I' ve just finished Yakuza for PS2 (I' ve been playing till 5 AM today - 8h straight) and I have to say I' m very impressed.



The Shenmue roots are very visible here.

While I keep bitchin' about imperfections in games - this one was a blast even though it had a lot of flaws.

First of all - it lasts about 12 h and the STORY is 10/10 - period.The best story since MGS1 and FF7,FF8 imo.



Visuals are very nice fo ra PS2 and some indoor enviroments are drop dead gorgeous (incredible use of textures makes them look 100% real).

There' s one way to describe this game - it' s a Spikeout mixed with Shenmue and jRPG.

I really liked fighting in this game (it' s not perfect though) and the city is so incredibly alive...

Some characters (Detective Date , Kazuma , Sera) faces look better than anything I' ve seen in any HD or SD game to date (except Gears of War and Mass Effect).

I totally loved this game even though I wouldn' t have scored it higher than 8.5/10 (very solid 8,5/10).I understand someone who can' t go past some flaws though.

It' s pretty fair to score it between 7 and 8,5 depending on reviewer.

Thank god I' ve checked it.The story alone kept me going and those realtime cutscenes were mindfuckinblowing.

A bit more polish here and there and this could' ve been the spiritual succesor to shenmue.A shame when you look at this wasted potential , but it was an awesome experience for me anyway.



I hate unpolished productions as you all can tell by now , but this game has such a great story that it kept me going anyway (and cutscenes ...oh god)

I' m very happy that I was able to taste a bit of shenmue style gameplay :)

A shame that they are making the sequel for PS2 - they did amazing things with PS2 hardware and I' d love to see this game in a photorealistic verision on PS3/360.




Voices are awesome too - I forgot to tell you that while some lines are better than others - it' s got a very well done voice acting and those voices have been picked to fit characters perfectly.



I was terribly impressed as you can tell by now.