SEGA STAFF hard at work.

Did you guys get your Yakuza 3 copies yet? No? That’s too bad. But hey, I happened to play a Yakuza demo today. Yakuza 4. Did ya see that? That was not a typo. I typed ‘4’. And while you guys in America are playing the neutered version of 3 that Sega of America is bestowing upon you, I’ll be playing number 4, and getting more store-bought titties than my little hands can handle. And before you get all, “But Brandon, I’m an adult. I don’t need fake videogame boobies.” I want you to remember that you’re also not getting AnswerxAnswer, Sega’s quiz game that you can play in the game. Not enough, well fuck you, maybe you’re not the weaboo I thought you were.

Anyway, I did actually play Ryu ga Gotoku 4’s demo this afternoon at Joshin in Osu. It seems to be the same demo that’s going to be put up on PSN on March 5th, but getting it a few days earlier is pretty nice. The official Sega staff people guys were letting us play the 4 person battle demo. Since Ryu 4 has four different characters you can play as this time around, it was nice to see how different they are. And they’re just different enough that you might actually notice you’re using someone different, but the usual fighting style isn’t so different that it’s gonna throw you off. Ryu 4 is just more 3. And that’s a good thing. The battle system remains unchanged from 3, as far as I can tell. The fights loaded faster than before, and the movement felt tighter, but it’s essentially the same. And that’s fine by me. I love the Ryu ga Gotoku fighting system. It’s improved a lot since the first PS2 game, and they keep upgrading mostly with more special moves. Most importantly, with all the new environmental finishers and weapons, there are more ways than ever to bash in the skull or skewer the insides of street punks littering Tokyo’s neon streets.

Kiryu Kazuma still plays the same. If you’ve played 3, you’ll surely remember the special move where he rips out a 17 year old bosozoku’s colon, eats it, and washes it down with a bottle of Nacchan. Of the three new characters, my favorite is Tanimura Masayoshi. He’s the detective in the story. The coolest thing he can do is his grapple. When he grabs someone, he puts them in an arm bar and has very different combos he can pull off. He’s slightly more athletic in his takedowns than either Kiryu or former yakuza, Saejima Taiga, but not as much as former homeless guy turned loan shark, Akiyama Shun. Also, Tanimura’s secret best finishing move, he cuffs the perp. Which seemed odd that he’d bother arresting someone when he had just stabbed that guy’s buddy in the fucking stomach 30 seconds before.

Saejima Taiga used to be a yakuza. He’s kinda on the outs with them now, seeing as he murdered 18 of them in a restaurant a while back. Now he runs around in his coat that I think he borrowed from Alex, and in the fight I used him in at least, beats people to death with trash cans. He’s the slowest of the four available characters, and he seems to pack the meanest punch. Kiryu really needs to clean this guy up a bit though. And lastly theres Akiyama Shun. He was homeless until that little explosion that Kiryu was involved in back in the PS2 days. He grabbed a whole bunch of cash that came falling from the sky, and used it to start a money lending operation, aptly-titled, “Sky Finance.” He’s so clever. His fighting style is pretty acrobatic. He flips and farts circles around the overweight and balding bad guys of Tokyo, and employs lots of prancing and dancing around in his finishers. He feels a bit all over the place. He’s to Ryu ga Gotoku as Maxi is to Soulcaliber. If you like feeling a little out of control, you’ll like him.

I’ll write up the story mode of the demo when it’s available for download on March 5th. But sleep easy, knowing that in 2011 (or maybe never), when Sega releases a shoddily localized version in America, that even if you can’t talk to the sluts at the hostess bar, you can at least beat people to death in style. If that’s not the American way, I don’t know what else is. 

Wanna pre-order the Japanese release of Yakuza 4? Get it here.