"Don't look so satisfied about this."
All it took was one line for me to brush aside most of my misgivings about this game. And let me be clear, they were already mostly in the realm of nitpicks, so I'll get to them in a bit. Upon further reflection (and some helpful reminders of some of the weirder moments in the game from Eye Micah's great review), the surprisingly emotional line deliveries from Haruka and especially Kiryu during the final act aren't actually enough to make this a full four, but they are close. Unfortunately, I'm reminded that Onimichi is actually a kind of annoying map to get around (I'd just gotten so used to it while grinding out side content at the end I'd gone numb to it) and while ultimately more focused than either Yakuza 3, 4 or even 2 in some ways this story still isn't quite as well realized as Zero, Kiwami or 5.
That aside, I wanted to establish that I had a pretty good time with this movie for a reason I see not many would agree with me: as someone who has always found the combat in these games to mostly act as a nod to the video game medium Yakuza uses to tell its stories rather than truly fun, hard disagree on some of the criticism directed this game's way. While it's undoubtedly true that the variety of additional characters during the PS3 trilogy, or the many stances of Zero, keep the gameplay feeling as fresh as it can over dozens of hours, I LOVED this combat system.
Not only is it hilariously easy to over level thanks to a combination of the food XP system I last experienced in Kiwami 2 (I don't remember how much of this system made it into Judgement, honestly) and a benevolent decision to dole out buffet-sized portions of XP during most of the main story beats, but allowing for multiple weapon-based heat actions on a single charge thanks to the orb system allows players to trivialize pretty much every combat encounter as soon as they'd like. Similarly, Extreme Heat's "mash square to mash square more" mechanic may be offensively simple, but paired with a bunch of Staminan and/or booze it sure does render Yakuza's infamously aggravating boss fights hilariously trivial.
Beyond that, it's clear that this game emerges from the same era as RGG Studio as Zero and the Kiwamis because the level of gravitas and humor on display in the writing is constantly at the peak of this franchise's potential. Generally speaking I'd say Zero and Kiwami 2 still represent the peak of this studio's inspired, broad take on Japanese customs and social mores but Song of Life is still remarkably adept at dropping biting one liners that can either cut the tension or establish just how scathing these people can be to one another in equal measure. While the game may go on and on and on (and on) about "the secret of Onimichi" and family and all the things this franchise has been droning on about for hundreds of hours now, it's this secret sauce that keeps it palatable no matter how repetitive the main beats can feel.
And make no mistake, Yakuza 6's primary flaw is probably that, especially having played most of these games over the past 2-3 years rather than over the course of nearly two decades, it's impossible to overlook the dire lack of inventiveness when it comes to the primary plot. For some reason these games find it impossible to resist piling surprise villains on top of surprise villains, buoyed by supporting characters that oscillate at a moment's notice from foe to frenemy and back again, and the succession plans of the various Yakuza clans have become so contrived at this point it's impossible to care about most of the big picture plotting these people are up to.
As for those nitpicks I mentioned, they mostly amount to the game opting for a Yakuza 3-esque obfuscation of the side missions that makes much of that content easy to miss. I wound up doing all of the bar chatting, baseball and fishing side quests while wearing a tuxedo on the precipice of the endgame because I'd realized the game was nearly over and I hadn't seen so much of a hint of activities I knew were in the game. The fishing is a charmingly simple little lightgun game (sans lightgun) while the baseball manager stuff was bizarrely abstract for a mode that presents as pretty straight forward (I admit years - in literal time spent - of MLB The Show provided an additional mental hurdle to get over) and the Snack Bar stuff disappointingly half-baked. It's odd to be graded on the "liveliness" of a conversation when Kiryu can only provide the most boring responses.
To a similar end, the less said about the cabaret mini-game the better - Yakuza can have an uncomfortably transactional relationship with male-female interactions to begin with and this is easily my least favorite version of it.
Oh, almost forgot - huge props to Beat Takeshi, the only actor other than maybe Claude Maki as Nishikiyama to figure out how to present an actual human being in this universe of gods and demons. Part of what I love about the Yakuza games is that, being entirely in Japanese, I can simply read the subtitles and otherwise thumb through much of the repetitive, Jenga-stacked expository dialogue without feeling guilty about missing something in the performance of the dialogue (I am staunchly anti-subtitle for English language entertainment for this reason) but whenever Hirose was on screen I found myself a snack or an article to read while glancing back at the subtitles because he just has that it factor, man.
All it took was one line for me to brush aside most of my misgivings about this game. And let me be clear, they were already mostly in the realm of nitpicks, so I'll get to them in a bit. Upon further reflection (and some helpful reminders of some of the weirder moments in the game from Eye Micah's great review), the surprisingly emotional line deliveries from Haruka and especially Kiryu during the final act aren't actually enough to make this a full four, but they are close. Unfortunately, I'm reminded that Onimichi is actually a kind of annoying map to get around (I'd just gotten so used to it while grinding out side content at the end I'd gone numb to it) and while ultimately more focused than either Yakuza 3, 4 or even 2 in some ways this story still isn't quite as well realized as Zero, Kiwami or 5.
That aside, I wanted to establish that I had a pretty good time with this movie for a reason I see not many would agree with me: as someone who has always found the combat in these games to mostly act as a nod to the video game medium Yakuza uses to tell its stories rather than truly fun, hard disagree on some of the criticism directed this game's way. While it's undoubtedly true that the variety of additional characters during the PS3 trilogy, or the many stances of Zero, keep the gameplay feeling as fresh as it can over dozens of hours, I LOVED this combat system.
Not only is it hilariously easy to over level thanks to a combination of the food XP system I last experienced in Kiwami 2 (I don't remember how much of this system made it into Judgement, honestly) and a benevolent decision to dole out buffet-sized portions of XP during most of the main story beats, but allowing for multiple weapon-based heat actions on a single charge thanks to the orb system allows players to trivialize pretty much every combat encounter as soon as they'd like. Similarly, Extreme Heat's "mash square to mash square more" mechanic may be offensively simple, but paired with a bunch of Staminan and/or booze it sure does render Yakuza's infamously aggravating boss fights hilariously trivial.
Beyond that, it's clear that this game emerges from the same era as RGG Studio as Zero and the Kiwamis because the level of gravitas and humor on display in the writing is constantly at the peak of this franchise's potential. Generally speaking I'd say Zero and Kiwami 2 still represent the peak of this studio's inspired, broad take on Japanese customs and social mores but Song of Life is still remarkably adept at dropping biting one liners that can either cut the tension or establish just how scathing these people can be to one another in equal measure. While the game may go on and on and on (and on) about "the secret of Onimichi" and family and all the things this franchise has been droning on about for hundreds of hours now, it's this secret sauce that keeps it palatable no matter how repetitive the main beats can feel.
And make no mistake, Yakuza 6's primary flaw is probably that, especially having played most of these games over the past 2-3 years rather than over the course of nearly two decades, it's impossible to overlook the dire lack of inventiveness when it comes to the primary plot. For some reason these games find it impossible to resist piling surprise villains on top of surprise villains, buoyed by supporting characters that oscillate at a moment's notice from foe to frenemy and back again, and the succession plans of the various Yakuza clans have become so contrived at this point it's impossible to care about most of the big picture plotting these people are up to.
As for those nitpicks I mentioned, they mostly amount to the game opting for a Yakuza 3-esque obfuscation of the side missions that makes much of that content easy to miss. I wound up doing all of the bar chatting, baseball and fishing side quests while wearing a tuxedo on the precipice of the endgame because I'd realized the game was nearly over and I hadn't seen so much of a hint of activities I knew were in the game. The fishing is a charmingly simple little lightgun game (sans lightgun) while the baseball manager stuff was bizarrely abstract for a mode that presents as pretty straight forward (I admit years - in literal time spent - of MLB The Show provided an additional mental hurdle to get over) and the Snack Bar stuff disappointingly half-baked. It's odd to be graded on the "liveliness" of a conversation when Kiryu can only provide the most boring responses.
To a similar end, the less said about the cabaret mini-game the better - Yakuza can have an uncomfortably transactional relationship with male-female interactions to begin with and this is easily my least favorite version of it.
Oh, almost forgot - huge props to Beat Takeshi, the only actor other than maybe Claude Maki as Nishikiyama to figure out how to present an actual human being in this universe of gods and demons. Part of what I love about the Yakuza games is that, being entirely in Japanese, I can simply read the subtitles and otherwise thumb through much of the repetitive, Jenga-stacked expository dialogue without feeling guilty about missing something in the performance of the dialogue (I am staunchly anti-subtitle for English language entertainment for this reason) but whenever Hirose was on screen I found myself a snack or an article to read while glancing back at the subtitles because he just has that it factor, man.