Yakuza 3

[Dyne]

Originally Posted by DarkMaster

What a time for this to come out. Another RPG, Resonance of Fate, comes out next week, the same day as God of War 3. What the hell is Sega thinking.

Piggybacking definitely is SOME kind of strategy, but I don't think it'll work very well.

Turok released in the middle of nowhere, February 5th, and it pushed over a million copies. Not too bad. Yakuza doesn't have that brand-power though.

Originally Posted by Bond

Is this the spiritual successor to Shenmue?

Sega's a real mishmash right now - in short, yes, it very much is, budget-wise. If Shenmue had continued, I don't think we'd ever see a Yakuza.

Gameplay-wise, it's the same. I know people will say that it isn't, but it is. The RPG-style way you upgrade your fighting is the exact same. Theme-wise, of course they had to snazz it up. Sex sells, and so does crime.

Where I get excited is Smilebit's involvement. Just after Sega's merger of all the studios, Smilebit branched off into two - one, the sports team, which is making Mario and Sonic at the Olympics every year, and the part that went to Amusement Vision, who did Panzer Dragoon Orta, Jet Set Radio Future, and Gunvalkyrie. In the first game, there's a car chase scene with guns, and there's a ton of borrowed elements from Panzer Dragoon for the style of gameplay. Jet Set Radio team's involvement is obvious - anything crazily Japanese is probably them, not to mention the detail in the city and the music.

But then we look at AM2 after Shenmue - they're all making Virtua Fighter reduxes all the time. The Shenmue team must've been fired or transferred. What did Sega-AV do before Yakuza? Monkey Ball and F-Zero GX. I'm thinking a good portion of Shenmue's staff, along with Smilebit, make up the Yakuza team. Even if I was wrong, Yakuza fills Shenmue's void in that it's an excellent story-driven fighting-game adventure in Japan.

As for Sega's mishandling of the localization, I don't care. I'm so pleased that we got this first game at all. Playing Ryu Ga Gotoku Kenzan (the prequel) is painful. Typhoid and I played it for a length of time and just nothing made sense. I was close to importing Yakuza 3 but I had given up because the cost wasn't worth playing a foreign game.

[DarkMaster]

Originally Posted by Dyne

Piggybacking definitely is SOME kind of strategy, but I don't think it'll work very well.

Turok released in the middle of nowhere, February 5th, and it pushed over a million copies. Not too bad. Yakuza doesn't have that brand-power though.

It's not so much the time of the year it was released, so much as it was the same exact day as Final Fucking Fantasy XIII. And then they're releasing another RPG next week, the same exact day as God of War 3... if anyone's even beat or is finished with FFXIII by then, I really doubt they'll decide to play Resonance of Fate: Obscure Japanese RPG Released out of nowhere over God of Bitch-slapping War 3.

[Dyne]

It'll still find its audience I think - it's by the Star Ocean guys after all. And it is getting a bit of marketing, but Yakuza 3 is getting nothing at all. It's depressing.