Man, that PS2 just keeps hanging in there, doesn't it? We're nearly 8 years after the system's launch and still getting some pretty high-profile games; part of me wishes that the PS2 wasn't on its last legs (as far as quality software goes), because that would mean we'd still be seeing the great output that Japanese studios gave us last generation--when development costs were merely crazy instead of wholly and intractably insane. But in the world of reality, Yakuza 2 ships today, and it's pretty important.
If you didn't play the first Yakuza, you're not alone; it came out in the Fall of 2006, when the world cared only for the tidal wave of next-gen was about to hit. I actually found out about the game long after its release date, and GameFly-ed it the following Fall. Yakuza was actually pretty surprising for what I assumed would be a ripoff of Grand Theft Auto--okay, it kind of is a ripoff of Grand Theft Auto, in its own way. Add a distinctly Japanese sense of game design to the GTA series, and you've basically got Yakuza; and obviously, there are some benefits and drawbacks to this equation.
In many ways, Yakuza is a different take on the JRPG; stats are involved, shops are visited, and there are even random battles, for Christ's sake. This all sounds very neat, but the one thing that GTA has always been able to do that Yakuza couldn't copy is offering up a large world that's constantly streamed off of the disc. I don't know if any Japanese-developed game has ever had this feature, but it's one of the main reasons why the GTA series worked so well. The world of Yakuza was broken up into so many tiny chunks--requiring their own respective load times--that I had to quit playing out of sheer frustration. It's a shame, though, because I really loved what I played; the same situation happened to me a year earlier with Tales of the Abyss, where one out of every five minutes of gameplay involved awkwardly staring at my reflection on a black television screen.
The good news is the loading problems of the first game have been reduced drastically in Yakuza 2. More good news: the awkward (though ambitious) and ambitious dub from the first game is now gone, so we are now free of that extremely alienating effect (as seen in Shenmue) of Japanese characters speaking English in Japan with Japanese accents. With those much-needed changes, Yakuza 2 should be worth checking out, especially with that tantalizing $30 price tag. People, we need to start rewarding Sega for releasing something other than...well, you've seen some recent Sega games. Ask yourself what kind of future you want to live in.
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