@Yossarian said:
Most of the reviews seem to be trending in the 70's range.
Without having played the game, yet, I have to believe that is probably pretty fair.
The series has always had a wide spread of review scores, and its perfectly understandable. For as much as I love this series, all the charm and craziness that people love is behind an intimidating wall of jargon, and all the scrolling text that entails. It is definitely an acquired taste, but those who are willing to sit through the first couple of hours of their initial Yakuza experience usually stick around, I find. And in that regard, I'm surprised to see a few of you mention Yakuza 3 as their gateway to the franchise (just as it was for me), because it's the worst game. Now, let me qualify that by saying that personally I think its an extremely enjoyable game, but it starts at a glacial pace. The Okinawa section is great from a narrative sense, particularly if you're intimately familiar with the overarching journey of Kazuma, but it makes little concession for the newcomer. I hardly think that the short videos filling you in on Yakuza 1 & 2 really do an adequate job on integrating players into all of that. When these games hit their heights (Tiger punching, literally grabbing the bull by its horns) they are amazing, but tying to sell someone on this series is pretty difficult. Well, that's speaking from personal experience, as I cannot for the life of me convince one of my friends to give this a try. This is despite the fact that he, still to this day will talk about Shenmue whenever we discuss games.
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