GTA + RPG + PLETHORA OF MINI-GAMES + TEKKENN + JAPAN = Yakuza 3 and it works!!!!
First off to they who are not studiers of Nippon culture here is some simplified history you will not find in the game:
Yakuza comes from three words; ya ku sa. In old japanese toung these are numbers and is an lod gambeling game. At the end of the last dynasty of Edo Samarai the noble lords and protectors of the lands were no longer needed and acording to thier code they were not allowed to earn money that their Shogan did not give them, so the largest majority that did not commit Seppaku {suicide by ritural disembowment} turned to gambeling. As time past they formed a mafia organisation called Yakusa and they exsist still today. History lesson ends.
If you missed GTA minigames this one has too many to count. Baseball, pool, darts, kickboxing champinships, golf and about 16 more. They're are not just add-ons but they are fully fedged games inside the main game. The main game is an RPG at heart with GTA, Tekken, and Japan thrown in and it works great! You can explore many areas on Okinawa {an island} and the Nippon mainland in your quest for justice.
Combat works where you are running down the street and bump into a gang or Yakuza member and the screen shifts to a battle perspective that is not unfamiliar to tekken fans. In these battles you can use near any thing as a weapon. Bikes, store signs trafic cones or even pick up a gang member and swing him into another if you like and there are weapons stores with all sorts of wierd and crazy weapons to use in combat. There is an RPG style leveling up system inplace to increase the stats you want.
This game is the ultimte fun if you don't mind japanese with subtitles, or are learning the language like me 9.9/10. -0.1 because some of the while subtitles are hard to see some times.
For people who don't 8.8/10