Seriously, there's a character in this game who somehow managed to be orphaned twice before their fifth birthday. The game's story is the by-now-standard Yakuza tale of betrayal and underworld intrigue, featuring vicious crooks, mysterious women, and a plethora of tragic childhood backstories. He begins the game monstrously powerful, and things just scale upwards from there. Then there's Kiryu, who's barely been powered down at all since Yakuza 3. The game also dodges the "reset-button" feeling of being put in a new character's shoes every ten hours-yes, players will be reduced back to Level 1 three separate times over the course of the game, but all three new characters have fighting styles so vastly different from one another that it never felt like I was asked to buy the same upgrades over and over again. By breaking the game into four distinct sections and giving each main character 20 levels worth of abilities to unlock, the game ensures that the relentless beatings a player dishes out will be rewarded with a constant sense of reward and accomplishment.Īt the beginning of each chapter the player will find themselves leveling up every couple of fights and gaining access to an ever-deepening set of abilities. With each Yakuza game designed to run somewhere in the 30-40 hour range and the player only reaching Kiryu's full potential just before the last few fights, players were faced with a gradual progression of abilities, potentially frustrating anyone hoping to get at the good stuff right away. The new characters are revelatory, and not simply because they're interesting in their own right-but because their inclusion transforms the entire way the game is structured, hugely improving the flow. Everything that worked last time has been retained, and everything that was slightly shaky about the franchise's move to the next generation has been tuned to near-perfection. ![]() The franchise, famous for getting better with each new installment, doesn't disappoint with this newest 3D real-time brawler/RPG hybrid. Three games' worth of needlessly brutal and viscerally stunning violence erase all those doubts, and leave Kazuma Kiryu as one of the great video game leads of all time. Naturally, this leads to the giant question mark hovering over Yakuza 4 -with all this time and effort spent building a compelling character, can the franchise really survive his demotion to co-star? After playing Yakuza 4, I now feel foolish to have ever doubted the developers. Can a single character be this exceptionally tough? As foes flee rather than risk getting into a fight with the legendary "Dragon of Dojima", an impression of Kiryu is built up in the player's mind-and perhaps doubts are created as well. There is a section early in the first Yakuza game that does a magnificent job of establishing series star Kazuma Kiryu as an impossible bad-ass without actually forcing the player to take part in any battles. ![]() WTF Death Volley, the Volleyball-themed assassin! LOW My continuing inability to find a save point in downtown Tokyo.
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