is a 2005 action-adventure game developed and published by Sega for the PlayStation 2. It was released in December 2005 in Japan and in September 2006 internationally. The story follows Kazuma Kiryu, a yakuza who spent ten years in prison for a crime he did not commit. After being released, he learns that the criminal underworld is searching for 10 billion yen that has been stolen from the Tojo clan. The game takes place in Kamurochō, a realistic recreation of Tokyo's Kabukicho district.
Yakuza takes place in an open world and makes use of role-playing elements. The player gains experience from combat which is used to improve Kiryu's fighting capabilities. In order to finance the game's expensive production, Sega contracted a tie-in campaign with famous Japanese companies. A sequel, Yakuza 2 was released in Japan in 2006. The game, along with its sequel, received an HD remaster, released in Japan in 2012. A remake titled Yakuza Kiwami was released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in 2016, and later ported to Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
Critical reception was generally positive; its presentation and story were praised while its controls and mechanics were criticized. Yakuza was a commercial success and sold over one million units on PS2. Its success led to an ongoing franchise, now renamed Like a Dragon internationally.
Gameplay
Yakuza is a third-person open world action-adventure game where the player controls Kazuma Kiryu in the city of Kamurocho. The game also utilises fixed camera system and incorporates role-playing elements. With the experience gained from combat, the player can level up Kiryu's attributes and increase his fighting capabilities in order to perform Heat actions which greatly damage his enemies. Yakuza utilizes quick time events during the fights.
While Kamurocho's map shows the linear path to continue the main story, the player may take on missions and side quests found around the city. The game is composed of three interconnected modes called Event, Adventure and Battle. In Encounter Battles, the player randomly encounters foes. Winning these battle nets some cash, which can be used to purchase equipment or healing items. Items can be bought in shops based on real life stores and are divided into multiple real companies.
The Battle Mode includes the Underground Arena which is located in Kamurocho's Purgatory area. Cutscenes are enabled after completing specific actions or beating a certain character during the Adventure Mode. They also introduce the chapter's objectives. Various minigames are available within 'Adventure Mode' in the form of arcade machines scattered throughout the game world. These include a claw crane, a batting cage, a casino (Baccarat (card game), blackjack and roulette), toba, and pachislot.
Plot
The game follows the story of Kazuma Kiryu (Darryl Kurylo/Takaya Kuroda), a yakuza whose life changes when his boss, Sohei Dojima, attempts to rape Kiryu's childhood friend, Yumi Sawamura (Eliza Dushku/Miyako Uesaka). When Dojima is murdered by Kiryu's best friend and fellow yakuza, Akira Nishikiyama (Michael Rosenbaum/Kazuhiro Nakaya), Kiryu accepts blame for the murder, and is imprisoned for ten years. During his incarceration, Kiryu is expelled from his organization, the Tojo Clan, and Yumi goes missing. After his release, he learns that ten billion yen has been stolen from the Tojo Clan's private bank, and that the entire Japanese underworld is now searching for the lost wealth.
Kiryu asks his former captain and adopted father, Shintaro Kazama (Roger L. Jackson/Tetsuya Watari), about Yumi's disappearance, but Nishikiyama, who now controls his own gang, shoots Kazama after he reveals that Yumi was connected to the lost money. Kiryu manages to escape from the Tojo, who now regard him as an enemy and put a contract out on his life. His escape is aided by a detective named Makoto Date (Bill Farmer/Kazuhiro Yamaji), who had been investigating Kiryu ever since the death of Dojima, and is now investigating the murder of Third Chairman Masaru Sera (Alan Dale/Ryuji Mizuki), the former Tojo Clan leader whose death has triggered a war between Kazama, Nishikiyama, and an ambitious yakuza boss, Futoshi Shimano (Michael Madsen/Naomi Kusumi).
In his search for Yumi, Kiryu finds an orphan named Haruka Sawamura (Debi Derryberry/Rie Kugimiya) who is searching for her mother, Mizuki, who Date identifies as Yumi's younger sister. Haruka is also targeted by the yakuza, who believe that her pendant, which Yumi gave to her for safekeeping, is the key to the missing ten billion. Kazuma is forced to protect her from not just Shimano and Nishikiyama, but also Goro Majima (Mark Hamill/Hidenari Ugaki), Shimano's sadomasochistic lieutenant, as well as the Omi Alliance, a rival yakuza organization, the Snake Flower Triad, led by Kiryu's old enemy Lau Ka Long (James Horan/Shinichi Takizawa), and the MIA, a mysterious group with ties to the Japanese government.
Eventually, Kiryu learns from Kazama that Haruka is actually Yumi's daughter, and that "Mizuki" is Yumi under an assumed identity. Yumi suffered amnesia after she was attacked by Dojima, but recovered and married Kyohei Jingu (Robin Atkin Downes/Hiroaki Yoshida), an ambitious politician who allied himself with Sera. After accidentally killing a journalist who had tried to blackmail him with evidence that he committed adultery, Jingu asked Sera to have Yumi and Haruka murdered. Kazama saved the pair and persuaded Sera to turn on Jingu, having learned that the latter was using the clan to launder ten billion yen for his own purposes. It is then revealed that Kazama, Yumi and Sera robbed the ten billion yen so that Jingu would not use it to bribe the clan. Shimano ambushes them but Kiryu defeats him; however, Shimano mortally wounds Kazama with a grenade and his ally, Omi Alliance lieutenant Yukio Terada (Gregg Berger/Kenji Nomura), then shoots him dead in revenge. Before dying, Kazama confesses to Kiryu that he killed his parents when he was young and that he in fact operated the Sunflower Orphanage Kiryu grew up in.
Armed with the knowledge of the money's location, Kiryu and Haruka head to Millennium Tower, where they meet Yumi, who has recovered her memories and now intends to destroy the money with a bomb. Jingu arrives with the MIA and the Omi Alliance, revealing his newfound interest in bribing the Omi Alliance instead of the Tojo Clan. Kiryu subdues him and his men, but Nishikiyama, revealed to be cooperating with Jingu after the latter bribed him, arrives to challenge Kiryu and take the money for himself. Kiryu defeats him. Jingu appears and shoots Yumi before a remorseful Nishikiyama stabs him and detonates the bomb by shooting at it, killing them both and destroying the entire floor in the process. Yumi then dies in Kiryu's arms, and with her, Nishiki and Kazama now dead, Kiryu decides to return to prison, but Date talks him out of it by reminding him that he is the only one who can take care of Haruka now. The Tojo Clan asks Kiryu to assume the role of Fourth Chairman in accordance with Sera's will, to which Kiryu complies but he retires instead mere hours later and names Terada as the new Chairman to rebuild the clan. The story ends with Kiryu beginning a new life as a civilian with Haruka as his newly-adopted daughter.
Development
The game was first hinted at in August 2005 as "Project J." Later that month, details were announced. Producer Toshihiro Nagoshi explained "For a while now, I've wanted to create a powerful, gritty drama where you feel the sense of humanity," Nagoshi explained. "After a lot of thought, this is the product that we've arrived at." Sega General Manager at the time, Hideki Okamura, revealed that as of August 23, 2005, the game had been in development for three years. The budget of the game was 2.4 billion yen (approx. $21 million).
Most of the team members are from different backgrounds, such as developers that have their roots in the arcade with titles such as Virtua Fighter 3 and Super Monkey Ball, as well as team members having experience in novel console titles like Panzer Dragoon and Jet Set Radio. The team members all felt that they went against their careers considering that the new game didn't match anything they had previously done. Nagoshi felt that this was an advantage, making them all play on even playing field. Anything that was done had to go through Nagoshi first, since only he had a concrete idea of how the game is going to end up.
During development, the team researched hostess clubs, which are prominently featured in the story, even attending hostess clubs themselves, including Roppongi and Kabukicho. The fictional setting of Kamurocho in the game was closely based on the red-light district of Kabukicho in Tokyo. The development team wanted to accurately portray yakuza, especially such as their obsession with jingi, their code of honor. Originally, the game had scenes where pinky fingers were cut off, a traditional punishment, but these scenes were removed so that CERO would give Yakuza a favorable rating. Though using the gameplay schematics of one of Nagoshi's earlier titles, SpikeOut, as basis for the combat, Yakuza utilized an entirely new engine crafted for the game. Some of the software used to help develop the game were Autodesk Softimage.
Writing The game's development team was divided into two groups: one writing the main plot and the other writing the subplots. Novelist Hase Seishu was an editor of the central plot. Seishu was brought on board two years before the game development started. Seishu had been a gamer since the days of Space Invaders, but over the past four or five years, he had lost interest, as he was less concerned with 3D visuals and gameplay than he was with story. Yakuza caught his attention, and he decided to accept the project even though it came at the busiest point of his professional writing career. Nagoshi wanted players to get enjoyment from merely walking through Kamurocho. Nagoshi reveals that the game's title, which translates to Like a Dragon, was his creation; Nagoshi felt that dragons have a strong image, which would evoke Kazuma's strength and manliness.
Although Sega did have a plot in mind when they approached Seishu, they hoped that he could add realism and emotional weight to the scenes. Under Seishu's direction, the ages of Makoto Date and Kazuma Kiryu were modified. Writing the subplots did not prove challenging, as there was not a strict pattern to follow. The team wanted all subplots to keep the feeling from the main storyline. Several ideas did not make it into the game because the staff members found them silly. One subplot that made the final cut, which involves a man who tried to commit suicide when he was rejected by a girl, was nearly removed from this game for this reason.
Localization