I'm in one of those moods; lets talk Yakuza

 Yep, it's one of those blogs

Recently I been feeling a little bit hopeless, you know? That feeling that I assume we all get, but I wouldn't know because I'm just a disembodied pair of typing hands across the internet with no interaction with the outside world and thus have no measurement for comparison. And when I get to feeling this overwhelming loneliness and despair, I like to think about my favourite snippets of escapism that paint a kinder, more sensible world. No, I don't turn to classic examples of kids TV with their timeless lessons and great character role models, nor to highbudget TV shows of the day, nor to the countless smooth paced relaxation games like Stardew Valley. (Hah! I just lied and implied Stardew wasn't stressful, when it absolutely is.) No I turn to the one game that really unwinds the knots in my neck and fools me into state of faux contentment; Yakuza. The drama game series about a Japanese gangster who single handily beats up the entire country at least once a game.

I suppose some of that comes from the very specific feeling of 'otherness' that I, as a foreigner to the culture of Japan, experience when I play a game so heavily balanced on Japanese pop culture. Feeling like a stranger to everything around you that should be your various worldly lifelines feels like a total malfunction of being human, but being a stranger to a county and culture I live nowhere near and know very little about is how I'm supposed to feel, I'm not supposed to feel like the world view I have fits in over there; and so experiencing this hyper inflated version of Japan as a backdrop for the Yakuza games feels more natural for me than the waking world does, if that makes any sense. And that's before getting into all of the impeccably silly over-inflated action sequences and dramatic narrative events mixed with silliness and an odd sprinkle of pathos here and there. (Maybe a little bit too much pathos at times.)

Another part of my obsession undoubtedly comes from my love of crime drama and romance. Two repeated sources of fuel for Yakuza storylines in their constant desire to call back to old-school low budget TV crime movies and inexplicably elevate those narratives through bombast and scale. There's a great balancing act between the genuine human drama that lies at the motivations of some of our favourite Yakuza plotlines, such as Tachibana's search for his long lost and long suffering Sister, or Nishiki's scramble to mark out a sense of control in a world that constantly seems to abandon and discard him, that tugs at the heart of everyone. And then, when you're most vulnerable, the game will throw a big crazy set-piece at you where a giant Castle lifts into the sky to reveal an inner castle, or Kiryu Tiger Drops a literal tiger, or you get to double drop kick that slimy character who no one likes out of a restroom window on the fifth floor. (I am amazed he actually comes back later in the narrative only to be killed by a single grand slam that the player doesn't even get to perform.)

As for romantic element; I more referring to the classic sense of romance, When you look at the way that Yakuza characterises the act of being a Gokudo, (I'm using that term to differentiate the actual role from the name of the franchise) it's portrayed as this very noble profession of modern day warriors who often times end up protecting the disenfranchised or 'civilians' from the bad Gokudo or criminals who might prey on them. Very much in keeping with the dreamy imagination of being a gangster that those old Japanese Yakuza movies propagated, and the propagandistic meaning behind the title of Gokudo itself! It means 'going your own way' or something like that, implying some noble self-sacrificing art of defying a broken system so that you can carve out your own sense of good. And of course it's all a load of bollocks. The Yakuza are just thugs, they were born out of a merchant class who teamed up to harass anybody they could and they evolved through the years into an organised mafia. (I used to be very economical about how I talk about the Yakuza, but I can't be bothered anymore.)

All of these are just the elements that make Yakuza the style of game that I would be interested in, what keeps me coming back day after day is the quality of the games themselves. Now of course, I'm not a diehard original fan who has been with the series since the early days of Yakuza 1's terribly dubbed port wherein Mark Hamill played Majima. (Which even to this day sounds like an absolute lie, but is 100% truthful) But Yakuza 0 was a game I pretty much had my eyes on the second I saw it announced. I don't what it is, I just have an eye for these franchises that I spot for a fraction of a second and go "Yeah, that's the one for me." It was the same case with Persona that is was for Yakuza, and then all these years later I finally get around to playing the damn things and my inkling is always supremely underplayed, the games end up slapping harder than I could have imagined.

Although that isn't to say the other Yakuza games don't have their charms too. I think that Yakuza Kiwami had some great gameplay with it's fully realised styles system, and was only really held back by the fact that the entire game took place in one city which got tired quick. Kiwami 2 looked gorgeous, and that visual appeal really did help sooth the fact that the combat was largely gutted and toned down from it's Kiwami 1 highs. (Also Kiwami 2 story was tons better than 1's) Yakuza 3 is still the beast I'm currently butting my head against because the combat is literally the worst in the franchise. (Yes, I've seen the defenders and the heavy copium they operate on. Let's be frank, the fact that the combat is designed to reward one singular style of reactionary combat is not a 'complex evolution of the combat depth'; it's boring.) But I still love Kiryu and his journey enough to put up with all the sore points.

Because Yakuza is just one of those special franchises that even at it's worst is still the sort of experience that you can't really get anywhere else. Grand Theft Auto has it's influential ties to what this series is trying to do, but Yakuza 'goes it's own way' with a lot of the particulars and ends up with a regularly successful product; sometimes more than GTA is successful with some it's particulars. I have absolutely no reservations about declaring Yakuza 0's narrative as superior to any Grand Theft Auto games, in complexity, emotional stakes, character and pathos. (I would have a harder time saying that about Red Dead. Those stories are really strong.) Few games manage the perfect balance of open world minigame goodness that Yakuza does. And even Saints Row 2's balance of humour and drama is pitiful in the light of Yakuza on it's best day. (Literally every one of Kiwami 2's side missions is an exercise in utter weird in the best possible way)

So that is why when the chips are down and I'm struggling to find reasons to get out of bed in the morning it's titles like Yakuza that make me smile enough not to walk headfirst into incoming traffic. Which is perhaps one of the reasons why I find the burgeoning schism between western and eastern game studios as increadibly disturbing. There's so much great content on both sides of the world that an interconnected community allows everyone to enjoy, and it's worms like Square Enix upper management that put that relationship in danger. I hope that Capcom at least can maintain their ostensibly neutral stance on the issue that they've maintained thusfar, because if the Yakuza franchise just suddenly stopped getting English ports, that would be a genuine tragedy.