2017 is really Yakuza’s year . In January we could enjoy the beautiful Yakuza 0 , in a few days Yakuza Kiwami will be released, the new chapter (seventh) will be announced shortly and during this Gamescom we put our hands on the much-anticipated localized version of Yakuza 6 . This sixth chapter marks a particularly impressive moment on brand history for two fundamental reasons: it will be the last chapter featuring the legendary Kazuma Kiryu and will be the first to boast of the brand-new graphic engine called Dragon Engine.
Yakuza 6 resumes the story exactly where we left her in Yakuza 5, with a Kazuma Kiryu in her lifetime saved in extremis by Haruka. During his recovery at the hospital, Kazuma is completely handed over to the police, agreeing to spend 4 years in jail for his death so he can live in the future as a free man, returning to administer the orphanage of the Sunflower in Okinawa.
The Return of the Dragon
On her return, however, things do not go as she had predicted: her beloved Haruka disappeared in mysterious circumstances and, as it may be, it seems that the key to everything is a mysterious newborn. What is Haruka’s son?
This is the narrative incipit of what will be the last adventure of the legendary Dragon of Dojima. The setting that will be the background to this sixth chapter could only be Kamurocho, or the neighborhood inspired by the true Kabukicho of Shinjuku. And when we say inspired, we mean in fact a nearly loyal reconstruction of the original. If in the previous chapters, the redesign of the famous red lights area of Tokyo has been steadily growing, now thanks to the Dragon Engine the similarity with Kabukicho has reached incredible levels.
If you’ve been in those places, especially in recent years, you will literally stay open and be overwhelmed by a devastating nostalgia. The Dragon Engine finally allowed the development team to fully exploit the resources of a console such as Playstation 4 and to make that leap of quality that a series like Yakuza had sincerely needed.
Kamurocho is the usual Kamurocho you’ve learned to know in these long years, but at the same time drastically changed that the number of locals and people living there is now increasing exponentially.
Charging times have been totally eliminated, and now the transitions between the indoor and outdoor environments, or even the transitions of the battles, have virtually disappeared giving a sense of fluidity in the really enjoyable exploration.
Combat side, another pillar of the series, the real big innovation is to have integrated the heat action in the various combos and taken in a uniform and constant way, making combat more dynamic and fascinating of how it has ever been. And then, finally, you can escape the clashes with a delightful simplicity, giving you the opportunity not to remain compelled to continue and force struggles against street criminals.
As for the progress and development of Kazuma’s skills, this time it was decided to point to something very different: whenever our protagonist fights, completes quest, drinks, eats or else, he acquires various types of experience points, which can be invested to increase precise parameters such as strength, defense, energy, dodge and heat action bar.
There was no way to try out the minigames and the new substories, but in return we could test the new interesting sundry system activated via SMS that informs Kiryu of the various events that happen in the city and where he can intervene. Unfortunately, these events are randomly generated and it may happen that many of them are repeated, but fortunately they are so immediate and, above all
