The Honourable Yakuza (Yakuza (PS2))

Member Name: heekeer

Product:	Yakuza (PS2)
Date:	18/08/09 (8 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Explores the world of the Yakuza, good graphics, fun beat em up

Disadvantages: Could have done with a little more variety.

Yakuza is an action game for the Playstation 2 developed by Sega.

This game takes place in Japan and is all about the Japanese criminal world of Yakuzas, the story follows Kazuma Kiryu, he takes the fall honourably for his killing his boss (apparently that's honourable) and once he is released from prison he finds that his Yakuza clan has had 100 million yen stolen from them and all the Yakuza clans are out to find it. Your goal is to make sure that you recover the money for your own honourable clan. The story was quite engaging and I enjoyed discovering the criminal world of the Japanese as it has never had a game devoted to it unlike the numerous GTA and Getaway titles devoted to the western world.

You control Kazuma in the game and will wander the streets of Tokyo visiting bars, shops and progressing the games plotline, though the game does let you have freely explore the area it is nowhere near as large as anything in a Grand Theft Auto and as a result the game suffers a little as you will retread familiar ground time and time again.

You will come across alot of enemies to fight with and Sega have done an excellent job with the games combat, Kazuma is a skilled martial artist and can perform a variety of moves which all fit in with the Japanese style being swift and ruthless. You can upgrade Kazuma to learn moves and increase his stats as the game progresses. You can also pick up weapons to fight with though never guns, just melee weapons which do give you the upper hand in some tough brawls.

The only disappointing feature about the game is that apart from the fighting and running from place to place in Tokyo to advance the games plot there is little else to do, missions simply do not have the variety they should and as fun as the beat em up gameplay it definitely wouldn't have hurt to include something else.

Graphics are actually very good showcasing many people on screen at once in the streets of Tokyo, animations are good and the voice acting is decent as well.

Yakuza is a good game but is let down by lack of variety in the things that you do.

Summary: A good game worth playing as no other game deals with the Yakuza world.