Forums > Submission Feedback > fleinn's Yakuza 4 review

I just had to review this for one of the other sites that I write for. I'd never played a Yakuza game before and I found it incomprehensible and 90% of the extra, non-story content useless. And I thought it was written by 14 year olds. Your review is a rock-solid assessment of what Yakuza 4 is - this strange game that still somehow manages to be decent and playable despite itself. Really nice job here.

Not sure how to make a sig? While logged into your account, you can edit it and your other public and private information from the Settings page.

Great review. I hope the staff reviewers will start to take heed and review more AAA titles rathers than garbage like DC Collection or Epic Dungeon. We don't want Dead Space 2 and Super Mario Galaxy 2 reviews to come out in 2014.

Not sure how to make a sig? While logged into your account, you can edit it and your other public and private information from the Settings page.

:) thanks. ..Thanks a lot. After Yakuza 3 I had high expectations, so that's.. maybe something that affects my view of it now.. But the entire "14 year olds wrote the script" thing is seriously spot on, imo. It's strange, because.. Y4 appears more polished and more cinematic than yakuza 3 in many ways. But it just doesn't match up to the "good god did that just happen!" stuff in Yakuza 3. You also don't have the authentic characters that Yakuza 3 and the earlier games had, imo..

Akiyama is a fantastic character, for example. Who really has lost sight of the line between legal and illegal. For good reason. But he doesn't develop in the way you expect. Same with Tanimura - he's presented well, but it doesn't end in a confrontation where he has to make that choice the entire game aims for..

That's unlike Yakuza 3, where Kazuma does end up getting into trouble because of trusting people too much. But where that also works as a test (which he passes) for how to change the underworld or break from it with his honor intact, etc. And that part is missing from Y4..

I also liked the crazy segments in Y3, though, so.. Wrestling a bull in a quicktime event, etc. That kind of thing. And where one of the characters in the game inform you casually that you might want to save the game now, because this will be the final confrontation, etc. I thought those were great, because the way they did it let the game play more easily, and didn't actually distract you from the story. In the same way, the continuous boss-fights through several stages, and so on were fantastic. The fight in the strip-club, for example. Y4 just doesn't get near that with the Tanimura fight, for example..

Not sure how to make a sig? While logged into your account, you can edit it and your other public and private information from the Settings page.