Yakuza 6 applies themes of fatherhood and masculinity as coping mechanisms for intense interpersonal drama. While it surrenders the sweeping ambition that defined Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 5, it feels sharper, more focused, and more honest about its intentions. At age 48, it's impolite to define Kazuma Kiryu as an old man, but it's clear that he—and Yakuza 6 as a whole—are devoted to passing their experience on to the next generation.
Yakuza 6 should feel tired. It’s the thirteenth title under the Yakuza banner, the ninth to make it to North American shores, and the third released in the last fifteen months. It is a quantity typically understood as too much, and stands in sharp contrast to industry leaders whom we only tolerate, at best, annually. This unspoken code, however, does not seem to stick to Yakuza 6. Through the strength of its narrative and its singular, unyielding focus on dramatic tension, it remains difficult not to feel enraptured by Kazuma Kiryu and the seedy criminal underworld of Kamurocho.
The basic outline stays untouched; Yakuza 6 still performs as a hybrid between an open-world beat ’em up and an action role-playing game. Walking through the small but densely packed streets of Kamurocho draws the player into random battles with raging street punks. Story missions usually filter the player though a building containing hordes of angry people. Experience points are acquired and used to increase a multitude of basic stats and add additional combat abilities. Often erroneously compared to Grand Theft Auto, Yakuza is better thought of as either a purpose-driven Shenmue or a beat ’em up fused with a Japanese television drama. It’s unmistakably unique.
Expectations acquired over a breadth of history can be turn into dead weight. Yakuza 6 responds by abandoning characters and locations many hold sacred. Daigo Dojima, Goro Majima, Taiga Saejima—some of the most popular (and last standing) members of the Tojo Clan—only dwell in Yakuza 6’s periphery. Shun Akiyama and Makoto Date appear in minor supporting roles, but Yakuza 6 centers on a brand new supporting cast. Younger, reckless, and consumed with their potential for power, they stand in direct opposition to the calculated miscreants of Yakuza’s past.
The focus of Yakuza 6 is left on its most visible face, Kazuma Kiryu. He is the only playable character, and, after Yakuza 4, Yakuza 5, and Yakuza 0’s multi-protagonist outings, this revelation may raise both eyebrows and pitchforks. Suspicions of insularity, however, quickly prove unwarranted. Yakuza 6 embraces modernity through its narrative, characters, and its technical composition. A younger cast compliments a new game engine, and, much like Monster Hunter World, arrives with myriad improvements that shake away some of Yakuza’s long-running aggravations.
Many of these refinements are crafted in the name of efficiency. Inventory space, once used as a catch-all for every consumable item, has been expanded to allow every item in limited quantities. The strategy of hoarding Stamina Royales is no longer possible, although you can still load up on junk food from the nearest Poppo. Heat, the meter Kiryu accumulates and uses to perform special moves, no longer dissipates if it’s unused or beaten out of him. Along the same lines, boss characters now only have a single health bar, as opposed to the endless stream of refilling, rainbow-colored bars. The loading and save times, a great source of pain in the last two outings, have also been drastically reduced.
The most obvious change lies with Yakuza 6’s “dragon engine” which, I assume, is the first technical overhaul the series has received in over a decade (Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza 0, for example, felt like PlayStation 3-level assets running at 60 frames-per-second). While Yakuza 6 can only, even on a PlayStation 4 Pro, operate at 30 frames-per-second, everything looks extremely nice. Kamurocho shows off better than ever; strolling down Tenkaichi Street or running through the Theater District carries unprecedented levels of fidelity. Onomichi, too, carries a relaxed southern atmosphere, offering a nice reprieve from the kinetic and unsavory Tokyo streets.
The technical side of Yakuza 6 is also home to the most compromise. A reworked physics system blends well with Kiryu’s improved ground game, as scooping up and kicking foes can turn them into bowling balls. Similarly, grabbing and swing-throwing a guy into a crowd is a good starter for almost every group fight. While it’s easy to appreciate seamless transitions into buildings and restaurants, it seems to have come at the cost of a “complete” Kamurocho. The Champion District is blocked off under the guise of renovation, and the northern section (including Purgatory) is absent. Whether constrained by time or technical issues, Kamurocho feels slightly unfinished.
Combat has been remixed and reinvigorated. The style-switching interplay that defined recent Yakuza games has vanished, or, more appropriately merged into a single style to conform inside of Yakuza 6’s new experience system. Basic combo strings are available from the start, and the player can invest experience points into five stat categories, unlock new battle moves, perform heat actions, and some secondary characteristics. It’s an omnibus approach that composes a greatest hits version of Kiryu’s style, or, if you’re me, yet another venue to Tiger Drop hapless victims into oblivion.
Narrative remains Yakuza’s strongest asset. Fresh out of a three year stint in prison, Kiryu returns to the streets of Kamurocho only to find Haruka Sawamura as the victim of a viscous hit-and-run. Comatose, she leaves behind a healthy infant, Haruto, much to the shock of Kiryu and everyone in Haruka’s immediate circle. This discovery takes Kiryu to Onomichi, a sleepy seaside town in Hiroshima, where it unfolds into another complex tapestry of organized deceit and inevitable chaos. Kiryu’s relationship with the members of Onomichi’s Hirose Family soon takes center stage. Of course, the emergence of the Triads in Kamurocho, the Tojo Clan’s plotting acting chairman Takumi Someya, and unstable neutrality of the Yomei Alliance further complicate Kiryu’s world.
A mystery box guides Yakuza 6’s plot along its course. Who is Haruto’s father? What was Haruka doing while Kiryu was imprisoned? What is the vague, world-changing secret locked inside of Onomichi? Lingering questions are addressed toward Yakuza 6’s finale, leaving the interim full of intensely serious thirty minute cut-scenes and wackadoodle substories. A winding narrative full of presumed kingpins, obvious red herrings, and outrageous plot twists still compose Yakuza’s endearing playbook.
Yakuza 6 retains its ability to harmonize both of Kiryu’s identities. Through the story, Kiryu exhibits severe malevolence for those who have wronged him. He has a limitless capability for violence and compliments it with powerful dose of charisma. At the same time, through substories, Kiryu is hopelessly roped into to solving ridiculous problems for the local populace. He’s as interested in smashing a bicycle into a man’s head as he is video-chatting with cam girls or deep sea spear fishing. Kamurocho is Gotham and Kiryu is a universal, unprejudiced Batman.
It’s not that Yakuza’s unsettling violence is unrealistic (few people actually die despite appearing mortally obliterated), its suspension of disbelief is overpowered by its outrageous collection of substories. At one point in Yakuza 6, Kiryu encourages a child to go through with her surgery by beating the living shit out of punks while he’s wearing a dumbass ramen mascot costume. He’ll also chase a maniac roomba across Kamurocho, handle an insufferable YouTuber, fight his phone’s A.I., and deal with an inept time traveler. Most substories culminate in Kiryu physically destroying his opponent, but they all provide much needed brevity between a heavy narrative.
Like other aspects of Yakuza 6, the quantity of available substories is fewer than past entries. Nearly half are blended into deeper, connected sequences. Kiryu winds up managing a baseball team, and can recruit new members from the streets of Onomichi. In practice, baseball adapts the batting cage minigame from past titles and fleshes it out with menu-driven strategy minigame. Finding drinking buddies at New Gaudi, a bar in Onomichi leads to a series of timed, Telltale-like conversations with fellow patrons. Fishing isn’t fishing, but rather a three-level rail-shooter where Kiryu deep sea dives and chucks spears at fish. Chatting up cam girls in video chat, complete with Kiryu two-finger-typing canned responses, is hilarious if not marginally tactless. Visiting Hostess Clubs, meanwhile, is as protracted as it’s ever been.
Two larger options compose the remainder of Yakuza 6’s periphery. The first is Clan Creator, which functions as Yakuza 6’s game-spanning minigame (much like Majima’s Cabaret Clubs or Kiryu’s real estate business from Yakuza 0). It’s basically a top-down, real-time strategy game where you deploy light and heavy sentries across a small map against the enemy’s opposing forces. Hero units are available, and more can even be recruited and acquired out on the streets of Kamurocho and Onomichi. The premise, in which Kiryu and his new buddy Joe are pushing back against the JUSTIS street gang, is full of wild characters and colorful showmanship. If you can connect with the concept—and there are enough character unlocks, progression mechanics, and mission types to make it possible—clan battles could easily absorb a dozen hours on its own.
The second new addition, likely created to fill in the gaps between substories, is through an app on Kiryu’s phone, Troublr. Citizens of Kamurocho and Onomichi will report minor crimes, like a gang of lowlifes (literally called “lowlifes”) harassing women or part of a building being engulfed in flames. One of the more engaging calls was to find the location of a bomb based on an escalating series of photographs. Troublr missions are quick hits used to gain small doses of experience and shuffle Kiryu across the map. They’re also a facet that could feasibly exist in Yakuza’s world, given Kiryu’s legendary status for solving every single problem, large or small, thrown his way.
Familiar minigames also make an appearance. Darts, mahjong, batting practice, and a karaoke return. Kamurocho’s Club Sega arcade retains the Super Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run, and Fantasy Zone quartet at one location. The other has a nice version of Puyo Puyo and the last revision of Virtua Fighter 5, Final Showdown. The latter, which includes a second-player option, is a huge get for the series. Virtua Fighter has always preferred technical proficiency to flash and accessibility, but it still looks gorgeous and performs as one of the best 3D fighters ever constructed. Sticking older games inside of newer games is no longer novel, but games of Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown’s caliber merit attention.
While Yakuza has always enjoyed cultish recognition, it wasn’t until Yakuza 0 took social media by storm that it felt legitimately popular. A stellar localization by a team that seemed to get Yakuza’s serious and silly duality created dozens of hilarious illustrations of Yakuza’s quirks (chronicled effectively in this Twitter account). Yakuza 6 resumes this course and never hesitates to let off the gas. Musings about robot uprisings, careful explanations of ethical challenges, and self-aware moments of incredulity are in frequent supply. The team is careful to keep Kiryu in character, and often pokes fun at his inability to grapple with the modern world.
When it’s time to get serious, however, Yakuza 6 understands how to build and apply dramatic tension. Respect is an enduring theme of Japanese drama, and Yakuza 6’s emerging characters twist and contort it to suit their needs. The Hirose family can never earn enough respect, the Yomei Alliance is saving a cache of respect for social currency, the Jingweon mafia uses respect to create chaos, and the Triad feeds off locations where respect is absent. Kiryu, the assumed paragon of respect, ultimately seeks to apply his ideals to each field and shape them back to neutral. Most of the time this culminates in horrific violence, but Yakuza 6’s hours of cut-scenes and dialogue sequences install a proper motivation.
Inside the nature of respect are themes of replacement and modernization. Kiryu, while only 48, is frequently referenced as an old man and portrayed as incompatible with the modern world. His custody over Haruto and relationship with the Hirose family reinforces this atmosphere, forcing Kiryu into the role of a teacher. The lessons he chooses to teach, and what knowledge he ultimately decides to pass on, is the heart beating beneath the plot of Yakuza 6. Kiryu isn’t so much concerned with his legacy as he is with setting an example. His violence is as much of a tool for instruction as it is destruction.
Yakuza 6 doesn’t shy away from confronting Kiryu with his own destructive history. The site of a major incident from the original Yakuza is smashed in his face, and his actions from that time form a direct line to his present situation. Before a villain falls, he tells Kiryu, “knowing you…you’ll have to keep fighting them to find your answers,” which is a self-conscious callout to Kiryu’s means of expression. Yakuza has managed a rich history over its seven main entries, and recognizing its past (not to mention additional commentary on its combat) always serves the series well.
Capturing themes of fatherhood and masculinity feels personal to Yakuza 6’s development team. Kiryu’s treatment of Haruto—complete with one baby crying minigame that mercifully only lasts a few minutes—alongside his desire to push a new generation forward figuratively speak for the chemistry of the development team’s veterans and newcomers. This is admittedly speculative, but Yakuza 6’s story and charactors are laden with enough personal touches to supply a mountain of evidence. Duty isn’t always incompatible with the search for joy.
It’s that endearing sentiment that raises Yakuza 6’s performance from adequate and satisfying to accomplished and inspiring. The sharp retraction in “content” from Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 5 can make Yakuza 6 feel like a dry run while the team grapples with new technology, a bridge to Shin Ryu Ga Gotoku (as well as Yakuza Kiwami 2). The energy and weight of Yakuza 6’s final three (of thirteen) chapters push through imposed limitations and place it among the series’ best. It’s a slow, almost oppressive fuse, but it’s worth waiting for it to erupt into fireworks.
Yakuza 6 applies themes of fatherhood and masculinity as coping mechanisms for intense interpersonal drama. While it surrenders the sweeping ambition that defined Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 5, it feels sharper, more focused, and more honest about its intentions. At age 48, it’s impolite to define Kazuma Kiryu as an old man, but it’s clear that he—and Yakuza 6 as a whole—are devoted to passing their experience on to the next generation.
