All right, next is Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. This is where a lot of what I said earlier about Kiryu and Haruka comes into play, so I'm going to separate the game itself from h…

All right, next is Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. This is where a lot of what I said earlier about Kiryu and Haruka comes into play, so I'm going to separate the game itself from how I feel about the direction their relationship took. There are story spoilers here, including the ending. After Yakuza 5, the series comes back down to one playable protagonist. You're following Kiryu through Kamurocho and Onomichi, trying to find out what happened to Haruka and how Haruto fits into the life she had while Kiryu was gone. The scale changes quite a bit. Five cities and a whole group of protagonists become two places and a much more concentrated story about family, responsibility, and people trying to keep the truth from each other. Onomichi matters to that. The Hirose Family, Kiyomi, the apartment, the shopping district, the docks, and the people at Snack New Gaudi give Kiryu a different daily routine. You get to know a smaller group of people. Some of them get involved in the main story, while others become baseball teammates, drinking buddies, or people who need help with something that has nothing to do with the Tojo Clan. This was also the first Dragon Engine game. If you're following the play order through Kiwami 2 before reaching this, you've already seen a later game using that engine. Yakuza 6 came first. The more continuous movement between streets, shops, and fights, the physics, the ability to throw someone into the scenery and have the whole area react, all of that was a major change here. Combat is back to one Kiryu moveset, built around upgrades and Extreme Heat. You're also working with a smaller set of activities than Yakuza 5. There isn't a separate Coliseum or a set of Climax Battles to finish. The side content goes in other directions: managing a baseball team, Clan Creator, diving after fish with a speargun, rescuing cats, and getting far too involved in the problems of an entire bar. Then there's Haruka. I've already said this, but her relationship with Kiryu is one of my favorite dynamics in games. I liked their life together. I liked him taking care of her, watching out for her, and having that family at Morning Glory. Seeing her grow up was always going to change things. My issue was the direction that change took and where it left them. Yakuza 6 puts Haruka in a coma for much of the story and has Kiryu trying to piece together her life through other people. Haruto becomes the person he can physically protect while he tries to get back to her. That fits Kiryu's instinct to take responsibility for everyone, but it also means another major part of their story is spent with them apart. The ending pushes that even further. Kiryu chooses to disappear so the people he loves can have a life without being dragged back into his problems. I understand the intention. I still wasn't happy with where it left Kiryu and Haruka. After everything that relationship had been through, I wanted more of their life together, and the game gives them another separation. I'm keeping the bigger discussion of their father-daughter relationship for its own post because there is a lot more to say about it across the series. For this one, that's the part of Yakuza 6 I can't leave out when talking about it. For the guides, there are some welcome differences. Platinum doesn't require the entire Completion List. Amon doesn't require every other substory. The collectible hunt uses safes instead of the old wall of coin lockers. You still have real work to do, especially with the hostesses, Snack New Gaudi, and Clan Creator, but copying a Yakuza 5 checklist into this game would make it look much more demanding than it actually is. I'll cover those systems separately so the requirements don't get mixed together. Finishing the story, earning all achievements, and finishing every single Award are three different goals here.