Yakuza 4 Remastered Review
Notice: This is a safe for work review of a game intended for mature audiences.
Playing the remasters is proving to be an interesting experience. Yakuza 3 was clearly a big stepping stone for the series, but the quality just wasn’t where it needed to be to capture my interest like later games. If you compare Yakuza 3 and 4, you would think that Yakuza 3 was some kind of beta version of Yakuza 4 if it didn’t have a different story.
For a first in the series, and fittingly for the title, Yakuza 4 has four protagonists who each gets four chapters. The first of these is Shun Akiyama, a loan shark who is willing to lend large amounts of money to people without interest or collateral so long as they can complete one of his tests. The second is Taiga Saejima, a man who has been on death row for 25 years after he completes a hit on a member of one of the Tojo clan’s rivals. The next playable character is Masayoshi Tanimura, a corrupt cop who follows his own sense of justice instead of playing by the rules. The final playable character is Kazuma Kiryu himself, the main series protagonist who gets involved out of a sense of responsibility after discovering a connection between the current crisis facing Kamorocho and the events of the first game. I think this game manages to find a good balance between the emotional highs of the third game and the slightly complicated mysteries of the first two games. It definitely has the strongest opening out of all the games I have played so far, but it slips up at the middle and does not hit the highs of later games.
Having multiple protagonists also helps make the combat a lot less monotonous, because each of the protagonists has a different fighting style. Akiyama is all about doing a lot of attacks quickly that do less individually compared to other characters. Saejima has a lot of health and relies on slow charge attacks. Personally I think his fighting style is a little boring as it feels like there are less decision points. By contrast, Tanimura’s combat style has a lot more interesting decision points. He gets a parry ability that will give you openings to attack if you defend at the right time. He has several heat actions that can be used immediately at the end of combos to quickly eliminate enemies, but if you can wait, one of the heat actions he can perform on a grounded enemy will instantly eliminate them instead by putting handcuffs on them. Kiryu plays pretty much the same as he did in 3, but seems to hit harder, faster and he does not have the awkward finishing moves that appear in boss battles. The process of upgrading characters is also significantly better. Now, when a character levels up, they get three soul orbs and can use them to purchase their skills in any order the player wants. I usually focus on trying to get all of the moves in my arsenal before going for all the situational passive effects.
Sub stories are more focused on quality over quantity this time round. Each character only gets 15, but they feel properly fleshed out this time round. Only Akiyama gets a sub story revolving around him getting conned, but he figures it out almost immediately and deals with the situation in a way that feels very evocative of his character. Akiyama really shines in his substories, which are mostly about him trying to help people out with his unique gimmick and his really endearing dynamic with his assistant Hana. Saejima gets a lot of sub stories that revolve around him helping the homeless population of the city or mimic the kinds of scenarios Kiryu would get involved in in previous games, which makes sense considering that Saejima’s situation is similar to Kiryu’s in the first game. He can only do sub stories in the second half of his part, which causes some pacing issues. Tanimura’s sub stories are all about solving mysteries or helping the community of illegal immigrants that live in Little Asia. Kiryu unfortunately gets the worst sub-stories because they are mostly references to lacklustre content in previous games, which will alienate players who are new to the series.
Most of the rest of the side content is just copied from the previous game with some minor changes. There are a lot of quality of life improvements, such as being able to order multiple dishes at once in a restaurant and each item of food getting a tick next to it to show you what you have already eaten before. This game gets a sequel to the Boxcelios arcade game introduced in the previous game, and pachinko machines which are as boring as the real thing. Each of the characters also get a unique side business and a series of training missions with a trainer. Akiyama gets the terrible hostess maker minigame from the previous game, but this time it is impossible to make a perfect costume and you instead will have to tailor the costume for different scenarios. Saejima gets the better fighter maker where you train up fighters in order to fight in the arena. Tanimura and Kiryu’s side businesses are not even really minigames as much as they are a series of glorified random encounters. Tanimura has to respond to incidents reported on the police radio, while Kiryu has to fight a series of street gangs who want to defeat him in order to gain recognition. I would say that with the exception of the substories, the side content still not quite there.
Graphically Yakuza 4 It is clearly running on the same engine as 3, but the animations have all been redone and move at a more sensible speed. The game also has significantly better lighting, which makes the game look a lot better despite reusing a lot of the same character and environment models. The soundtrack I am a little bit mixed on. While Yakuza 4 has a bigger soundtrack, I felt that some of the themes like Tanimura’s main battle theme were somewhat disappointing, and the battle themes in Yakuza 3 were a lot better.
Yakuza 4 is another leap forward for the series. This is the point where I can say the series gets good, but I cannot say that the series has become truly great yet. I suspect 5 is going to have caught up to the standard I expect, due to it running on the same engine as Yakuza 0 and it getting a much better minigames. The Yakuza games have had to deal with a well known advertising issue of not getting to the right audience, because the crime drama presentation is commonly associated with very different games like Grand Theft Auto. But I am beginning to feel that the series hitting its stride 4 or 5 entries deep has hurt it just as badly. Whilst the games do try and work stand alone, a lot of people will still be put off by feeling like they need to play though several mediocre games first or feel like they are missing out on something. Yakuza 0 was not just so successful because it was a prequel, but it was also made after the Ryu Go Gotaku team really figured out what they were doing and the series properly found its tone. We will see when Yakuza 5 Remastered comes out.
