Yakuza is a single player action-adventure videogame for the PS2, known as Ryu ga Gotoku in Japan, features a storyline by award-winning novelist Hase Seishu about brutal Japanese criminals. In the game, you play as Kazuma Kiryu Or Dragon of Kojima, a stone-cold, chiseled yakuza who's committed to honoring his boss as well as his brothers in crime.
Developer and publisher Sega hits the videogame market with this PS2 videogame that starts as Kazuma, the main character, pays 10 years in prison for a crime he did not committed, hence got the back from the yakuza clan. When he came out the slam, everything's changed in Tokyo and, of course, inside yakuza.
The game was heavily acclaimed in Japan for being the first game to explore yakuza culture with such depth and authenticity to the nature of Japan's criminal underground. A great deal of the storyline revolves around a piraling underworld plot involving Kazuma looking after a mysterious 9-year-old girl named Haruka and a missing $100 million. Kazuma must use his fists and his wits to stay alive as he unravels the complex web of truth and lies that surrounds the notorious yakuza.
Yakuza or Ryu Ga Gotoku videogame sort of re-creates the city streets and illicit haunts of Tokyo's nightlife district. Once you get past how beautiful the crowded, neon-lit streets of Tokyo look in this game, you'll find it a little tedious to trudge from one bar to the next, delivering this item to that character.
The PS2 experience is simple but cool enough to help keep you motivated to continue beating people up throughout the game. The camera angles during combat can also be somewhat frustrating.
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Engrossing storyline packed with complex, captivating characters -- more than a dozen intricately detailed chapters as the complex web of the Yakuza unravels.
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Players can string together attack combos to take out multiple enemies simultaneously in street brawls or grab and use in-game objects to defeat opponents.
There are also some minigames in Yakuza, including a coin-operated UFO catcher, an underground boxing circuit, a homerun derby at the batting cages, a casino with blackjack, roulette, and baccarat, and hostess minibars where you get to try to chat up pretty girls (you're dying to know more about the UFO catcher, right?).
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Add strength, stamina, and skills through combat; Build skills and attributes by gaining experience, accumulate weapons and items, engage in numerous side missions, gamble, interrogate and bribe informants.
The audio in Ryu Ga Gotoku or Yakuza isn't that good. The game sounds annoying as it uses ambient background during few loops. There's disappointingly little music in the game, too, though what's there is solid.
Before finishing, don't be surprise if you do not find a unique gameplay experience from Yakuza, but the game captures enough cinematic drama and violence surrounding Japan's notorious organized crime families to be worthwhile.
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