Yakuza

The imaginative minds at Sega of Japan have taken us pretty much everywhere except Japan itself.

A gritty street drama for Japanese natives and a welcome trip abroad for foreign Japanophiles, Yakuza offers a grounded vision of Tokyo that is a welcome locale missing from modern games. Featuring both staff and influence from the Shenmue series, the city of Tokyo feels alive as you visit fast food restaurants and bars, some of which are modeled after actual locations.

While Yakuza nails tone and location in its first outing, it stumbles in nearly every other aspect. The fighting is a choppy mess full of input lag and awkward controls; the story is a nonsensical maze of hardly-earned twists; and the difficulty balance makes for an early game that is a boring cakewalk only to be followed by insanely difficult bosses and encounters at its end that employ cheap tricks which stunlock the player into submission.

All these failings aside, there is still a lot to enjoy in learning these city streets, characters and the hierarchy of the yakuza mob. It may be tempting to skip this series debut, but you may find yourself lost when jumping into the superior sequels (though they do offer lengthy, detailed recaps).