I really like the story in all of the previous Yakuza games, and Yakuza 6’s is no less than amazing. It’s full of emotional moments, epic confrontations, humor and everything we’re used to, with some moments that truly hit those feels. And, once again and without getting into any spoilers, we’re left with a smile in our faces at the very end after the credits, because “Kiryu’s saga mayI really like the story in all of the previous Yakuza games, and Yakuza 6’s is no less than amazing. It’s full of emotional moments, epic confrontations, humor and everything we’re used to, with some moments that truly hit those feels. And, once again and without getting into any spoilers, we’re left with a smile in our faces at the very end after the credits, because “Kiryu’s saga may have ended” but the world of Yakuza is vast and full of promise and great characters.
The most immediate game to compare Yakuza 6 with is of course Kiwami 2, both sport the same Dragon Engine, albeit Yakuza 6 came out earlier than Kiwami 2 if I’m not mistaken (like a year or so) on PS4, so I would say that Kiwami 2 is a tiny bit more refined in some aspects.
Visually, Yakuza 6 looks great, but I still think Kiwami 2 looked a bit better, might be the different color palette, as RGG Studios are well known for not keeping the exact same colors and palettes between different games, but I’m not sure…both games run pretty similarly, but overall I felt that special tint Kiwami 2 used… made it look more gritty, which to me is a bit more appealing, but it’s just a small nitpick.
Performance on my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti is great, I played the whole game at 1080p native, all settings set to Ultra and Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing set to 1.5x, so a pretty decent effective resolution overall, and stable capped 60 FPS at all times, not a s ingle drop ever.
But… this game also suffers from high amounts of aliasing and shimmering due to many lighting and specular effects primarily being rendered at way lower resolution than native (like Kiwami 2), so even when we raise the internal resolution, use DSR downsampling or add SSAA, we still see some shimmering and jaggies.
It does seem RGG Studios corrected this finally in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, with the inclusion of Temporal Anti-Aliasing, but it’s a shame they never patched earlier Dragon Engine games like Kiwami 2 or Yakuza 6 to have this better looking AA.
Another small issue I had with this game, is the combat: Kiryu is a very experienced character, he’s been doing this for 30 years by now, yet I felt his abilities were a bit lackluster in this game, compared to earlier ones, like Yakuza 3-5, were he was basically a Komaki techniques machine, with the drop, knockback and parries in there.
We do have some of those techniques available in the game (but not all of them), sure, but the combat does not feel as responsive, I even reckon that Kiwami 2’s felt a bit better.
Part of my gripes with the combat are due to the fact that some of the “elite” enemies, like the ones with special heath bars, but not bosses, have like an enormous amount of animation frames where we cannot interrupt them, this is normally called “armor” in brawler games, beat’em ups, etc. Normally we need to dodge them and hit from behind, or do a perfect parry, but when you’re in a crowd of 30 enemies, which happens quite often, it ain’t that simple…even when doing to spinning grab move, which is one of the best in the game for this reason, to remove cannon fodder quickly.
Also, this creates funny situations where a pair of such, stronger, enemies can easily stun-lock Kiryu with some fun to watch combos and not letting us get back up, which is hilarious but again proves my point a bit.
Also, perhaps I missed it, but there are no heat actions usable when enemies are knocked down on the ground, a staple in the whole series, which I really missed a lot here in Yakuza 6.
At the end of the game, with like all the combat abilities unlocked Kiryu, more or less, resembles his old self (and not even that old, as I said, Yakuza 5, etc.), but still he feels a bit gimped compared to previous games, even Kiwami 2, were we could break enemies’ blocks by charging the light attack, instead of the heavy like in Yakuza 6.
Anyhow, that aside, a minor issue if you know what you’re doing, the game is great, it’s full of what we love in these series, the graphics look nice, especially those cinematic close-ups, a staple in the series, with very detailed skin and animations, perfect to take some screenshots.
After this game, like many of you who probably played it on PS4 or, like me, just finished it on PC, I’m left thinking how this franchise could still use all of these incredible characters in future games. I have not played Like a Dragon yet, but I heard it’s connected to the main series, a bit (and in Japan it’s still considered Yakuza 7), but I have no doubt we’ll see again the likes of Saejima, Akiyama and company in future main titles, because it seems there is still a whole huge bag of stories left to tell here, for sure.
I have truly enjoyed playing all of these games on PC, and I cherish them as one of the best sagas I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing, and I look forward to seeing more games in the Yakuza universe.… Expand
Yakuza 6: The Song of LifeYour Score0 out of 10User Score
