Game details Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

Platform: PS4

Release Date: December 8, 2018 (Japan); April 17, 2018 (worldwide)

ESRB Rating: M for Mature

Price: $60

Links: PlayStation Store | Official website Sega: Sega: PS4December 8, 2018 (Japan); April 17, 2018 (worldwide)M for Mature: $60

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is not the game I was expecting. The series’ newest numbered release (actually the seventh, after Yakuza 0) has long been billed as the swan song for longtime protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. As such I expected a celebration of the hero’s interpersonal relationships—those key moments of Yakuza storytelling that have propelled the series forward for more than a decade.

Strangely, though, Yakuza 6 feels like yet another solid, introductory jumping-on point after 2016’s prequel and last year’s remake of the first game. It opens with Kiryu enjoying another stint in prison; this time for three years. When he gets out, his adopted daughter is in a coma, his closest allies are in prison, and the Tojo Clan he once served is at war with an entirely new criminal faction. Without these direct ties to the past, Yakuza 6 feels like a fairly self-contained—if not exactly clean—tale of international criminal conspiracy.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t thrilled about this de facto “reset” at first. Kiryu and company have carried Yakuza through six numbered games, three spin-offs, two full remakes, and a couple of movies. Much of that wealth of history is completely missing this time around. Where were Daigo, Haruka, and the kids from the Morning Glory orphanage? How could Sega send Kiryu off without resolving the violent sexual tension between him and Goro Majima?

Most of these characters make cameo appearances (or, as in Haruka’s case, are off-screen plot motivators) in Yakuza 6, but the vast majority of the game feels like a “normal” Yakuza title, not the cavalcade of fan service you might expect. After the first couple of hours, it becomes clear why. By cutting Kiryu off from his usual allies and resources, The Song of Life brings that smoldering, compassionate charisma of his to the surface.

Putting the “family” in “organized crime family”

The search for answers about his daughter’s condition—and the newborn son she left behind (gasp!)—soon takes our hero to a fictionalized version of Onomichi, Hiroshima. There he must win over a rural Yakuza family in typical Kazuma Kiryu fashion: by beating the crap out of them and their enemies.

But these manly displays of fist-fueled emotion only scratch the surface of what makes Kiryu tick. They’re gameplay excuses to crack the armor of the criminal bluster the Onomichi gang uses to protect their wounded souls. And The Song of Life sums up this theme more succinctly than any other Yakuza game.

Once the crap has been firmly cut through, that trademark Kazuma Kiryu empathy can slip in through earnest man-to-man heart-to-hearts. That’s what Kiryu fights for in the first place: not to create pawns who owe him or underlings who fear him but to widen and deepen his never-ending family of misfits.

That’s how Haruka became his daughter. That’s how Majima became his soulmate. Now, it’s how Yakuza 6’s largely brand-new cast becomes his latest band of brothers. And heaven help the circle of over-the-top villains who try to abuse those familial ties for their own greed. They get a whooping, too.

Repetitive but thrilling gameplay

The gameplay portion of these fights play out in equally typical Yakuza fashion: with a mix of light-light-heavy punch combos, occasional grappling, and by building up “Heat” to perform super moves. But Yakuza 6’s brand-new Dragon Engine shakes the formula up by, among other things, allowing greater freedom of movement.

In past Yakuza games, starting a fight usually locked you in a tiny arena. Now you’re free to run, snag improvised armaments, and change locales at will. That can lead to more of the series’ signature environmental and weapon takedowns (the aforementioned Heat-fueled super moves). Even if the animation never changes, I still never get tired of throwing opposing gangsters groin-first into telephone poles or arm-locking a man with a pair of chopsticks. But these added moments of flair also feel less necessary than ever before.























The Song of Life has the most forgiving combat of any Yakuza game I’ve yet played. Sometimes that feels like an almost objectively good thing. A lot of the series’ past “challenge” came from downright unfair boss fights, where overcharged enemies would just be immune to holds and finishing blows. Or maybe you’d spend a full minute rope-a-doping a stationary enemy with too much health who existed solely to block your path down a hallway. Not any more! Still, I might have preferred some deeper challenge to the combat, even if it was optional.

Yakuza 6 also changes up the way you earn and distribute experience points by splitting them into five different categories and tasking you to engage with different side content to earn them all. It’s a great reward for going out drinking, singing karaoke, or playing a fully functional Virtua Fighter cabinet in the arcade—in theory. But without big, obvious dragons to slay (like Yakuza 0’s towering Mr. Shakedown or the harder Majima Everywhere fights from Yakuza Kiwami) the gobs of XP don’t feel like much of a reward.

Melodrama and microdrama

Thankfully, then, the side activities are still well worth seeing for their own sake. Yakuza’s lovable “substories” are back and just as fancifully juxtaposed to the main story’s drama as ever. And if Yakuza 0 was a send-up of the booming '80s economy, this year’s satire centers on tech culture tchotchkes.

Kiryu’s time lost to prison is the perfect setup to start introducing the nearly 50-year-old grandfather to more modern “conveniences.” A marriage proposal involving a runaway Roomba, for instance, sports just the right mix of saccharin comedy and eye rolling. But my personal favorite side moment is probably the B plot where Kiryu stops a horny, vindictive Siri knock-off from taking over the world. Ongoing side activities also include running your own cat cafe and getting into real-time strategy gang wars with New Japan Pro Wrestling stars.

Put plainly, there’s a lot to do in Yakuza 6. If you boiled every activity down, few would technically qualify as more than fetch quests or the same light-light-heavy battles you engage with all over the game. But Yakuza is a franchise about what you do, not always how you do it. The joy is in discovering what wacky, soap opera-style twist Sega dreamed up this time. The magic is in wondering how the hell both wildly different tones fit so well together.

If Yakuza 6 has a weakness, it’s likely on the melodramatic end of things. The overarching story is fine but far less focused than the still-fresh prequel, Yakuza 0. What starts as a missing-persons mystery quickly spirals out of control. By the middle of the game, it’s all-out war between four major criminal organizations, a shady corporation, dirty politicians, and all the sub-factions underneath.

Things settle back into the relatable interpersonal stakes the series excels at but not before giving in to the series’ worst storytelling impulses just a little. One major villain too many is conveniently silenced by a mysterious gunman’s bullet, for instance. One (or perhaps two or three) too many women are used purely as plot devices with nothing close to the agency of literally every male character in the game. Yakuza desperately needs to crawl over this female characterization hump, but if anything it has regressed a bit by laying up the once-playable Haruka in a hospital bed for most of the game.

I make this look good

When it plays to its strengths, however, Yakuza 6 does justice to the muscle-bound big boys it lingers over. It’s electrifying when a boss’ name, title, and entire clan lineage slam on-screen as he and Kiryu fling themselves at each other in a slow-motion clash leading into a seamless camera twist starting a fight. And it remains electrifying every single time it happens. Simply put, no other game of this scale holds a candle to Yakuza on stylistic impact and consistency.

That sense of style goes beyond camera cuts and character models you can count every pore off of, too. One early scene sets the tone when Kiryu meets with an up-and-coming Yakuza looking to seize a top spot in the Tojo Clan. With just one line of dialogue and some stellar voice acting, the character both appeals to Kiryu’s vanity—addressing his once-legendary status in the organization—and makes a thinly veiled insult about his predecessor’s fading star. Kiryu, in response, says everything he needs to by saying nothing at all.

It’s a small, subtle kind of interaction, but those are sorely missing from many big-budget video games where spectacle seems so much more marketable. And Yakuza 6 manages to sneak these moments in constantly among the explosions of blood, sweat, raging emotions, and fighting spirit. It’s not the best blend of bombast and character drama the series has ever seen (that’s still Yakuza 0 for me), but it’s up there.

I expected something slightly different for Kazuma Kiryu’s closing chapter. I expected a look back at the tangled web of his life and the lives he’s drawn to himself over 30 fictional years. Instead, Yakuza 6 cuts through that web and down into the bone of the character—as well as the series itself.

The execution isn’t always perfect. After so many very similar games, maybe that proves Yakuza could use a total reset right about now. But this is still an appropriately larger-than-life send-off for a larger-than-life character who doesn’t lose sight of why he got that way in the first place.

The good:

Subtle, detailed storytelling blended well with bombast

Jumps between bizarre comedy and melodrama as smoothly as ever

Combat is hard-hitting and flashy

Incredible sense of style

Surprisingly decent jumping-on point for a long-running series

The bad:

Longtime fans will miss some familiar faces (Majima!)

Combat could be just a little more challenging

Twisting plot can be tough to follow

The ugly:

After so many Yakuza games, the developers still can’t write interesting female characters

Verdict: Yakuza 6 sums up its lead character succinctly and emotionally, while shaking up enough to make the return ride feel fresh. Buy it.