What Yakuza and Shenmue can learn form each other

Joined
Nov 13, 2019
It's a hot topic, especially since Yakuza fans usually hate the Shenmue series for some reason, and we already discussed this in the past, but never with a dedicated topic.

First of all I'm an original fan of both series and while they are two different games (and even if Yakuza could not exists without Shenmue) I think only Shenmue and Yakuza has the formulas to make the perfect open world games.
That said Shenmue is nowadays accused by Yakuza fans to be an old game, while in truth it's Yakuza that mantain the same oldish legacy of the PS2 games at its core, even with all the improvements.

Shenmue 1, 2 and 3 make lots of things that Yakuza doesn't that I personally miss when playing Yakuza, making Shenmue an overall better experience, I'll try to list them, of course you are free to add other things:


-Real time day-night cycle (Yakuza and some other current AAA games still doesn't have this)
-Real time weather system (same as above)
-Fully voiced dialogues (in more than 15 years, only 1 game in the series, Yakuza 6, achieved this)
-Advanced dialogue system (no other game does this, especially fully voiced)
-Seamsless exploration with no loadings in Shenmue 3 (achieved only in Yakuza 6, after 8 games released...)
-NPC with daily routines (other games and Yakuza only has NPC with some custom animations)
-Activitisies and minigames happens 1:1 in the game world (like RDR2 and unlike Yakuza series, where they are separate from the game world, usually loading a 2D minigame ).
-Music during exploration (unlike Yakuza and many other OW games that prefer to have a silent exploration).
-New city/enviroment at any new chapter (unlike Yakuza that recycle always the same city, Tokyo-Kamurocho, for budget reason of course).
-ability to explore almost every building and stores


That said also Shenmue could learn something from Yakuza series:

-Yakuza games has one of the best story pacing, with very few rivals in the industry
-Top level facial animations (sometimes even better than other AAA games)
-well balanced design overall


What do you think?
 
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I think you're being a tad unfair to the Yakuza series a bit there, especially with the load times (Shenmue 3 came out after Yakuza 6 by a long shot) and with the point about cities. Every Yakuza game bar Yakuza Kiwami has introduced a new city alongside Kamurocho. Yakuza 5 doesn't even let you back into Kamurocho until the last chapter!
 
Also as vocal as somefolk on the internet are, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of crossover between folk that like Shenmue and Yakuza.

Thaaaaaat all being said, I think I'd like some of Shenmue 3's ideas about levelling up incorporated into Yakuza; I really like that you have to physically train Ryo in different ways to make him level up, while Yakuza is like most other RPG-skill-tree systems where you just choose stuff from a menu (for the most part)
 
I think you're being a tad unfair to the Yakuza series a bit there, especially with the load times (Shenmue 3 came out after Yakuza 6 by a long shot) and with the point about cities. Every Yakuza game bar Yakuza Kiwami has introduced a new city alongside Kamurocho. Yakuza 5 doesn't even let you back into Kamurocho until the last chapter!


Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 7 regressed a bit design wise from Yakuza 6.
Seems like Yakuza 6 is when they tried to 'go all out'. Like that game was fully voiced.
They even added the 'buy a drink from a vending machine and show Kiryu actually drinking it' which was done in Shenmue since the first game BUT they took that out in Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 7 which came out after Yakuza 6, and those two games are not fully voiced like Yakuza 6 was.
I feel Yakuza 6 pushed the console to the limit for Sega and their Dragon Engine. Game could not run at 60fps like Yakuza Zero, Kiwami 1 and Ishin could seeing as how those are cross gen games and were using the older engine so PS4 was able to boost the framerate for them.
Much more higher graphical fidelity and artifacts are going on in Yakuza 6, Kiwami 2 and 7, so framerate had to be sacrificed.
Pretty sure Kiwami 2 runs at 60fps on PC though.
Most likely moving forward, obviously future Yakuza titles will run at 60fps on PS5 unless RGG studio makes a newer engine that is SO powerful that it pushes the PS5 to its absolute limit and once again framerate takes a hit. But I doubt that for some reason. PS5 is going to be a powerhouse.

Also regarding leveling up, Yakuza 6 kinda seemed like it was starting that idea with Kiryu going to the gym but that was a very short lived idea once he traveled over to the small town Haruka was staying at to investigate.
Truth be told, Yakuza series while having martial arts moves in it, isnt martial arts oriented.
Kiryu and friends arent martial artists theyre Yakuza street brawlers. So the martial arts philosophy, the Wude, none of that is exemplified in the games. The main focus is the plot. The battles are are pretty much random on the street until you get to the story specific fights.
So theres no emphasis on training daily to improve one's martial arts in Yakuza.
The closest to that was that goofy old guy that supposedly 'trained' Majima and Kiryu in the beginning but they dont really take that plotline seriously its more of a side quest plot.
There's no random enemy encounters in Shenmue.
 
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I agree that Yakuza Kiwami 2 was a step back from Yakuza 6 due to the regression of returning to text only dialogue for many conversations. To me, the presentation in Yakuza 6's is the best of the series and almost catches up to Shenmue.

I'm very appreciative of the fact that Shenmue 3 retained the fully voiced DNA of the first 2 games. I think that it's something that largely taken for granted, but as fans we should keep in mind what a huge undertaking it is to fully voice every character in a video game. It could have been very tempting for YSNet to decide to program half the NPC base as non-interactive to save on budget and I'm glad that they didn't do that.

I think Shenmue could take some queues from Yakuza's cutscene presentation. Specifically making sure they are sufficiently long enough to present the story in a satisfying manner. Detail was a bit lacking in Shenmue 3's cutscenes and expanding them have would have lead to a richer narrative experience.
 
I don't mind the text only dialogue, tbh. I think they make up for it with the quality of writing and amount of scenarios. Obviously full voice acting would be even better, but I understand the trade-off.

-Fully voiced dialogues (in more than 15 years, only 1 game in the series, Yakuza 6, achieved this)
-NPC with daily routines (other games and Yakuza only has NPC with some custom animations)

I personally feel like these are all things that could be cut from future Shenmue games if Ys Net wanted to emphasize gameplay and story instead of focusing the budget on things that really only benefit the game superficially. Ys Net actually did limit what NPCs can do, and I am ok with that. I think it's awesome you can talk to everyone in the first two games, but it was smart to not spend money on recording lines for hundreds of characters again.

I'm not saying I don't like these in Shenmue, but I get why they're not implemented in Yakuza. The Yakuza team's focused on gameplay and story ahead of everything else. I'm sure they're capable of implementing these systems, but are they worth the trouble or money? Will they truly make Yakuza better? I don't really think so, particularly if they're at the expense of everything else that makes Yakuza great.

-New city/enviroment at any new chapter (unlike Yakuza that recycle always the same city, Tokyo-Kamurocho, for budget reason of course).

I think this is smart. There's no reason for them to keep building new areas if they don't need to and the story they've written justifies 'recycling' some areas. I don't see how Ys Net could copy this, unfortunately. It doesn't mesh with the Shenmue story.
 
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Yakuza and Shenmue are really different genres and I honestly would hardly classify Yakuza as an open world genre.

Yakuza are jrpg so most of the points you raise would actually make a genre shift. So most of the points you do not seem to like from the Yakuza series of its roots as a jrpg that is the reason that structurally it has more similarities to the Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy or Persona series than to Shenmue or Red Dead Redemption.

-Real time day-night cycle (Yakuza and some other current AAA games still doesn't have this)
With the current approach of storetelling that the Yakuza team has this would increase the ludonarrative dissonance. One of aspects of Yakuza is that the story of each series actually happens in an actual year and mimics some of that years issues like which phones and apps people use or what corruption scandal was kinda happening and how the city changes year by year.

With the day night cycle you could potentially spend in game 10 years and still be in the 80s real state boom which is not what the Yakuza team seem to want. And honestly I would not like to have a forced end date in the Yakuza series as it could limit my side activity time.

-Fully voiced dialogues (in more than 15 years, only 1 game in the series, Yakuza 6, achieved this)
That might be nice if to achieve it we do not have to sacrifice content. The more voice acted lines the more chance to have less sidequests in jrpgs as then they become expensier and unfortunately a lot of players do not play sidecontent at all so in dev perspective is wasted effort.

-Advanced dialogue system (no other game does this, especially fully voiced)
Could you clarify this point to me? Shenmue, as far as I know, it is quiet a flat dialog tree and games like Baldurs gate, Torment tides of Numeria, Elder Scrolls, Dragons Age, Divinity Original Sin and Witcher have more expansive dialog trees.

-NPC with daily routines (other games and Yakuza only has NPC with some custom animations)
That is currently unnecessary because those NPCs are ther to fill the following jrpg roles:
- Main Quest progression
- Side Quest or minigame giver
- shoopkeeper to buy items or gear.
- jrpg random battle encounter (the punks in the hub area Kamurocho, etc...)
- Ambient passerby to increase the feeling you are in a living city.

So adding routines in this jrpg world does quite not add much or justifies resources without a massive genre shift.

So aside of cutscene direction or combat engine or pacing during the yakuza "jrpg dungeons" (which IMHO Yakuza usually does better than Shenmue in the action segment, as I really liked the usual dungeon boss with the cutscenes) they are extremely hard to compare gameplay wise.
 
Honestly in my opinion, there is very little the two franchises can learn from each other because their goals are different. Ryu Ga Gotoku aims to be more fast-paced and action packed, while Shenmue tends to be slower and more contemplative. So implementing certain elements from one series into another would betray that set goal. For example, weapons would not work in Shenmue, because the story is supposed to be a martial arts epic, and adding a more detailed world with detailed non-player characters in Ryu Ga Gotoku would add unnecessary padding to a franchise that is supposed to be fast paced and fun.

There are some superficial elements you could add such as the weather and day/night cycle for Ryu Ga Gotoku as you mentioned, or adding more mini games like baseball (or if this ever happens), eating at restaurants in Shenmue, but I cannot see these two franchises really learning much from one another. Also if you take a look at both franchises as a whole, they tend to share a lot of the same elements anyways. Now someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I would like to see Shenmue implement a type of timed counter attack. Ryo could learn an attack where he strikes in the middle of an enemy’s attack and inflict more damage than usual. However this type of attack would require strict timing and reading of the opponents movements.

Outside of that, there’s really not a whole lot.
 
Yakuza Kiwami 2 ad Yakuza 7 regressed a bit design wise from Yakuza 6.


Also regarding leveling up, Yakuza 6 kinda seemed like it was starting that idea with Kiryu going to the gym but that was a very short lived idea once he traveled over to the small town Haruka was staying at to investigate.

2 things here:

1. 7 appears to be fully-voiced (according to @danielmann861)
2. The whole gym thing was simply an in-concert agreement with Rizap, who own gyms in Japan. It would also have been just a mini-game/quest-related thing.
 
I think its totally reasonable that not everything is fully voiced in every Ryu Ga Gotoku game.
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is not Rockstar Games or a Ubisoft Studio,
they cant just do whatever they want and then Sega says yes without any questions.
Not long ago, 3-5 years, Yakuza games were a niche product.
Yakuza 5 was a game for hardcore fans in the west. So of course Sega wont just suddenly boost the budget by 250%
just because the last 2-3 games were a success.

I dont remember the real quote, but the localization producer Scott Strichart said that the Yakuza 5 script
was as thick as the bible x1.5
I can totally understand that it doesnt make sense for such a studio / product to boost the budget
just to get voice acting for everything. Just because they put voice acting for everything in there,
doesnt mean that the sales numbers magically increase too.
It takes some time to figure out what the best combination is in terms of content and budget
and they will analyse the feedback of the players.

I mean they have the new engine which they had to learn and improve,
they tried the voices for everything in Yakuza 6, then the english dub for Judgment + new language options.
Now Yakuza 7 seems like a really really really big game with completely new mechanics
and maybe it will get the Judgment language treatment ...
Step by step, we cant have everything at once.
 
2 things here:

1. 7 appears to be fully-voiced (according to @danielmann861)
2. The whole gym thing was simply an in-concert agreement with Rizap, who own gyms in Japan. It would also have been just a mini-game/quest-related thing.

It’s not fully voiced, there are still moments where it cuts corners. But there does seem to be more voice acting along the lines of Yakuza 6 moreso than the others. But there are still moments of cutting corners.
 
2 things here:

1. 7 appears to be fully-voiced (according to @danielmann861)
2. The whole gym thing was simply an in-concert agreement with Rizap, who own gyms in Japan. It would also have been just a mini-game/quest-related thing.


1. kay but I'm pretty sure I remember text in the demo and also the drinking from soda machines wasnt in like I said

2. eww
 
I think its totally reasonable that not everything is fully voiced in every Ryu Ga Gotoku game.
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is not Rockstar Games or a Ubisoft Studio,
they cant just do whatever they want and then Sega says yes without any questions.
Not long ago, 3-5 years, Yakuza games were a niche product.
Yakuza 5 was a game for hardcore fans in the west. So of course Sega wont just suddenly boost the budget by 250%
just because the last 2-3 games were a success.

I dont remember the real quote, but the localization producer Scott Strichart said that the Yakuza 5 script
was as thick as the bible x1.5
I can totally understand that it doesnt make sense for such a studio / product to boost the budget
just to get voice acting for everything. Just because they put voice acting for everything in there,
doesnt mean that the sales numbers magically increase too.
It takes some time to figure out what the best combination is in terms of content and budget
and they will analyse the feedback of the players.

I mean they have the new engine which they had to learn and improve,
they tried the voices for everything in Yakuza 6, then the english dub for Judgment + new language options.
Now Yakuza 7 seems like a really really really big game with completely new mechanics
and maybe it will get the Judgment language treatment ...
Step by step, we cant have everything at once.


Yakuza 1 had a 20 million budget tho
 
-Real time day-night cycle (Yakuza and some other current AAA games still doesn't have this)

I've been mulling over this one for a while. Would a day/night cycle work for Yakuza? I tend to think it wouldn't be ideal and I think it just boils down to design. I kind of liken Yakuza to more of a hub world than a true open world. It's more here is your environment to explore in between the story, now go play and do whatever you want whenever you want. In order to accommodate a day/night cycle, they would have to rethink everything. Certain places could only be open at day while other establishments (bars and such) are open only at night. Then do you do a GTA thing where you are always active in the world. Or do you do a Shenmue thing where you have a strict curfew before the start of a new day.

It could be interesting to see in Yakuza and it could force them to truly rethink their design structure, but to be honest, I kind of like the way Yakuza does its current time cycle. But it would be cool to see at least one Yakuza game with a true day/night cycle.

-Real time weather system (same as above)

This I agree with. The Dragon Engine is a really nice engine and I would love to see it with weather effects.

-Fully voiced dialogues (in more than 15 years, only 1 game in the series, Yakuza 6, achieved this)

Yakuza 6 achieved it but Yakuza 6 also cut down on a lot of content to get there in terms of side quests. Voice acting does cost money and Yakuza tends to go for quantity over quality. Still, with that said, I did like Yakuza 6 and the fact it was a much tigher game as a whole. So I'd welcome it if it meant a more tighter experience.



-Seamsless exploration with no loadings in Shenmue 3 (achieved only in Yakuza 6, after 8 games released...)

Kiwami 2, Judgment and Yakuza 7 all say hello. The Dragon Engine effectively allows for this already. There are couple of moments of loading between some areas (mini games and such) but exploring Kamurocho is pretty seamless now and has been since Yakuza 6.

-NPC with daily routines (other games and Yakuza only has NPC with some custom animations)

I'm gonna say no on this. I don't think Yakuza needs to go this route. I don't really care about the lives of nameless faceless people when I visit Kabukicho in real life so I can't say I really care about the NPC's of Kamurocho. I think for a game like the original Shenmue it worked because it was such a smaller tighter spaced. It was cool that NPCs had schedules in Shenmue, but I can't say I would ever care about this if implemented into Yakuza. They're there for scenery purposes and to give the illusion of hustle and bustle and that's good enough for me.


-Activitisies and minigames happens 1:1 in the game world (like RDR2 and unlike Yakuza series, where they are separate from the game world, usually loading a 2D minigame ).

This did bother me a little bit in Judgment..especially when retrying the last two stages of Kamurocho of the Dead over and over. But technically, it seems like something they can't work around. Next gen should fix this though with SSD storage speeds. It should cut down loads drastically.

-Music during exploration (unlike Yakuza and many other OW games that prefer to have a silent exploration).

I actually kind of prefer Yakuza's city scape ambience. I love Shenmue's music, but I kind of prefer Yakuza's ambience for Yakuza at least.

-New city/enviroment at any new chapter (unlike Yakuza that recycle always the same city, Tokyo-Kamurocho, for budget reason of course).

They technically have taken you to a new city with every Yakuza game though. Sure, Kamurocho is the main stay for the series (and it needs to be considering Kabukicho is the real life home of Yakuza in Tokyo) but I think this is a bit of misconception...the games have always taken you to a new city on the side. Y2 took us to Osaka. Y3 took us to Okinawa. Y4 kept us in Kamurocho but did open Kamurocho open more. Y5 took us to Sapporo, Fukuoka and Nakasu on top of Osaka and Kamurocho. Y6 took us to Hiroshima and Kamurocho. Y7 takes us to Yokohama as well as Kamurocho.

To me, they've been pretty good at giving you new places and I feel it is a bit of a misconception that people have with Yakuza. It's not always just Kamurocho. And even when they do stay in Kamurocho, they do either update it to reflect the year its taking place or upgrade it in the case of Y4 to let you explore more of it.

But at the end of the day, I feel like Yakuza without Kamurocho just wouldn't be Yakuza. Kabukicho is Yakuza central in real life and so to does Kamurocho reflect that. It's vital to Yakuza.




That said also Shenmue could learn something from Yakuza series:

-Yakuza games has one of the best story pacing, with very few rivals in the industry

This I could kind of agree with. I would also say look at Judgment (or even Persona and its social links) and take some lessons about the friendship system. In the lead up to Shenmue III, I remember Yu talking about the affinity system and how it would have you building contacts and friendships in order to help fufill your quest (or something to akin)...didn't really happen in Shenmue III to my disappointment. That's one area I would say "take a look at Judgment and learn some lessons from the friendship system)
 
Many interesting replies.

I'll read all later as I'm in a hurry now.
But I forgot to mention one this so I added in my original post:

-Shenmue had another advantage, the ability to explore almost every building and stores on the map, while in Yakuza and basically every other open world game (apart Elder Scrolls series) you are limited to just a few shops or buildings.

Also unfortunately Yakuza 7 isn't fully voiced. Yakuza 6 remain the only one that tried to go all out in every aspect.
 
I don't think Shenmue has much to learn from Yakuza tbh. I don't remember having seen anything special in these games but I didn't play the series for an extensive while so... Meanwhile, I think Shenmue can learn much more from a game like Jade Empire.

In both games, you can freely enter a tournament of street fighters or a martial mart school to test your skills and improve yourself. But Jade Empire was way more interesting because you could freely have a social feedback with most of the fighters, before and after a fight, victory or defeat. If the opponent turned out to be an arrogant prick, it was pretty cathartic to get his reaction after a successful fight. You might eventually build positive relationship with fighters who initially despised you.

The martial art school of Jade Empire in the big city was even better because a storytelling was building the relation between you, the masters, the students and the staff with some bits of mystery and action. And here again, that was only a side quest.

In Shenmue 3, it's just "do your thing": train, beat and eventually progress the story. The lack of dialogues spoiled the satisfaction of excelling at martial art and making you feel powerful. We didn't fight against people but shadows. The masters were the only ones that may react to your action, and even there, you could spot the limits.

I know it's only a side quest and Yu implemented the dojos at the last moment in the game. But since you spend many of your time in training - and I genuinely think it was the most interesting part of Shenmue 3 - I think they should have put more care there because the benefit would have been HUGE.

Jade Empire, and old-school Bioware to a lesser extent, are remarkable demonstration that dialogues can turn the emotion dramatically whatever the minimalism of your game.

Ironically, if we have to find the very right games that Shenmue should learn from, they're Shenmue 1&2 themselves. All the points I meant above, the seeds were already there, on Dreamcast.
 
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I don't think Shenmue has much to learn from Yakuza tbh. I don't remember having seen anything special in these games but I didn't play the series for an extensive while so... Meanwhile, I think Shenmue can learn much more from a game like Jade Empire.

I think it could take some influence from Yakuza though. In the most recent games, Yakuza has been doing some interesting stuff involving more social aspects. (i.e friendships). Some of my favourite moments in Yakuza 6 came from just chatting to other people at a bar and making friends with the local barflies.


I think Shenmue could take a look at some things it is doing and maybe take something away from it. Since Shenmue is so incredibly heavy on having you interact with everyone around you. This is the one area where I've always felt Shenmue needed work on. Back in the day, it was unlike anything else to simply just talk to everyone. Hell, you could build a friendship of sorts with Feng Mei in the second game simply by talking to her over and over again. There were cool ideas in Shenmue but I always felt it was limited by the tech it was on. That was one my disappointments with III (if I have to be honest)...I wanted to see what he could do with those ideas now that he actually has the hardware. The closest we got to it was our nightly conversations with Shenhua...which were awesome and probably one of the best parts of the game for me.

But if I have to be really honest, I was a little more impressed by what Judgment did with its friendship system and thought "Shenmue III could have learned from this."

I think some of the social stuff that has always been there in Yakuza is something that YSNET could maybe look at for reference. Just because there is something to be learned from it.
 
I love Yakuza, but I don't care for the fans of it. They seem rude, like they actually think they are a part of the Yakuza.

As far as learning from each other. Both are two intensely different games. I can't compare nor do I care to have similar attributes from Yakuza just because it's an incredibly well received series.
 
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