A beat-em up adventure which pits you against gangs on the Tokyo streets
After serving his time, he returns to find that everything has changed and the 10 billion yen is missing which the whole yakuza underworld is looking for.
The story takes you around a city where Kazuma tries to find his brother Nishiki and his sister Yumi, however within the game, Kazuma meets a girl where she trying to look for her mother and this changes everything. The story is really good and a few elements of surprises, however there are a few predictable moments in the game's story.
The gameplay consists of travelling around a city, where gangs will provoke you into a fight, the fighting part of the game has you up against a few gang members, where when you beat them you will earn experience points. Earning these points allows you to level up and learn new abilities, which do prove useful within the game. You can also block, shift and dodge during fighting.
During fight scenes, you can also pick up a variety of weapons, each having unique abilities and do prove useful also a heat mode is also uses, when it fills up, it can be used to enhance the damage of your moves you can execute during fighting. The enemies' variety, as well the bosses really do offer up a challenge. The only downside to the fighting is that it gets boring later on in the game.
Other gameplay elements includes side quests, you earn simple experience points to help you level up and also locker coin keys, which opens lockers to earn some items during the game.
The controls are responsive and the graphics are well done. However I've had a few problems with the camera during fights as you can lose your guard and get attacked by off screen enemies, pressing the camera button (R2) does solve this problem.
In the end, it was really worth playing this game. The gameplay is around 10 hours minimum and does offer a good experience. With an engage story offering something interesting and good fighting system, Yakuza stands out from other games on the market for the Playstation 2.