When is a game not a game?

This is the question I had running through my mind while playing Yakuza 3, from the second I started watching the hour-long recap videos (to tell the story of Yakuza and Yakuza 2), to the minute I began watching the first introductory video of Yakuza 3 proper, to the first time I got to control protagonist Kazuma Kiryu… and was greeted with in-game text to button my way through, and more intricate backstory to absorb.

While the story is very interesting and expertly delivered in cinematic form, and the open world (as well as instanced and closed) environments are extraordinarily realistic in appearance, I had a hard time enjoying the ‘game’ part of Yakuza 3, as it’s delivered in such a segmented, compartmentalised fashion that, in the end, it feels as though the story is the ‘real’ Yakuza 3, while the interactive sections are merely mini-games, put in place to keep you interested long enough to link up with the next cinematic – something that may be true of most games, but is painfully apparent in this one.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Yakuza 3.