The Yakuza Series: What is it, and what have I been missing?
By: William Lim
Tags: Life, Fun, Culture, Videogames, Gaming

I did not expect that a single-player game I decided to play based off of a meme would turn out to become one of, if not my favourite series of all time. Yet, 2020 has been an unprecedented year, and it has resulted in me putting over 300 hours put into Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2.

Further, it seems like I am not the only one who has just recently discovered the Japanese beat’em up (now RPG). Sega’s annual report for 2020 cited that since 2018, over 3 million Yakuza games were sold, which account for 20% of their lifetime sales. When one considers that the series has been a part of Sega’s lineup for more than 15 years, it has to be a huge boost of confidence for the developers of the Yakuza series, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio.

This is me watching my grades slip after finding Yakuza.

While the now-famous Baka Mitai memes certainly have had a hand in causing a few people to pick up the game (including myself), it certainly shouldn’t be pointed to as the sole reason towards the series’ surge in popularity. After all, looking past the memes, one can discover that the Yakuza series is much more than meets the eye.

All the way up to the latest release of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the series has been a beat’em up game including a strong storyline with RPG and open-world mechanics thrown in. What makes the series stand out is the absolutely fantastic execution of all the mechanics above and more.

The best thing about Yakuza to me is that it very deftly toes the line between hilarity and tragedy in its storytelling and characters. The core story of most of the games is very serious, taking main character Kiryu Kazuma (sometimes others) through internal struggles, conspiracies, bringing him towards the seedy underbelly of Japan. However, the side-missions and substories often come in stark contrast to the dramatic, long-take cutscenes of the main story.

In Yakuza 0, you can jump from investigating a lead on a murder case in the main story right into racing pocket circuit cars, managing a real estate business, or helping a kid find his lost video game. The substories at no point felt like a drag, and help humanise the character of Kiryu far beyond the main story. We see a side of Kiryu that’s always willing to help someone out and will go out of his way to help the downtrodden of society. Contrasting that with his Yakuza roots and it makes Kiryu one of the best protagonists I have played, and I haven’t even gotten to the combat yet.

The combat is brutal, sometimes frustrating, but I always found it extremely fun. While Yakuza grounds itself in reality by setting the game in fictionalized cities of Japan, the combat often has characters perform near-superhuman displays of strength and agility, often with hilarious results. Further, a surprisingly in-depth progression system has Kiryu grow to herculean levels of power. Combine that with some absolutely ferocious special moves (called Heat Actions), and you get one hell of a gameplay loop.

A quick check finds that Mopeds/Motorcycles can weigh anywhere from 220 to 500 pounds (or 100 to 226 Kilograms).

Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 6 also feature the dragon engine, which revamped combat to somewhat mixed results in the community. The extremely over-the-top combat is toned down slightly, and combat has been streamlined to make it feel more realistic. Yakuza 6’s combat was considered to be a bit clunky, but Kiwami 2 took the dragon engine and refined it, and it’s made the game one of my favourites to play based on combat alone. Even after finishing the game, sometimes in the evenings I will boot up Kiwami 2, and fight a few mobs. The combat is just that fun to me.