So... Yakuza, am I right? Right now I don't think it needs introdution. Some of you might know of it as Like a Dragon, as it should really be since the beginning (they initially released as Yakuza to make it sell more. Stupid move in my opinion). This franchise is centenary nowadays (in truth, it's only 20 years old, which means it's older than most of your nephews) and it spawns a lot of games. Initially, it didn't catch much traction and mostly remained a niche franchise. It wasn't until the outstanding success of Yakuza 0 (11 years!) for the franchise to become something. And with the release of Yakuza: Like a Dragon... by the divines! Nowadays, it's one of SEGA's big three, alongside Persona and Sonic. But something is amiss...
I love this franchise. Truly. The fifth entry is my second favorite game ever (I even wrote a guide for the Platinum trophy in Spanish!) and I have played every single game that's been localized. And yet... I can't help but feel like my love for the franchise has disappeared.
How come, if it's better than ever? Accompany me and Yousef on this collaborative effort to explain... Why Yakuza isn't what it used to be.
PART 1: HUMBLE ORIGINS (Written by Yousef)
Yakuza 1: incredibly ambitious, and yet, disappoitingly scarce in content.
Many have argued what the “true” origins of the Yakuza series (known in Japan as “Ryu Ga Gotoku) could be, from being a possible spiritual successor to the Shenmue franchise to being likely inspired by Japanese TV crime dramas at the time, but one thing is for sure: series creator and head honcho, Toshihiro Nagoshi (of Super Monkey Ball fame), did not have an easy time pitching the project to Sega.
It’s been documented many times how much of a struggle it was for Nagoshi-san to get his vision approved for a game, let alone a full-blown series. Not to mention, had he even gotten his game greenlit for a sequel, he’d eventually have to worry about working with new hardware due to the original Yakuza coming out at the tail end of the sixth generation.
It was not an easy time, to say the least, but not only was the original Yakuza a groundbreaking success that proved to change Sega’s gaming landscape for the foreseeable future, but also Nagoshi’s as well, as he was now in charge of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios, a new subsidiary studio named after the series that got its feet off the ground.
Now, while we may have established the origins within the context of the original PS2 brawler in itself, we need to jump ahead here, as it’s important to establish the origins of the series within the grander context of the franchise as a whole and what the first game looks like in comparison to modern entries.
This is because while it’s true that the first game had an almost gargantuan marketing budget behind it and was being sold as the next big thing, the PS2 game itself is actually quite humble in terms of gameplay and content, with many franchise staples not making their debut until later entries.
One interesting example to jump to would be karaoke; while it might sound like a string of brilliance at first, Nagoshi himself allegedly heavily pushed against the idea until he was eventually convinced to let it in. This is why the feature may have felt a bit barebones in its debut game, Yakuza 3. This is in no small part due to Ryosuke Horii, a staple dev and director of Yakuza 7, heavily advocating for the feature to be implemented, thus impacting the course of the series.
Funnily enough, even Yakuza’s transition to next-gen hardware has some charming humility to it, as rather than working on their next big game at the time, Yakuza 3, they actually opted for creating what was at the time the first spinoff in the series, Ryu Ga Gotoku Kenzan, an entry set in feudal Japan starring the tales of the legendary swordsman, Musashi Miyamoto. This was also the first game to give series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu his face-scanned model.
Of course, this is not even mentioning how the series began as an open-world game with a fixed camera, something that would be later changed in the aforementioned Kenzan, amongst other features such as the removal of missable substories.
The Yakuza franchise continued to do well, with both Yakuza 3 and 4 being a huge success. Sadly, however, Yakuza 5 showed signs of diminishing interest overseas, as shown by Sega not only neglecting to release a physical copy but also taking a whopping three years to get localized, showcasing Sega’s apparent lack of interest in growing a global market. It seemed as if Yakuza was now destined to be a niche supported only by a loyal Japanese audience. Small note by Aziamuth: it was thanks to the continued effort of fans and a worker at SEGA that the executives were convinced to eventualy release Yakuza 5 outside of Japan, albeit digital only.
Things, however, would see a turnaround, as evident in the next segment covered by our good friend, Aziamuth.
PART 2: THE YAKUZA 0 PHENOMENON (written by Aziamuth)
Overall, the perfect action game.
2017 is, by far, the most important year for the franchise, for it was the moment Yakuza 0 came out outside of Japan (the game itself was released for the PS3 only on Japan on 2015). Not only was the game a critical success, it was also a success for veterans of the series, as it encapsuled everything that made the games great but amped to eleven. Superb writing, outstanding narrative, an OST that sticks to your brain even after you stop playing, phenomenal combat system, a wide array of well-designed side activities (as well as catfights) and quality substories, the core of Yakuza’s side content. Aside from that, the game is also a celebration of the series up to that point (the tenth anniversary!), because it had several cameos and references to previous games in the series.
While it was a success for old timers, the real meat of the player base came from newcomers. Because it was meant to be a prequel set in the past, anyone could jump into this game as their first game if they felt like it. That, combined with the overall quality of the game, meant huge popularity, for the first time ever, for the Yakuza series. And you know the best part? Yakuza 0 still had the Yakuza identity. This is most likely because it carries the vibes introduced by Yakuza 5 (mostly because they use the same engine and it can be felt on how the scenes are constructed and how the UI looks) and the ever-present charm of the franchise. It was all well in the world…
Interestingly enough, the sequel, Yakuza Kiwami, got released worldwide a year prior. This is a remake of the first game, using the same engine as Yakuza 0. It keeps the core story intact while adding new scenes pertaining to Akira Nishikiyama, the main antagonist as well as Kiryu’s brother. The combat takes what 0 did and improves, but unfortunately the game is plagued but poorly designed bosses that hide just how well designed the combat actually is. Yakuza Kiwami wouldn’t gain traction until the release of Yakuza 0, which only highlights how important that game is. It also meant the farewell of the Yakuza 5 engine, leading to a critical stage for the series, with the development of a new engine. But, how harmful can a new engine be?
Part 3: DRAGON ENGINE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE FRANCHISE (Written by Yousef)
The games became more realistic, but at what cost?
We’ve established already how important the series origins are and how big a deal Yakuza 0 was to the series and its fans, but we’re now going to dissect how Dragon Engine entered the fray and how that affected the franchise, for better or for worse.
While the Dragon Engine has had undeniably permanently healthy quality of life changes to the Yakuza series, such as the addition of a more user-friendly item management system, we must establish necessary context in order to better understand the nuances behind this discussion, as it’s not a simple matter of just good or bad changes; it’s far more complex than that. Rather, it just feels as if Yakuza has seemingly lost a core part of the elements that make it distinctive and identifiable from other crime dramas at the time, possibly in hopes of pursuing a larger audience.
None of the changes that'll be discussed here are necessarily good or bad per se. Rather, it feels like a Theseus’s Paradox situation (also known as the Ship of Theseus), where so many tiny changes happen to something that over the long run, you have to wonder if it’s still the same thing it was 15-something years ago.
This is the perfect way to verbalize the current state of Yakuza. Even though the games are of great quality, there have been so many minute, intricate changes over the years that one is left wondering if it can even be considered the same franchise so long as it keeps some vaguely similar elements.
Of course, change in itself can’t be a bad thing, and sometimes change happens due to completely external circumstances like evolving hardware, game development techniques changing, dev team members being shifted around, standards and trends changing, and so on. Also worth mentioning, the transition to Dragon Engine was inevitable, as it’s been said that RGG didn’t want to work on the old engine forever.
But even with everything laid on the table, it’s still hard to not wonder: was there really nothing that could be done to maintain the charm of the classics? That je ne sais quoi charm that can’t be articulated or put into words. And was the engine really all at fault? Sure, RGG did admit Yakuza 6 was a simple test game for the engine and not much more, but even that game made a valuable effort in trying to maintain a core quality that’s been slowly disappearing from the series as it went on.
Once again, this is not commentary on which era of Yakuza is better. It’s quite tricky to convey what’s so special about Yakuza 1-5, Dead Souls, Kurohyou 1-2, and Kenzan, as they all just carried that unique innocent charm that’s seemingly vanished by now. Look, Yakuza always wanted to be big and ambitious; Yakuza 5 itself might as well be “Celebrity Cameos: The Video Game,” but it was the juxtaposition of a series with big dreams being confined within budgetary constraints that made it so charming. It’s a combination of both intentional and unintentional qualities, like with any truly beautiful piece of art. Sometimes it is both internal and external factors that make something what it is.
It could also be said Yakuza may have lost the vision it once had and somewhat lost these days. Making all sorts of experiments that don’t evolve or don’t seem to go anywhere. It’s nothing like how Yakuza 1-5 were constantly building upon one another. Yakuza 8 was an interesting display of RGG seemingly putting a lot of emphasis on the cast, setting, and scale rather than it being a good game period. We can only hope this mindset would change with the upcoming Pirate Yakuza. For now, I advise reading the next part, as it expands on the point brought up earlier about modern Yakuza finding its identity.
PART 4: GOING DRAGON QUEST? (Written by Azimuth)
On the bright side, we got Ichiban Kasuga so maybe it's not all so bad.
On 2021, Yakuza: Like a Dragon (most commonly known as Yakuza 7) was released worldwide. What originally appeared as an April Fool’s Joke somehow turned into a full-fledged turn-based RPG. Yakuza 7 was a paradigm shift for the franchise: not only was the genre completely changed, but it also gave us a new protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, and a new setting, Yokohama. It was certainly a massive difference in comparison to the previous entries. On the surface, it was just that: a new way of testing the waters, perhaps an attempt at soft rebooting the franchise. The narrative was outstanding; in my opinion the strongest Yakuza has ever been (minus a certain plot point that’s minor in the face of everything that it does great); the new characters were charismatic and likeable; and, hey, I’m all up for trying new things. But… something was amiss. The game was bigger. Way bigger. Perhaps… too big? And I don’t mean just the map (Yokohama was immense): the story itself and, most noticeably, the scenes, were longer than before. And you might say: doesn’t Yakuza 5 have that as well? Yeah, that’s true, but in that game, it was its identity; here it just feels like it wants to be big for the sake of being bigger (or even worse: because RPGs have to be big, or they are not worth it). And I feel like that's a big problem, because Yakuza has always benefitted from being smaller and more compact in comparison to other games such as GTA or Assassin's Creed. With this new JRPG structure, that compactness is completely gone.
As a result, the game barely felt like Yakuza. The magic was gone. One could blame it on the new gameplay, but that couldn’t be far from the truth. It’s more like how the world of Yakuza 7 is presented: everything is more corporate, more soulless, less charming. In truth, at least for me, it did not even matter, because I had personal problems with the game outside of “how it felt”. Namely, how redundant combat was in plenty of aspects and how it claimed to be inspired by Dragon Quest despite the fact that it had a total of two references to Dragon Quest (one of them being a title drop) and the combat being more akin to Persona than to the franchise I love so much. So, that feeling of “it’s gone” wasn’t prevalent. No, that wouldn’t happen until the release of Infinite Wealth.
Infinite Wealth makes me so mad because it’s the perfect culmination of what modern Yakuza is nowadays. Good writing, good gameplay, good side content. Hell, it even fixes every problem I had with Yakuza 7 (the story is a bit worse, but it's enjoyable nonetheless). And yet, it’s soulless as hell. I wasn’t hyped by it when I saw the trailers and only fell when I saw that Akiyama was going to be present. Yakuza FINALLY had proper marketing, making the game known and appealable for everyone. But all I saw was meaningless side content that was there just to sell. All there was, for me, was “oooh look how quirky our game is, give us money”. It lacked the ingenuity, the creativity and the heart that previous entries had; which is weird because the side content in Infinite Wealth was miles better than anything that isn’t 5, 0 and maybe Lost Judgment. I don’t know, maybe I’m OLD. That being said, I hated how you were FORCED to interact with said side content instead of letting your curiosity go wild, like in 5.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the game a lot and gave it a good score on Backloggd, but at the same time it completely killed my interest in the franchise. When a game is really good but doesn’t encourage you to experience later entries in the franchise, then you know something is wrong.
CONCLUSION
Despite its questionable combat, I enjoyed the remake of Ishin a lot because it felt like going back to the past.
This article may have been a bit negative, but don’t think it’s all over! Both Judgment games are fantastic because they offer cool detective stories, and I’m extremely excited about them. And, hey, I’m not going to disregard a possible Gaiden about Akiyama or Shinada, since I love them so much. But whatever your opinion is on the franchise, it’s undeniable that change has seeped into the overly realistic pores of Way of the Dragon. I guess that what we’re feeling now is what veterans of Monster Hunter feel about World and Rise: fantastic games, but the identity of the franchise is at risk.
What do YOU think? Do you like how the franchise is currently? Or are you nostalgic, like us? Let us know in the comments, and stay tuned for more high quality articles!
