Yakuza: Dead Souls

 Halloween started early for me this year.

I played this on my PS3.

Ahh, Dead Souls. As this is something of a black sheep for the Yakuza series I wasn't quite sure what to expect going into it. Really, the only thing I knew about this game before I started it was that it was "the non-canon one with zombies, and also Ryuji Goda's there" and, sure enough, it's got Goda and it's got zombies. 

They're not afraid to say the "z" word.

As I mentioned earlier, this is non-canon, but it still felt pretty jarring to see Yakuza characters dealing with something so fantastical as the undead. Sure, the games have been goofy and have stretched believability at times, and there have always been weapons or the odd substory with a slight supernatural edge to them, but for the whole game to take that tack was something I had to get used to. Also, while the tone of the game is generally still pretty standard Yakuza, the fact that zombies have taken over most of the city is, to me at least, really dang grim. So much of Kamurocho's population is dead now but everyone's acting like it's business as usual, and that bummed me out a bit. But maybe that's just a me-problem.

The other big thing that seemingly breaks canon here is that Goda is back. Given the events of Yakuza 2, his reappearance in Kamurocho would be... extremely unlikely in any sort of sequel, yet here he is. And this is a followup to the earlier games, seemingly non-canon though it may be. There are explicit references to the fact that it's been roughly a year since the events of Yakuza 4, and developments within this game fit that timeline. Kamurocho Hills, something that they've been building to since Yakuza 2, has its grand opening during this game for instance and, as an aside, that's something that I have to imagine Yakuza 5 still runs with, zombies notwithstanding. It's been looming over Kamurocho for years at this point so I'm interested in seeing it, uh, without zombies in Yakuza 5 (probably).

Kamurocho Hills! I'm sure I'll see it in its full glory some day.

The story in this game is, well, it's really just serviceable. Maybe I was expecting too much from the "goofy non-canon zombie game", but I was a let down by how lackluster the narrative was. There are none of the twists and turns you'd come to expect from a Yakuza game, none of the melodramatic reveals and surprises, it's all pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. I also kept waiting for some grand scene that explains how Goda is able to be here but it never really came. There's an offhand comment about how Kiryu "did this to [Ryuji's] arm" but clearly there's some missing context. As of the last time we see Goda in Yakuza 2, he's still got both arms (and neither is particularly injured) so you just have to assume things went down slightly differently in this alternate canon. Maybe they had a sword fight on that roof and Kiryu cut off Goda's arm (to save his life???). Anything's possible.

Much like Yakuza 4, the story is broken up into five chapters, moving between characters as it goes along. You'll start as Akiyama, then play as Majima, then Goda, then finally end things as Kiryu. All of the characters are compelling and watching each of them react to the city they love falling apart was enjoyable. Most of the supporting characters you'd expect to see make appearances, though Saejima and Tanimura are noticeably absent.

Majima, as always, is delightful.

Now, let's talk about Kamurocho. While there are no rooftop sections like there were in 4, a handful of the underground areas return. As the game progresses, the parts of the map available to you change as well in a kind of interesting way. At the start of the game Tenkaichi Street has been quarantined so that area is, essentially, siloed off for combat. The rest of the city looks like standard Kamurocho, but the quarantined sections are filled with rubble and, more importantly, zombies. The parts of the map that are still "normal" were, surprisingly, more jarring to navigate than the ruined areas. Wandering around Kamurocho without getting into random street fights (there's effectively no melee combat in this) makes it feel empty and sort of lifeless. It's very weird. 

As the game progresses, more and more of the map will fall to the horde of undead and previously "safe" locations will now need to be rescued before they can be accessed. Once you've made contact, however, you can go in and out of restaurants and facilities whenever you want. Want to take a break from killing zombies to go bowling or gamble? You can still do that.

It's easy to forget there are hordes of zombies outside with how casual everyone is.

As far as the zombies go, they're mostly your run-of-the-mill shambling types (albeit with glowing red eyes) but you also have Left 4 Dead style special infected (known as "mutants" here). Generally speaking, these fit the L4D mold pretty cleanly, with a handful of larger "prototype" creations almost feeling like something out of Resident Evil. There's enough variety to the enemies to keep combat from getting stale but, unfortunately, that doesn't mean the combat is good.

There's even a very blatant "Witch" analogue.

I suppose I should talk about the gameplay, since I've avoided it for this long. To put it bluntly, this game doesn't play well. It's a mediocre shooter that's really only playable due to some incredibly generous auto-aim as the free-aiming feels very bad to navigate and interact with. Something about the combination of their choice of a deadzone and the stick sensitivity makes aiming your guns feel bad, and you will be doing a lot of shooting in this game. While you can still pick up objects from the environment, melee is really only in there as an afterthought (outside of an early section in Kiryu's part). This game is a shooter first-and-foremost where you'll be using pistols, shotguns, rifles, Gatling guns, or grenade launchers to mow down thousands of zombies.

There's a permanently onscreen kill-counter a la Dead Rising that keeps track of how many zombies you've killed, and while there's some novelty to taking on hordes of enemies in familiar Kamurocho locations, the PS3 was just not ideal for this game. Performance takes a heavy hit when there are tons of enemies or effects onscreen and while I never ran into any outright crashes, I would often feel the weight of the game bogging things down. While combat has rarely been a selling point in these games, I found this gameplay to be exceptionally tedious even when compared to other Yakuzas. 

 While you can beat zombies with abandoned bikes (or motorcycles), it rarely seemed practical.

The boring combat is only exacerbated by the "Subterranea" sections. These are optional dungeons that are seemingly procedurally generated and none of it is at all enjoyable. You'll be walking down identical corridors for a very long time whenever you enter into one of these, and trying to engage with the combat in tight hallways hammers home how rough it all is. I suppose this idea is neat in concept (and from what I saw of a friend playing Yakuza 7, I know it's something they sort of come back to) but outside of the somewhat engaging boss battles at the end of each of them these sequences were a slog.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Shifting gears a bit, progression in this game is a bit closer to Yakuza 3 or Kenzan!, despite the fact there are four playable protagonists once again. Items, money, and experience are shared immediately upon moving onto a new character, so while Yakuza 4 had a sort of rhythmic, repeated 1-20 leveling curve this instead has a straightforward 1-99 that doesn't reset. While you'll still be changing characters as the story progresses, the finale keeps you as Kiryu and doesn't allow you to freely change between them (unlike 4).

It may sound like I'm pretty down on this game, and I am in a lot of ways, but the reason I don't hate this game is because there are still traces of what I love about this series in here. The writing, in the side content specifically, is just as solid as any Yakuza game's side-content. In addition to just being genuinely funny quite often, they keep up the tradition of referencing earlier games' substories and minor characters by bringing back quite a few familiar faces. Gary Buster Holmes actually does something in this one!

Some of the substories are pretty funny.

It's in those returning faces that I think I found the most enjoyment with this game. While I wish they had at least tried to offer an explanation for how and why he's back, getting to spend some time playing as Goda was fascinating. This game presupposes a world where Ryuji followed a similar arc to Kiryu and got out of the yakuza life and it makes me wish his return would have happened in a better game. 

While I still have issues with the hostess clubs, namely that I think their pacing leaves a lot to be desired, I've grown to appreciate what they offer: a chance to see the protagonist(s) in a more candid, vulnerable state. Seeing Ryuji reflect on his lack of a relationship with his sister, hearing Majima talk about how much time he spends getting his hair done, even just spending more time with Kiryu or Akiyama, it all works to paint more complete pictures of each of these people.

In addition to the substories and hostess clubs, this game has a majority of of the side content that was present in Yakuza 4. I didn't 100% this game so I didn't see everything that was on offer, but you can take the two new playable characters to karaoke, you can still play mahjong or go to the casino, you can go golfing or fishing; even with everything apocalyptic going down in Kamurocho the party never stops.

These games are so silly.

As I stated, while I didn't 100% this game I, um, came incredibly close. Really, all I didn't do was go for minigame completion, and at this point I may go back to this and clean up what I missed just to say I've done it. My hour count is... high, partially because of how much side content I did and also because I'd frequently leave this game open while multitasking without realizing. I feel like I left it running on my PS3 for basically all of this past week even though I wasn't necessarily playing it all-day/every-day. If I were just to mainline the story this game actually seems like it'd be a fair bit shorter than some of the other Yakuza games, but that's just my guess. Anyway, guilty preamble aside, here's my completion screen.

Woof. That was a lot. I'm surprised I wrote as much as I did, but then again I suppose it's often easier to write about something you dislike than something you love. While there's a lot to like in this game, overall it just doesn't come together in the way I wanted it to. It was genuinely enjoyable to see Goda again, and to see any number of returning side characters along the way, but fanservice alone does not a great Yakuza game make. 

The game is ultimately bogged down by being a sort-of-mediocre third-person shooter from the PS3, so whether you want to give this a try hinges entirely on how much you tolerate those. Personally, I played a ton of games back in the day that ran poorly or were mechanically uninspired so this game isn't something egregiously bad to me or anything, but it's also a hard thing to recommend. I put a ton of time into it (which maybe says more about how I spend my free time than about the game) so I feel like I've seen most of what this game has to offer, and the short and simple truth of the matter is that this is the worst Yakuza I've played.

It's still decent, and not bad per se, but for a series that's been putting out hit after hit after hit it came as a bit of a shock to have one of these games fall flat for me. Do I think it's a shame that it's stuck on the PS3? Yes. But I'd personally rather see RGG revisit the Kurohyou games or Kenzan! before they touch this. Obviously that'd be a heck of a lot more work than this since neither of those were ever officially localized, but Dead Souls isn't exactly a hidden gem so it's not like people are missing much by not playing this one.

I've said several times that this is non-canon but, by the end of the story, Kamurocho essentially returns to normal and just about every named character is fine so I think it could be funny to imagine that this is actually canon to the rest of the series. Until I see something that explicitly contradicts this, that is. 

I almost forgot to mention the product placement!