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Yakuza: Dead Souls – Review

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Yakuza: Dead Souls - Review 1Title: Yakuza: Dead Souls
Alternate Title: Ryu Ga Gotoku: Of the End
Developed By: Sega
Published By: Sega
Console: Playstation 3
Genre: Action-Adventure, Third Person Shooter
Classification: MA15+ for Strong Violence
Review Conditions: Australian Playstation 3 version. Content should not change between games however DLC inclusions and releases may differ between edition and region.
Special Thanks: SEGA Australia for providing me with a copy of this game.

In all previous installments of the Ryu Ga Gotoku / Yakuza franchise, you have occasionally had the opportunity to use firearms in battle, however primarily you were left making use of your fists or anything else you could find – bicycles, mannequins or desks in order to defeat your opponents. However, it turns out the team behind the games wanted to try something a little bit different from the normal and decided to completely destroy the town of Kamurocho with a zombie outbreak – leaving the games four playable characters to fight against the swarm and find a solution. As I alluded to in another article I wrote today…. over the last couple of years we have seen numerous zombie games released on the market… to the point where just adding zombies to the formula might actually ruin a game unless they are implemented well and with creativity. So how does Yakuza: Dead Souls compare above the rest? Find out by reading my review of the game!

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The game begins in Okinawa where Kazuma Kiryu, the series main character has for the last few years been running an orphanage and trying to live his life peacefully along with Haruka (The daughter of Kiryu’s childhood friend) and the children who he looks after. One day, he recieves a mysterious phone call from a man who says he has kidnapped Haruka and that Kamurocho is dying…. literally as zombies are roaming the streets. After hearing that you can completely forget about this for two and a half chapters as most of the game is about building up to this one point.

Similarly to Yakuza 4, the game follows not only one character but four characters each with their own respective chapter – Shun Akiyama: A loan-shark who is willing to lend people out high sums of money with low or no interest provided they fulfill his odd requests, Goro Majima: A non-playable character since the first game and well deserving of a playable role, Ryuji Goda: One of the antagonists of Yakuza 2 who has since dropped out of the Omi Clan and has a gattling gun in lieu of his arm and finally Kazuma Kiryu who I have mentioned above. Each of these chapters follow an individual character and despite the game showcasing them working together… they are very rarely seen consulting or fighting with each other until the last two chapters. The first two chapters following Akiyama and Majima were more about showcasing the implications the zombie outbreak had on Kamurocho, mostly involving rescuing people from recently infected areas while the final two storylines are more focused around the cause of the outbreak and rescuing Haruka.

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The first thing to note is that while you can play this game without having played any of the games or only Yakuza 3 or 4….. but to fully appreciate the backstory to this game you would have had to have played Yakuza 1 and Yakuza 2 on the Playstation 2. Unfortunately these games are out of print and damn near impossible to find, so as this game does not have the “reminisce” mode of previous games, I would suggest loading up a previous game and watching them or hoping that Sega releases a HD Collection of the original two games. Moving on, I really did enjoy the inclusion of Majima as a playable character and he played a good role which offered another side of his personality that is not often seen in other games. However, besides that fact I felt the storyline was overall “Just Average”, and similar to Yakuza 4 hindered by the individual character chapters that would have been better off left with a single character or alternated between them more frequently.

The game does come equipped with their usual substories, a number of missions added to the game each with their own storylines which frequently make use of the zombie outbreak. While I think having more would have been of benefit, especially considering they are spread over four characters – these were good means of deviating from the main gameplay. The game also doesn’t just throw you into the fray but instead is localized and slowly spreads as gigantic barricades are destroyed by zombies (or in order words, as you progress through the storyline). To also deviate from your normal storyline which takes place in both containment and safe zones, you can enter the quarantined area at almost any time and take part in “Free Battles”, allowing you to rescue businesses or occasionally rescue the odd hostess (Who surprisingly will take up arms and join you in future ventures after training).

While there is some witty writing, mostly on the behalf of Majima, a little bit of emotion on the behalf of Goda and the ability to bring the storyline and its battles to areas you have previously not been able to enter or walk around… it is an overall satisfying storyline that did not disappoint, however a number of elements including the multiple characters really did dampen the experience which could have proven much better if it were more focused on the issue at hand. Love it or hate it, when Yakuza 5 comes around, this is considered a non-canon storyline.

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Normal / Quarantine Artwork for Kamurocho (Click to Enlarge)

When Yakuza was first released on the Playstation 2, we were presented with a large open world which while not having the degree of mini-games and other activities as we do now, was quite good for its time. Two games later when releasing Yakuza 3, the team evidently had to rebuild to city to bring it into the quality expected of the Playstation 3 console and did what I think a very good job at recreating it with their own new little tweaks. While each game has made their own little additions to the world building – we are now once again two games down the track and instead of recreating…. they have made the effort to destroy the city entirely. As the game progresses – even more of the towns infrastructure succumbs to the destruction of the zombie outbreak. They maintained the landmarks from the un-quarantined Kamurocho and did its job well enough, however I felt at points it was just there for aesthetic design and not to provide anything new in terms of gameplay – with only an underground escape route and a couple of sidepaths added to the mix. The un-quarantined zones however remain almost identical to that of its Yakuza 4 counterpart, although how much more they could add to it would be debatable.

Character designs remain almost identical to those from Yakuza 4, which in my opinion were pretty satisfying – while the only main character who has not appeared in a PS3 version of the game (Ryuji Goda) designed to have a solid stature and indifferent expression… but you can’t pass up how kick-ass the prosthetic Gatling Gun looks. The game includes (The range may depend on the edition you have purchased) alternate character costumes for all main characters and Haruka. Some of these costumes can simply be described as awesome – and killing zombies with Majima in an extravagant pirate costume really gives a Pirates of the Zomb-ian feel to it. While you can also upgrade your weapons, they don’t really have much in terms of visual changes between improvements – but are suitably designed for what they are.

The designs of the zombies on the other hand…. the normal zombies are essentially similar to those of the random NPC’s walking around the streets so I didn’t mind that there was only a limited diversity of them – but the “special” zombies only had one if not two designs in total which was lacking in my books – especially when they were appearing four or five plus times in a stage. Boss zombies including the final boss fared much better with the exception that the game heavily lagged in the later and more eccentrically designed bosses.

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All the way back in May 2012 when I wrote my review of Yakuza 4, I mentioned that the best song in the game was the theme playing on the Data Install screen. While the song was perhaps not so enjoyable in this game, they have made use of the same style of Data Install screen which is both simple but effective in making the ten or so minute wait a lot more bearable than other games. The game comes with a sizable soundtrack including battle soundtracks for each character, event music and just general music that is used in the game. While some might not appreciate this heavy J-Rock inspired soundtrack, I thought it was as enjoyable as any of the other games and was probably the most effective style of music to use in this instance. As with any other Yakuza game…. we must talk about Karaoke music. Unfortunately there were no new songs added to the mix but they did record tracks for the new main characters – including Majima singing “Get to the Top!”, a track usually sung by a select few female characters in the game and was easily the star of the few inclusions. Voice acting is Japanese-only as other games and is of the same standard as previous games.

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The game does allude to fist battles, but for a majority of the game you will be battling exclusively with your ranged artilary – ranging from dual-pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles and a number of other types you pick up along the way. As you might expect, simply punching or kicking a zombie in this game doesn’t have much effect other than temporarily knocking them down. The shooting mechanics do come attached with a hefty learning curve, with very slow aiming that even the auto-target skill the game offers doesn’t always cater for. As not all zombies simply wander around but like to swarm upon you in groups with bigger zombies that are faster, stronger, have more defense AND require more skills to work with… accidently aiming at the wall (Which can happen) may mean a quick game over.

To give you an added advantage and visual spectacle in battle, the game brings back the heat gauge which allows you to perform heat shots. These are similar to the special attacks in previous games where you can select special targets such as Oil Drums, Liquid Nitrogen Tanks and water lines in order to KO or otherwise severely damage the zombies around you. As you are occasionally able to to bring “Partner” characters into battle with you, you can also do coordinated heat shots with them, which also offer a bit of added purpose to having them join you.

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As you continue through the game, the number of zombies you are faced with increase – justifying the increased quality and shooting capacities of each characters individual guns by default (You can mix and match some when you access your storage in bases). When you play as Akiyama, you are only faced by a couple at one time and thus using dual pistols is acceptable, however as you go through the characters Majima is provided with a more powerful shotgun, Goda his Gatling Gun arm and finally Kiryu who makes use of a mixed bag of weapons throughout his chapter. Not only the number of zombies increases, but the variety of them increase as well. Whereas with Akiyama you might just fight normal turned zombies, with Kazuma you may be left in a small corridor with flying zombies, zombies encased in a spherical rock and slow zombies that can cause immense damage with every hit. Coupled with the at times constricting shooting mechanics you will be left to forgo aiming and just aim in the direction you are standing.

While it doesn’t have as much impact on the battles as previous installments, the game does come equipped with an experience-based levelling system, where each zombie kill, completed stage or substory will net you a certain amount of points depending on how successful you were. This unfortunately proves to be more annoying at the beginning where the number of items and weapons you can hold is seriously restricted, but later on gives you some freedom about what you want to focus on when developing your characters. These skills are shared amongst the four characters instead of individually. Another aspect to the overall effectiveness of characters in through weapon modding, which is your normal affair of collecting X number of Y and paying money to give your weapon stat boosts. Done well, I was however able to mod a pistol that until the end of the game, was more effective than other weaponary – so more weapon balance might have been good – although I can’t say as the guy in the mod van was handing out free modding items (Which may or may not be an individual DLC or special edition factor as I am reading mixed reports online).

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Most of the games action takes place exclusively in zombie-infected zones, therefore unlike previous games, if you are in a non-quarantined area then you do not have to worry about any random battles against thugs or worrying about taking an extra couple of minutes to get to your target destination. Considering how tedious this ended up being in post-game, I was quite glad to see this implemented.  On mention of post-game, the game includes the usual Premium Adventure Mode which comes equipped with mostly the same activities and games as Yakuza 4 (Karaoke, Darts, Haruka’s Trust Score, Massages and much more!). What was good however, was that you could choose a normal Free Adventure which focuses solely on the sidegames, a boss battle mode where you can battle individual bosses and the ability to return to the end each characters chapters to take part in individual substories and save the remaining stores in the quarantine lockdown. There are also a number of special modes which provide some added post-game challenges.

I have enjoyed many games in the Yakuza franchise and I feel that Sega’s decision to continue the English distribution of the games has been a smart and hopefully profitable move which they will continue into Yakuza 5 which is currently in the works and from the limited snippets of information sounds promising. But in terms of side-games… if given a choice I would have personally gone for currently unreleased Yakuza: Kenzan! which features the main characters in Kyoto, 1605 over Dead Souls. This was not a bad game by any means and if they had a bit more of a focus on the storyline and a few new mini-game inclusions than it might have easily gotten up to the standard set by Yakuza 3…. but completely replacing the physical combat of the original games and just adding third person shooter elements to it without modifying the system more heavily for this inclusion wasn’t the best move in my books.

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The studio behind the game, now known as Studio Yakuza have shown that they can develop a third person shooter with great gameplay mechanics – with their recent worldwide release of Binary Domain and I just wish they had implemented a system similar to that in Dead Souls. But of course you have to take into account that Binary Domain was in development after Yakuza: Dead Souls and is dissimilar in every other area. Personally, I completed this game in 13 hours and 43 minutes, and about nine of those were a straight playthrough that took place yesterday so it is a medium length game that managed to keep my interest for an extended period of time. But looking at it overall, I would have been happier with them spending that time developing Yakuza 5 or perfecting Binary Domain. If you are a fan of the Yakuza series then this would most probably be a good addition to your game collection, otherwiseif you are new to the franchise I would suggest starting at Yakuza 3 or Yakuza 1 (If you can find it).

In the introduction I questioned if this game was a solid performing zombie game in comparison to the many others in the gaming market at the moment. In comparison to every zombie game I have played so far, I would say it has hit around the middle mark…. nothing too bad, nothing too great…. but instead is a game for fans of the extended franchise who want a deviation from the usual style of gameplay. In the mean time, I highly suggest Sega get around to developing a Yakuza 1-2 HD Collection, as these along with Yakuza 3 are the stars of the series so far – and will enable those new to the series to be able to further appreciate the well thought out overarching plotlines of the PS3 game releases.

Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: B-
A great overarching plotline let down by individual character chapters that initially don’t contribute much to the plot other than showing people are panicking. Majima as a playable character.

Design: B
Regular zombie designs uninspiring, but as usual character designs are of a good quality and they didn’t just slack off during the development of the zombie-infested regions of Kamurocho. Lag during boss battles annoying.

Music/Voice Acting: B+
A sizable number of songs put into the game and a continuously high standard of  voice acting, but at the expense of few new karaoke tracks. Awesome data install screen (How many games can you say that about?).

Gameplay: C
Average third-person shooter gameplay at the expense of Yakuza’s usual third person brawling combat. While having many zombies on screen and attacking at once was a great and complex gameplay choice, wonky and slow controls made it frustrating quite often.

Replayability: B-
While it doesn’t offer much more in terms of extra side-game content in comparison to Yakuza 4, it offers a couple more modes in Premium Adventure and the sidestories should provide you with enough to do for at least half a dozen to a dozen hours.

Personal Opinion: B-
It was an average but fun game, but would have preferred the other Yakuza game we have not seen a localization of yet – Yakuza: Kenzan!

Overall Score: C+

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

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