Who gave that Yakuza a baby!

Back at Playstation Experience last December, Sega announced that Yakuza 6 The Song of Life will come to the US in early 2018. From trailers we know the game’s story has a bit of a Lone Wolf and Cub flavor to it with the grizzled main character, Kiryu, forced by unhappy circumstance to care for an infant of suspect parentage.

Yakuza 6 was playable as an eight minute demo at E3 this year; not much time for an open world game with an expansive story. Just enough time to get in a couple fights with street thugs and rival Yakuza and, of course, sing some karaoke. What more could you want from a Yakuza game?

Based on this small slice, Yakuza 6 seems ever so slightly understated compared to earlier games in the series. The combat is still bombastic, but the camera doesn’t sweep in to feature a particularly brutal move like it used to. The crazy stuff still happens but the game doesn’t dwell on it. Mechanically the combat feels less mashy and more intentional. The player needs to actually execute a combo to execute a combo now.

It’s hard to say from only one round of karaoke, but the minigames in Yakuza 6 seem less difficult but more polished. Which is a good thing because in past games of the series the difficulty level of the minigames would vary wildly mostly because of finicky controls or byzantine mechanics.

These minor adjustments are probably improvements so ultimately Yakuza 6 seems like a case of getting more of a good thing.