This action adventure game was published by SEGA and released initially for PlayStation 4 on December the 8th 2016 in Japan. The English version came out in March 2018 and for PC and Xbox in March 2021. I had never at all played any Yakuza game than this one and it easily became one of my all time best games. Before I Start I want to say I really love Asian culture, in particular Japanese and also Chinese. I don't know why but since I was a child I always liked their way of life, manners, respect and so forth. Growing up in the 90's Asian inspired movies were actually the best, obviously Martial Arts was at the center of things and even in western countries we had Legendary Martial artists with block buster movies. So this game gave me that childhood vibe I always loved. A movie was not a movie without a bar fight, street fight or group fight.
To the crux of the matter, it is a very immersive and story driven game. It is none linear in its nature though to an extent it still is. The story and the gameplay made a perfect marriage as each fight you encounter has reasons for it. It also gives you exploration and has side quests plus with all that included it is never distracting from the main story.
It is full of fun explosive fights which are really good to encounter and form the crux of the games gameplay. It very much easy to play even for a first time player. During combat the environments are very much interactable as you are able to pickup things and bash your opponents and have a general leverage over them in combat. There is a couple of combos you need to remember for an even glorious experience.
You do have a character upgrade system that's pretty much straight forward and is mainly driven by your continuous fight encounters on the streets. Remember to always eat and upgrade your stats constantly or else you really will take a thorough beating. What makes this a complete game is the story. The story doesn't throw you off, its rock-solid and if you didn't know about the series they do have a memories panel that you can access to gain an understanding of the history of the characters and the world in general. I like how the story develops and its not obvious, it keeps the mystery closed slowly luring you to want to find out and know more.
I also like how the camera has both a 3rd person (mainly) and a first person view which is very rare in most games. That flexibility of being able to experience the game with a view you want is really good. Its also very much a very dialogue driven game and at first I was critical of how that in order to hear English you have to read the captions however as time went on I realized that the probable intent is to immerse you into the Japanese world with a total Japanese feel and atmosphere to it rather than characters which look Asian but sound mostly western. I don't know how you may feel about it but I think it was a good idea.
Overall its a highly recommendable game with so much fun, the only improvement I wish for is less of a seemingly static world to more of a dynamic environment (Day and night cycles etc). I will be waiting for your precious views and cheers.
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