Wander the streets of Tokyo and Osaka getting shot in the face and somehow living to tell the tale.

Sega has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with Sony platforms over the years with the Yakuza franchise. While the series is not super popular amongst gamers in the West, Japanese console and handheld owners have been enjoying the titles for years. Earlier this year, Sega decided to bring the series away from Sony platforms for the first time ever with the release of Ryū ga Gotoku 1&2 HD (Yakuza 1&2 HD) for Wii U in Japan. Despite being a complete commercial flop, Yakuza 1& 2 HD still does many things right, but not without a handful of technical oddities.

After playing through both games, it is worth noting that the difference in the gameplay between the first and second game is noticeable, particularly in combat. As mentioned in my previous set of impressions (which you can read here), the combat in the first game is very particular about where you are placing your punches and kicks. If you are just slightly off from facing the enemy in a flurry of attacks, Kazuma, the main character, will continue the animation in midair, leaving you susceptible to incoming attacks. This has been balanced out a little bit more in the second title thanks to a rubber banding-like effect. Even if you’re a little bit off with your attack, the game will guide the kicks and punches toward the enemy. This evolution makes the second game superior in terms of controls, but at the same time still feels a bit antiquated.

Apart from gameplay, the thing that both of the Yakuza games do extremely well is tell an engaging, dark and interesting story. The excellent voice acting and interesting characters make the entire experience entertaining and cinematic. Both games will take players to seedy areas in both Shinjuku and Osaka and offer tons of things to do on top of the main story. Getting to the end credits of both games took me a little over 30 hours total, but with a decent amount of side missions, mini-games, hostess clubs and tons of things to collect along the way, players can easily clock in 40 hours or more.

The visuals throughout both games are a mismatch of crisp, uprezzed character models and locales mixed with low resolution assets making up a majority of the environment. Typically, the camera can hide most of this by repositioning itself as you stroll around the cities, but there is just no getting away from the muddy, washed out backgrounds. Being story driven games, Yakuza 1&2 incorporate quite a few cutscenes throughout the experience. About half of these are low-resolution videos ripped out of the Playstation 2 version. Some of which were recorded in engine when the games originally released. The other half of the cutscenes are included using the updated, uprezzed assets. It is extremely inconsistent and you never quite know what you’re going get when the cutscenes initiate.

Yakuza 1&2 HD for Wii U is a solid game at its core but suffers from noticeable technical issues that tend to annoy rather than take away from the heart of the experience - the narrative. Both games have fun and interesting stories to tell and if you can get past the flaws, you can enjoy this game. Sadly, most gamers outside of Japan will more than likely not have that chance on the Wii U. The barrier of entry and requirements to play the game (i.e., owning a Japanese Wii U and knowing Japanese) are extremely high. If you meet these requirements and can look past the antiquated aspects of a game that is nearly ten years old, there is some fun to be had here. If you can’t do that, there are certainly more current-generation titles on the platform that fill the void for this genre.