The game constantly plays with the seedy side of the real-life red-light district of Kabuki-cho it is based on, allowing you to chat up hostesses with some wonderfully cheesy dialogue or have a massage (quotation marks optional). Barmen tell you about the real-life spirits you can drink, and you can drink them 'til you were legitimately wasted.
Yakuza doesn't suck the player in quite as Shenmue does; Ryo's a blank slate, but Kiryu Kazuma is a well-constructed character. But the plot more than makes up for it; a plot that is more than a function to get the player from the graveyard level to the ship level, but a real story, with believable characters who face challenges and overcome them. Yakuza was written and acted by professionals, and in the Japanese version at least, it shows. Tellingly, the story is so strong, it is set to appear in movie form later this year, directed by Takashi Miike (the famed Japanese director who collaborated with Yakuza's author, Seishu Hase, in The City of Lost Souls).
The game's sequel, released late last year in Japan, improves on almost all the flaws of the original, notably its irritating loading times. It also expands the amount of sub-quests and side-stories to ridiculous degrees, allowing Ryo to try his hand at being a host, or even run his own cabaret club.
Worlds Apart
Although coming out just a year after the first game, Yakuza 2 is not a cheap cash-in, but an expansion of the world that Kazuma lives in. Kazuma's world expands to include Osaka, his relationships with characters from the first game continuing and changing, his past explored, his loyalties questioned.
The four games that make up these two series do exactly what games - no, what art - should do: push boundaries. Be it Shenmue's offering the player revolutionary levels of freedom and detail, or Yakuza's attention to detail in crafting an intricate plot and believable characters, Sega has done more to create convincing worlds than any physics improvements or higher resolution textures could hope to do.
Neither game is about the end of the world, that story crutch so many lesser games fall back on in an attempt to make their unconvincing worlds appear important; they are simple stories in a world in which the player has a true emotional investment, with characters that are to be cared about. When games finally stand as an art form the equal of movies or books, it is games like these that will deservedly be thought of as the milestones along that journey.
Gearoid Reidy walks the streets of Japan 'til he gets lost because he has no sense of direction. His website is www.gearoidreidy.com.
