As I was going through all of the Yakuza titles, I was getting less hopeful that another one will get me as excited as 0 did back at the start of this journey. None of the games I’ve played this far were bad, even 3 had lots of strong elements despite being the game I’ve enjoyed the least. But then along comes Yakuza 4 in its remastered form on PC and I’m happy again.
By now you are probably aware that Yakuza games are open world action adventure titles with beat ’em up/brawler combat and cinematic stories. Yakuza 4 isn’t any different in this regard and, in fact, its open world is once again limited only to one main map of Kamurocho, just like it was in Yakuza 1/Kiwami. It has more places you can visit this time around, but still, in terms of locations, there isn’t anything grand.
What is wildly different, especially if we consider the chronology of releases instead of the storyline and place 0 after 4, is how the story is structured. It was clear in Yakuza 3 that the studio didn’t know what to do with Kiryu anymore and they didn’t want to continue making stories where muscular men try to prove who’s more powerful and occasionally cry during the emotional scenes. And to spice things up, Yakuza 4 tells the story of 4 playable characters, only one of whom is Kiryu. This completely changes both the story and gameplay dynamic, as you get through far shorter, punchier (no pun intended) storylines that eventually resolve in a big finale. Each character starts fresh, with no upgrades, items or money transferred. Each of them fight completely differently. All of them have unique gameplay and narrative quirks. And all of them feel absolutely awesome.
No really, every single new main character in Yakuza 4 is interesting in their own way. And I’d argue that their stories and their personalities are far more interesting than what we got more recently with Like a Dragon. Even Kiryu himself, by being relegated a much smaller (but no less important) role feels fresh and fun again. Which is great, because the main story isn’t that fantastic, if I’m being completely honest. Yakuza 3, in fact, was a far more curious and nuanced storyline. Yet, despite that, it’s hard to care about that, when you’re having so much fun experiencing interesting situations with engaging characters.
Gameplay had some great tweaks too, even though it’s mostly the same as the third game. The obnoxious chases are lessened and are made more enjoyable when they happen. The fighting styles of each character are very different, not just from each other but also from the previous games, including the 0 and Kiwami styles. Substories are handled in a clearer way and are almost all fun to go through.
Though, there are some returning frustrations. Like the abundance of QTEs that require you to mash buttons (after playing Like a Dragon that allowed disabling it, returning to the mashing is unpleasant, gotta be honest). Or the Revelations system that is still sometimes easy to fail because several choices sound right, but only one of them is correct. And the difficulty spikes are, as always, present. Along with fights that are more annoying than anything, unless you’ve mastered some particular move that gets through the boss enemy bollocks.
You know what, though? So far this is my second favorite Yakuza game after 0. And it’s easy to recommend it even to those who did not play the previous entries. Sure, you will miss out on some of the story nuance, but all of the important elements will be told to you in this game. In fact, even one particular story bit that you will know if you’ve played 0 (as it uses the cutscenes from this game for that specific section), has a lot of the important story bits unspoiled and you will be able to enjoy playing 4 after 0 and vice versa. And play Yakuza 4 you should if the series sound interesting to you at all. This is a fantastic entry and I’m only hoping that 5 will turn out to be as good as people tend to say it is.