Blu wrote:Why did these games sell so poorly in the US? The first game according to vgchartz sold 30,000. The other games didn't sell well either.
The only conclusion I can reach is that the setting and everything about the game is extremely Japanese, and just fails to interest the US market enough. But still, plenty of plenty of very Japanese games sell very well here, so who knows. It's a shame really.
Are they worth getting? What's the gameplay like?
The franchise is among my favorites of all time so obviously my answer would be a very heavy-handed yes, but I'll try to sell you on them a little.
I like to think of these games as "living in Japan simulators" kind of. They take place in an extremely detailed fictional Japanese district modeled after Kabukichou. So, you can kind of get a feel for what walking around a Japanese district would be like, which is really cool. You can explore pretty much every inch of it doing things ranging from going to a restaurant, going out to the bar, chatting with hostesses, hitting up the batting cage or the arcade, to beating down people in the street with bicycles. The violence in the combat is portrayed as rather comical and over the top, you can literally shoot someone in the face with a shotgun, rip their teeth out with pliers, stab them in the gut, and smash their face into the pavement, and once the battle sequence is over they walk away perfectly fine. The only time someone is actually hurt or killed is when it happens through story sequences, which are more serious.
When you boil the formula of the game down, it's actually more or less a JRPG. It's very story-driven, and as you progress through the game you complete sidequests, play mini-games, acquire XP to level up your character and learn abilities, engage in random encounters, collect weapons and gear, etc. So although from the outside it kind of looks like GTA, it couldn't be any further from it. The amount of content in some of the later games is ridiculous and easily over 100 hours worth. And every second of it is awesome.
Where the game really shines though, is with the characters and story. The early games are better here, but all of them are very good. This series has some of the most human and compelling characters I've ever seen in a video game, if not the most. The stories are usually complex and involve dozens of characters and several organizations. Sometimes you even lose track of what's going on, but there is an in-game database in most if not all of them. But yeah, the characters really grow on you. You really cheer for the characters and get to know them very well. They feel real. Generally the morality line here is gray as well, so there are "good guys" that aren't quite what they seem at first, and sometimes the villains aren't such bad guys.
I can't praise this series enough and I feel if more people actually sat down and gave it chance, they might find they really enjoy it. Personally my favorite one is Kenzan, but unfortunately Sega didn't localize that one. To a new comer, I would suggest starting from the beginning. There is really no reason not to, and many fans agree that the second game is the best of the franchise, so you definitely don't want to miss that. If you do want to start with the PS3 games, however, Yakuza 3 has a pretty in-depth recap thing and is mostly it's own story, so that's a decent starting point too.
Oh, and one more thing. It's probably obvious but don't start with Dead Souls, the zombie game. It's a non-canon joke game pretty much. It's a fun arcade shooter, but obviously it shouldn't be used as a gauge for the series as it's entirely different.
