Yakuza 4 Remastered

Yakuza 4 Remastered All right, now we're moving into Yakuza 4. This is where the series really opens up the playable cast. Kiryu is still here, but you don't start with him, and the game doesn't spend its whole runtime following him around. You play through Akiyama, Saejima, Tanimura and Kiryu in that order, with their stories coming together in the finale. I'm covering the Remastered version here. It's still the same underlying game as Yakuza 4 on PS3, rather than a Kiwami remake. The remaster improves the presentation to 1080p and 60fps on PS4, revises the English localization, and changes Tanimura's face and Japanese voice performance. Toshiki Masuda takes over the role from Hiroki Narimiya. Those changes don't turn it into a Dragon Engine game or replace its combat with what you played in Kiwami 2. The main story takes place in 2010. A killing in Kamurocho starts pulling together people whose connections go much further back than the immediate incident. I'm keeping the big explanations out of this introduction, because the practical guides are going to contain enough spoilers already. Akiyama runs Sky Finance. His part gives you a different way into Kamurocho through the people who come to him for money, the conditions he puts on those loans, and his relationship with Hana. He fights with fast kicks and long combinations, so the opening can make the game feel fairly quick and forgiving. Then you switch to Saejima, and you need to change how you're playing. He is built around strength, charging attacks and throwing people around. His opening is also much rougher than wandering the city as Akiyama. If the prison section catches you off guard, that doesn't mean you've somehow forgotten how to play between chapters. You're working with a different character and a much more restrictive situation. Tanimura is a detective, and his part gets into the police side of the story and the people living around Little Asia. His parries are a huge part of his fighting style. Trying to use him exactly like Kiryu is going to make some fights harder than they need to be. You want to redirect attacks, control where enemies end up and take the openings that creates. Kiryu comes last. By then, you've spent enough time with the other three that his return changes the feel of the combat again. You have the familiar combinations, throws and Komaki techniques, but you're also seeing how these other lives connect to a city he has been dragged back to over and over. Kamurocho gets more room above and below the streets this time. Rooftops, the underground mall, parking areas and sewers matter for getting around, finding things and moving through the story. A marker that looks close on the map might be on another level entirely. That's especially important with the locker keys. There are two different sets, and blindly running around at street level will leave you wondering where half the collectibles went. Each character also has things that belong to his section of the game. Akiyama trains hostesses and builds relationships with people around town. Saejima trains fighters. Tanimura responds to police-radio incidents. Kiryu gets involved with the gangs. Those are worth covering separately, because “do the side activities” doesn't tell you how any of them work. For completion, there is one distinction I want to make before anything else: getting every trophy or achievement is not the same job as getting 100% on the in-game completion list. You don't need every locker, every restaurant order or every minigame completion target just for the platinum. You do need all the substories, the Amon fights, the Ultimate Skill challenges and the required difficulty clears, plus the individual activity trophies. There is also a real missable trophy in Hostess Maker. If you finish training all three women before buying the required clothing types, Premium Adventure doesn't reopen that finished activity for you. I'll cover the exact safeguard in the achievement and hostess posts, along with the temporary substory restrictions that are easy to mistake for permanently missed quests. So the plan with this one is to cover the game properly: the achievement route, the substories and their prerequisites, both sets of locker keys, the four fighting styles and trainers, Hostess Maker, Fighter Maker, the city activities, minigames, Ultimate Matches and the fights that need their own explanation. There is a lot packed into this version of Kamurocho, even without sending you to several different cities.