off from the main action and shoved into a box.

Yakuza 6 doesn't change the trajectory. Haruka gets coma'd, shunted aside as Kiryu raises her surprise son. The game skips over anything dangerous like seeing Haruka pursue a romantic relationship. We're given scenes that indicate when Haruka would have gotten pregnant, but its still hard to imagine her as a woman taking ownership of her own desires and relationship aspirations. Even now, the game leaves me uncomfortable saying the flat out fact: Haruka is a grown woman who had sex. That's textual and inoffensive. Yet Haruka is still so defined as the Wise Daughter, its impossible to square that circle in my head that Haruka has any kind of sexual desire or longing for companionship. By the time she's woken up from her coma, she's fully ready to exist as The Mother, the third kind of woman that can exist. The game can't handle Haruka leaving the role of Daughter and into something more complete, but it also firmly believes she must eventually become a Mother. So that second stage, that second kind of woman that exists in the Yakuza universe, is shoved into a coma box where no one can see her. If you don't show the step between Daughter and Mother, you don't have to think about it. And Haruka can remain as innocent and pure as the game needs her to be.

Endgame spoiler: Its so fucking weird that Kiryu's last letter is to Daigo.

I love everything Kiryu says in that scene. I love that he acknowledges that he dealt Daigo a bad hand. I love that he recognizes how his inability to think ahead has damaged the world around him. I love that he admits he's neglected his loved ones in the pursuit of some pointless isolating honor. I love that he calls Daigo his son.

But he says all this while Haruka is in the same room, while he still refuses to call her his daughter too. His last letter isn't to Haruka or even the other kids he's raising. He repeats that Haruto is not his grandson. In both Yakuza 3 and 6, he explains that he takes care of Haruka, but repeatedly denies any claim that she's his kid. What's the distinction? Why claim otherwise? Is it to keep Kiryu from truly being defined as a single dad instead of a cool action guy? But why have him insist upon this in the same moment as him gently rocking a baby to sleep? Given Kiryu's monologue about fatherhood to Daigo, one has to assume there's self-awareness here. Kiryu's core flaw is his inability to choose one life. He can't fully leave the yakuza, he can't fully commit to being a parent. Its clearly something he enjoys doing! But he's so caught up in his own mistakes, he never allows himself to exist in the present.

The joy of Yakuza, to me, is in how its disparate elements clash together. Comedy and drama in a chaotic mix, bringing out the best in each other and advancing the narrative in such a specific, confusing tone. But sometimes, its soap opera sensibilities leave me cold. Despite all the ways it puts its whole heart into something, there's so many examples of where you can feel the hesitation. Where you can feel the points that they held back. And when comparing the sheer gusto of the franchise's ambition to these moments of anxiety and regression, it just makes those flaws all the more obvious.