YAKUZA FURY
Original Release: D3 Publisher, 2005, PlayStation 2
Did this humble Simple Series title inspire the adventures of Kazuma Kill You? ... well, probably not, but it's interesting that it came out first and has some substantial gameplay similarities
Yakuza Fury (PS2, D3, 2005)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: PlayStation 2 Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
It's tempting to look at Yakuza Fury and automatically assume it's a ripoff of Sega's Yakuza ... but this game actually came out three months earlier! If anything, Yakuza Fury is a rip of Spike's Kenka Bancho games, basically taking their formula and moving it from high school "yankii" delinquents to Japan's version of the Mafia ... but the first of those games came out just three months before this one did, so it's more likely just a big coincidence.
If you're not familiar with Kenka Bancho (quite likely given it got all of one low-profile PSP localization in the English-speaking world), another fairly close comparison is River City Ransom. You move freely around a city map divided into segments, there's a linear story but you have to wander around talking to people and finding the right locations to progress it. While doing all that, you literally beat the yen out of a seemingly endless supply of street punks that assail you everywhere you go.
Another difference is that Yakuza Fury unapologetically plunges itself into the criminal underworld, patterning the story after the crime pictures that were popular in Japan in the '60s and '70s. With Sega's series, Kazuma Kill You is always kinda on the periphery of organized crime with some kind of layer of plausible deniability as he runs orphanages and whatnot. It might normalize the Yakuza and make them seem like an inevitable and unassailable part of life, but it dances around actually openly glorifying them. Yakuza Fury doesn't worry about how it will be taken, making the main character a high school kid who gets recruited by a clan and moves quickly up the ranks in the midst of a factional war forming "bonds of brotherhood" with his fellows and all that.
Not to suggest that it inspired many Japanese kids to run out and join the Crazy 88, as it's a mess and a clunkfest. But really kind of an interesting one. Obvious effort was put into some elements of it: the soundtrack is surprisingly good at times, your character can be highly customized, and it encourages repeated playthroughs with a "New Game+" system that reveals new options and story branches as you replay it.
The trouble is that anything interesting has to flow through a central fight engine that's basically a clunky POS. Our main man Asuka (didn't know that was a unisex name until now) is awfully slow, needing to line up pretty much perfectly with foes to land attacks (a style seen in other Simple Series games). That makes life fairly tough on him as he's constantly surrounded by backshooters, but the game doesn't really get unbearably difficult until its final levels where you're constantly pecked at with cheap hits with very little opportunity to refill your health.
The game also hides some of its most interesting qualities from you, requiring you to stumble upon them and figure out for yourself how they work. You'll quickly notice that Asuka can change a number of facets of his clothes and appearance, but what's less well-documented is that each equipped item has its own stat-altering properties and sometimes even grants new moves or abilities. Trouble is, the description in the store and in your menu sometimes doesn't give you nearly enough information.
Another issue is the hidden "honor system," which players might find cool if they had any idea it was there. Basically, you lose honor for fighting with weapons and gain it for Manly Boxing. However, the only indication this is happening is the branches the story ends up taking ... but you're never once told that the unseen honor meter is what's influencing these directions. Honestly, I'm not sure how the hell you would even know about it if you don't read about it online.
All of this is tied together by a story that is kind of hard to judge. It initially seems pretty boring and flat, but it's also suffering from a poor translation to English (this was officially localized in Europe, as some Simple Series games were). It picks up more on replays when you access the branching paths that aren't initially available, but I'm guessing the flat initial appearance plus the clumsy gameplay drove off most people before they ever won through to that point.
This is one of those games I'd love to see ROM hackers go in and tighten up a bit. If the play control could just be made more responsive, and maybe pepper in some more helpful text that lets you know what's going on, this could actually be pretty fun. As is it's something of a curiosity piece, especially for those into the old-school badass Yak movies like Battle Without Honor or Humanity, but it's rough to try to slog your way through.
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