The Japanese Playstation store has seen its major weekly update and this time, hidden under the menus, is a demo of the upcoming Ryuu Ga Gotoku: Ishin!; or Yakuza: Restoration if you want to be Anglophonic about it.
For those who have been living under a rock, Yakuza Restoration does not have any story ties to previous Yakuza games. Instead, it’s a standalone spin-off. It borrows real historic figures, events and places and adds a Yakuza flavored twist to them. For example, many established characters from the Yakuza franchise make their appearance recast as historic figures, but still retaining their appearance, signature characteristics and mannerisms.
I spent 3 hours clearing the demo twice from corner to corner, and on the whole I liked what I saw. Restoration makes some conservative, but smart design choices that go towards rectifying some of the issues I had with Yakuza 5.
During the opening few minutes of the demo we’re introduced to the protagonist and historical figure, Saitō Hajime, played here by central Yakuza protagonist Kazama Kiryuu. Saitō is a ne’er do well; a freeloader, a gambler and the laughing stock of town. ‘The dice are calling me’ he says, just moments before stumbling out into daylight.
He turns into an empty alleyway, relaxes his posture and then switches to a severe expression that speaks volumes: the uncouth stumbling, the gambling addiction; all of it is a façade to mask his true intentions. His mission: to track down a disciple of the Tennen Rishin Style.
If you want to find a martial artist there’s no better place to look than the local dojo. The game sets a destination marker on your mini-map and leaves you to it. I jumped into the map screen to get my bearings.
In previous Yakuza games you had to go through the cumbersome process of opening your menu and picking out the Map screen. The Select button was reserved for bringing up an option to jump to the title screen; an option that a) no one used and b) didn’t need to be on speed dial. In Restoration the Map can be summoned with a Select button one-touch.
The map screen itself has seen some of the same smart design reform. You can use icons—as well as color—to distinguish between (for example) merchants and eateries intuitively. Hover the cursor over a location and you even get a street-level photograph. Tying the map screen to street-level navigation like this meant I found my bearings quickly; I felt familiar with the town after only 20 minutes.
I found the dojo easily enough, but there were no Tennen Rishin disciples in sight. Saitō, disappointed, makes do with fighting the dojo’s students.
As has always been the case in this series, landing hits on enemies builds your Heat Gauge; build it high enough and you can use Heat Actions; situation specific special moves. In previous games you could create a ‘situation’ just by knocking an enemy down. The situation criteria in Restoration are more stringent; for example, successfully landing a blow with a slow, charged strike.
After dispatching the sword fodder, Saitō meets up with an informant called Crow. Sadly Crow has no new leads but he does stop to offer some exposition; The Shinsengumi—the elite police force under the command of the Tokugawa Shogunate—are out in force attempting to apprehend rebels. During this exposition, the camera shows a figure in a maroon kimono slipping away unnoticed. Series fans will instantly recognize him as Shun Akiyama. But who is he playing in this this history-fiction drama? The demo doesn’t tell us.
Saitō, having no leads, decides to wander around town to see what he can dig up. I took the opportunity to poke around and see what else I could learn about Restoration.
I found out I could dash in bursts of several seconds by holding the X button down. A widget popped up to inform me I’d run 1/5km whilst dashing. I learnt from some NPCs about the coming of ‘black ships’ (placing Restoration historically sometime after 1854). Another widget popped up telling me I’d talked to 1/100 NPCs. I stopped by eateries which served food that temporarily buffed my stats. Yet another widget popped up telling me I’d eaten so many of so many meals.
Statistically tracking everything you do is not new to the series, but it has never been so front-and-center. But as I found out, Restoration is anal about stat tracking for a reason; it all ties into the Benevolence System:
In previous Yakuza games you became stronger by levelling up your character either by fighting, eating or completing side-quests. In Restoration you have multiple fighting styles which you can switch between mid-battle with the d-pad. Each of these styles has a corresponding levelling-up board. Slot colored gems into these boards and you can learn new moves and become stronger. It seems pretty straightforward but, look high and low, I couldn’t find gems anywhere in the demo so I can’t say much more about this.
But what about non-combat levelling options? This is where the Benevolence System comes in. You get Benevolence for doing almost anything in the game; finding items, eating, playing mini-games; everything. Even stopping to have a karaoke session with Saitō’s acquaintance Okida—played by series frenemy Majima Goro—netted Benevolence.
You can cash Benevolence in at shrines and temples around the world for character upgrades like being able to dash for longer, increasing the size of your inventory and improving ‘affinity’ with in a given location.
Some of the NPCs in Restoration are part of on-going side-quests. These NPCs have an affinity score associated with them. One hopeless fisherman asks Saitō to help him catch fish. Keep helping him and his affinity gauge goes up. I’m not sure what is supposed to happen if you max the gauge out, but it probably gets you a fat pay-off of Benevolence. The affinity gauges of the NPCs you befriend are tracked in a book called the ‘Enlightenment Catalogue’. This catalogue stat tracks everything else in the game that yields Benevolence, so it makes sense that you would get Benevolence for maxing affinity gauges.
Speaking of the Enlightenment Catalogue; I couldn’t help but notice how neatly arranged it is; everything is broken down into tabbed sub-sections; one for the Abstergo Challenge-like stat tracking, another for NPC affinities and so on.
The other menus in the game also follow the same sensible design philosophy; the inventory screen breaks down into tabs for collectibles, healing items, and raw materials. This means that not only are things easier to find now, but also that items of different types don’t cramp the already small inventory screen; equipables no longer fight for space with healing items.
On an aside: I found a neat option when I was playing around in the menus; the option to change difficulty mid-game. To my knowledge this is a series first; a welcome addition.
The gameplay mechanics have also been sharpened up a bit. In one section, Saitō chases down a kimono-thief. In previous games you would apprehend a running target by catching up to them, shoulder barging them repeatedly until their health was low enough, and then, finally, capture them. It was game-y and awkward; like a discount criminal underworld version of Pokémon. In Restoration you only have to get close enough to make a single tackle; it’s organic and it stops these sections turning into Benny Hill sketches.
Near the end of the demo Saitō runs into someone who recognizes him under another name; Ryōma Sakamoto. Saitō (or is it Ryōma?) tries to shush his excited acquaintance down; he doesn’t want any unwanted attention, especially not from the angry looking Shinsengumi dudes who, having heard the commotion, are heading directly towards him.
Those well read in their Japanese history will know Ryōma Sakamoto to be a prominent figure of a movement that wanted to overthrow the Shogunate. Naturally the Shinsengumi, being Shogunate henchmen, aren’t too keen on people like Ryōma. But to complicate things, in this Yakuza-fied version of history, Ryōma also plays the role of Hajime Saitō; famous for being a Shinsengumi captain. I’m not entirely sure how developer Ryuu Ga Gotoku Studios intends to consolidate these two historic figures into one character. I’m not sure, but I’m interested.
In the last part of the demo you get to play a reversed chase sequence. You move Saitō through the town, trying to put enough distance (and corners) between you and your pursuers as you can. If there is a red haze around the screen that means your pursuers can see you, so keep running.
If you get out of glaring distance you can hide in buckets or behind planks and wait for the patrols to pass you by. You need to be undetected to enter the target destination so a little stealth doesn’t hurt. I did find, however, that you can’t mess these sequences up; enemies can’t hurt you (you don’t even have a life bar) and the worst that happens is you have to mash the X button a few times to escape entanglement.
I got pretty close to the target destination just by running. When I got close to where patrols where thicker, I ducked into an unused palanquin and waited for them to thin out. I saw an opening and made a break for a shady alleyway. A cutscene played:
As Saitō catches his breath he realizes he isn’t alone; the man in maroon, the Akiyama-alike, seems to have followed him. Saitō goes for his sword. The man backs off and assures Saitō, ‘Hey, I’m just like you. I’ve got skeletons of my own’. Saitō realizes this is not his enemy and makes to leave. Just before Saitō passes out of ear shot the man casually spits out something that stops Saitō in his tracks: ‘By the way. Did you ever find that Tennen Rishin style practitioner you were looking for?’. The man smirks; he now has Saitō as his captive audience.
Fade to black.
Yakuza Restoration will be released on the Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 in Japan on February 22nd. There is currently no official confirmation of a western release. Based on the evidence so far, it would be a shame if it doesn’t make it over to these shores.
Shehzaan Abdulla
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