It’s not peak fiction, but you can see it from here.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon — referred to as Yakuza 7 from here on — was pitched to me by a couple of friends as one of the greatest games ever made. That’s a tough sell, largely because I’m a miserable dickhead who seriously (don’t laugh!) writes about video games. Putting forth anything as being one of the best is a fucking gamble, because you’re not playing with good odds. There are a lot of works out there, and only a couple get to be the best. It tends to make it hurt worse when, almost inevitably, it’s not actually one of the best; you get your hopes up, and then the work doesn’t live up to the inflated goals you set for it, and then you’re left feeling disappointed.
Luckily, though, that’s not the case here. I don’t think Yakuza 7 is as good as I was told it was, but it’s certainly still pretty good. Great, even! There are some pacing and writing issues that drag it down, but what’s here is legitimately impressive. I don’t really care for RPGs as a genre, and I especially don’t care for games that ask for thirty to forty hours of my time, so the fact that this is still scoring as high as it is may as well be a sign of the end times. The four horsemen are a yakuza, an ex-nurse, an office worker, and a triad boss.
It’s immensely funny that, in an era where the largest development studios are playing it as safe as they possibly can, RGG Studios decided that Yakuza is no longer an action game. It’s such a ridiculous fucking idea. Some positive reception to an April Fool’s joke was all they needed to go all-in on this? What the fuck? You aren’t supposed to make games like this. And yet, they did; and yet, it works. It works really well, actually. There’s a bit of a problem that AoE skills are absurdly good compared to their single-target little brothers; obviously the single-target skills are king in boss fights, but those are pretty far and few between. Autobattling still takes a while and uses up precious items, and low-level mooks don't run away even when you've got a massive numbers advantage over them; most of the street fights are little more than time wasters, ultimately. Expect to spend the majority of the endgame running away from random encounters simply because they don't pay out in resources more than they take.
Ichiban is a wonderful character, and it's frankly no surprise that many people have latched onto him as hard as they have. Most of the cast is strong, really. I certainly wasn't expecting this to handle social issues as well as it did. It's more than a little hamfisted at times — discussions about "gray zones" and "bleaching white" tend to lean on wordplay a bit too heavily — but it's a pretty solid takedown of blind idealism. Bleach Japan's goals sound, from the outset, to be pretty reasonable. It's only once you dig in and find out what they're actually working towards that it becomes apparent that they're interested solely in enforcing laws, not in ensuring that people benefit from the law. Sure, women being forced to turn to sex work is bad. Homeless people not being able to find a safe spot to sleep is bad. Yakuza gangsters shouldn't be running the streets. The solution, though, is not to deport them, arrest them, and incite a gang war in the hopes they all kill themselves off, respectively. The gray zones are astronomically far from perfect, but blindly adhering to already-oppressive laws serves only to worsen the problem. It's rare to find a work with a positive view on criminal activity that isn't individualistic "fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want" id slop, but rather calls into question the legitimacy of the laws being broken.
I do have a problem with the writing in that it feels mean, sometimes. It happens often enough to be noticeable, and it clashes hard with a lot of what's written elsewhere. Nanba, for example, never really stops being a "homeless guy", even after he manages to get two(!!!) different houses that he stays in. The game just keeps reminding you how bad he smells, because he's homeless: he can debuff enemies because he stinks; he can breathe fire because his breath is just that potent; he can revive allies because none of them want him to give them CPR. It's weird. I don't really feel a sense of malice here, because the game is otherwise pretty fair to homeless people — certainly more than most, as low of a bar as that is. It's more like the game needs a smack upside the head and for someone to tell it that it's not being funny. I feel like it'd smarten up pretty quick.
Yakuza 7 has a bit of a habit. It’s definitely not a good habit, but I’m a little hesitant to call it a bad habit. Yakuza 7 just really loves killing off characters. Whenever a character’s arc comes to a close, they just get merked. The Geomijul goon who shakes down the bar owners? Shot to death. Arakawa? Shot to death. Hoshino? Shot to death. Ogasawara? Probably shot to death. Characters just start dropping like flies the second that they’ve served their narrative purpose. I guess I can understand it, considering that this is ultimately a game about organized crime — nobody walks away from Goodfellas wondering what was up with all of the indiscriminate murder — but it makes it a little difficult to stomach the feel-good ending that follows in the wake of such a bloodbath. Yakuza as a franchise is kind of renowned for being over the top, so this might just be a case of me going to a steakhouse and complaining that they don’t have enough vegetarian options, but I think there’s a bit too much melo in this melodrama.
Where it really came to a head for me was in the final stretch of cutscenes — as good a place as any for it to come to a head, I suppose. After going through a lengthy boss sequence, and then a second boss sequence, and then a third boss sequence, Ichiban finally manages to corner his young master. Masato pulls a gun, points it at Ichiban, and then points it at himself; his life as he knows it is over, and all of his hard work has been pulled out from under him, and he sees no reason to go on. Ichiban, who’s spent the entire game desperately trying to make this fucking stupid asshole see the light, breaks down in tears. He tells Masato that he would have done anything for him, that Masato needs to start over, that he believes Masato can turn a new leaf and be a better person. He caps it off with the line “please don’t make me watch my brother die”, which is so insanely good that I’m getting choked up again writing it out. It’s a phenomenal sequence. It’s written really well, it’s paced really well, and it works. It works better than any single moment in the preceding thirty hours.
Masato then gets stabbed by a lackey and bleeds out. Ichiban punctuates the moment with a slow-motion “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”. I roll my eyes because the game is now being stupid. Take it down a notch. You had something really good going, with the whole “choosing to be a better person after spending twenty years fucking up” angle. You don’t need to spoil it by going full soap opera, pretending like you’re gonna kill off the character after all of that. Just roll these obviously fake credits, and show us the scene where Masato is out of the hospital, and — oh, no, you actually killed him off. Jesus. Really? What a waste. I can’t really articulate why this complete bloodbath bothers me so much if not for the fact that it all feels at odds with the fact that this is supposed to be a happy ending. I guess when you’ve got a franchise that’s been running for this long without the universe being reset, it does you well to just kill off as many named characters as you can; people who play the next game won’t be asking where the old characters are if they know that they’re all turning into compost.
A severe difficulty spike right near the end also necessitates a good dose of grinding to get to a point where you can (un)comfortably clear it, which doesn't help the pacing much. You're more-or-less forced to complete the battle arena at least once, and then subsequently forced into the Kamurocho sewers to farm Invested Vagabonds. It's certainly not as egregious as some other RPGs when it comes to how much grinding you're expected to do, but it's still a hefty ask for a game that's already about thirty hours when you're going straight down the critical path. Add in the obscene amount of substories and minigames — some of which are great, some of which very much aren't — and this is a long game. I was definitely starting to lose patience with it by the end.
It's not perfect, but it's not far from it. There's a lot here to love. I think if this had ended somewhere around the halfway point, I wouldn't have a single bad thing to say. The first ten or so hours of Yakuza 7 are masterful, and the remaining minimum twenty are only pretty solid. It's easy to be a lot worse than this.
Don't piss me off. I'm close to leveling up and you look like just enough XP.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon — referred to as Yakuza 7 from here on — was pitched to me by a couple of friends as one of the greatest games ever made. That’s a tough sell, largely because I’m a miserable dickhead who seriously (don’t laugh!) writes about video games. Putting forth anything as being one of the best is a fucking gamble, because you’re not playing with good odds. There are a lot of works out there, and only a couple get to be the best. It tends to make it hurt worse when, almost inevitably, it’s not actually one of the best; you get your hopes up, and then the work doesn’t live up to the inflated goals you set for it, and then you’re left feeling disappointed.
Luckily, though, that’s not the case here. I don’t think Yakuza 7 is as good as I was told it was, but it’s certainly still pretty good. Great, even! There are some pacing and writing issues that drag it down, but what’s here is legitimately impressive. I don’t really care for RPGs as a genre, and I especially don’t care for games that ask for thirty to forty hours of my time, so the fact that this is still scoring as high as it is may as well be a sign of the end times. The four horsemen are a yakuza, an ex-nurse, an office worker, and a triad boss.
It’s immensely funny that, in an era where the largest development studios are playing it as safe as they possibly can, RGG Studios decided that Yakuza is no longer an action game. It’s such a ridiculous fucking idea. Some positive reception to an April Fool’s joke was all they needed to go all-in on this? What the fuck? You aren’t supposed to make games like this. And yet, they did; and yet, it works. It works really well, actually. There’s a bit of a problem that AoE skills are absurdly good compared to their single-target little brothers; obviously the single-target skills are king in boss fights, but those are pretty far and few between. Autobattling still takes a while and uses up precious items, and low-level mooks don't run away even when you've got a massive numbers advantage over them; most of the street fights are little more than time wasters, ultimately. Expect to spend the majority of the endgame running away from random encounters simply because they don't pay out in resources more than they take.
Ichiban is a wonderful character, and it's frankly no surprise that many people have latched onto him as hard as they have. Most of the cast is strong, really. I certainly wasn't expecting this to handle social issues as well as it did. It's more than a little hamfisted at times — discussions about "gray zones" and "bleaching white" tend to lean on wordplay a bit too heavily — but it's a pretty solid takedown of blind idealism. Bleach Japan's goals sound, from the outset, to be pretty reasonable. It's only once you dig in and find out what they're actually working towards that it becomes apparent that they're interested solely in enforcing laws, not in ensuring that people benefit from the law. Sure, women being forced to turn to sex work is bad. Homeless people not being able to find a safe spot to sleep is bad. Yakuza gangsters shouldn't be running the streets. The solution, though, is not to deport them, arrest them, and incite a gang war in the hopes they all kill themselves off, respectively. The gray zones are astronomically far from perfect, but blindly adhering to already-oppressive laws serves only to worsen the problem. It's rare to find a work with a positive view on criminal activity that isn't individualistic "fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want" id slop, but rather calls into question the legitimacy of the laws being broken.
I do have a problem with the writing in that it feels mean, sometimes. It happens often enough to be noticeable, and it clashes hard with a lot of what's written elsewhere. Nanba, for example, never really stops being a "homeless guy", even after he manages to get two(!!!) different houses that he stays in. The game just keeps reminding you how bad he smells, because he's homeless: he can debuff enemies because he stinks; he can breathe fire because his breath is just that potent; he can revive allies because none of them want him to give them CPR. It's weird. I don't really feel a sense of malice here, because the game is otherwise pretty fair to homeless people — certainly more than most, as low of a bar as that is. It's more like the game needs a smack upside the head and for someone to tell it that it's not being funny. I feel like it'd smarten up pretty quick.
Yakuza 7 has a bit of a habit. It’s definitely not a good habit, but I’m a little hesitant to call it a bad habit. Yakuza 7 just really loves killing off characters. Whenever a character’s arc comes to a close, they just get merked. The Geomijul goon who shakes down the bar owners? Shot to death. Arakawa? Shot to death. Hoshino? Shot to death. Ogasawara? Probably shot to death. Characters just start dropping like flies the second that they’ve served their narrative purpose. I guess I can understand it, considering that this is ultimately a game about organized crime — nobody walks away from Goodfellas wondering what was up with all of the indiscriminate murder — but it makes it a little difficult to stomach the feel-good ending that follows in the wake of such a bloodbath. Yakuza as a franchise is kind of renowned for being over the top, so this might just be a case of me going to a steakhouse and complaining that they don’t have enough vegetarian options, but I think there’s a bit too much melo in this melodrama.
Where it really came to a head for me was in the final stretch of cutscenes — as good a place as any for it to come to a head, I suppose. After going through a lengthy boss sequence, and then a second boss sequence, and then a third boss sequence, Ichiban finally manages to corner his young master. Masato pulls a gun, points it at Ichiban, and then points it at himself; his life as he knows it is over, and all of his hard work has been pulled out from under him, and he sees no reason to go on. Ichiban, who’s spent the entire game desperately trying to make this fucking stupid asshole see the light, breaks down in tears. He tells Masato that he would have done anything for him, that Masato needs to start over, that he believes Masato can turn a new leaf and be a better person. He caps it off with the line “please don’t make me watch my brother die”, which is so insanely good that I’m getting choked up again writing it out. It’s a phenomenal sequence. It’s written really well, it’s paced really well, and it works. It works better than any single moment in the preceding thirty hours.
Masato then gets stabbed by a lackey and bleeds out. Ichiban punctuates the moment with a slow-motion “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”. I roll my eyes because the game is now being stupid. Take it down a notch. You had something really good going, with the whole “choosing to be a better person after spending twenty years fucking up” angle. You don’t need to spoil it by going full soap opera, pretending like you’re gonna kill off the character after all of that. Just roll these obviously fake credits, and show us the scene where Masato is out of the hospital, and — oh, no, you actually killed him off. Jesus. Really? What a waste. I can’t really articulate why this complete bloodbath bothers me so much if not for the fact that it all feels at odds with the fact that this is supposed to be a happy ending. I guess when you’ve got a franchise that’s been running for this long without the universe being reset, it does you well to just kill off as many named characters as you can; people who play the next game won’t be asking where the old characters are if they know that they’re all turning into compost.
A severe difficulty spike right near the end also necessitates a good dose of grinding to get to a point where you can (un)comfortably clear it, which doesn't help the pacing much. You're more-or-less forced to complete the battle arena at least once, and then subsequently forced into the Kamurocho sewers to farm Invested Vagabonds. It's certainly not as egregious as some other RPGs when it comes to how much grinding you're expected to do, but it's still a hefty ask for a game that's already about thirty hours when you're going straight down the critical path. Add in the obscene amount of substories and minigames — some of which are great, some of which very much aren't — and this is a long game. I was definitely starting to lose patience with it by the end.
It's not perfect, but it's not far from it. There's a lot here to love. I think if this had ended somewhere around the halfway point, I wouldn't have a single bad thing to say. The first ten or so hours of Yakuza 7 are masterful, and the remaining minimum twenty are only pretty solid. It's easy to be a lot worse than this.
Don't piss me off. I'm close to leveling up and you look like just enough XP.
4 Comments
Admittedly a thin defense maybe, but about Nanba's mean-spirited jokey abilities in battle - we have to remember that all the fantastical rpg fighting and goofy enemies and skills and whatever really only exist in Ichiban's head. Nanba in a fight is essentially the world's biggest (lovable) bonehead's idea of what a homeless superhero would be, and is appropriately dumb.
glad you could enjoy this one, i was expecting to like it but had to quit around chapter.. 6? after just not having fun with it
I thought the ending was actually perfect — Masato was murdered by the very hatred he fostered. Ichiban believed he could change and see the light, but he'd dug his grave far too deep. It matches the themes of tearing down blind idealism you point out IMO
NovaNiles
2 months ago