Having recently played the remasted trilogy of Yakuza 3, 4 and 5, the first thing that jumped out at me was just how gorgeous this game is. The visual fidelity has taken a huge leap forward, and this being the first game in the dragon engine (although I did play Kiwami 2 not too long ago), there are a multitude of changes large and small from the previous entries in the series. A lot of them good, some of them I could live without, but what this entry did most of all was cement my newly found position as a Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio fan.
Maybe my newfound love for this franchise is a little ironic, seeing as how Yakuza 6 is supposed to be the end of the Kiryu saga. An unexpected positive side effect of me playing through the series in 2023 is that I'm playing with the knowledge that this is indeed not the end of Kiryu Kazuma, with him getting a new game that's releasing later this year. I think that's why I was able to be onboard with the story as much as I was.
To be clear, I did enjoy the story that was being told, but if I had played this with the mindset of this being possibly the last time we're seeing Kiryu, I would definitely have been disappointed. The characters that we've come to know and love over these past 7 games (counting 0) are mostly brushed aside, and instead we spend almost the whole game interacting with a new set of characters. I wanted more of Majima, Saejima, Daigo, Haruka, all the kids at the orphanage! Yuya makes a brief appearance, but Kazuki is nowhere to be found.
This game ending the way it did, I understand why a lot of people were upset at the time. I'm hoping more to come back to all these relationships that never got proper closure in future games.
I mentioned that this game changed a lot from the previous games - combat being one of them, but one that I'm not going to touch on too much in this review as I don't really care that much about it - combat is a means to an end, the reason why I've fallen for these games is for the worldbuilding, the characters and the story. I was positively surprised that all the substories are now properly voice acted and animated, but the joy was shortlived. There aren't that many substories to be found, and the main story itself was pretty short as well. But with the new engine, I'm guessing a lot of dev time went into getting to know the tools. Maybe they didn't have as much time to just churn out content.
Overall, Yakuza 6 is a hell of a way to close out this first decade long chapter of Yakuza games, and I'm excited to play through the rest of the series.
Maybe my newfound love for this franchise is a little ironic, seeing as how Yakuza 6 is supposed to be the end of the Kiryu saga. An unexpected positive side effect of me playing through the series in 2023 is that I'm playing with the knowledge that this is indeed not the end of Kiryu Kazuma, with him getting a new game that's releasing later this year. I think that's why I was able to be onboard with the story as much as I was.
To be clear, I did enjoy the story that was being told, but if I had played this with the mindset of this being possibly the last time we're seeing Kiryu, I would definitely have been disappointed. The characters that we've come to know and love over these past 7 games (counting 0) are mostly brushed aside, and instead we spend almost the whole game interacting with a new set of characters. I wanted more of Majima, Saejima, Daigo, Haruka, all the kids at the orphanage! Yuya makes a brief appearance, but Kazuki is nowhere to be found.
This game ending the way it did, I understand why a lot of people were upset at the time. I'm hoping more to come back to all these relationships that never got proper closure in future games.
I mentioned that this game changed a lot from the previous games - combat being one of them, but one that I'm not going to touch on too much in this review as I don't really care that much about it - combat is a means to an end, the reason why I've fallen for these games is for the worldbuilding, the characters and the story. I was positively surprised that all the substories are now properly voice acted and animated, but the joy was shortlived. There aren't that many substories to be found, and the main story itself was pretty short as well. But with the new engine, I'm guessing a lot of dev time went into getting to know the tools. Maybe they didn't have as much time to just churn out content.
Overall, Yakuza 6 is a hell of a way to close out this first decade long chapter of Yakuza games, and I'm excited to play through the rest of the series.