Yakuza Series Alive and Well Through 2018

Games
1

Coming to U.S. and Europe exclusive to PS3 on the PSN.

I couldn’t believe people were still holding out hope for this coming over, never thought it would but I’m happy to be proven wrong. I played about 20ish hours of my import copy and loved it, there is a great community that put up translation guides, videos, and walkthroughs which made importing it worthwhile. I’ll happily rebuy the English version though. I think going digital was a smart decision even though I’d prefer a physical edition, though it is coming to a last gen system.

2

Hopefully my PS3 holds out till then :)

3

Hell yeah. I am super excited about this, and I too never thought it would happen.

Hopefully this makes a strong case for the economics of digital-only releases of more niche titles, and we see more stuff like this in the future.

4

I’m so glad this is happening. I just reflexively threw some money at my TV screen and now it says it’s downloading two Yakuza games.

5

I recommend that everyone watches this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkN9oru-qCQ

It’ll convince you that Yakuza is a series should you should be playing.

6

I have 4 sitting unplayed on my PS3 may just boot it up now.

7

Basically, if you love beating dudes up, then Yakuza is the game for you.

8

Honestly, the beat-em-up component of the game is good (and downright excellent in later entries), but even if it sucked, the Yakuza games would wonderfully as virtual tourism simulators. Having been to Kabukicho recently, the games do an amazing job of capturing its atmosphere.

9

For the longest time I thought Kamurocho was completely made up, blew my mind when I started seeing pictures from Kabukicho. Here’s some videos showing comparisons between the real world and the game:

Yakuza Locations Tour Part 1
Yakuza Locations Tour Part 2

10

Those are cool videos for fans of the series. Thanks for posting them.

11

FYI, the game is now up for pre-order on the PlayStation Store. Normal price is $39.99, and pre-orders get 15% off. An official release date hasn’t been announced yet, annoyingly, but I went ahead and pre-ordered anyway!

12

They’ve got a date up now. December 31, 2015.

13

Same here, looking forward to diving back into this one. Really dug the cities in the game, as much as I enjoyed Yakuza 4, being in Kamurocho the whole time wore me down a bit so exploring new areas was much appreciated. Also here’s Saejima singing Karaoke with a hostess because why not. Cracks me up every time, wish there was footage of the voice actor recording it.

@ydejin I think that date may be a placeholder, at least I hope so.

14

Could be, it does seem like a bizarre date to release a game.

15

Possibly due to contractual obligation with Sony to release in 2015.

16

Yeah, I am pretty sure that it’s just a placeholder – otherwise, why wouldn’t they put that in the pre-order announcement as the actual release date?

17

From the Playstation Blog announcement comments:

  • canedaddy on August 25th, 2015 at 7:50 am said:
    Still no release date? This is like torture. :p It would be great if you’d at least give an indication of whether we’re talking sooner (September) or later (November/December).

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  • John Hardin on August 25th, 2015 at 9:37 am said:
    We don’t have it fully locked in yet, but it’s looking like it won’t be “sooner” :(
    We should have a solid date in a few weeks though!
18

“What the hell is Saejima doing?”

This is an amazing video and vocal work.

19

Another tidbit, from the European blog post comments, on the question “So what’ll be cut out from the english version?”:

20

Meanwhile, in Japan: Police brace for yakuza war. I can only imagine the plague of leisure-suited bruisers shambling through Kabukicho disrespecting one another and wielding bicycles and street-signs as weapons.