I can't recommend these games enough to subscribers

It's a wonderful thought to picture new players falling in love with the Yakuza series on Xbox One.

The next game on the list, Yakuza Kiwami 2, is a major milestone – and it's launching real soon. Sega is bringing Yakuza Kiwami 2 to Xbox One, Windows 10, and Xbox Game Pass on ??July 30, 2020.

If you a??ren?'t going the subscription route, you can buy the game for $19.99.

The story &nd?ash; a tale of impending "all-out war," eternally retold – kept my? attention the whole way through with a compelling antagonist (the fun-to-hate Dragon of Kansai, Ryuji Goda). The more modern Dragon Engine took me a bit, but once it clicked, I felt even more immersed in this wacky underworld.

If you missed this dramatic, silly, endearing-as-hell street-brawling saga in its original form and you've only recently gotten into the series starting with Yakuza 0, hang in there and pace yourself. Everyone has their personal ranking and every game has pros and cons (especially when we're talking about the remakes), but I'll say this much: Yakuza Kiwami 2 is an all-around better package than Kiwami 1.

How many games let you deck a tiger in the face ??mid-jump? Not nearly enough.

_{[Image credit]}

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Kazuma stoically nods in approval

If you own either Yakuza 0 or Yakuza Kiwami on Steam - and to be honest there's little reason not to - you wi?ll be pleased to hear that Sega has auto-upgraded both titles to their respective Deluxe E?dition releases, adding a selection of neat extras to the wild 'n' wacky brawler RPGs.

By visiting "Extras" in either titles' installation folders, players now have access to a digital manga for each game, as well as a selection of avatars and wallpapers. There are also a couple of neat animated Steam banners, so you can dress up your desktop and interface like a hard-dr?inkin', hard-fightin' night in Kamurocho.

While these upgrades are hardly ground-shaking events, we currently live in an avaricious era of video gaming, and as such the "little things" matter. Publishers like Sega having the foresight to appreciate its loy?al fanbase ??is something to be commended, no matter how small the gesture.

Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 are all available on PC via Steam. If you hurry, you can capitalise on the current "Big in Japan" promotion, offering all ?three titl??es at great, discounted prices.

Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami owners get de??luxe editions for free on Steam [PCGamesN]

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Majima: Is there anything he can't do?

[Update: It's official: Yakuza Kiwami 2 for PC will release on Steam on May 9, 2019.

"Rebuilt from the ground up, Yakuza Kiwami 2 uses the Dragon Engine to update one of the series stand-out titles into a modern classic. The PC version includes all the enthusiast features you’ve come to expect: 4K resolution, unlock?ed framerates, customizable controls, and robust graphics options."]

Sega is up to its old tricks again and I couldn't be happier. Following the release of Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami on PC, the company has begun teasing Yakuza Kiwami 2 for Steam. On the publisher's landing page, Sega's regular avatar was not-so-subtly swapped out for an image of Majima's eye patch.

And if that's not enough to go on (which, judging from Sega's past shenanigans, it totally is), the ESRB recently listed Yakuza Kiwami 2 for PC. Speaking of which, I always get a kick out of these content-warning summaries. Here are a couple of excerpts to sum up (part of) the wider Yakuza experience.

"Characters use knives, pipes, and swords during combat and can trigger scripted special attacks (e.g., bashing heads into walls; stabbing enemies with a knife; ripping off nails and teeth with pliers) after successfully building up an attack meter." (Side note: Kiryu's victims aren't dead, they're just sleeping.)

Another ESRB description: "During the course of the game, Kazum?a can order and drink alcoholic beverages at various bars: players are rewarded for drinking in the form of experience points; a status icon denotes character's level of intoxication, while his movement becomes harder to control."

It only takes one game to become hooked on the long-running Yakuza series and, at that point, it's just a matter of slowly but surely chipping away at the intimidating list. I'm actually midway through Yakuza Kiwami 2 right now. As a relative newcomer, I don't think there's any topping Yakuza 0 (the Majima storyline was so enthralling), but I'm enjoying this romp far more than the first Yakuza Kiwami.

A random news post like this isn't going to move the needle, but consider trying these? games. There's something magical about a series that lets you grow old with a city a??nd its eccentric inhabitants.

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Wear the dragon

It's still kind of surreal to me that the Yakuza series is actually popular in the West. I've been playing them for roughly one-third of my life and I never expected the series to break beyond its niche. It has truly been a wild ride and I'm happy we can now all agree that Kiryu Kazuma is a badass. Sadly, there has been a dearth of merchandise for fans to show off their love. Apart from pop-up stores in Japan, where else can you get some official Yakuza branded t-shirts?

At the online Sega Shop, apparently. If you head over to Sega's official online store, you'll be able to grab some Yakuza Kiwami 2 themed shirts and hoodies as well as a blanket and phone case. They all sport antagonist Goda Ryuji's golden dragon tattoo, which is totally awesome. The ??prices are a little bit high, but this is likely to be the only official merchandise we'l?l ever get.

Y2: Kiwami [Sega Shop]

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Baka mitai

For nearly as long as I’ve been playing Yakuza games, I’ve always read comments from fans saying, “These games are like Shenmue”. At first glance, that definitely sounds accurate. I even remember making such a claim after playing the demo for Yakuza 3, which  reminded me a lot of what? I had heard about Sega’s Dreamcast classic. It has taken me until now to see how wrong that statement is.

For those unaware, I’ve never personally owned a Dreamcast. My friend had one and I’ve played games on it, but the consumer distrust that Sega bred after the release of the Saturn got to me even in my youth. I absolutely loathed Sega’s 32-bit system and I didn’t want anything else to do with their consoles for the foreseeable future. Maybe it was just my nine-year-old self being hyperbolic, but I wrote off the Dreamcast long before ??it was even announced as coming west.

While that may or may not be a tragedy, it was how I felt at the time. That decision ended up causing me to miss out on some crazy and memorable games from Sega’s final console, most notably Shenmue. I’ve never had a frame of reference for properly comparing Yu Suzuki’s magnum opus to Yakuza, but after reviewing the two games this past week, I can ?finally ??make a declarative statement.

Shenmue and Yakuza are really not that similar.

To an outsider, a cursory look might trick you into thinking both series are the same thing. Shenmue has you traveling around Japan and China in a semi open-world manner. You can talk to people, play mini-games, enter shops to buy items and even fight guys on the street. Yakuza is limited to Japan (with different cities), bu?t everything else I mentioned above is accurate of Kiryu Kazuma’s journeys. The execution of these ideas is where the two series differ.

The main goal with Shenmue was to create an environment and atmosphere that could be mistaken as real. The famous concept behind Yu Suzuki’s epic is an acronym known as “FREE”. This stands for “Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment,” and it was a core philosophy that Suzuki and his team worked to embed in everything Shenmue had. If you wanted to talk to a random person, that should be possible at all times (and even ful??ly voiced). If you wanted to chill out and play some arcade games, that should be possible whenever you felt the urge.

There was a story with main characters in Shenmue, but the real desire was to expand the possibilities of gaming by presenting entirely new dynamics not feasible on older hardware. This can be seen in how progressing through the main campaign of the first Shenmue puts more of an emphasis on mundane activities over bare-knuckle brawling with thugs. For a martial arts game, Shenmue features very little fighting and a weird focus on living out Ryo’s real life. It even cu??lminates in him get??ting a job to pay for a ticket to China, which is the kind of stuff kung-fu films gloss over.

Shenmue even presents different scenarios based on when you appear to specific locations or on what in-game day you’re finishing a main story sequence. There is a tremendous amount of missable cutscenes and content because real life has much the same thing. If you aren’t at a bar on Christmas Day, you might miss the chance to profe?ss your und??ying love to your high school sweetheart.

For the Yakuza series, the main goal was to create a gaming experience geared more towards adults. At the time when Yakuza released in Japan, Sega was famously dealing with financial woes. The failure of the Dreamcast was still fresh (with Shenmue play??ing a huge role in that) and market trends were showing Sony and Nintendo making pushes towards teenagers. Microsoft had also jumped into the console market and it seemed like the medium was starting to &ldq??uo;grow up”.

Instead of trying to create a game with mass appeal, Yakuza series producer Toshihiro Nagoshi wanted to make a game specifically for the Japanese market. Sega wasn?’t ?doing well in any regard and Nagoshi figured honing in on something only they could provide would resonate with a home audience. After some extensive research (a.k.a. drinking at dive bars in Tokyo) and hiring a famed Japanese crime novelist, Nagoshi’s team set out to properly replicate the Japanese underworld and show that gaming could move past being simply high scores or quarter munching.

With that, the very opening of the first Yakuza should show you how different both teams approached game design. Yakuza sets up a clear story, has intense cinematic direction and incredible voice acting and always guides the player through the journey to maintain proper pacing of its plotline. There are side distractions, sure, but you likely will never be without a?n idea of how to progress in Kiryu’s story.

The emphasis that Shenmue puts on fleshing out its setting of Yokosuka, Japan is not present in Yakuza’s fictionalized version of Tokyo. There is a layer of authenticity to how Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios’ created Kamurocho (Yakuza’s main setting), modeling it closely after Tokyo’s own Kabukicho district, but you never have the same level of interaction as present in Shenmue. Nagoshi’s team certainly wanted to creat?e an environment you felt connected to, bu??t wisely stepped away from detailing too much of it and focused more on fleshing out other aspects of the game.

Even the side activities in Yakuza don’t take center stage. You could make that same argument for Shenmue, but Yu Suzuki’s vision includes waiting around for multiple in-game hours while time passes and new events can occur. This necessitates doing something to kill time, which is where the arcade cabinets (or gacha dispensers) come in. In Yakuza,?? the only thing stopping you from? progressing is walking to the next waypoint.

Beyond that, even the pedestrians present in Yakuza bear little resemblance to Shenmue’s obscene level of detail. Since there isn’t much story purpose in talking with random bums or little children in Yakuza, the game doesn’t allow you to do so. Some NPCs might give a single line of dialogue, but that is it and you’re on your way. In Shenmue, you’ll be talking to seemingly everyone since the game demands you piece clues?? together on your own.

The action sequences, as well, play out with entirely different design methodologies. Shenmue uses an engine repurposed from Virtua Fighter (of which the game originated as a prequel to the fighting series) whereas Yakuza could be more closely linked to Streets of Rage. Shenmue wants you to practice your martial arts, focus on skills that you find useful and execute them like a true master of kung fu. Yakuza just lets you smack dudes in a visceral manner with simplified inputs and combo strings. You even get RPG-lite systems that see Kiryu level-up, where Shenmue is mostly about your own journey with conquering its con???trol scheme (though moves will get stronger as you use them).

What you prefer is entirely subjective, but each game feels nothing alike. I guess removing layers and layers of nuance will reveal the central idea of “Martial-arts action,” but the execution is key. Both games couldn’t feel less alike if Sega tried. Even the quick-time events play out differently, with Shenmue relegating entire sequences to them while Yakuza us??es them to punctuate devastating finishers in? combat.

Could one even say any aspect of the two series' is similar? For? sure: there is definitely some crossover between the two series. In action, though, you really don’t get the same thing playing one over the other. Both are targeted at a different audience and mindset and that is completely okay.

What drew me to falling in love with Yakuza was split between the writing of its characters and its mixture of old-school, arcade gameplay design with new technology. What I enjoyed from my time with Shenmue was how it made you feel organically connected to its game world and the respect it paid to martial arts philosophy. Any influence that is present is likely because Nagoshi worked as a supervisor to Suzuki while Shenmue was being made.

Really, though, just stop comparing the two series. Each does something totally different and it is really diminutive to try and say they are the same. If Yakuza is Shenmue, then Deadly Premonition is Shenmue. Resident Evil 4 is Shenmue. Heavy Rain is Shenmue. The impact of Sega’s legendary game can be? felt in so many titles that you can see it in even the most far removed of genres. That doesn’t suddenly mea??n that these games are similar to Yu Suzuki’s.

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Could Yakuza Ishin finally be on the books?

Following up the release of head-cracking remake Yakuza Kiwami 2, publisher Sega have released a questionnaire to the community, asking about their thoughts on the Yakuza games and their remakes.

It's all fairly standard stuff, but of note in particular is the question "How interested are you in purchasing the various spin-off titles that have never received western release?" This, of course, is referring to Yakuza Ishin, a side-game tha?t launched in 2014 for PS3 and PS4 in J??apan, but never made it to the West. It contains similar structure and gameplay to the fantastic mainline series, but is set in the Bakumatsu era of Japan, back in the 1800's.

Now this is obviously no confirmation at all that Sega are preparing Ishin for localisation, but it should be remembered that Sega sent out a similar survey asking about Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, with the release of Yakuza 6. Faster than you say "EEEYATATATATATA!", we got a localisation announcement soon afterward, so fingers crossed, Yakuza fans.

You can take the survey yourself right here. Yakuza Kiwami 2 is available now on PS4.

The post Yakuza Kiwami 2 survey asks fans about remakes and spin-o??ff localisation appeared first on Destructoid.

Only one dragon can remain

When it comes to remakes of classic games, the ideal goal should be to improve aspects of the source material that were lacking due to technological limitations. While taking some liberties with plot and structure, I still feel that Yakuza Kiwami is the best way to experience the beginning of Kiryu Kazuma’s jo?urney. It adds more content, po??lishes up the presentation and is readily available at a budget price.

Yakuza 2, though, is often considered the absolute best entry in Kiryu’s storied history. Featuring a jazzy soundtrack, bleak atmosphere and some great side characters, tinkering with any aspect of the package was going to be sacrilege to a certain number of fans. If you were hoping for a 1:1 recreation of Kiryu’s second outing with Kiwami 2, you’re going to be disappointed. That ??being said, if you can allow yourself to look past your nostalgia for the original, you’ll find a package that is more feature complete and polished than its inspiration.

It really depends on what you're looking for.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4 [reviewed with a PS4 Pro])
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Released: December 7, 2017 (JP), August 28, 2018 (US, EU)
MSRP: $49.99

Yakuza 2 (and by extension, Kiwami 2) picks up a year after the events of the first game. Series protagonist Kiryu Kazuma is visiting the grave of his father figure, Kazama Shintaro, when the fifth chairman of the Tojo Clan, Terada Yukio, comes to him with a request. Terada needs Kiryu to prevent a war breaking out between the Tojo and the Omi Alliance after the events from a year prior. Before Kiryu can even really access the situation, assassins come and kill? Terada, forcing Kiryu’s hand in the matter.

What follows is a plotline that has a tremendous amount of twists and turns and eventually sees Kiryu come face to face with Goda Ryuji, a fan favorite villain. Goda is a man that basically wants to watch the world burn, trying to claw his way to the top of the ladder to be the one true dragon in Kamurocho (Yakuza’s main setting). His hand i??n the m?atter gets revealed way later in the story after some shocking revelations that most people will see coming a mile away.

Summarizing the plot of Yakuza 2 is difficult mainly because of how everything plays out. New characters are introduced pretty regularly until the mid-point and their roles in the story kind of fade in and out between chapters. The cop that takes Kiryu into custody, Sayama Kaoru, is very similar to Goda in that she is pivotal in bringing Kiryu into action, but gets underutilized. In fact, that could be said for a lot of Yakuza 2’s story.

It tries to build-up Goda as a menacing villain, but he is only present for five of the game’s 16 chapters. As a matter of fact, you kick his ass in chapter four and he disappears for another four chapters just to tell you he is giving you a deadline. After that, he is basically gone until the conclusion and I&rsqu?o;m utterly confused as to why anyone is in love with him. He has an interesting backstory, sure, but he doesn’t feel like some ultimate threat to Kiryu.

Sayama, as well, starts off all spunky and fierce, but slowly erodes as the game throws all kinds of wild developments in her direction. Towards the middle, she starts to develop feelings for Kiryu, but then information regarding her past makes her revert to her original self, withholding information from Kiryu seemingly just to spark a showdown. If there was any aspect of the original game I was hoping Kiwami 2 would address, it wa?s how bloated the main plot is.

This isn’t the worst story that the Yakuza series has ever told. It is??n’t even a bad one, just something that feels more like a soap opera than the first game or a few others that would follow. If you can stop yourself from reading between the lines, you might even be shocked at some of the twists that happen. For me, having played every other game in the series before this, I saw all the revelations coming long before they happened.

As any fan will tell you, though, Yakuza isn’t solely about its plot or dramatic twists. The main thrust with this series is how it knows when to shut up and be a video game, giving you ample opportunities to smack thugs around or enjoy the sights and sounds of Japan. In an interesting mirror, Kiwami 2 is an improvement over Yakuza 6 in much the same way as Yakuza 2 further developed aspects of the original Yakuza.

For starters, the sort of floaty and basic combat from Yakuza 6 has been tightened up a lot in Kiwami 2. Kiryu might still flop around when getting attacked, but his moves feel overall faster and his combos get interrupted to a far less degree than in his PS4 debut. The upgrade system is still lacking in cohesive progression, but there are now characters in the game world that teach you moves, making your development feel more organic. This isn’t Kiryu randomly remembering a heat action, but learning it from watching videos, taking l??essons with his teacher (a returning Komaki) or aiding civilians in need.

As well as that, both Kamurocho and Sotenbori feel a lot more fleshed out than the cities that populated Yakuza 6. Kamurocho has a fully restored Champion District, complete with extra bars and side quests, and the underground Coliseum makes a return, giving you more opportunities to further upgrade Kiryu. If that wasn’t enough, old mini-games make a return on top of some of the content that saw its introduction in Yakuza 6. There is even a playable version of Virtual-On in Club Sega, which is just amazing.

I’m truly in awe of how the “Clan Creator” mode from 6 got worse, but the rest of Kiwami 2 feels like the game Yakuza 6 could have been given more development time. Kiryu has more heat actions (the series’ signature finishing moves), the game looks and runs a bit smoother (on both Pro and Base models) and the general presentation is more akin to classic Yakuza than the changes 6 made to the formula.

About the only aspect, one could say Kiwami 2 falters in is the presentation of its story. The voice acting is far and away much better, but each cutscene employs the same method that the first Kiwami did. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio??s copied the exact camera movements and animations from the PS2 game and plopped them in this new engine. While honoring the original cinematic direction, it does end up making certain moments feel stilted.

Then there is the change of soundtrack, which isn’t as drastic as some will have you believe. While a few cutscenes swap tunes in a manner that even I can’t defend, the majority of Kiwami 2’s OST is comprised of remixes from Yakuza 2. “Outlaw’s Lullaby,” in particular, feels a lot more extreme and the final battle tune brings a sense of finality and attitude that wasn’t present in the original. Maybe this hurts the overall atmosphere of the PS2 classic, but it doesn’t feel out of place for a Yakuza game (apart ?from the truly terrible credits song by ??Japanese Reggae Metal band SiM).

As for problems with Kiwami 2, they kind of mirror the same problems that the original Yakuza 2 had. There are no unlockable climax battles, bowling and pool are absent and a few of the gambling games are MIA. This was also a problem in Yakuza 2? (which didn’t feature karaoke!), but you’d think a ??remake would be able to rectify that.

If you’re a purist, too, then you’ll be incredibly upset at the removal of the “Shinseicho” region. I wouldn’t call it exactly pivotal to the experience, but having a distinct district be condensed into backlots of Sotenbori is disappointing. The Yakuza series has always doubled as digital tourism and hav??ing less to explore just sucks. At least Sotenbori is bigger than its original incarnation, but explorable rooftops don’t really replace the Tsutenkaku tower.

All of this and I haven’t even mentioned the inclusion of the “Majima Saga” storyline. Completely new to Kiwami 2, players are given a short three-chapter story that explains Majima’s exit from the Tojo clan prior to the events of Yakuza 2. Featuring the return of Makimura Makoto from Yakuza 0, this short tale never feels necessary to the main story of Yakuza 2.

Worse still, it reminds me a lot of the cheap DLC we saw in ??the early 360/PS3 era. Majima ??lacks any kind of progression and is overpowered to the point that all encounters simply devolve into button mashing. While you can still take in mini-games to earn cash, you’re basically falling over items during the events of this diversion. It makes all of the side activities feel pointless and mostly comes off as something that could have just been explained in a single cutscene during the main game.

At least Majima’s chapters aren’t interspersed with the main campaign. They unlock alongside your progression to play at your leisure, so it doesn’t disrupt the flow. You can even safely ignore them, which I almost did before writing this review. While nice to see new content, this is the one aspect of Kiwami 2 that feels rushed.

Overall, I think my feelings on Kiwami 2 are held back by the game that Yakuza 2 is. Maybe I did a disservice by playing all of the later entries first, but Yakuza 2 feels like a relic from a bygone era. Being rebuilt on an engine that isn't being fully exploited doesn't help make this the best remake, either. If you can look past some flaws, though, you'll find a Yakuza experience that fans are sure to love.

For my money, it is the best way to exper??ience this particular story and improves enough of the game to make for a great time sink. Maybe certain aspects could have been tweaked to be more faithful to the source material, but the worst thing that could happen is you end up wanting to play the original to see the changes firsthand. That isn't such a terrible outcome.

_{[This revi?ew is based on a retail build of?? the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Yakuza Kiwami 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

Along with digital pre-orders

If you've been itching to get a taste of Yakuza Kiwami 2, then boot up your PS4 and get to the store. Sega has just unleashed a demo that lets you take a look at the remade Sotenbori district from the original (which was also in Yakuza 0 and 5). Much like the Japanese demo, this is a short sampler that won't let you carry progress to the main game (unlike the Yakuza 6 demo).

If you like what you play and intend to grab the game digitally, Sega has now put digital pre-orders live. Along with that, you'll get?? a "Dragons" theme for your console and a bonus "Special Item Pack" for use in the main ?game. That pack includes the demonfire blade, a one million yen bonus, a comedian costume for Kiryu, a couple of bonus cards for the "Clan Creator" mini-game and the absolutely wonderful Ono-Michiyo hostess.

To get yourself hyped for the August 28 release date, Sega has uploaded a new trailer that sets the stage for the story. It is remarkably faithful to the direction of the original Yakuza 2's cutscenes, which is sure to please fans.

The post Yakuza Kiwami 2’s demo is now available appeared first on Destructoid.

Yakuzin for a bruisin

E3 is next week and Sega will be present on the show floor along with Atlus. The two companies will be showing off a bunch of their upcoming titles with the likes of Yakuza Kiwami 2, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Total War: Three Kingdoms and Team Sonic Racing taking the spotlights. There will also be gameplay from Shining Resonance Refrain and a brand new trailer for Catherine: Full Body.

While there won't be a formal conference for either company, Sega will be streaming every day from the E3 show floor. This is where you'll be able to catch the new Catherine trailer before the internet spoils anything for you. You can find them on Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube, where they will be holdin??g interviews with developers behind the games and showing off some "exclusive content."

With Kiwami 2 coming shortly, I'm more interested to see what Total War: Three Kingdoms has in store. I'm dying to see Lu Bu just annihilate a couple of thousand people ?with ease.

The post Sega and Atlus’ E3 includes Yakuza, Total War and Valkyria Chronicles appeared first on Destructoid.

IKUZO!

For years now, I’ve been a huge fan of the Yakuza series. The first title I played was Yakuza 3 back in 2011 and it took me by complete surprise. It was basically everything I had ever wanted out of a video game, right down to kooky ch??aracters and gut-wrenching action moments. It also had a?n extreme attention to detail in recreating a small slice of Tokyo, a city I’ve always fantasized about visiting.

When the chance arose to speak with the localization team behind the series, I couldn’t pass that up. I had always wondered about how one gets started doing localization or what the process might be for selecting which features get cut. With Yakuza 6 releasing soon, it felt like the best opportunity to have a chat with Scott Strichart and Sam Mullen (producers over at At??lus that handle Sega’s Japanese content). While I wasn’t able to directly talk to them, I did put together a couple of questions that hopefully answers how the localization process isn’t as straightforward as you might think.

_{[Art gallery image courtesy of Sarah Wellock]}

To start off, I asked Sam and Scott how the two of them even ended up working on localization for the Yakuza series. The cliff no?tes version is that they happened into it, but the longer story is a bit more detailed. For Sam, he started his career working on deployment and project management on Japanese cell phone games in a pre-smartphone era. Th??is soon led to him becoming a project manager on deploying Japanese games into Western markets, which he describes as being, “effectively localization.”

For Scott, his story is more of an underdog tale. After receiving his English teaching degree, Scott found himself broke, unemployed, and disillusioned with his life. He took a long shot and applied as an editor and tester at a local company to keep himself afloat. That company turned out to be Atlus and after a single project in QA, Scott was brought on as an editor for the Nintendo DS game Drone Tactics. As he states, “I still have that game, sealed, on my desk. Never forget your roots&hellip??;But don’t play them, eithe?r.”

Both men have worked on a tremendous amount of titles. When asking about their personal favorites, both agreed that it was too difficult to pick one game. “Games are like children,” Sam says. “There are no favorites. Each is special in its own way.” Still, some of the more notable titles each has worked on include the SEGA Vintage Collection, Persona 4, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Project DIVA, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call, and Class of Heroes (the first game the two worked on together).

With such a broad range of genres and styles, I obviously wanted to know how long a typical game would take to localize. I stuck more to the Yakuza series when asking this, but Sam’s answer can apply to almost any text-heavy Japanese game. In his words, “[The length] depends on a lot of factors, including the number of Japanese characters in a game…and the number of people we can allocate to the project. The Yakuza series has become easier to localize ove?r time and ??with the move to the Japanese version needing to support both Traditional Chinese and Korean at launch…there’s been a lot of improvement in our ability to engage earlier and more effectively on the series.”

Scott then followed that up by stating, “To give you some context, Yakuza 0…the largest Yakuza game my team has actually worked on, started pre-production in December 2015 and didn’t go gold until November 2016. By comparison, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, which despite being a more focused game w??ith a larger team, still look 10-11 months from p?re-production…to QA and final submission.”

That seems like an awful lot of time just for translation, doesn’t it? But localization doesn’t just mean taking text and dum?ping it into Google translate. There are a lot more factors that a team must account for when trying to convey a message that the game director wanted.

“We do a lot more than translation,” Sam pointed out. “There is a common misconception that a localization team just translates, but that is just a small sliver of what our job entails.”? He then mentioned how a direct 1:1 translation of text would lose the cultural nuance of the text, so the teams often adapt the relevance of sentences for the Western audience. The game also needs to ??be readied for localization, meaning a team cannot work on a project without the go-ahead from Atlus or Sega.

As for which Yakuza title took them the longest, both Sam and Scott agree that Yakuza 5 was a massive project. As Sam stated, “Yakuza 5 wasn’t built to be easily localized in the first place.” This can be see??n in the many cultural standards that aren’t brought up in Western games (such as playable character Shinada being a reviewer of sexy massage parlors).

So with localization demanding a careful eye on cultural relevance, does the localization team have any say on what content gets retained during the games? I mainly questioned about the side stories that are prevalent in the Yakuza series, since a lot of th??em use Western lingo to convey comedy or drama depending on the situation.

“We just need to make sure the emotional beats in the substories that we do get land like they’re supposed,” states Scott. “If the story is meant to tug on your heart strings, we make it do that. If it’s meant to make you laug??h, we make s??ure it’s funny.” Sam then followed up with, “We don’t censor anything if we can help it.”

As diehard fans may already know, Yakuza 3 was a victim of content being cut in order to ensure its release. This resulted in the removal of content that was deemed “heavily rooted” in Japanese culture. Sega did eventually relent with Yakuza 4, but the damage was done and people were a bit angry. W??hile I mistakenly inferred t??he translation was broken, Sam did say that the game was, “a product of its time.”

Scott elaborated: “I’d love the chance to [restore cut content]…It’s less about ‘fixing’ and more about bringing your own strengths to the table on restoring older games.” He then continued by explaining how he takes more notice of the Kansai accent and how his personal styling of Kiryu’s dialog in Yakuza 0 and 6, which demanded the character be more impassioned than other games, is something he has brought into the Kiwami remakes. He did end by saying, “Having done four games now, getting the opportunity to bring that consistency back to Yakuza 3 would be really cool.”

As with any Yakuza interview, I had to ask what the chances of Sega localizing Kenzan and Ishin might be. Both games have remained Japanese exclusives and for good reason; they feature periods of Japan’s history that Western audiences know next to nothing about. While the answer wasn’t a definite “no,” as Sam puts it, “We’re releasing four Yakuza games within the span of two years and are doing all we can to meet the demand of the fans. Just keep buying our games if you like them.” Scott followed up with, “Short of dedicating this entire office to Yakuza localizations, we’re? ??going as fast as we can!”

Something else that wasn’t a definite “no” was the chance of the West eventually seeing the PS3/Wii U Yakuza HD Collection. The final answer: greater than zero percent and less than 100 ??percent! That may not be the confirmation ??everyone was looking for, but it does at least keep the dream alive.

The best way to wrap up was to? ask both men how much they enjoyed having the chance to localize games. Both had some very inspirational things to say about their work.

Sam: “Since we work with parties around the world, there’s never any downtime. There’s always something that needs attention…But at the end of the day, you get a game that people can enjoy and the fans are so wonderful?? and encouraging. It really does g??et you up out of bed and out the door; because you know you can get out there and make something amazing.”

Scott: “Sometimes, when our games are erupting into dumpster fires because of this and that…we’ll [Scott and Sam] look at each other say ‘LIVIN’ THE DREAM, RIGHT?’ because it’s true. As much as things challenge us, as hard as they can be, we’re getting paid to make video games happen. Standing in that room when we announced Yakuza Kiwami 2…hearing the entire room literally eru??pt because they saw a subtitle over Kiryu’s face; I live for it.”

The post Talking localization with Yakuza localization producers Scott Strichart and ??Sam Mullen appeared first on Destructoid.

New stores and sidequests

Sega has updated its official site for Yakuza Kiwami 2, with a lovely selection of new screen shots showing off Sotenbori, the second district visited by Kazuma and friends during the events ?of the sequ??el's story.

The classy, expensive entertainment district, which is based off of real-life location Doutonbori in Osaka, has never looked better, brought to life by the power of modern gaming technology and filled with new stores and distractions to while away the hours in between laying waste t?o the Omi Alliance gangsters that popularise the d??istrict.

New locations include restaurants, shops and a sweet indoor putting green. There are also some new quest-givers waiting to pounce on Kiryu, including one g??uy who needs the rugged dreamboat to fill in for an absent photo??graphy model. As the site states: "Can Kiryu’s poses really make the art director&rsq?u?o;s soul tremble?"

We'll hopefully find out in a localisation, which must surely be on the horizon. Lucky Japanese gamers will be able to hit Sotenbori on December 7, when Yakuza Kiwami 2 launches on PS4.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 [Official site]

The post Sega unveils revampe?d Sotenbori for Yakuza Kiwami 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

Vote on it!

Were you excited by the announcement of Yakuza: Kiwami 2 and that sick-looking Fist of the North Star game on August 26? Do you know someone who was interested in them? Are you looking for a way to express interest to Sega that you would throw money at them for those games besides screaming on social media and buying a dozen copies of Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza 6?

Well luckily for you, Sega has the answer? ?in the form of a four-question survey.

The survey is extremely simple compared to many others of its kind. It's just four questions, and no personal information is required. The questions ask if you had heard of any of the three games involved before taking the survey, and individual questions for how interested you are in Yakuza: Kiwami 2, Yakuza Online, and Hokuto ga Gotoku. You can see the exact contents of the survey below.

Remember, if you, or someone you know, is interested in these games, vote on the survey. The survey is for Sega to judge how much interest there is before localizing them. Everyone wins by getting more games out of Japan, and it potentially encourages Sega to take more risks down the road. Hell, when was the last time we had a decent Fist of the North Star game? It takes next to no time to vote, so if you have any interest at all, or want to help bring the games over for someone else, show your support. It's also not clear when?? ??the survey ends so get your votes in as soon as possible.

You can find the survey here.

The post Sega hosting survey in order to gauge interes??t about Yakuza: Kiwami 2, Fist?? of the North Star appeared first on Destructoid.