Really wish somebody at Giant Bomb would try out this game.

they said they would check it out in the Japanese playstation store video. "might"

@bigjeffrey: Awesome. Thank you.

I really don't see the point if it doesn't come out in english.

and its never going to sob

im crying tears

because of stuff like this:

@darji:

You mean oddly complex GIFs?

@video_game_king: Yeah it is a big bit but more because of the crazyness

The Yakuza series is an masterpiece of Japanese media culture. It is emotional, sad, funny, crazy, silly, tons of stuff to do and also it has great gameplay. It is probably my most favorite videogame series of all time. And it deserves more coverage from the western media as well. And just be it these silly videos and moments. It is the Shenmue western people always wanted only better and even more important profitable.

@darji: I have no idea what the hell was going on in that video, but I like it.

@alternate said:

Yeah, while Jeff has certainly persevered with certain games despite language barriers in the past, this Yakuza game (and 5, unfortunately...) would obviously be far too story orientated to play through without being able to understand Japanese.

@yummylee: Well I just want them to do the demo. The combat and exploration is strong enough for a decent quick look. Also there are some rumors that Atlus will localize 5 and maybe Ishin after words so it isn't completely dead in the West... I hope..

It is not that hard to actually follow the story without understanding anything. Just get to the part when you can move freely through the city and do all the stuff you can do. Jeff would not be into the story anyways. He already called the serious tedious on UPF

@darji: Oh my god, what is Majima doing?????

Come out in America, damn you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The base of the story for Ishin feels like classic Samurai/HK-action/KungFu flick theme to me. I wish I didn't have to rely on those fluent in the language to decipher that kanji-filled game for me but I like what I've gotten out of it. Jeff surely knows those stories and how they go - looking at later footage of the game, I've guessed right.

Despite that, eagerly awaiting payday so that I can buy the game.

@somejerk: the basis is Sakamoto Ryouma's life I suppose, so it's a 'real' setting with a 'real' story. As other mentioned, you can still play the game without being fluent in Japanese. In my opinion however, it loses most of its charm. It's a very story-led game and as such ignoring most of it would be a shame. Also, Sakamoto Ryouma is such a rich part of Japanese history that you wouldn't want to be missing out when you play the game.

@darji: it's not Shenmue at all! Though one could see how Shenmue was a precursor to many aspects of Yakuza, I see it as a very, very different game. Especially when you consider the pace of the game you can feel their are aiming at different things. I won't comment on being 'better' as that's purely subjective. But it's a great series. I think it can be even better if they are not a afraid to make some changes in the, by now very old, formula. I think they might try something new with Yakuza 6. I'd love to play a new Shenmue game to finish that story though :(

A QL of this should be no problem. Easy to figure out.

I could do minigames and farming and if the dungeon crawling from the VITA one is in the full game then I'm set, this will become my forever-game..

What a dangerous freaking game..

I'm going to have to tell my man in Japan to fetch me a physical copy of this and the OST :(

@edsone Oooooh now I've connected the dots and wow. Time to calculate the budget

Kenzan was like that too. It was basically the Story of Miyamoto Musashi. I played i back then when I could not read much Japanese and but luckily I have read the book before so I could follow most of the stuff pretty easily. For this one I have not much knowledge about this person so I would probably miss a bit more but I am really tempted to buy it. The only question is if I should wait until I have my PS4 sometimes this year or just buy the PS3 version

As for Shenmue/Yakuza: For me Yakuza was always the evolution to Shenmue. Their second try to tell a very emotional story in an open world environment with tons of stuff to do while also making profit on it. And luckily they succeeded big time with Yakuza. It is just a shame that this game never was successful in the west.... It is kind of sad that this always gets compared to GTA while in reality it is more of an modern JRPG

But man this op is really really good. I am so tempted just to buy the PS3 version. Or maybe I should first read a novel based on Sakamoto Ryouma.

unless there are upskirt opportunities in the game than no he did not forget about it.

@darji: even if it's understandable why people compare to GTA it kind of misses the point really :/ I don't see how it could be as successful as GTA in the west but could definitely do better with some more marketing. On the other hand the series is very Japanese and hard to comprehend from a western perspective. I wouldn't go as far as call a modern day jrpg but I could see why someone would say that. And talking about the rpg aspects of the game I wish they somehow change the random battles to something more natural. It's one little thing that annoys me after a few hours ^^

About Sakamoto Ryouma, IF you get somehow interested I recommend a taiga dorama called Ryouma Den. It covers his whole life. If it's too long you can always just read the wikipedia page about him. The dorama is pretty good though. Gets better and better as it goes. It's very easy to find. Here's a playlist on daily motion Ryoma den but I believe it's pretty cheap on amazon by now (I may be wrong :p). I don't know about books. There are plenty in Japanese obviously but those kind books are pretty tough to read. It takes months for me to read regular book in Japanese so I don't even approach those :(

It really bums me out that we won't get any more English Yakuza games. Me and two of my friends played through Yakuza's 1-4 over the last year. We just finished four and decided to order 5 and try learning Japanese at the same time. It's a bad idea. But those games are so awesome.

@edsone: Thanks for the tip. A dorama is always better than a book so I will look for that XD

@darji: Not really. Major reason why Kenzan! didn't come over is child prostitutes play a role in the main story line and some of the substories. Westerners are whiny about stuff even if its historically accurate. Black Panther games didn't come over because 'lolpsp' and 5 probably won't come over because of how poorly Dead Souls did. Trying to ignore that rumor about an Atlus localization to keep myself sane.

@adoggz: It's got up/around-loincloth and bulge shots and fanservice of muscular men in hot tubs. On the female side of things it's got cleavage, but not a hint of upskirt or something like that.

Hopefully gaming journalism goes and hypes it up for these causes rather than focusing on how everything hates women.

That was not the reason why Kenzan did not come over. Yakuza games in general were not a huge success. And with the translation of 3 there was no way they would translate a spin off as well. The worst thing they could have done was porting this shitty dead souls game over instead of working on 5. Now the series is basically dead in the west. I doubt we will be seeing either 5 nor this one translated which is really a shame. As for the geisha part this was more than harmless. The scene in 4 was much more serious but still harmless.

Can I buy this game in the US?

@alwaysbebombing: You could start with this one. It is almost the same.

This series is way too story-heavy for us to get anything meaningful out of the Japanese version of the game. I'm not going to drop 8000 yen on it.

@jeff: Understandable. But There should be a demo up as well with some side stuff like karaoke^^

@darji: I'll check back in on the store and see if there's a demo up there. Pretty sure it wasn't up the last time I looked.

@jeff: I think all the demos were not ready by then. But now it should be there.

Sega just announced that a PS4 demo of the upcoming Yakuza Ishin will launch on February 22nd, on the same day as the full game. Since it’ll be the 22nd in Japan in about eight hours, it won’t take long for the trial version to be available for download from the Japanese PlayStation Network.

The demo will require 2.640 mb of free space on your hard disk and it’ll include the beginning of the story, the utagoe parlor (basically a karaoke bar rhythm game) and a fishing minigame.

http://n4g.com/news/1460883/yakuza-ishin-gets-a-ps4-demo-launches-in-a-few-hours

But I do not know how much content would be in there for something like a quicklook thingy.

Strong rumours of Sony handling localizing, weak unsourced rumours of Atlus doing it, prayers of gamers everywhere that we eventually will be able to buy it in every country in the west.

Specifically: Karaoke (two songs), fishing at three different spots, fighting, gathering by taking things out of pots rather than smashing them, shopping, eating and drinking (alcohol powers up, food boosts), bathing (then) streaking.

Eight word story synopsis: Find the assassin with the unique sword style.

Important: Karaoke is the place by the central gate, you need to get it done before you do the bath-house (I'm quite sure) or approaching it will trigger the final mission of the demo.

I believe it's Adam Boyes in fact who's been trying to start up a new team to localise more games. If he manages to pull through, then Yakuza 5, Ishin, and maybe even the HD collection for the first two Yakuza games would be almost assured I think, given how as far as requested localisations go, they're obviously pretty high up on the list.

Would be great but I really do not want 1 and 2 again. I rather want them to focus on the new and upcoming ones

Shahid's gotten room for localizing some portable JRPGs, I think I see where this can go: GDC mid-March!

@jeff said:

I was unable to download it from my PS4 PSN store directly, but I found that if I went to the PSN webstore I could "purchase" it and queue it up for download there.

isn't Shahid handhelds only? I really do not want i to be localized on handhelds anyway. The best thing would be either kickstarter it or even better ask fans to translate it for free. They are usually also much faster than official teams. Just give them the tools they need and GOOOO!!!!. Translation done in 3 month XD