Yakuza 6 will be officially released outside of Japan on March 30, 2018 on PlayStation 4 according to an announcement from SEGA.
This game will be the final chapter in main character’s Kazuma Kiryu story and takes place after his three year prison stint. Kiryu’s surrogate daughter, Haruka, had disappeared and he eventually finds out she was run over by a car and left in a coma, leaving her son in the care of Kiryu (who didn’t know she had a son until now. Kiryu decides to get to the bottom of why Haruka was hit by a car and to find out more information about her son.
Like the other previous Yakuza games, players will have to fight their way (literally) through mobs of other yakuza (Japanese gangsters) in arcade style 3D combat. This basically means that you can hit from all sides, but you can also get hit from all sides. Also, players will be able to level up stats like attack, defense and health to create a completely overpowered Kiryu (but hey, that’s the point of the game).
Players will be put back into the Kamurocho ward of Tokyo, a ward specifically created in the Yakuza series. Except this time around, it will be given a modern day upgrade. Kiryu will also be heading to Hiroshima, Haruka’s last known location before her tragic car accident.
Newer challenges in the game include taking care of Haruka’s son, who is only a baby by cooing at him, fishing using spears, taking the modern day selfie and taking care of cats. It wouldn’t be a Yakuza game without something unique gameplay added to all of the fighting. All of these can be seen in the newest gameplay trailer, available on the SegaAmerica official YouTube channel.
Yakuza 6 was originally released in Japan back on December 8, 2016. In a review from Famitsu, a Japanese video game newspaper, Yakuza 6 was given a 39 out of 40 according to Gematsu. This is an almost perfect score, so I’m excited to see what the Western publications will have to say when the game launches in the West.
The game crossed over 500,000 copies sold in Japan and the rest of Asia just a couple of weeks after the initial release date, according to Segalization. The Yakuza series as a whole has sold around 9 million copies worldwide as of late 2016, becoming an amazing achievement for the developers of the game.
The last Yakuza game to be released was Yakuza 0. It was released in early 2015 in Japan for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 (following a Western release for PlayStation 4 only in 2017), which follows the events of Kiryu’s youth. It received mostly positive reviews, having a score of 85 from critics and an 8.7 user score on Metacritic.
One review from God is a Geek gave Yakuza 0 a score of 85.
“If you’re a fan of the series, you’re going to want to play this–Yakuza 0 encapsulates the zaniness of Japanese culture with spectacular side missions, and is aided by it’s own satisfying combat and recreational activities,” it says in the review. The full review from Yakuza 0 from God is a Geek can be found here.
Yakuza 6 will be closing the curtain on Kiryu’s over a decade long story (the original Yakuza game, Yakuza, was released in Japan in 2005) for Western audiences. Although Japan was able to see the end of his story first, the wait that Western fans experience will probably be worth it. The Yakuza series has has had a mostly positive review streak in it’s lifetime, and with a Famitsu giving the game an extremely high score, I can’t wait to get my hands on Yakuza 6 when it launches early next year.
