# Anyone played the Yakuza series? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [September 16, 2016, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-played-the-yakuza-series/766072 "2016-09-16T09:34:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2016, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-played-the-yakuza-series/766072/1 "2016-09-16T09:34:55Z")
PlayStation exclusive series so sorry PC or xboxers. Haven’t seen this series mentioned on here. The Yakuza games are basically Grand Theft Auto (without so much driving) based in Japan and with real street layouts, but changed names (They call it Kamuracho instead of Kabukicho but it’s the real street layout). What I love about the series is it somehow pulls off a mixture of seriousness and over the top sillyness, and mixes the mundane with manga style ultra violence. The hand to hand fighting is much deeper than GTA, loads of special moves and combos to learn, and loads of weapons (but not so many guns, since it’s Japan where guns are rare even among Yakuza). Fights are usually you against a gang of up to eight people and there’s combo moves that will take down more than one person at a time which are essential to learn, otherwise you get swamped. You can also go into many more buildings than is typical in GTA games, restaurants, conveniences stores, the sega arcade (where you can play minigames), hostess clubs, seedy bars etc. The sheer amount of content is pretty amazing. One thing that will turn some people off is the extremely long cut scenes, they’re skippable but personally I don’t mind them as the writing is pretty decent (not great but ok). Yakuza 4 and 5 are available on PS3 as digital downloads and pretty cheap now. Yakuza 6 and Yakuza 0 are coming out soonish for PS4, but lets hope they don’t take three years to release the english version like they did with 5. If you still have a PS3 lying around and like open world games with loads of minigames give it a try, IMO this series is under rated, it’s huge in Japan but just not that well known in the west (It’s called Ryū ga Gotoku in Japan literally “like a dragon”). ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-played-the-yakuza-series/766072/2 "2016-09-16T16:04:06Z")
No one played any of these? Now at 13 hours and 5 percent complete according to the stats. It’s a big game. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2016, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-played-the-yakuza-series/766072/3 "2016-09-18T05:45:32Z")
Guess Im the only one then. Well never mind, hopefully the english release of Yakuza 6 and Yakuza 0 well get the series some more fans outside Japan. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2016, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-played-the-yakuza-series/766072/4 "2016-09-18T21:59:29Z")
Sounds great, but I don’t have a PS these days. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2016, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-played-the-yakuza-series/766072/5 "2016-09-19T07:01:03Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > Sounds great, but I don’t have a PS these days. Yeah SEGA really has done everything possible to hamper this series getting a following outside Japan. Yakuza 5 english version was released in 2015 on PS3 only, long after many people had got rid of their PS3’s. SEGA has said Yakuza 0 is coming out in english for PS3 and PS4, hopefully pretty soon. I suspect that the PS4’s built in capture to YouTube feature might actually get some more fan’s of the series outside Japan. (I admit I’m selfish, I want this series to get popular outside Japan so they make an english version a priority and release it soon after the Japanese version, not lagging a year or more). ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2016, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-played-the-yakuza-series/766072/6 "2016-09-19T07:03:42Z")
from the reviews and the mb discussions on gamefaqs ive seen there buggy hot messes that only marginally improve with each game … the lowest metacritic score is 64 (for a zombie side story game) and the highest is 85 … [yakuza - Reviews, Articles, People, Trailers and more at Metacritic - Metacritic](http://www.metacritic.com/search/all/yakuza/results) ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2016, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-played-the-yakuza-series/766072/7 "2016-09-19T07:23:10Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > from the reviews and the mb discussions on gamefaqs ive seen there buggy hot messes Never experienced a single bug playing through all of Yakuza 4 on PS3 and so far no bugs on Yakuza 5. Yakuza 5 gets 83 on Metacritic which is pretty good, also you can see it has 22 positive user reviews and 1 negative. > **[Yakuza 5](https://www.metacritic.com/game/yakuza-5/)** > > The legendary dragon returns to the criminal underworld of Yakuza. Kazuma Kiryu, once known as the Dragon of Dojima, was living a quiet life as a taxi driver in Hakata after severing all his ties with the underworld. However, at the dawn of the... I did say it’s not for everyone, but “buggy hot mess” is completely inaccurate. As for not improving, Yakuza 5 has five cities compared to one in Yakuza 4, more variety of side missions (Taxi and racing added) and an improved graphics engine and fighting system.