After Yakuza 3 struggled so hard to join the natural progression of Kiryu’s life with the necessities of a Yakuza plot, the sequel took the next natural step and introduced what would become a series staple, focusing on different protagonists. Instead of just following the straight-laced Kiryu and his life of crime, you start with Akiyama, a sketchy guy who runs a legitimate business. That seems to make them perfect opposites, but unfortunately, they share the key similarity of being mostly irrelevant to the overarching plot. The obligatory convoluted power-grab of the day really only involves Tanimura, whose father was killed as a result of it, and Saejima, who served twenty-five years in prison for his involvement. Akiyama’s motivation being his romantic interest in one of the key players is pretty thin, and Kiryu being dragged out of civilian life to save the Tojo clan is starting to feel a bit rote after happening for the third time. It’s not just our heroes who suffer from uneven characterization either, since a cast of four villains were meant to be a matching set. Tanimura gets a showdown with the corrupt police chief who serves as the primary antagonist, but the secondary antagonist is already dead by the time the heroes and villains confront each other. So, even though Saejima should have a well-developed villain to fight, he fights Kido, an underling who had no connection to the event that put him in prison, robbing his story of catharsis. Akiyama fights the guy he thought would make it to the top of the underworld, Arai, but it turns out Arai was a cop all along. Kind of. He was a cop who infiltrated the yakuza, but then started to align himself with them, but to a different family than the one he said he was aligned to, only to betray them to the corrupt police, to then betray the corrupt police and be a genuine criminal? To say that this game includes a hilarious amount of betrayals and allegiance swaps would be an understatement. Kiryu then fights Daigo, the chairman of the Tojo clan, for… some reason. Sure he was involved in the plot, but his goal was to use it to rebuild the clan, so after they fight they're immediately friends again and Daigo resumes his position as chairman without missing a beat.

Needless to say, all this confusingness left me… well, confused. Why were there four protagonists if only two really mattered? Why was Saejima’s final battle against someone he hardly knew? Why was so much time spent on Arai’s seventeen betrayals when he ended up not actually mattering that much? Why set Daigo up as a final-boss-tier villain, only to reinstate him as a good guy thirty minutes later? Really, the only story in this game that checks out is Tanimura’s, but his characterization is just as confusing as the rest. At the start he’s shown to be a corrupt cop taking protection money from businesses involved in human trafficking, but two hours later he’s referred to as a shining example of what a police officer should be. It’s not that the story is a trainwreck or anything, the plot at the heart of it all still basically works, but there kept being moments like these where I was wondering why on earth the story would be written this way. Each protagonist has some good moments, but when everything's pieced together, it becomes a mess, which could also describe the combat. Each character has a unique style that feels great to use, but as you switch from campaign to campaign, no progress is maintained and basic functions need to be unlocked over and over again. That’s what leaves me hard-pressed to evaluate Yakuza 4, it’s one of the few cases where a game is less than the sum of its parts, where individual moments stand out for their quality, but rarely build on each other. I guess I have to come down negatively on it overall since the development Kiryu got in 3 didn’t get to shine much in this game, which feels like wasted potential. Well, maybe as I go onto 5 I’ll finally get the payoff I’m looking for...