Yakuza comes to us from long time industry powerhouse SEGA, and veteran developer Amusement Vision, makers of Shining Tears for the PS2, but may be better remembered for their wacky Super Monkey Ball series on the Gamecube. Interestingly enough, they also made the Virtua Striker and Virtua NBA arcade games of mid to late 90's.

Visually, this title is pretty sharp looking. The characters are well proportioned and modeled accurately, with acute facial expressions, detailed hair and clothing styles, and most importantly, they come off as living, breathing entities. Sometimes you may notice the somewhat angular design of the figure as a whole, but that doesn’t distract much from the solid presentation. Numerous cut-scenes also accent the stylish art design, linking the story along nicely. Also worthy of note is the awesome quasi-futuristic landscape of Tokyo, with its ever-present neon glare from blazingly bright billboards, windows and storefronts. Lighting effects are really top notch here, most notably the bloom, or “soft glow” effect. Tokyo feels quite vibrant and full of activity, further immersing you into this action/RPG hybrid. Unfortunately, once you put many of these elements into motion, it doesn’t come across so hot. While characters are modeled well, they move rather stiffly and abruptly during most of the fighting scenes, but this is about the biggest issue graphically.

On the sound side, Yakuza is also quite impressive here as well. A heavy rock theme permeates most of the abundant fight sequences, while an equally solid ambient background fills in the downtimes walking around to and fro on your adventure. The various effects such as walking, fighting and so forth, aren’t that engaging, and walking, specifically, sounds far too loud at times. I thought this was a bustling metropolis, yet I sound like I am tap dancing. What gives? These are more or less minor annoyances, but still detractors nonetheless. So while the music and general effects aren’t so hot, the voice acting is actually quite good, aside from the Japanese-English lip synching issue. And check this out for star power (way to go SEGA!): Eliza Dushku, Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor on Smallville), Rachel Leigh Cook and - drum roll please - Michael Madsen. Oh yeah and some Mark Hammill guy. A rather intriguing set of actors here…. just think of the awkward exchanges in the studio break room… Oh and did I mention they cuss a lot? I mean every- other-word kind of stuff. Did Quentin Tarantino consult or what? Because that would help explain the Madsen connection…

You play as Kazuma, an honorable Yakuza (Japanese mafia/crime syndicates) who was wrongfully sentenced to 10 years in prison involving an assassination of a Yakuza family leader. The first thing on his mind upon release is to uncover what went wrong, teaming up with the same detective that helped lock him up earlier. The world of the mysterious and secretive Yakuza is quite popular in popular media and videogames, both past and present, not unlike the Italian Mafia, which has also taken similar avenues by storm. Both combine elements of honor, respect, violence and of course, massive amounts of criminal activity. All these scream sellable items in the world today, and thus, we see this title from SEGA and Amusement Vision come to fruition. Worthy of note is a storyline constructed by award winning Japanese novelist Seishu Hase and producer Toshihiro Nagoshi, so be on the lookout for some pretty solid storytelling within, chock full of the aforementioned elements.

The basic gameplay consists of wandering around city streets, talking to a host of foul-mouthed, seedy characters, and then proceeding to pummel them into the sidewalks. Some of the shop locations are interesting as well, and remind me of a beefed up version of the immortal NES classic River City Ransom. You can purchase food, beverages and other items that boost health and add to your pool of experience points. Now… it has been awhile… but I don’t think RCR had pachinko clubs, arcades or strip clubs. But hey, it fits the adult theme of Yakuza quite well, going hand in hand with the potty-mouthed residents within.

Outside of the mini-game/shops of Tokyo, the RPG element comes into further play with the upgrade feature. Here, you can fine tune your abilities and style of combat by tweaking the technique, body and soul elements within. New moves open up, and after a few hours of playtime, you really notice your arsenal has gone up several notches in the lethality department. Wild roundhouse kicks, thunderous upper cuts, body slams, throws and more will be at your disposal. You can also wield a host of items lying around like bikes, metal poles, boxes, swords and more, again another homage to RCR… or perhaps Final Fight… but hey, as far as I know, the latter ripped off the spirit of that very NES title just mentioned.

Speaking more on the element of fighting, occasionally you may run into some issues facing many opponents, often a fatal flaw in videogames of this type. By deploying a few rapid combos, using plenty of strafes and blocks, you should come out all right, but you may take a few lumps before you hit your stride. Either way, the fighting system is quite fun and robust, and coupled with the RPG flavor of customizability, you can’t go wrong here. A cool element worth mentioning is the intro into each fight sequence that pulls you into a “square-off” visual style, locking you into a specific location, unable to retreat. Some may say this isn’t entirely realistic, as in many games you can just steal a cab or sprint away *cough GTA *cough, but for the story element to progress, the developers can’t just have you running off to play pachinko all hours of the day, right? Many of these fights occur randomly as well, so you can’t just dodge them by taking a different route either.

Lastly, there is no multiplayer to speak of, either offline or online, so what you see is what you get for the single player mode.

Upon starting Yakuza, a handy tutorial of sorts walks you through the finer points of making it in this rough world, such as movement, basic combat, NPC interaction and more. A welcome addition indeed, and one integrated well into the gameplay. The fighting mechanics are fairly basic, as long as you don’t excitedly mash buttons, and as long as you use a few defensive maneuvers in key moments, you will own with the best of them. Veterans of any type of fighting/street fighting game like The Warriors, will be right at home here as well. Overall, after learning the ropes via the opening scenes, most gamers should do fine here.

For starters, the controls are fairly decent, which is always critical in a combat intensive title such as this. But sadly, the third-person camera issues rears its ugly head yet again. Along with the annoyance of not being able to specifically target baddies, you have to manually position the camera on your character, but at the cost of peripheral vision of the surrounding landscape - quite a burden for the city exploration elements.

Yakuza combines a fairly unique mix of Japanese crime society, frenzied melee combat, streamlined RPG elements, and slick visuals and sounds. Any fan of Japanese culture, most notably the Yakuza elements, should definitely check this title out. Furthermore, any gamer who just wants a solid beat ‘em up should take this one for a spin too.