Topic: Yakuza 4 not going to have as many cuts as 3

[idolminds]

Hooray!

Sega wants Westerners looking forward to Yakuza 4, a PlayStation 3 exclusive, to worry less. Not only with hostess clubs survive the game's U.S. localization. So too will Mah-Jong which also had been excised from Yakzua 3, according to Sega's Aaron Webber, who showed Kotaku the new game yesterday and was the community manager who had to settle down rowdy Yakuza 3 fans when they complained about the prior game's cuts. Webber said all of the game's side-quests "will pretty much be in there." Pressed about that qualified statement, Webber said he was unaware of any cut side-quests and said any cuts will be "nothing like Yakuza 3."

Mahjong is in, so I'm sold. Its damn near impossible to get a real mahjong game in english.

That reminds me, I should pick up Yakuza 2 for the PS2. Get caught up with the series and play some mahjong.

The one part of Yakuza 4 definitely dropped from the Western release is Answer X Answer, an interactive Japanese game show. Japanese trivia had been cut from Yakuza 3 because it was considered something that might be too exotic for Western gamers, but Webber said the content was not the concern this time. The technology was. Answer X Answer is comprised of 16-bit-style old-school graphics, much of its text rendered in custom-animated fonts. The labor involved in re-doing all of Answer's text in English would keep Yakuza 4 from making its spring 2011 release date.

Understandable.

[idolminds]

Guess I can just make this the Yakuza thread.

I picked up Yakuza 2 a while back, played it for a while and then sorta realized the things I had been doing wrong all along so I'm starting over from the start. But its a great game and fans of the Shenmue series should check it out. The camera is different (and kind of annoying) but it seems in Y3 and Y4 it is more like the behind the back camera of the Shenmue games.

Basically you run around, beat up dudes that pick fights with you, do a bunch of side missions and activities (bowling, batting cages, mahjong, casino gambling, etc), and all along theres this big epic story.

I saw a full list of cuts in Yakuza 3, and it doesn't seem nearly as bad as the hardcore fans might have you believe. Sure some stuff is pretty fun that got cut but the majority of the game is still there. I was going to wait for Yakuza 4, but I found out they added the hanafuda card game to 3 (and 4) so I went to track down a copy the other day. Sadly the only local copy I could find was still $40. For that might I might as well wait for Y4 in March. Amazon has it for $25 so Im thinking of ordering it. Might give updates when I do.

But the reason I wanted to post in this thread is something I didn't see until now. A Yakuza spin-off game Yakuza: Of The End. Its Yakuza...with zombies. I hope they bring this one over.

[iPPi]

Mahjong is awesome, but digital recreations of it suck... especially online versions of it too because players are too slow.  What makes Mahjong such a fun game to play in real life is that it does tend to be fairly fast paced at times.

Granted, finding enough people who know how to play it in real life can be a challenge as well.  Most of my friends don't know how to play it.  If they do know, they don't play particularly well.

[idolminds]

So I bought Yakuza 3 and am loving the heck out of it. Its got a better "feel" compared to Y2. In Y2 the camera was almost fixed perspective that would change around depending on where you went, similar to the old Resident Evil games. Now the camera is behind your back and follows you so you feel more like you're exploring a place. Fights don't go to a loading screen, it loads a fight right there in the world where you are.

Of course I already found the mahjong parlor and shogi place, which are pretty useless since you cant play those games. No big deal. Lots of extra things to do. Kareoke, a dice game, 2 special card games, darts (like Shenmue!), an pool. The pool minigame could almost be its own game. Its really good.

So yeah, its great. Really looking forward to Yakuza 4.

[idolminds]

Complete list of Yakuza 4 cuts

Answer x Answer quiz game is cut.
They couldn't get a license for the opening song, so they changed it.

Thats it. This is going to be AWESOME!

[idolminds]

So in spite of my better judgement to wait, I bought Yakuza 4 today. I already love it.

NOTE: Its $39.99 right now on BestBuy.com. Kmart in-store gives you a free copy of Yakuza 3 (and a $10 store credit thing if you have their "rewards" thingy). Pick whichever is the better deal for you.

I've only played for an hour or two, but the game is great fun. The new character fights differently, which is fun after the 60-some hours or whatever I played of the last game. There are a total of 4 guys you will play as this time so that should keep the fights interesting.

Granted I haven't played a lot so theres not a lot for me to comment on. I went in the mahjong parlor and yes indeed you can play! When you go in a place to eat something (in my case, the burger join) there was an actual animation of you eating. I know, totally minor thing but its better than Y3s fade to black and then fade back. All the hostess clubs are back so now that section of town wont seem quite so dead, and the MEB shop thing where you get information about the different clubs and girls actually has a use now!

My favorite parts so far are probably the minigames. First, the gambling hall has all the japanese gambling games in one place this time. Before you had to fly between cities to play one game or the other, but since you apparently don't visit Okinawa in this game they put em all under the same roof. And Baccarat is back!

The other new thing is the hot spring. It seems like a place you'll take girls on dates to, but you can go in and relax and play the new table tennis game. I havent figured out the finer points of playing but its fun. It has a very Japanese feature, too. I noticed when it showed the games controls there was a button labeled "Stare". Huh? How does that fit into table tennis? Well...pressing the button zooms in on your opponents physics enabled breasts and goes all slo-mo. I have no idea if this is of any actual use in the game or the dating or if its just pervy for its own sake, since its hard to make the next shot if you do it.

Oh, and one more thing! In the series there are coin lockers and all their keys are spread around the city. Find the key, you can open a locker and get an item. In previous games you had to be an eagle eye or simply use a guide to find them all. This game actually has a locker key radar that will beep when a key is close. I love it.

[K-man]

So is this like a GTA clone or what?

[scottws]

So is this like a GTA clone or what?

Yeah, I have to say that I was like "Yakuza 4?  I have never even heard of Yakuza 1, 2, or 3".

[K-man]

I'd heard of them, and a lot of people saying the games were good.  I just never actually got what it actually was.

[idolminds]

Its more like a modern Shenmue than GTA, even though they are all sort of open world games. Yakuza has more of a focus on fistfights, though.

[K-man]

Are the stories self-contained?

[idolminds]

Yeah. Each game has videos that recap the basics of whats happened in the previous games in the series, but they don't really blend one into another. They are mostly there so you can learn a little backstory for the characters. But each games story is all nice and self-contained. The in-jokes for people who've played previous entries are kinda cute, though.

Also for a better explanation on Yakuza, the last couple posts in this thread do a pretty good job.


If you're interested in the series and have a Kmart near you, Yakuza 3 is $15 there. And they just got a bunch of copies in for the Yakuza 4 promo so you should be able to find it.

[K-man]

Yeah I was toying with grabbing the twofer deal.  I may just grab 3 and then get 4 down the road when it gets cheaper. 

[K-man]

Well I grabbed 3.  I thought about grabbing 4 to get 3 free, but I think by the time I'm actually ready to play 4 it should be cheap.

I was mulling around in the CAG thread about the K-mart deal on Yakuza 3, and early reports suggest that some people are actually preferring 3 to 4.

[K-man]

And as an added bonus, it appears this copy comes with a voucher for some DLC.

[idolminds]

Yeah, the copy of Yakuza 3 I bought a few months ago didnt have the DLC code. I was bummed. Got one in Y4, though.

So I think the most important thing to keep in mind when you start playing Yakuza is to ignore the main story whenever possible. Not that its not good, but the game will happily push you along through the story and you'll miss everything else. If the streets aren't blocked off where its forcing you to go somewhere then go nuts and run around the city and do stuff! First time I played Yakuza 2 I got to like Chapter 6 before I realized everything was there for the taking. The game doesn't stop and say "Ok, go do stuff and we'll let you know when the next story bit is." And some missions are only possible at certain times so if you've gone past that point then you are out of luck.

Yakuza 3 is better about that. There were only a handful of missions that couldn't be done later. Y4 adds a great new feature. If you visit a certain bar you can talk to a dude and he will basically point you to any areas where you can pick up a side mission. So you don't have to run all over hoping to stumble on that one mission. Guess he says something like "I haven't heard of anything lately" and thats your cue to move the main story forward.

[K-man]

Thanks for telling me that.  Although I have a penchant for going off the beaten path in games like this, I probably would have let the story push me along a bit.

I picked both this and Shiren the Wanderer for Wii up yesterday.  Probably a ton of gaming packed in the 30 bucks I spent.

Yakuza 4 is getting killed in reviews.

[idolminds]

I guess my review of Y4 right now would be "More of the same, but more to do." If you've played Y3 then this plays pretty much exactly the same. But with fewer cut content theres a bunch more stuff to actually do.

[PyroMenace]

Thanks for telling me that.  Although I have a penchant for going off the beaten path in games like this, I probably would have let the story push me along a bit.

I picked both this and Shiren the Wanderer for Wii up yesterday.  Probably a ton of gaming packed in the 30 bucks I spent.

Yakuza 4 is getting killed in reviews.

Haha, dude, stop buying games.

I shouldnt be talking though because I just ordered Vanquish of Amazon.

[K-man]

I watched the recaps of Yakuza 1 and 2 last night.  I still don't know what's going on.  Apparently a lot of people fake their deaths in Japan.

[K-man]

This game is very "Sega" if that makes sense.

I'm digging it.