#Yakuza kiwami majima of the dead series#

As the series goes on, we get more playable characters, explore more locations, gain more and more variety with the combat, and have more relatively mundane and extremely crazy side-activities to do with each installment. The series is considered by many players to be the Spiritual Successor to Shenmue (on which Nagoshi was a developer), and is also compared to such classic old-school series as Streets of Rage and River City Ransom. There are also tons of items and equipment to find, and you can even create your own. The amount of things to do in the games is mind-blowing.įighting enemies earns you experience points to gain new moves to punish them with, and you can also learn new moves by doing sidequests. And in good ol' Shōnen/ Seinen series fashion, there are even underground fighting tournaments to participate in, complete with a caged arena. Players can help people on the street with myriad problems, find hidden illegal gambling halls to play in, go to the batting cage to hit a few balls or find an enigmatic martial artist to learn many powerful moves from. While you can just follow the story and play it as a straightforward beat 'em up, there are TONS of sidequests, minigames and secrets to do and find, many of them quite challenging, unique, even funny sometimes.

The series is basically old school Beat 'em Up with a sandbox setting and RPG elements. Yakuza is now one of Sega's flagship properties, and Nagoshi has since remained the creative lead of the series, which as a whole has so far no end in sight. Contrary to any misgivings Sega might have had, the game was heavily acclaimed in Japan for being the first game to explore Yakuza culture with such depth and as it is claimed authenticity to the nature of Japan's criminal underground, and it was such a financial success for the company that both a localization of the first game and sequel were released the following year. Nagoshi, however, was willing to stake his career on getting the game produced, and with some convincing he got the project off the ground. His pitch was initially met with quite a bit of skepticism in the higher echelons of Sega, who were more than a bit hesitant towards the proposed game's adult themes and highly controversial concept of being centred around organised crime, and believed that the very Japanese flavor of the game would appeal less to the Western market. Ryu ga Gotoku was first conceived by veteran game designer and Sega employee Toshihiro Nagoshi in the early 2000s. Kiryu is a former yakuza whose release from prison after a 10-year sentence, for a crime he didnt commit, sparks the setup of the first game's plot involving huge conspiracies, yakuza members at war with each other, mystery-solving hard-boiled police, lives being lost, tears being shed, punks being beaten, and that formula more or less has stayed with the series since the start.

Like a Dragon), is a video game brawler series that mostly follows the man with the dragon tattoo, Kazuma Kiryu (桐生一馬, Kiryū Kazuma), the 'Dragon of Dojima'. Yakuza, or as it's known in Japan, 龍が如く ( Ryu ga Gotoku, lit. For the series' first installment, click here.

Yakuza kiwami majima of the dead