I’m going to open this with a weird analogy but bear with me here.
For as beautiful as they are, there’s something disconcerting about listening to, say, one
of the early ensemble Steve Reich pieces or In C by Terry Riley, where a repeating theme
will see almost imperceptible changes introduced every few bars or so, lulling you into a false
sense of security before you realise, at the piece’s conclusion, that where it began
is almost unrecognisable from where it ended up and crucially, you didn’t notice.
And upon revisiting Yakuza 3 via the recently released remaster on PS4, as well as the last
few years of immersing myself in all things Yakuza, I find myself with that same disconcerting
feeling all over again.
I’ve always found that the comfort of repeatedly returning to Kamurocho, becoming intimately
familiar with its twists and turns, more than excuses the fact that it is, indeed, the same city,
the same game time and time again.
As this remaster has shown me, however, the changes introduced to the series over the
years—the strides it’s made between releases (even before the change to the Dragon Engine)—are
way more significant than discussions about the series as a whole might lead you to believe.
The decision to re-release 3, 4 and 5 as remasters rather than Kiwami-style remakes is understandable—from
a purely practical perspective, to go from the blocky visuals of the PS2 to the fidelity
and fluidity of the newer Dragon Engine represents a stark upgrade, the returns of which potentially
diminish the further you get away from the sixth console generation that marked the series’
introduction.
While Yakuza 3’s generational leap certainly shows in its visuals, however, its gameplay,
by comparison, feels decidedly stuck in the ways of old—replete with incredibly stiff animations
and action that lacks both the impact and bombast of future titles.
And indeed, these mechanical differences between new and old are felt most acutely in the game’s
combat system.
It’s not without its charm, for sure—it’s its own thing, requiring an altogether different
mindset from even a game like 0 where you were granted more flexibility over how you
wanted fights to go down, and especially following multiple games that favour sheer brute force;
emphasising the vicious nature of every punch thrown in a chaotic flurry of flying bodies
and destructible environment objects.
Here, the standard encounters tend to feel pretty mechanically and visually rote, while
stronger foes see you following the game’s rules pretty strictly and it will punish you for deviating
too hard from them.
The aim of the game here is countering—sidestepping an enemy attack right as it happens before
immediately exploiting the opening it creates.
Otherwise, you’ll be treated to minutes of an enemy blocking your attacks
seemingly endlessly.
It’s a fairly set process, meaning that things like random encounters feel more like
opportunities to grind than dazzling feats of destruction, and uncovering a new heat
action often feel like activating a cheat code—a reward for playing nice and eating
your strict combat-shaped vegetables, rather than an extension of any brutality you might
enact in normal fights.
The emphasis on things like quickstepping often turns encounters into a comic display
of boxer-like bobbing and weaving, with combatants sometimes literally dancing circles around
one another.
As much as some fans have taken issue with the changes in combat style over the years
thanks to a growing emphasis on physicality over technicality, it definitely feels jarring
to go all the way back to something so rigid.
But what was perhaps the wildest thing about revisiting 3 was how that rigidity carried
through to other areas of the game, namely its story.
3 is a game widely recognised as having fairly major pacing issues, with a number of critics
at the time lambasting how long you had to spend at an orphanage managing the seemingly
mundane whims of these kids before you were allowed to head to Kamurocho and experience
the real stuff, the cool stuff, and be a big ol’ Crime Man once more.
The problem for me, however, isn’t that it’s slow to get to the good stuff; rather,
that the game can’t effectively bridge the gap between the two aspects of the game’s
identity.
One of the main reasons I love this series is the deft hand it shows in navigating the
apparent dissonance between immensely complicated characters who largely want to help those
around them while also pulverising the faces of any drunkard that confronts them.
3, however, represents perhaps the widest gulf between these two sentiments of any game
in the franchise, and the momentum of the story suffers for it.
See, I actually enjoy the whole orphanage arc.
It does a surprisingly good job of making you sympathise with the position Kiryu and
his kids are in.
You’ve spent several chapters teaching your band of youngsters how to be objectively good
people (being friendly and polite, working hard, helping each other), you’ve watched
them subsequently carry out acts of kindness in ways that bestow each kid their own unique
and often genuinely likeable personality, only to have their interactions with the outside
world punctuated by reminders that they’re brutes and criminals because… they don’t
have parents I guess.
It’s a really interesting way to explore the theme of “family beyond the biological”
that’s so prevalent across the entire series as Kiryu himself goes from orphan to guardian;
trying to show these kids the path to being a good person while himself struggling with
his past and his knowledge of how brutal and unfair the world can be.
Narrative threads revolving around conflict resolution subtly frame the complicated politics
of the Japanese criminal underworld as petty and juvenile, as the kids quickly settle their
differences and the adults throw their toys out of the pram, so to speak.
And then, after several chapters of this, you’re suddenly, uncomfortably jolted into
this whole other story with so many characters, allegiances and mysteries thrown in the player’s
face, that the game struggles to satisfyingly explore or resolve much of it in the time
it has left—more or less an entire chapter is dedicated to just flat out explaining everything
to you via a static, sit-down conversation and a drop-down menu.
Similar to the combat, the narrative is not without its touching or gut-wrenching moments—a
couple of which do stick out as series highlights for me—but the overall pacing of the game’s
story makes me yearn for some kind of title where the more heartfelt orphanage drama is
the uninterrupted focus.
For as slow and uneven as it may be, the relative subtlety of these sections—their more thoughtful
reframing and exploration of typical series themes and characters—make the jarring cuts
to “real gang stuff” (with its reliance on utterly absurd twists explained through
endless exposition) feel more garishly cartoonish by comparison.
So yeah, 3 is an incredibly uneven video game all-round but despite what you might think, any negativity
I discuss here is only in the context of knowing how far the team would later take this formula;
chipping away and gradually improving it, eventually achieving some of the most satisfying
combat and accomplished storytelling in all of games.
As I’ve stated before, “not the best Yakuza” is still more interesting than most other
games to me.
What’s more, the re-release has largely been seen as a means for western audiences
to catch up on the story they might have missed since the series’ rise in popularity over
here, all without having to dig out their old PS3s.
There’s part of me, however, that thinks 3 in particular, and perhaps 4 and 5 to follow,
might be more interesting having played games like 6 and understanding where the character
of Kiryu goes, how subtle and contemplative his writing ends up being; going into the
older titles with the expectation that, for as much as it’s a series that markets itself
on its bombast, Yakuza’s best moments can often occur when it slows down a little—you
just might avoid being turned off by the comparatively awkward middle chapter in the process.
So I hope you enjoyed my piece on Yakuza 3.
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Rine, Justins Holderness, Nicolas Ross and Charlie Yang.
And with that, this has been another episode of Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I’ll see you next time.