Yakuza 4

[Charlie Miso]

Head back to the seedy side of Tokyo with the Playstation exclusive Yakuza 4.

Price round-ups are forum discussions that let the community track   prices and trade-in offers for upcoming releases. It is an opportunity   to share trade-in exploits, point out online sales, reveal broken street   dates and helps reduce work for staff so that we can have more  frequent  round-ups.

[Charlie Miso]

Hooray!

Best deal I think is JB where you do the trade three thing and get Yak 3 free. I've even tempyted by that and I have over 70 games in my pile to play.

[GCharlie]

$99 dollary doos @ EB for the standard edition.

[Charlie Miso]

JB are doing the standard for $89

[ianinozzie]

Domo arigato, Miso-san, for starting this up. Not many comments though!

But you're right: JB Hi-Fi seems to have the best deal where if you get the Shiro Edition for $109, you get Yakuza 3 as well. Given that Yakuza 3 was released just last year, that's still a pretty new and decent game! Unless you already have that game.

Meh that JB have Yakuza 3 on their exclusion list now though.

[ianinozzie]

Game online store had the Shiro edition for $99, with a free Yakuza inspired T-shirt with pre-orders; a bit too late now for pre-orders and it's sold out online at the moment anyway.

Kuro Edition (with game, Blacksteel box, 4 pieces of bonus content including unlockable costumes and battle modes) for $118 at EB Games is pretty expensive. I could have sworn that the pack also included chopsticks and a ricebowl, but there's no mention of it.

I'm sure in-store in K-Mart and Big W, the price for the standard edition would be lower than most other Australian brick-and-mortar shops, but haven't seen anything being advertised in catalogues or brochures.

[Charlie Miso]

@Ian - you seem to be a bit of a fan.

I've got a few games kicking around - should I do the trade and go the double of Yak3 & 4.

[ianinozzie]

@Charlie - I've never played a Yakuza game before in my life! I like being informed when it comes to games though, especially those that am interested in. I really like the trailer and the reviews (of Yakuza 3 at least) have been pretty good. Plus I do like Japan and being able to immerse myself in that world...big fan of open-world games. So this game seemed like it was right up my alley! Had I known that there was going to be a trade-deal and you'd still get Yakuza 3, I would have trade in my games instead of paying cash.

Yeah, go for it! You get two games, one which is a brand new release and one which hasn't been around for too long (but on JB's exclusion list sadly).

[Charlie Miso]

Did it, knew I shouldn't have bought Halo Reach yesterday.

Plus my Dragon Quest VI turned up in the mail today.

/adds to pile

[ianinozzie]

Awesome Charlie. I think I'll be playing Yakuza 4 over the weekend (though I MIGHT start with Yakuza 3 first, given that Yakuza 4 is a direct sequel with links to Yakuza 3) and let you know whether it's worth your while playing it before the rest of the games in your pile!

[ianinozzie]

Charlie: I've played about 8+ hours of Yakuza 4 thus far and I am STILL on the first story (Chapter 3 though) with Shun Akiyama, the "loan shark" from Sky Finance.

It is pretty fun to play, in my opinion; I love playing Sandbox games like GTA and although this is a completely different game from a GTA or Saints Row-type of game, there are so many things to do and explore in the Kamurocho! There are heaps of substories as well and I've deliberately avoided trying to complete the main chapter arc by walking around, finding people and playing the substory missions.

There are some quirky and hilarious missions that I've completed so far, and it is a lot of fun, in my opinion. Combat is a little "samey" and you get stopped often by Yakuza, gang members and street thugs, but it's pretty cool beating them up and then getting a nice little reward after, as well as an experience point boost.

Finding locker keys around the city has taken up a great deal of my time too (think red balloons from GTA: Vice City)...I don't go out of my way to find locker keys, but when my locker key GPS-thing goes off in a particular area, I do try to hunt for it.

There are heaps of shops in which you can drink, eat and try out various Japanese foods in the menu. I'm not sure if there is a trophy or bonus to try out every food and drink item on the menu in shops, but I'm certainly going to try everything out! Heaps of other activities that you can spend a lot of time doing too...playing pool, darts, karaoke (not sure how that will work), pachino, mahjong, among other things. And you can visit a gentleman's club and hostess bars too!

I haven't even scratched the surface of the game...maybe 3% complete, but have already spent 8 plus hours. It is an amazing timesink, but I am finding it really fun!

[Charlie Miso]

Last thing I need to hear is that it's long!

[Zychion]

Hey guys. Don't know if it is worth adding in my two cents but I own all four of the Yakuza games. I've finished 1-3 and I'm currently working through 4. Love them all, but you have to be ready to get in to a story as all of them have been written by a japanese author. Not a game writer. So the scripts are something you can really sink your teeth in to.

Ohh and subquests are a huge part of the game. I've finished Yakuza 3 and I think I'd only hit about 30% complete because there were so many subquests, mini-game challenges and other asorted stuffs.

[Charlie Miso]

So no aliens in space to kill?

Looks like I've wasted my $  :p

[ianinozzie]

Charlie: No aliens to kill, I'm afraid. But who knows...it's the Japanese so maybe it may be a mini-game. You can go into Club Sega in the game to play games too, though I'm not quite sure what games they have! It's massively long if you play the min-games and substories too, but it's good that way...enough variety to keep one entertained!

Zychion: Thank you for the info about Yakuza 1-3. I never played any of the Yakuzas before Yakuza 4, though I did familiarise myself by what happened previously through the "Reminisce" function in Yakuza 4. An hour's worth of cutscenes just to catch up on what happened previously in Yakuza 1-3!

I read that there are at least 6 hours of cutscenes in the main Yakuza 4 game, so it is a very VERY long game indeed. I can't wait to play more of this game!