I know I usually try to be coy, or come up with clever names for these, but I figured I would just get to the point with this one. Especially after seeing so much praise for 6 (if anyone has a link to some actual criticism of the game (not just 4/5 reviews or fluff on "how good a dad" Kiryu is), let me know because I haven't seen any), I found myself profoundly disappointed. Especially because this is what the developers are claiming is the final (new) game starring the Dragon of Dojima himself, Kazuma Kiryu.

And to be clear, this will have some spoilers for both the end of Yakuza 5, and some stuff from the early parts of Yakuza 6. Then, later on there's spoilers for the end of the game, and that will be in a spoiler thing. But I figure if you are into these games enough to worry about spoilers, you've probably already played/are playing 6. That said, as disappointed as I am in this game, if you are a longtime fan of the series and haven't played yet, probably just stop reading here and go play the game yourself. I feel like I'm an outlier in my take on the game (though I'm baffled about the people who loved it), so I don't know.

Yakuza 6 picks up right where Yakuza 5 left off. Kiryu is badly wounded from the final boss of that game, Haruka had just announced her retirement from being an idol (something I strongly criticized a couple years ago), and the Tojo Clan is in disarray. After a short recap of that stuff (and to be fair, the game technically starts with a tutorial fight set later on, but then flashes back to that), the story really begins with Kiryu in the hospital, and making the first questionable decision of the game.

When faced with the choice between "hire a good lawyer" and "go to prison to take the fall for the Yakuza clan he hasn't been a part of for years," he decides that even though he runs an orphanage without the help of any other adults, he would be better off in prison. The idea being that otherwise he'd draw too much attention to the orphanage. And while I guess there is something resembling a logic to it, and he had already been letting the orphans run the place themselves in 5, at least in that game Kiryu had been sending them money to run the place. I'm sure Japanese prisons are different from US ones in a great deal of ways, but I'm pretty confident there wouldn't have been a way for Kiryu to keep funding the orphanage. And even beyond all that, it's hard for me to look at a decision like that and think anything other than Kiryu is just trying to hide from his problems until they blow over.

Haruka, meanwhile, discovers that even though she abandoned her dream to spend more time with her fellow orphans, the media was still keen on assassinating her character, so she comes to the same conclusion as Kiryu, and runs away, though at least not to prison. And being the oldest of the bunch, that meant the orphanage was run by no one but young teens for the three years Kiryu was in prison.

This is when it gets to the thing that actually ruins Yakuza 6 for me. Upon getting out of prison, Kiryu returns to the orphanage to find everything in order (I guess letting orphans run it wasn't so bad after all), except that Haruka is missing. So, Kiryu goes to the only place in Japan that anyone ever goes in this series, which is that one tiny square of Tokyo called Kamurocho. Here is where he learns that Haruka was hit by a car, is now in a coma, and was a clutching a baby when the car hit. And Kiryu embarks on his adventure to figure out who hit her, why she was hit, and who the father of the baby is.

And I hate it. I already hated that in Yakuza 5, a game explicitly about following one's dreams, Haruka's entire arc was to give up on her dream because like most women in this series, she felt most at home at, well, home. Now that she's old enough to be an adult, that's come full circle and she's become a mom. But not even an actual mom, just a mom plot device to force Kiryu to have to take care of a baby, which only amounts to having to repeat a bad minigame to calm the baby while running around a small town looking for milk.

It's especially frustrating that after seeing nothing but praise for this game, and seeing people (rightfully) criticize God of War for having the wife be dead, and never directly seen or heard from, that I haven't seen a single person complain about how Haruka is in a coma for the vast majority of this game. Yes, I realize it's not the same thing because Haruka does appear (brief though it is) at the start, and eventually wake up. And even when she does wake up, it's not like she suddenly gains a vast amount of agency in the story. She still exists just to be something the men fight over. But between that, and the story in general, I just feel like I played a different Yakuza 6 from the one I've seen people talk about.

Nothing in this game's story did anything for me. The closest I got to really enjoying it was seeing some of the antics of what has to be the most slapdash, half-assed Yakuza family in history. Even that didn't last, because they had to get involved in the quest to find Haruto's (the baby) real father (the reveal of who it is I saw coming a mile away, even if I preferred my original prediction that the baby wasn't actually Haruka's). To be honest, I liked them better when they were just comic relief, and not a serious part of the story.

But for real, it felt like it wasn't until I was over halfway into the story that it started to pick up at all, and even when it did, I just couldn't bring myself to care. It's just the same sneaky back-stabbing politicking between criminal syndicates that the series always has, but without a memorable cast to propel the action along. The game tries to make a big deal out of the events taking place, and I'm sure some of them (like 'The "Secret" of Onomichi,' a late game McGuffin) are more meaningful for the Japanese audience the game was written for. But again, when the new characters don't feel like they're worth caring about, I couldn't bring myself to get invested in the plot.

Most of my favorite characters from the previous games are nowhere to be seen, outside of brief appearances. Majima, Saejima, even Daigo might as well not even be in the game, for how little they are. Even Akiyama, who shows up a few times, has far less screen time than the new characters, who just...aren't great. Outside of those aforementioned knuckleheads, the new characters aren't likable at all. They're not even villainous or interesting enough to be the "good" kind of unlikable.

Even Kiryu just feels like he's Kiryu doing the same Kiryu thing he has been doing for the last few games, outside of 0. When he was one of four or five playable characters, that was fine because he didn't need to carry an entire game on his own. But that shtick just doesn't cut it anymore. Honestly, 6 has helped me realize that Kiryu doesn't really have that much depth as a character. He's just this generic stalwart of what's right, and he just wants to help his family, which is fine, but...boring. At least in 0 he had actual character growth, where he went from just another Yakuza into the Dragon.

But back to Haruka, and how this game really just continues to treat women the way the series pretty much always has. They're not active players in the story so much as just plot devices for the men to care (or not care) about. Haruka is in her coma, and Kiyomi (the one other woman relevant to the story) is there to babysit Haruto while Kiryu is out beating up people. Oh, and don't forget about Kiyomi's tragic back story (spoilers, I guess) about her abusive husband (who is vying for control of the Tojo Clan) who she had to run away from, and in the process abandoned her actual child to life with him. And also don't forget that she basically just stops showing up in the story once that back story is revealed, because women have no place in this series if they can't be either a McGuffin, or have some tragedy to either take part in, or relay to the men. SPOILERS: When she does show up again, it's only because she's been kidnapped, used to force the men to fight each other, then "killed" (of course she was fine) to again, just get the men riled up.

(In retrospect, while I loved 0 last year, thinking about this is making me rethink Makoto's role in that game's story, and I'm suddenly finding a lot of similar issues I wish I'd thought more about back then.)

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that just like (what feels like) every other game in the series, trans women exist only to be the punchline of a "joke." Though at least this time the woman was correctly gendered, and there wasn't any violence involved. But Kiryu's visible discomfort at being near a trans woman was still played for "laughs," as I'm sure the physical design of the character was (you can surely imagine how this series would represent a trans woman stereotype without me going into details). Of course that's all assuming this was the only LGBT related "joke" in the game, and there wasn't anything else I missed, which is...possible.

So, I've complained about as much as I can without getting into SPOILERS for the ending, so let this be your warning.

Anyway, I can't really overstate how disappointed this game really made me. I was feeling bummed out pretty much all day after I saw that ending. Part of me wanted to take the disc out then and there, and never play the game again, but I still had side content to do, and you know...

Okay, but I know what you're thinking: Even if the story is disappointing, at least the game play is still fun, right? Well, that's a bit more complicated. Ultimately, yes, I do think the combat is still fun, but it takes too long for it to really get good, and even then still isn't as deep as it was in 0. Yakuza 6, it turns out, is the first time there's been a serious and substantial change in the tech around which the Yakuza games are made since Yakuza 3. 3, 4, 5, 0, Kiwami (which I didn't play after reading it wasn't great/had plenty of transmisogyny), and all the spin-offs I didn't play were ultimately all designed as PS3 games, and generally all felt the same (aside from maybe the zombie one, but I didn't play that).

Yakuza 6 is the first one built for PS4, and as such it has a variety of new innovations that only the PS4 can handle. Like being able to enter stores without loading. If that sounds sarcastic, it's because while it's a welcome change, stuff like that feels like it should have been possible back in Yakuza 3. It also allows for a greater level of detail possible in the design of the cities than ever before, which is nice, but comes at a cost.

I'm not the sort of person to complain about anti-aliasing, and in fact, I'd be willing to bet that in all the years I've been writing these blogs, this is the first time I've ever felt the need to mention it, but the aliasing in Yakuza 6 is terrible. I mean, so bad that there were cutscenes where I was supposed to be focused on the characters (really, the subtitles at the bottom since I don't know Japanese), but I couldn't keep my eyes off the horribly aliased objects in the background. Power lines, buildings, cars, just about everything. There's spots in the game where it looks like almost the whole screen is just a mess of aliasing, and on top of that, there's bad screen tearing in some areas too. It's especially noticeable in the first person mode. After 0, which sure, still "looked like a PS3 game," but ran well and I don't remember having issues like this, it feels like more harm than good has been done to the visual side of the game.

And, I feel the same way about the changes made to the combat. I was already worried going into the game, knowing that after three games of multiple protagonists that this was going back to just one. I became even more worried when I learned Kiryu was only going to have one fighting style, as opposed to the three for 0 (four, if you count the secret one you had to grind for (which involved going through the terrible transmisogyny of that game, which is why I didn't)).

All that aside, the combat is on the surface the same as ever, but in that nebulous "feel," not quite the same. The older games, for better or worse, felt very rigid in their combat. Rigid in the sense that every time you did the same combo, the moves came out in exactly the same, snappy way. 6, on the other hand, in motion, looks a lot more fluid. I don't know if that's just because there's more and newer animations, or if there's some sort of dynamic animating going on (the game sure likes to use the word "dynamic" in the descriptions for some of the moves, at least).

I don't know how much of it is fundamental changes made to the combat, and how much was the need to upgrade Kiryu's attack speed, but the opening hours of the game are a slog any time Kiryu gets into a fight. By the time I fully upgraded the speed of Kiryu's attacks, it got to a point where it felt pretty much good as it did in 0, but still not quite there. Maybe that slower speed was supposed to represent Kiryu being rusty from being in prison, but honestly I would have preferred less of that, and not made the opening hours feel like such a drag.

And the way Heat works has changed too. There's much less of an emphasis on getting enemies into specific situations, and then hitting Triangle to do a special move that drains part of the Heat gauge. That still exists, but now it feels like the thing to do is wait for the Heat to max out (now represented by orbs instead of meters), then hit R2 to go Kaio-ken, which speeds up and increases the power of Kiryu's attacks. It also opens up a lot more Heat Actions that simply aren't available normally. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I just don't enjoy what it's done to the flow of fights compared to the previous games.

It does, however, lead to my favorite thing about the combat in 6. Ending combos with Triangle in Heat mode will zoom in on the enemy's face while Kiryu's fist or foot smashes into it, and seeing the faces contort while the game prompts you to mash Triangle, only to then send the enemy flying is fantastic. More than anything else in the game, it demonstrates the raw power of the Dragon of Dojima, and it's cool as heck to look at. I wish there was more stuff like that. Maybe involving weapons? Which, weapons aren't nearly as much of a thing in this game as the past ones. Not that I ever got super into using them, not counting Majima's baseball bat fighting style, but it still feels a bit lacking in that regard.

Speaking of the fights themselves, like walking into buildings, they're a lot more seamless than before. That's good, and another thing I mostly like is the increased amount of physics on the enemies. Sending enemies flying after a big hit has long been in the series, but it's never felt as rag-dolly as it does here, and if there's anything I love, it's wonky physics on bodies in games. Seeing someone fly ten feet into the air, for no reason, after falling to the ground is certainly immersion breaking, but in the way that I can't help but enjoy.

There's also a heavy emphasis on knocking enemies into other enemies as a means of both crowd control, and doing damage. The old throw of the past is replaced with Kiryu spinning someone around, which knocks everyone back. It's cool, but sometimes it can make fights kind of a mess, where everyone gets knocked out at once, or most of the enemies are still technically conscious, but in a stunned state on the ground. At which point it tends to be either kicking them out, or waiting for them to stand up, because I found trying to grab enemies on the ground to be hit or miss with it actually working. And toward the end of the game, so many enemies are thrown at Kiryu (who often has some allies with him) at once, in tight enough spaces that it gets hard to tell what's going on, which was frustrating.

Anyway, the combat is ultimately still fun enough that it kept me going through the disappointing story. But really my biggest gripe with the changes to the game play systems are around the leveling. Yakuzas 3 through 5 (and I assume the first two) all leveled like regular games, and 0 had Kiryu and Majima spending money directly to unlock abilities on skill trees (which I really liked). 6 is back to XP, but in a baffling move, it has five different types of XP. Yes, FIVE. I think the idea was that these different types of XP represent different things Kiryu has to work on. Strength, speed, etc. The problem is that almost all of the things to be unlocked require multiple types of XP, and most of those require ALL of them, which just makes the splitting of XP into categories seem meaningless. Actually, more frustrating than meaningless, because Kiryu doesn't get XP for all five categories at the same rate.

There's XP from fighting, from completing story missions, sub stories, eating (which you can't do infinitely because Kiryu has a stomach that can get full (you can spend XP to increase his stomach capacity and the rate at which he digests the food (for better or worse, there's no need for him to use the toilet ever)), going to the gym, just about everything gives some amount of XP. But the things that happen the most in the game, like fighting, only give some of the XP types. And those other two types ended up being the bottleneck that slowed my progress toward unlocking things, especially later in the game. By the end of the game I had thousands of XP for three of the types, in a couple cases I literally hit the cap on how much XP can be had for them (9999), and I could barely get enough of the other two to keep unlocking anything.

On top of all these types of XP, and different ways to get it, over the course of the game it felt like I spent more XP getting abilities to get XP faster than I did on new abilities, or even on improving Kiryu's core stats (which only go up like, two points at a time, making any individual upgrade feel meaningless). Over the last few years, I've been feeling myself getting tired with these sorts of incremental, individually insignificant upgrades in games (something I recently felt a bit of with the runes in God of War), but this game has to be one of the worst examples in recent memory. It's just so much busywork, and the end result is just that the regular enemies are so weak that when I do come across a slightly tough boss, I'm paying so little attention to not getting hit that I don't realize I need to be careful until half my health is gone.

Unlocking new moves, stuff like that is fine. This just feels like busywork for the sake of having busywork. And it's frustrating in a game where I just want to have a good time being up lowlifes and criminals, not checking the stomach meter every five minutes and running to a restaurant to maximize what to eat.

One thing that I do think the game gets right (mostly) is feeling like these are places that could actually exist. When I first started the game, I thought having to hold X to run everywhere, and running out of breath was going to be a hassle. And, at times it still is. But the answer (aside from upgrading stamina, which I did) ended up being that I didn't mind just...walking. Most of the time, I just strolled through the game at a lackadaisical pace, taking in the sights, and feeling like I was walking through the streets of Kamurocho and Onomichi. It's relaxing...even if half the time Kiryu just gets jumped by thugs.

It's still not perfect, though. The first person mode is great for getting really immersed, but the game does nothing outside of the minimap to show where things are in the world, which means either having this big, intrusive map, or turning it off and trying to go on memory. I can do that in broad strokes, at least for Kamurocho, which is still mostly unchanged after all these years (for better and worse). But I ended up keeping the minimap on, because the alternative just meant I was pausing the game to check the map way more often. It allows for setting a waypoint that shows on the minimap, but I would have liked if that at least appeared in the world, or if the game had any sort of a less intrusive way to show where things are.

I often see people praise these games for having small, but dense areas, rather than huge, sprawling worlds, and while I generally agree, I also think these are too small. This is the same Kamurocho I've been wandering since Yakuza 3, and presumably the same Kamurocho from the first two as well. Of course 3 was the first one to not have loads and camera cuts just walking down the street, which would have been a meaningful change, but that doesn't change that it's the same layout.

Yes, that can feel good at times, because it feels like I'm returning to an old haunt. Going back to a place that might look a little different at first glance, but still feels like home. But it can be just as disappointing, when I'm back and it feels like the only ways it's truly changed are ways that make it smaller. I don't mean that it feels smaller, I mean that it's literally smaller. Granted, it's ultimately only a few streets, but there's parts of Kamurocho from the older games that are just blocked off in Yakuza 6. Still on the map, but there's construction going on, I guess, so no going there. That, and it's still a bummer to have the edges of the playable areas just have big red things pop up if you try to go any further.

Onomichi, as pleasant as it is, is even smaller, and has even less to do in it. It was nice to walk around for an hour, but after that, I just wished for more. It stopped feeling like a real town I was visiting, and felt like a small level in a video game. Sure, one with lots of detail, but not enough to actually feel alive. And even within these small spaces, there's too many fenced, or gated off areas that are simply inaccessible. The areas wouldn't even need to be physically larger if there was a lot more going on in the spaces. Sure, there's a handful of places that can be entered, but there's far more that can't. I'm not saying Kiryu should be able to barge into every person's apartment, but what if there was a way onto every roof of the game? What if the sewers weren't just one spot that Kiryu goes to for the story, and were big enough that they might as well be their own level? I know things like this are often more limited by resources, and even tech, but that won't stop me from thinking about what this game should have, and probably could have been.

I dunno. I really wanted, and expected to have a great time with Yakuza 6. I've truly loved these games in the past, even when they had issues. And while nothing in 6 reaches the lowest lows of the awful transmisogyny in 0, nothing in it approaches the highest highs of that game, or any of the other great moments in the others. It even felt like it was struggling to meet the averages of them most of the time.

Even the sub stories aren't up to par. The ones where Kiryu dresses up as Onomichi's mascot Ono Michio stand out as the best in 6, but most of them just aren't that memorable. A whole branch of them just seem to be built around the joke that Kiryu is old and isn't familiar with technology. There's multiple sub stories about people trying to scam Kiryu out of money over the phone, for example. Again, they're not really bad so much as they just feel...average. There are a couple that call back to things from Yakuza 0, and even feature returning characters from that game, even if they look like they've aged twice as much as Kiryu has over the same period of time. But, again, doing a quest involving the same cult from 0 didn't feel novel, it just felt like they were rehashing the same story, for anyone who might not have played 0.

I don't want to call the game bad, because as much as I griped, I did come around on the combat, and there were brief moments, like a fistfight in a burning building where everything clicked, and it started to feel like the Yakuza games that I know and love. But looking back on everything I've written, I have to at least admit this is my by far least favorite of the series. In time, I'll probably find my lack of wanting to call it bad because of how much I've loved previous games diminish as I get some distance from the game. Don't be surprised if by the end of the year, when I'm doing my GOTY stuff, that I say I should rename my "Todd Howard Presents the Fallout 4 Award for Most Disappointing Game," because I feel like that's the trajectory I'm going to have with this game.

And given it's Kiryu's last new game, that's a bummer.

I'm reminded of, how last year, after loving so much of 0, I didn't want to play Kiwami, and burn out on a sub-par Yakuza game. Except now, after playing a sub-par Yakuza game, I'm hoping that Kiwami 2 is really good, so I can play that, and leave the series on a better note.

Here's to hoping.