Yakuza 4
A year after Yakuza 3 a murder happens in the Tojo Clan causing four characters Kiryu, Akiyama, Saejima, and Tanimura to get involved. With more questions than answers they learn a mysterious woman is in the center of the mystery.
[Combat]
Yakuza 4 has four different combat styles. Well...kinda.
Let's start with Akiyama.
Akiyama has a style of using only his legs. Yes I mean kicking.
At first I hated his style, he felt slow and had barely any combos to learn. After training I mean actually training with his mentor you learn some great skills making it fun to use in street fights to level up.
But I will say though, I played as him the longest and I think he has the worst fighting style for bosses who block alot. Akiyama doesn't have any good guard breakers making boss fights not fun unless you spam Triangle. (on PS4) But that wasn't the biggest deal so I very much enjoyed his combat.
Saejima.
He has to be my least favorite combat.
When I said there's kinda four different combat styles, Saejima is what I meant. He feels like Kiryu from Yakuza 3 but with less combos and very slow. I get he's a brick wall but geez they really went for it. His mentor wasn't that fun either. You literally have to punch BOULDERS as his training. While that does sound fun it's not at least to me. Also I remember being angry that I finished his training and learned kinda useless stuff.
I know it sounds like I had a bad time but actually I didn't, I enjoyed playing as Saejima but I wasn't particularly a fan of his combat. He isn't the worst combat in Yakuza's series but it wasn't the best either.
Tanimura.
Ah, my favorite combat. Tanimura has the best combat in the game in my opinion. He felt like Rush from Yakuza 0 but with fun combos. His combat is much different from both Kiryu and Akiyama.
I will say this I didn't do any of his training with his mentor because I hate the dodging system he has in the game. But even without training I liked his combat which is fine for me.
Kiryu.
If you liked Yakuza 3's combat, it's back in this game but better.
Kiryu is probably the most broken character in the game. I mean broken in the way that he has all his skills from Yakuza 3 and you just upgrade them or get even better skills. He DESTROYS everyone on sight at first, even the first boss fight you get is pretty easy compared to everyone else.
[Heat Actions]
Everyone in Yakuza 4 have their own unique Heat Actions.
Some of my favorites include Akiyama, Tanimura, and Kiryu's.
Each of them have some epic Heat Actions that trigger much easier than Y3 which was a complain in my previous review.
These actions are very handy if you wanna get out of battles fast and with the easy heat regain in this game you trigger them fairly quickly one after another. The Heat Actions are pretty good and I have barely any complaints other than Saejima lacking in every part of the combat department. But of course that is my opinion.
[Combat overall]
Kiryu and Tanimura's combat styles were my favorite in this game and probably some of my favorites from the series. Though I had my problems I think Yakuza 4 Remaster has some solid combat for an older game and I don't think it's too dated for newer fans like myself.
[Mini Games]
Here we go once again. I played most of the mini games that aren't gambling related.
My list goes
Pool,
Karaoke,
Fishing,
Darts,
Baseball,
Hostess dating game?
and
Police radio mission.
Pool
Plays genuinely the same in most of series, at least from what I remember.
I played it for Haruka's after game system and I think a sub-story or just because I enjoyed it. Either way I had fun, didn't have any problems with it and I genuinely like pool in the Yakuza's series so...
Karaoke
I did karaoke after the main story because I totally forgot about it until I was reminded of it afterwards.
Nonetheless I did it and had fun but I'm rubbish at it. I'm mostly bad at it with these older game mechanics, I feel like it's not as responsive as I would like but I could just be bad at it. Regardless it's like Yakuza 3 so it's not too bad.
Fishing
Did you know I love fishing? No? Well I do, in every game that has fishing I'm trying it. Yakuza 4 has great fishing, I remember hating it at first but after doing it for awhile I found it as my favorite mini game in the game. Though others might not enjoy but I definitely did. Like the other mini games it's not mandatory so give it a try at least.
Darts
I play this in every Yakuza game and it's basically the same in each of them.
I'm not the biggest fan of darts and it took me until this game to understand how to lightly throw the dart. Anyway, I will say I did it for Haruka's affection but other than that I didn't touch it much.
Y0 still haunts me with darts.
Baseball
This game and Kiwami 2 has the best baseball mini games for me. I enjoyed playing it and probably will play it again in my second playthrough when I get a chance. My overall opinion it's pretty good.
Hostess
I played the hostess mini games for sub-stories and didn't enjoyed at all. The girls are bland and some of the women's models are unflattering.
After doing research and seeing the actual women for the models I'm confused how they made them look nothing like the actual women. Like the main story chick you meet in the game looks so much better in cutscenes and outside of them. I don't want to sound like a jerk but if I had the choice to skip them without skipping my sub-stories I would of.
Police Radio Missions
As Tanimura you get radio missions that you can interact with. Meaning you get a notification on your screen with a insert situation and you have to deal with it. I ABSOLUTELY loved these mostly the chase missions like in Yakuza 3. These are so fun and I didn't expect to love it so much but I do. I say this is the most fun of Tanimura's part. You know other than the main story.
I recommend doing them because they have a small side story to it which was fun and pretty easy.
Baseball
This game and Kiwami 2 has the best baseball mini games for me. I enjoyed playing it and probably will play it again in my second playthrough when I get a chance. My overall opinion it's pretty good.
Hostess
I played the hostess mini games for sub-stories and didn't enjoyed at all. The girls are bland and some of the women's models are unflattering.
After doing research and seeing the actual women for the models I'm confused how they made them look nothing like the actual women. Like the main story chick you meet in the game looks so much better in cutscenes and outside of them. I don't want to sound like a jerk but if I had the choice to skip them without skipping my sub-stories I would of.
Police Radio Missions
As Tanimura you get radio missions that you can interact with. Meaning you get a notification on your screen with a insert situation and you have to deal with it. I ABSOLUTELY loved these mostly the chase missions like in Yakuza 3. These are so fun and I didn't expect to love it so much but I do. I say this is the most fun of Tanimura's part. You know other than the main story.
I recommend doing them because they have a small side story to it which was fun and pretty easy.
[Substories]
This game has 63 substories and around 16 for each character including one Amon for Kiryu, which I skipped.
I did 62 because I didn't care to deal with a super boss that was going to hurt my wrist for a trophy.
Anyway, I had fun with most of them. I had problems with the hostess ones but otherwise I had fun with each character. I mostly enjoy doing substories to get a personal feel of them, which this game does and I appreciate.
This games doesn't have as many as Y3 but each character has something interesting even to the final chapters.
[The characters]
Yakuza 4 has some SPECTACULAR characters. I enjoyed everyone in this game, from the protagonists to the villains, I liked it.
My favorites were Saejima and Tanimura, as their storylines shined the brightest for me; but that doesn't mean the others lacked behind.
There's other characters in this game that makes you understand why each of these characters were meant to meet. The play out for each character is done wonderfully and I applaud them for this well writing.
[The Storyline]
The storyline of this game is one of my favorites so far.
I do usually give out a brief description of the storyline but I kinda spoiled Yakuza 3 in my last review so I'll jump into the Good and the Bad this time.
[The Good]
The storyline is solid.
Each of the characters has their reasons and backstories for the goals they want to achieve.
They all meet up in a story driven way that doesn't feel forced or silly.
The villains are satisfying with their goals and how far they would go to achieve them.
The story takes less of an action movie approach and instead uses assets from them.
Less dramatic situations unlike the last game.
Characters are likeable even when they aren't suppose to be likeable.
Overall great characters and outcomes.
I will say the way this game played out, it felt a lot like Yakuza 0 to me. I wouldn't say exactly because of course the storytelling of Y0 is 10/10 but it's pretty good.
[The Bad]
The beginning of the game starts off slow and has short chapters.
I mean really short, if you skip the substories to play through only the storyline it's quite short. Most of my time I spent on it was goofing off to do other stuff. (Mostly substories and baseball.)
The slow part is mostly for Akiyama, his chapters were a drag for me at first. Plus his part of the story really annoyed me at how fast he trusted a "certain" person for a dumb reason. That's a personal opinion but of course you can judge it when you play it.
[Overall]
After everything I said I will give Yakuza 4 a...🥁
For an older game I will give it a 9 as a lot of new games these days lack the substance what older games like this could achieve.
This was great and finishing up here makes me want to play it again. I highly recommend this game and jumping into the Yakuza series.
Yakuza 4
Have you played it?
Did you like it?
Did you try out the mini games?
Whatever's your answer is tell me about it.
No matter how brutally honest you are with it, I wanna hear it.
(Please no hate towards the devs, Sega, Atlus, or anyone else's opinions as this is about the game not the company, devs, etc.)
Yakuza 4 is available on the PlayStation store, Steam, and the Xbox store in the remaster bundle or stand-alone.
Review and written by AshyPaints
(All store links used are US links)
