It initially came out in Feb 2009 but now its within the remaster collection of 2019. The collection aims to hit 1080p 60fps. The beauty about it is though its an old game it still holds up in presentation in relation to todays terms. The character models are very much good but one of the things you might dislike is the character movement which is very much stiff and not gracefully fluid but well it is obvious since it was a PS3 and 360 era game initially. Also I really did not like the save game method whereby instead of making your life easier with autosave you have to find a save point for your progress to be accounted for. It is the classical way of save game progress but you can imagine how I had to go back and replay without knowing at first since these days we mostly rely on autosave and use manual save as a backup.
As above the cutscene dialogue is very much similar to the other games that come after it. Though an old game it surely does hold up in this segment without disappointing. The strong point of this game is its deep long story though it is slow paced but when it does pickup it does get interesting. That's one thing Yakuza never messes up, that rich 90's movie style story.
At times you get these kind of typed dialogue engagements which to me slow down the rhythm of immersion. Audio goes off in a way and it really sounds and looks weird with the type writer style noise. If you don't like reading text this will surely put you off but perhaps the only positive we can draw out from it is that you can control the dialogue.
Combat is largely similar to future iterations and you can easily tell the grass roots of say for example Yakuza 6 from this game. It is dated yes but still a lot of fun to play and easy on the go for a newcomer. You will get the usual fist fights, heavy attacks, heat attacks, weapon attacks and character upgrades through these actions. It can be clumsy at times when you think someone is going to die but they still live after a hummer crushes their skull.
Overall its a really impressive remaster almost inseparable to modern Yakuza games. Its a roughly 30 hour game which is a good span of time although at times with repetitive actions such as nice long cutscenes, running around town, getting in a couple of fights with people who walk up and challenge you. So should you bother to play it? sure but just give it time to build up though or else you will lose interest due to slow pacing.
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