Yakuza 3 Japan Demo (PS3) – First Impression
As mentioned earlier the Yakuza 3 (or Ryu ga Gotoku 3, if you will) demo hit the Japanese PlayStation Store this evening. Although there’s an understandable lack of English, I was able to gleem a little bit of information about the graphics and battle system from my play through.
First of all, while I expect this means absolutely nothing to fans of the series, Yakuza 3 isn’t breaking any grounds with its graphics engine. While probably not the case, my first impression is that the environment and character models have little to no added geometry from the prior game in the series, which was a PS2 exclusive. The textures are definitely higher-resolution and the game looks nice enough, but it’s not quite what you would expect to see from such a high-profile game, certainly below the sophistication of GTA IV, a loosely similar game, at least in its environment’s scope and story’s reliance on cutscenes.
The demo is focused on presenting several fights, a couple of cut-scenes, and allows you to enter one of the social clubs to try your hand at impressing a lady. It seems that the demo is an excerpt from early in the game, but is not the very beginning of the game as one would experience in the retail copy. It’s hard to tell without having any understanding of the story that’s being told, but the beginning of the demo is abrupt, dumping you right into the same Osaka neighborhood featured in Yakuza 2.
The cut-scenes are all in-engine and use high-res character textures, but the geometry of the faces and hair is very reminiscent of the programming tricks used in many PS2 games. The cinematography continues the tradition of the well-done cut-scenes from the previous games, no complaints here.
The fighting engine is carried over essentially untouched from prior games in the series, though there appears to be at least two minor additions. First, the HEAT system now has two stages, blue and pink. I’m not quite sure what additional capabilities you have while in the second, pink stage, but I assume it involves more powerful attacks. Second, the boss fights use a new “Quick Time Event” system for finishing moves that adds an additional element of timing to the usual QTE format that was present in the previous games.
While there’s no current plans for a English release of Yakuza 3, it’s a safe bet that if we are ever so lucky, at the very least, we’ll be getting more of the same great gameplay, and hopefully a decent story to boot. If you’re interested in checking Yakuza 3 out for yourself and don’t have a Japanese PlayStation Network account, you can check out this video for English instructions on setting one up for yourself.
