Fire up the klaxon! The Yakuza 3 Demo is now live! Check it out right now and go beat down some punks for great justice.
 
Oh. And a reminder about the Showdown from Nippon-town on March 9th.
 

Damn i bet ffXII don't have any of that!

that's a convincing graph

damn i couldnt find the karaoke lol

I only speak the truth. Always bet on Kazuma.

" I only speak the truth. Always bet on Kazuma. "

" @Keystone_Yinzer said:

" I only speak the truth. Always bet on Kazuma. "

also yakuza wins in the games in which can brutally beat people to death and then go bang a girl from a hostess bar "

Whoa... did not expect this.  Awesome.

Played it for 5 minutes, pass.

I was gonna pass on this, but that chart is convincing.

Played it for more than 5 minutes, SOLD.

 @kingclaw: I am just doing my patriotic duty of spreading the word about this awesome game so we have hopes of SEGA releasing Yakuza 4 stateside which comes out this year in Japan.

 
This may be from Yakuza 2, but the picture speaks for itself about this series.
 

I just finished playing the demo, and man does it kick ass. The finishing moves are so bad ass and so fun too warch, I yelled out "shiiiiiit" so many times :P. The karaoke stuff was kinda amuzing also.

Sold.

I didn't like it. People take forever to kill and all you get it hand to hand type combat. Also I had used up all my weapons by the time I got to blue shirt in the club so he just kept stabbing me and their was nothing I could do about it. I'll go back but so far not impressed

I wanted this game as soon as I heard the importers rave about it. I'm definitely buying this on Day One. Sadly, they took the dating game that was in the Japanese demo. I wondered what I said to that lady.

You can't beat a chart like that. You just can't. 

Graphs don't lie! *Runs to PSN to queue download

I've seen a bunch of people trying to compare this game to GTA for some reason or another. Hell, I just watched a preview on IGN that had stated that exact same comparison. It's a bit discouraging to see that, it's as if the concept of "open-world" immediately translates into "It's like GTA." Perhaps there are more dramatic examples in the final product to justify the GTA comparison, but my impressions from playing this demo was that it's obviously more Shenmue than GTA. 
 
Yeah, I loved the demo. I think this game has "Endurance Run" written all over it. I'm not talking about length, but there's something inherently "awesomely strange" about the karaoke mini-game. Why were there animals scoring me at the end?! What was up with the cat?! Why did the room change into a sound stage after scoring a bunch of points?!?! WHAT'S GOING ON?!?!?!?!!
Suffice to say, it was great :P I would love to see commentary :P

" I didn't like it. People take forever to kill and all you get it hand to hand type combat. Also I had used up all my weapons by the time I got to blue shirt in the club so he just kept stabbing me and their was nothing I could do about it. I'll go back but so far not impressed "

I've played the demo, haven't played the previous ones so I didn't know what to expect really. AND HOLY BALLS, is this game insane or what?! It's like they read my mind and made a game. I must get this.

im not gonna play the demo since iv'e allready preordered it and know it's going to be awesome ! i don't want to get more teased than im allready am :P

thanks for telling me about the demo, i will check it out after work.

ill get it when i finish Yakuza 2

 @m1k3 said:

" ill get it when i finish Yakuza 2 "

Hmm I might have to go home and try me a slice of this crazy pie.

i played the demo 
that shit was crazy!  i dig it

is this game any good?

small FYI for any one who wants to know.
 
SEGA have confirmed that some things have gotten cut from the game so far.
2 Things are confirmed and there is evidence of even more stuff is now gone.
 
SO far A quiz and any thing to do with the hostesses is gone (it is about 10 hours of game play)
We also have some evidence that several minigames, massage Parlour and a chunk of other things are also removed from the game and there reasoning for removing them are becaus they would not "Resonate" with American gamers.
 In other words they removed any thing us Gajin would be to dumb to understand.