All comments

this game looks more and more compelling every time.

cool cutscenes
bad gameplay grafics and combat. stupid beat em up as "Yakuza 1"

wanted to get japanese version of this game but dont think this has eng sub!! like lost odyssey.

The demo looked amazing but the gameplay sucked.

yeah, the combat needs some tweaking, but i can see myself enjoying this alot anyway

looks good but i agree the battle system needs a little work. Maybe a little more speed, and some flashy moves to spice it up.

i'm a big fan of the shenmue series and have been dieing for another game similar to shenmue

will definently pick up yakuza 3 when it launches..hope it launches in europe!

if only it had english subs, could've imported the japanese version..beautiful thing region free consoles are

Shenmue is adventure
Yakuza - beat em up

Shenmue >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Yakuza

Considering you spend more than twice as much time walking around and watching cutscenes in Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan than fighting, I'd consider Yakuza an adventure too.

I'm with ACE about Yakuza being a beat em up. I've typed it out so many times before I'm not gonna do it again, but Yakuza IS a brawler in a hub world/RPG wrapping.

However, I'm gonna be controversial enough to say I think Yakuza is a more accomplished game than Shenmue was, both in terms of rewarding gameplay and a gripping story. They're COMPLETELY different though, so the comparison is pretty stupid to begin with.

Have you played Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan? I never played a Yakuza game before this, and I wonder if the game formula has changed significantly.

Anyways, I disagree with you on almost everything you brought up. A brawler I consider to be a games like Double Dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Marvel Universe, River City Ransom, God of War, Heavenly Sword, and The Warriors. Basically you're spending at least 3 quarters of the time pressing the buttons in different combinations and defeating massive numbers of enemies. Even games like God of War and Heavenly Sword I might be more inclined to group up under generic 'action' instead of 'brawler'.

There are a lot of fights in this game, but not even 50% of the total time is spent actually fighting, and if you're doing minigames and side quests, it's probably less than a quarter. The fighting amount seems very equivalent to Shenmue's fighting. The focus on walking around, talking to characters, cutscenes, with a side of minigames is purely adventure realm. Anyways, I can't see how you can call this game a brawler but not Shenmue.

Shenmue and this game are not completely different at all. In fact I think they're the two most similar games in all of gaming (to each other). If you can think of another game that's more similar to this game than Shenmue, by all means bring it up.

What you have explained sounds like the game mechanics of Yakuza 1 aswell.
It's like an RPG/Brawler with a great cinematic story

The combats in the first Yakuza where not very good in the beginning of the game. But the more experience you collected during the game, and got more moves, the better and more fluid it got!!!! At the end of the game the combats where quite cool!! And I think the same will happen here!!!

Shenmue is an adventure/exploration/inquiry game with a bunch of game mechanics worked in, tailored for each situation.

Yakuza is Spikeout (made by the same team) with a hub world around it. Whenever a fight occurs the game essentially turns into Spikeout, and the rest is basically just padding.

Maybe there are more distractions in Kenzan than in the first Yakuza, perhaps the QTE's play a larger part, but it's still an RPG with Spikeout/SoR bits in place of turn based combat - complete with tons of items, customization, weapons, and random encounters.

So yeah, stick Spikeout battles into an RPG of your choice and you've got Ryu Ga Gotoku. If you still don't reckon this is the case - if you still argue it's similar to Shenmue because of mini games - think of all the distractions you can participate in in your average Final Fantasy game aswell.

@Hrimthur

Absolutely! The bosses towards the end are AWESOME, and the amount of strategy and thinking that goes on nudges on that of Ninja Gaiden easily.

Well I don't see any logic behind any of that. You're stretching the definition of RPG and brawler way too far. It's like arguing that nearly every game is a shooter because at some point something is almost invariably shot. Kenzan has nearly the same balance of gameplay as Shenmue. A larger portion of the time is spent fighting in both Shenmues than Kenzan as well (although it's very close). Other than the cave fights, the battles have lasted 2 minutes at a time at most in Kenzan so far.

If I stuck brawler battles in ANY RPG the result would be nothing at all like Kenzan. For one thing there are far more battles in a videogame RPG. There are also typically far more stats in a RPG than in Kenzan. There's less minigame content in RPGs; there are dozens of 'minigames' in Kenzan.

Basically Shenmue is more alike Kenzan and vice versa than either game compared to any brawler, any RPG, or any other game.

Just FYI, I believe there are less QTE in Kenzan than either Shenmue.

Looks so repetitive. Oh, when theres enemies using long range weapons, you usually take them out first. At least I do. Makes the game a lot easier.