The Yakuza comparisons to Shenmue gotta stop.

shadowman16 said:
Yakuza is getting a brand new landscape for 7 - Yokohama (Ijencho) though it still sounds like Kamurocho will be in as well - Ijencho will be the biggest city in the series to date, so that'll be cool. 2, 3, 5 and 6 all had excellent new locations for the story as well, and the way the games are written - Kamurocho is basically the heart/main character of the story, so its only natural for it to keep showing up in each game. Plus the city only gets better with each new entry.
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Yeah, the city does change with every year. In the early games The Godzilla Hotel (or Kamuro theatre as it is in Dragon Engine games) wasn't there, but from 6 onwards it was updated. Much like in real life when the Toho Theatre/Shinjuku Gracery building actually did open.

shinjuku4.jpg

I wish they could get the Godzilla licence but Toho is infamously expensive....actually I'm surprised they didn't just make up their own Godzilla-like Kaiju in place...think of the side story mission potential :D Do it Sega! I want my Kaiju side story!

But yeah, they've always done a good job keeping Kamurocho up to date and reflecting the real Kabukicho.

Every time I go to Kabukicho I'm always amazed by how reflective it actually is to Kamurocho.
 
danielmann861 said:
Yeah, the city does change with every year. In the early games The Godzilla Hotel (or Kamuro theatre as it is in Dragon Engine games) wasn't there, but from 6 onwards it was updated. Much like in real life when the Toho Theatre/Shinjuku Gracery building actually did open.

View attachment 5270

I wish they could get the Godzilla licence but Toho is infamously expensive....actually I'm surprised they didn't just make up their own Godzilla-like Kaiju in place...think of the side story mission potential :D Do it Sega! I want my Kaiju side story!

But yeah, they've always done a good job keeping Kamurocho up to date and reflecting the real Kabukicho.

Every time I go to Kabukicho I'm always amazed by how reflective it actually is to Kamurocho.
Click to expand...
One detail that I only recently realised is how they change the building that housed Mach Bowl to mirror current events - it went from Rizap to the VR Parlour as per real life. Though the VR Parlour has now closed/moved so I wonder what will be in that location next time.
 
I see the comparisons as a means of, let’s just agree to disagree. I personally don’t mind them because it could bring Yakuza fans to Shenmue and vice versa. I’ll admit I imported the first game back in 2005 because I thought it was going to be a spiritual successor to Shenmue from Sega. Was I wrong? Sure I was! I thought it was going to live up to FREE and as crazy as it sounds the first game disappointed me in that aspect. I was living in Tsuchiura (just north of Tokyo) a year later when the second game came out and I decided to try it. After playing the second game, I came to appreciate it for what it was.

It doesn’t fill in the hole that the wait for Shenmue 3 had in my heart, but as I played each installment of Yakuza, I saw what it had to offer. Yes, you can play at the arcades, you can play mini-games like darts, and you explore realistic parts of Japan, but they’re also different games and that’s totally fine. Should Yakuza originally used the FREE engine? I don’t know. I like how in Shenmue you can explore most rooms and objects and I didn’t like how Yakuza didn’t offer that. Then again, Yakuza has no reason to offer that though I do like that feature.

When I first played the Japanese version of Shenmue when it came out, it helped me with my Japanese studies. When I picked up Yakuza 5, it exposed me more to the Fukuoka dialect and thought how weird it was (I have only been to Fukuoka once on a business trip but didn’t have much time to interact with locals to know the local dialect).

As for that Godzilla building in Kabukicho. Sega did make Godzilla games for Dreamcast, but unfortunately they don’t have the license anymore. Godzilla Generations didn’t get great reviews, but I actually enjoyed it.
 
When I played Yakuza 0 (just after finishing Shenmue 1 and 2) I said here that I felt a few "Shenmue vibes".

It's not the same of course. I just look to Yakuza like the cooler cousin of Shenmue, while Shenmue it's more slow, reflective and patience, Yakuza it's more frenetic
 
I've only played and beat Yakuza 0. I also played the first 10 minutes of Kiwami 1. I get alot of Shenmue vibes from Yakuza. The are differences also. IDK just my opinion.😎
 
I’ve pretty much played the entire franchise (including Kurohyo, the PSP games). I thought of the original Yakuza game as a one and done kind of thing. When I finished playing the original PS2 game the first time, I still have my copy, but I didn’t think of playing it again (the original first game was heavily flawed with its combat). Thanks to the franchise continuing, I’ve learned to appreciate it and not think of it as a substitute for Shenmue which kind of ruined my first experience with the first Yakuza game. I haven’t played it since, but Kiwami allowed me to fully appreciate the original again. I tried to play the English version to the first game when my brother had it, but playing it in English really felt wrong and haven’t touched it since.
 
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