I uhm.....posted this here coz i cant in reviews yet......so...can i keep this single one here until i can?
Enter the Dragon of Dojima
When i first saw this cover art while i was first holding it in my hands, I felt something great was coming my way.
And boy oh boy was i right. The very first OG Yakuza game on the PS2 was what got me into loving the franchise thats about bashing heads with increasingly riddicoulous finisher attacks and silly towns people. On a more serious note though this is the story of a person who goes through some harsh things in his life and his journey of growth and emotions is nothing else but epic in my eyes and heart.
Story of the Criminal Underground and Feels
The saga of our hero starting from the very first game Yakuza 1 seems like another Beat em Up but set in a sandbox like setting.
It all begins very slow, with our boy arriving in a car with his Aniki (a subordinate made by oath dont mind my silly descriptions).
Seems like they are here as loan sharks to rough up a company that wont pay their protection money to the yakuza. And quite honestly I start to wonder what our main character will be like if thats what he does for a living. Will he be just a muscle and the whole story will be you doing similar like quests? And then....... a few hours later after drinking with his sworn brother Nishki things start to get very interesting. We see how our boy is full of emotions and cares deeply about the people that surround him. That's when it hit me, our protagonist was just giving out this friendly macho man vibe. A few hours later.......his sworn brother has shot the very boss of the organization they are both working for........Turns out the old creep wanted to force himself on Yumi, a friend of the two bros and Nishki ended him for doing that with a gun. Visibly crying and shaking and Kiryu (our hero) worried about the shocking moment he is currently in......We see that our characters are very emotional creatures and that murder does not come light to them. Even though they are in the Yakuza. I think it would be too long to write the story of the whole franchise so I will try to make a somewhat decent summary.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Looking back at the very first game the game mechanics were a tad bit clunky. And Kiryu honestly felt like controlling a train that when it goes one direction, its kinda hard to switch to different tracks. When you want to do a combo on an enemy your every attacks isnt so swift, cancelable or stoppable. What im trying to say here is that if you go ahead and want to attacks multiple foes at ones if you go rushing in for all of them, it is very likely you will get trashed like a bowling pin. Your best bet is to learn where to position yourself in the whole crowd of enemies and attacking them one by one and also attacking one enemy then repositioning and attacking a random enemy but where the attacks of others cannot reach you.
That being said as you progress you learn new movesets and finisher attacks called "heat actions". Your "heat bar" is like a rage bar, but when it fills up instead of constant rage mode, you get to do cool attacks on enemies that do decent damage or big damage depending on the attack and weapon you can pick up and use on an enemy. Later on you meet his mysterious master of martial arts that shows you how to go Miyagi on anyone who dares challenge you. You will get stuff like, the ability to dodge more than one time in a row over time, being able to attack an enemy behind you while attacking another enemy. Which makes our big beefy train more agile. And..... something you will realise if you play these games for long enough is that one of the best if not the very best normal special move you can do is....the Tiger Drop! Which can no kidding drop a real tigger in the sequel!!!! Oh my days....... As sequels continue the Heat Actions slowly start to get more and more flashy. Part 3 is...uhm....wel...lets just say the enemies like to put up a fight aka the tecnhique called "I wanna block all night and chill every day". This is a bit of a nuisance especially in the unpatched version or to my knoweldge I dont know if there is a patched version. There is one way of dealing with this, but its not really recommended as a normal playthrough or at least i think so. My way is to gather every possible weapn becasue this game lets you keep them, and upgrade them to the max in the "weapons shop". That way you can trash those silly little boy who love to block all day and finish them off with a spectacular array of weapon finish moves. Or.......at least i think they're kinda cool.... Moving on to the rest of the games, the story keeps getting better and better (not sure about rubber bullets ......). Parts 4 and 5 let you play with different characters with all having different fight styes, which is rad. As soon as part 5 hit, we see that Kiru began to be really fast, agile and well.....more of a bumper car on all foes at all times instead of a freight train. 6 has these......ragdoll physics.... and John Yakuza simply is so OP its like throwing a massive bowling ball called Kiryu at the bowling pins those being the enemies. You can easily grab one enemy and smash the whole group while holding the poor poor soul by the leg. With all of them wonderfully bouncing as you batter the bejesus out of them. Finishers are getting pretty crazy by this point. Yakuza 0 introduces switching fighting styles and even more fun finishers, with two playable characters and various movesets, this makes our pal into an absolute unit. The ragdoll pshysics are gone in this one thank god. Not that they are not fun while it lasted.....in my opinion becasue it was just so silly and I love Kiryu but........The gameplay is more balanced in the what i like to call "normal yakuza engine". The gameplay overall is not that hard but you do face stronger foes with different weapons and moves that can sometimes roll you over.
Story Summary
In chronological order the story goes like this.....
Kazuma Kiryu and Nishkiyama Akira were orphans, one man helped them by taking them to Sunflower Orphanage. This palce will be mentioned a few times. These two became best friends and even more so.... sworn brothers. They thought they could live the good life like the person who they saw as their father, so they wanted a slice of that too. Turns out it was a life of a Yakuza, something their adoptive father Kazama never wanted. He thought that maybe he can beat that idea out of their heads, a bit litterlarly.
However..... thicc skulls are always thicc, outside and inside. Years later both of them ended up in the Yakuza criminal organization, the Tojo Clan. Seems like they got waht they wished for, wads of cash and anything they could possibly wish for. Yet.... Kiryu seems a bit lost.....as we can see.... that isnt exaclty joy in his eyes... The friendship of the two brothers kept flourishing even years later. One fatefull day... Kiryu gets blamed for a murder that got the cops knocking on the Tojo Clan door. Not knowing waht to do Kiryu asked to be explelled form the Clan. This normally doesnt go easy in the yakuza world. Some face smacks later, Kiryu arrives in front of Dojima himself, the boss. He casually says how he basically doesnt give a damn what he does. Kiryu on the other hand is more than willing to do anything to prove his inoccense. With the three big bosses gunning for him, our guy has some hell of a labyrinth to traverse. Luckily there are friendly faces who help him on his journey. This time around you get to play the story divided in two by letting you play with two different charachters. Both with their motivations, struggles and goals. Majima Goro, beloved by many hardcore fans of the frnachise.... Is a man who was forced not to show up for a hit and has to live with the knowledge that he was set alone on a murdering rampage of 18 men and to complete his job he had to take the fall for the Tojo Clan and get locked away for a wopping of 25 years. Majima is being forced to live in a controlled cage of a city where his every move is watched and he is practically a prisoner even though he is a manager of one of the best Cabare Clubs there. Even going as far as being called "Lord of the Night" as far as his reputation of how good he is goes. But he doesnt care much about that and feels like he failed his sworn brother Saejima. The franchise is very story heavy with loads of cinematics as a reward for all the bashing, also various side stories are very enjoyable and are in a way the heart of the franchise along with the main story. We get to see Kiryu taking care of a little orphan kid who is no more and no less Yumi's daughter. Majima breaks from his shackles in Yakuza 0 and chooses to abandon the love of his life becasue his life is too dangerous for her. Kiryu and Nishkiyama eventually face as enemies becasue he couldnt save his sister from a medical condition and he was also belittled by everyone while Kiryu was in prison becasue he took the fall for Nishki so that he could get away.
The story keeps getting better witch each sequel ( ahem, rubber bullets), so if you want to know it, well..... why not giving it a try?
Z
Enter the Dragon of Dojima
When i first saw this cover art while i was first holding it in my hands, I felt something great was coming my way.
And boy oh boy was i right. The very first OG Yakuza game on the PS2 was what got me into loving the franchise thats about bashing heads with increasingly riddicoulous finisher attacks and silly towns people. On a more serious note though this is the story of a person who goes through some harsh things in his life and his journey of growth and emotions is nothing else but epic in my eyes and heart.
Story of the Criminal Underground and Feels
The saga of our hero starting from the very first game Yakuza 1 seems like another Beat em Up but set in a sandbox like setting.
It all begins very slow, with our boy arriving in a car with his Aniki (a subordinate made by oath dont mind my silly descriptions).
Seems like they are here as loan sharks to rough up a company that wont pay their protection money to the yakuza. And quite honestly I start to wonder what our main character will be like if thats what he does for a living. Will he be just a muscle and the whole story will be you doing similar like quests? And then....... a few hours later after drinking with his sworn brother Nishki things start to get very interesting. We see how our boy is full of emotions and cares deeply about the people that surround him. That's when it hit me, our protagonist was just giving out this friendly macho man vibe. A few hours later.......his sworn brother has shot the very boss of the organization they are both working for........Turns out the old creep wanted to force himself on Yumi, a friend of the two bros and Nishki ended him for doing that with a gun. Visibly crying and shaking and Kiryu (our hero) worried about the shocking moment he is currently in......We see that our characters are very emotional creatures and that murder does not come light to them. Even though they are in the Yakuza. I think it would be too long to write the story of the whole franchise so I will try to make a somewhat decent summary.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Looking back at the very first game the game mechanics were a tad bit clunky. And Kiryu honestly felt like controlling a train that when it goes one direction, its kinda hard to switch to different tracks. When you want to do a combo on an enemy your every attacks isnt so swift, cancelable or stoppable. What im trying to say here is that if you go ahead and want to attacks multiple foes at ones if you go rushing in for all of them, it is very likely you will get trashed like a bowling pin. Your best bet is to learn where to position yourself in the whole crowd of enemies and attacking them one by one and also attacking one enemy then repositioning and attacking a random enemy but where the attacks of others cannot reach you.
That being said as you progress you learn new movesets and finisher attacks called "heat actions". Your "heat bar" is like a rage bar, but when it fills up instead of constant rage mode, you get to do cool attacks on enemies that do decent damage or big damage depending on the attack and weapon you can pick up and use on an enemy. Later on you meet his mysterious master of martial arts that shows you how to go Miyagi on anyone who dares challenge you. You will get stuff like, the ability to dodge more than one time in a row over time, being able to attack an enemy behind you while attacking another enemy. Which makes our big beefy train more agile. And..... something you will realise if you play these games for long enough is that one of the best if not the very best normal special move you can do is....the Tiger Drop! Which can no kidding drop a real tigger in the sequel!!!! Oh my days....... As sequels continue the Heat Actions slowly start to get more and more flashy. Part 3 is...uhm....wel...lets just say the enemies like to put up a fight aka the tecnhique called "I wanna block all night and chill every day". This is a bit of a nuisance especially in the unpatched version or to my knoweldge I dont know if there is a patched version. There is one way of dealing with this, but its not really recommended as a normal playthrough or at least i think so. My way is to gather every possible weapn becasue this game lets you keep them, and upgrade them to the max in the "weapons shop". That way you can trash those silly little boy who love to block all day and finish them off with a spectacular array of weapon finish moves. Or.......at least i think they're kinda cool.... Moving on to the rest of the games, the story keeps getting better and better (not sure about rubber bullets ......). Parts 4 and 5 let you play with different characters with all having different fight styes, which is rad. As soon as part 5 hit, we see that Kiru began to be really fast, agile and well.....more of a bumper car on all foes at all times instead of a freight train. 6 has these......ragdoll physics.... and John Yakuza simply is so OP its like throwing a massive bowling ball called Kiryu at the bowling pins those being the enemies. You can easily grab one enemy and smash the whole group while holding the poor poor soul by the leg. With all of them wonderfully bouncing as you batter the bejesus out of them. Finishers are getting pretty crazy by this point. Yakuza 0 introduces switching fighting styles and even more fun finishers, with two playable characters and various movesets, this makes our pal into an absolute unit. The ragdoll pshysics are gone in this one thank god. Not that they are not fun while it lasted.....in my opinion becasue it was just so silly and I love Kiryu but........The gameplay is more balanced in the what i like to call "normal yakuza engine". The gameplay overall is not that hard but you do face stronger foes with different weapons and moves that can sometimes roll you over.
Story Summary
In chronological order the story goes like this.....
Kazuma Kiryu and Nishkiyama Akira were orphans, one man helped them by taking them to Sunflower Orphanage. This palce will be mentioned a few times. These two became best friends and even more so.... sworn brothers. They thought they could live the good life like the person who they saw as their father, so they wanted a slice of that too. Turns out it was a life of a Yakuza, something their adoptive father Kazama never wanted. He thought that maybe he can beat that idea out of their heads, a bit litterlarly.
However..... thicc skulls are always thicc, outside and inside. Years later both of them ended up in the Yakuza criminal organization, the Tojo Clan. Seems like they got waht they wished for, wads of cash and anything they could possibly wish for. Yet.... Kiryu seems a bit lost.....as we can see.... that isnt exaclty joy in his eyes... The friendship of the two brothers kept flourishing even years later. One fatefull day... Kiryu gets blamed for a murder that got the cops knocking on the Tojo Clan door. Not knowing waht to do Kiryu asked to be explelled form the Clan. This normally doesnt go easy in the yakuza world. Some face smacks later, Kiryu arrives in front of Dojima himself, the boss. He casually says how he basically doesnt give a damn what he does. Kiryu on the other hand is more than willing to do anything to prove his inoccense. With the three big bosses gunning for him, our guy has some hell of a labyrinth to traverse. Luckily there are friendly faces who help him on his journey. This time around you get to play the story divided in two by letting you play with two different charachters. Both with their motivations, struggles and goals. Majima Goro, beloved by many hardcore fans of the frnachise.... Is a man who was forced not to show up for a hit and has to live with the knowledge that he was set alone on a murdering rampage of 18 men and to complete his job he had to take the fall for the Tojo Clan and get locked away for a wopping of 25 years. Majima is being forced to live in a controlled cage of a city where his every move is watched and he is practically a prisoner even though he is a manager of one of the best Cabare Clubs there. Even going as far as being called "Lord of the Night" as far as his reputation of how good he is goes. But he doesnt care much about that and feels like he failed his sworn brother Saejima. The franchise is very story heavy with loads of cinematics as a reward for all the bashing, also various side stories are very enjoyable and are in a way the heart of the franchise along with the main story. We get to see Kiryu taking care of a little orphan kid who is no more and no less Yumi's daughter. Majima breaks from his shackles in Yakuza 0 and chooses to abandon the love of his life becasue his life is too dangerous for her. Kiryu and Nishkiyama eventually face as enemies becasue he couldnt save his sister from a medical condition and he was also belittled by everyone while Kiryu was in prison becasue he took the fall for Nishki so that he could get away.
The story keeps getting better witch each sequel ( ahem, rubber bullets), so if you want to know it, well..... why not giving it a try?
Z
