In 2022, Yakuza is a fairly large series in the West, as we saw yesterday when eight games made it to PlayStation Plus. But it’s not always this way! Between the release Yakuza 2 and 3 everything is looking for extremely difficult for English speakers and there are genuine concerns that if Yakuza 3 Not selling well, this will be the last game in the series that we can watch here.
I know this sounds ridiculous given the number and prominence of Yakuza games around these days, but it’s true! In fact, people were really worried about that, that every little change that Sega has made Yakuza 3’s English release has been scrutinized to hell and back, with fans terrified that anythinghing is likely to affect sales which means the end of the series in the West.
All that fear was worthless, of course—Yakuza 3 well done and the rest is history—But all the worries about low sales helped set the stage for why, in the same period, a Yakuza the game was released in Japan (then a sequel) which we still can’t play in English to this day. And it’s time for a change.
In 2008, Released Sega Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan! for PS3, which I guess you can best describe as Yakuza special vacation. Set in Kyoto in 1605, it is a Yakuza the game goes back in time, with the player still controlling Kazuma Kiryu, only now he’s called Kazumanosuke Kiryu, and instead of being a gangster, he’s a retired swordsman, Currently working as a bodyguard.
Then in 2014 Sega released Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin! for the PS4, does the same thing — currently only set in the late shogunate in the mid-19th century — and introduces more cameos from the main series, with appearances by fans like Majima and Daigo.
Despite being set in different time periods and with a historical, sword-heavy twist, this is still Yakuza game through and through. Watch the Japanese trailer for Ishin and you will understand what I mean:
Ishin there’s even, if you’re a fan of karaoke sequences in the main games, its own history:
These look great! I really want to play them!
Sega and developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio have long had reasons to keep these games in Japan. The first is an understandable fear that, if no one buys, Yakuza games, why would they bother with these side stories? As that was gradually neutralized by the increasing popularity of the series in the West, there are still concerns that much of the game’s vibe will be lost to Western audiences, who won’t be familiar with the nuances of the time period. (It is saying here that the other Yakuza spinoff, heavy gun Dead Souls, to be released an English-language release that says a lot about Sega’s perception of the Western market.)
Technical issues have now been hooked up (or replaced), as we mentioned just last year, when director Daisuke Sato said:
Personally, I want these titles to be localized and loved by our western fans. We’re making it a priority to regain our footing with the series in the West from Yakuza 0so as time goes by there is no ideal time to release these games.
The action is some of the best in the series in my opinion, so I’d like to localize them if we get the chance. However, the game is also almost 7 years old, so we may need to put in more work to redo it instead of a simple port, so the decision is a bit more complicated.
Despite the potential in those claims, and the fact that the developers said they are working on the game beyond Yakuza and Judgement series, we haven’t heard of this possibility since. But even if it takes some work — and in case Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan!some serious work — to keep up with the pace of games on modern hardware for modern expectations, there’s never been a better time to trigger that spend.
The Yakuza Kiwami the game — a remake of the first two entries in the series — worked well, and that’s for two games already available in the West! These side stories will start all over again, not to mention more engaging than the existing ones Yakuza fan base for audiences with broader potential that drove installations such as Ghost of Tsushima.
Anyway, I’m not here to request these games. We’ve all managed to survive the past 15 years without them, and could survive another 15, if the outside world allows. I’m just here to be able to give Sega a nudge, a reminder that, hey, we love Yakuza games, but maybe one day we can love them too Other Yakuza games, including games with swords.
