Quick Look: Yakuza 6 - The Song of Life

More of that delicious Yakuza content!

Kiryu Kazuma is the real Best Dad.

wow 1 hour 36 minutes... Can't wait for Beast in the east 7 in 2025.

Aniki is "older brother", and it's often used as a term of respect for a more senior/older Yakuza. It's used similar to senpai, in that the concept doesn't necessarily translate easily to English.

Edit: "Nice to michi" for "Yoroshiku-michi" is some A+ translation. Can't wait for this to arrive tomorrow!

Kiryu? I hardly know you!

Alex might specifically mention this, but it looks like there are multiple versions of the Live Chat conversations. Both the conversation was (slightly) different when Waypoint's Danika and Natalie showed off the demo in February* (the thing that tipped me off was the fact that here he says "Boobies!" instead of "BOOOOBS" with 4 Os)

*It was wild because during that whole segment of the stream, Natalie was frantically texting Austin if they should cut off the stream or risk showing anything that could get the official Waypoint Twitch account banned. It's also probably why only the clip is still up, not the full archive

I havent watched the quicklook (I intend to play it myself tomorrow) but I hope Alex enjoyed the 60 odd hours he spent with it. While i'm sad we probably wont be getting any more BitE I understand these games are better off being played at your own pace.

@johnymyko: in certain ways it’s better!

I'm still working on Kiwami and I don't really know if I should play this before Kiwami 2 or any of the other Yakuza's. How much does 6 dive in the previous storylines and characters?

@alex@vinny Aniki means 'bro', and for most of the East Asian organized crimes (Chinese Triad, Japanese Yakuza, Korean Kkangppae), your colleagues are brothers, and very often there are rituals to take the oath to become sworn brothers. Oyaji is basically 'dad', and your crime boss is like your father.

Those things above the pants are belly warmer https://thejapans.org/2016/02/10/haramaki-the-japanese-belly-warmer/

The mascot in Onomichi seems to be heavily based off of the mascot in Kure city, not far from Hiroshima - Kureshi, or Mr. Kure.

We back!

"nice to michi"

Boooooo! Hissss!

@mattgiersoni: the Yakuza games have pretty much always had pornstars in them in some way. All the phone cards you collect in 0 have pornstars on them, and I think most of the girls in the hostess clubs are pornstars too.

I have 55 hours into Yakuza 6 so far, and kinda don't want to ever stop playing.

@mattgiersoni: Almost all of the women in subquests in 0 are pornstars. Kiryu's real estate assistant, the girl in the cult, the dominatrix, Majima's cabaret girls, etc.

@ravelle: its the end of Kiryu and Haruka's story here's an official site with an interactive comic that looks like it covers up to the 5th game and also a timeline with videos from the games history http://yakuza.sega.com/experience/index

Looking forward to playing this 3 years from now when I finally catch up on the series lol

If i'm not mistaken, Aniki means like "brother" or "bro". From what I understand it doesn't have to be blood relatives. Just a guy you consider "like a brother".

StepNFetchIt

It's 2018, and still no one blinks in the world of Yakuza.

I am planning on playing them all, just wondering if I can play 6 without getting spoiled on previous events.

I haven`t played 6 yet, but the Yakuza games are normally fairly good at giving you recaps of the previous games. I would add though that the best way to experience the series (and especially 6 from what I have heard/seen) is to play them in order. In my opinion at least the characters are kinda more important than the plot beats in this series and the connection you feel to the characters really amplify how enjoyable the stories are and makes the emotional beats hit a lot harder. Considering 6 is billed as a send off to Kiryu I expect that having that connection with Kiryu and Haruka and their relationship is going to be pretty important.

I feel like it`s kinda like jumping into a TV series on season 6 after reading a summary of the previous seasons on Wikipedia. you`re going to understand the major plot beats, but you`ll probably miss a lot of the small details and a lot of the emotional core of the story.

If it`s similar to previous Yakuza games there will definitely be spoilers for previous Yakuza games both direct and indirect. For example this starts right after the end of 5, so it will definetly spoil stuff about the end of that game.

The story will also probably be pretty confusing if you don`t watch any of the recaps from previous games since the stories tend to build on both events and characters from previous entries.

SPECTACULAR BAKALAR

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I ordered 6 but I'm in no rush to play it yet.

Is Yakuza kind of the best wrestling game franchise? Would the WWE games be better if they handled like this?

The last series standing for me that I always buy day 1. Keep them coming Sega!

@ravelle: I just finished playing 6 after playing 0 and Kiwami (Haven't played 3, 4, 5). The beginning of the game is minutes after the ending of 5 so there's stuff in the setup that are connected to the previous title. There are stuff in the middle of the story that shows up that references to things in previous games such as the Korean mafia from Yakuza 2.

But majority of the story after what's in the demo is pretty much standalone with brand new characters not shown in previous games. Ive come to notice from reviews that those that stuck with the series seem to be more disappointed in the story due to the fact that the regular characters from previous games are mostly absent throughout this game.

I'd be curious to play through the rest of the game and see how it ties around with 6 again down the road. Hope that helps!

I still have my PS4 offline for the "demo"

Having fully voiced sidequest dialogue actually adds a lot to the series.

I like how this quick look is a like a weird family vacation. "Kids, we only have time for a handful of activities. First we're gonna beat up some thugs, then we gotta stop by the internet cafe to chat with some pornstars, THEN we can go do the Yakuza clan battles. We only have time left over for one song of Karaoke and a round of Virtua Fighter to finish things off, so decide which one you want to do first!"

As someone who speaks Hiroshima-ben Japanese, it's funny how the Hiroshima-ben Japanese was translated here! I am into it... we definitely have a distinct way of speaking in Hiroshima. You'll hear a lot of "~jaro" and "~en" and stuff if you've got a keen ear. Looks like they localized it in a pretty funny way.

Takeshi Kitano was best in MXC!

@alex Beat Takeshi is 71, born 18 January 1947

It seems the guy from the very beginning of this quick look named Yuta is the same actor who played main kid Shuya in Battle Royale.

Bread Club for lyfe!

@dya: Gotta call it by its actual -and more fitting- name Takeshi's Castle!

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I wonder how much Yakuza has borrowed from what is perhaps Takeshi Kitano's best film:

Looks great! I actually really enjoyed the looser, more physics-based fighting when I tried the demo. I put 4 down halfway through last year, after marathoning 1, 2, 3 and 5 during Beast in the East, but I will definitely pick it up again sometime so I can finish it and 6 and round out Kiryu's story. Can't wait to see Kiwami 2, though! 2 is by far the best in the series imo, so seeing that redone in the new engine is super exciting!

Also, Anri Okita ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) noice. Kinda surprised no one knew what S and M meant, though.

OH NO!

God damn you sweet, succulent hour and a half 'quick' look.

I........ I need to get a ps4.

I want to go to a baseball game in Japan more than life itself.

@mattgiersoni: Every single female character in Yakuza 0 aside from like Makoto and the Obatarian was a real Japanese porn star. This includes the Marina, the bowling alley lady, etc.

I can already tell I am going to spend way to long building the perfect baseball team.

She likes Chaka Khan? Abby, you're just about perfect! You gotta work on your pun appreciation, though. :P

I literally only played 0 and while I would probably ideally play through them all first that is a looooot of time and I'd probably be fatigued by the time I got to 6. I started it last night and from what I can tell so far it would definitely benefit from playing the others over the years to build up your emotional connection to Kiryu and his life. But I find it completely fine to come into this without having played previous, you can fill in the gaps no problem and I'm expecting to be affected emotionally by this despite missing a lot of the games. They do a really good job of making it easy to jump straight in.

My plan is to play this and then go back through them as they all come out in the re-releases. I'm pretty happy to do it this way, I guess it's just down to your preference.

Sega need to hurry up and start porting these games to PC.