When it was released Yakuza 6: The Song of Life got raised some eyebrows for being a more simple kind of game. While it has 6 in the title, this was actually the seventh game to be released and it is one of my personal favorites. Yes, this game strips many things back to make it more basic, but that is what I liked about it.
How to Download Yakuza 6: The Song of Life
To download the game from a digital store of your choice, click on the Download button at the end of the review. Check out also our reviews of other Yakuza games: Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza Kiwami 2, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
The Game Review
The Yakuza series is known for its storytelling. This game takes place after where 5 left off, and Kazuma Kiryu is in the hospital recovering from his injuries. Kazuma is visited by the cops and he decides to just take his prison time so that he can get out and live a normal life with Haruka and the children he vowed to take care of.
He spends three years in prison and when he tries to return to a normal life, he finds Haruka has gone. She was the victim of a hit and run, plus she is also a mother now. Kazuma wants to find out what the heck happened and he does that by putting a beating on any thug that he comes across.
The story is way, way scaled back, and much smaller in scale than the all-out Yakuza gang wars that came before it. I for one like this, it makes it a game that is more about Kazuma and the kind of person he is and that is something I liked. There are plenty of side missions, but the main story is much more focused this time around.
As well as the story being scaled back so is the fighting. Fighting in Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is much simpler than it was in 5. I hate to say it, but it is much more of a “button masher” this time around. You still have your special attacks and the Extreme Heat Mode where you dish out massive amounts of damage is cool so it is not like there is no variety at all to the combat.
The setting of the game is something I liked a great deal. I liked the way the game would take you from the big, busy city of the Kumarucho red-light district to the much more rural and laid-back Onomichi Jingaicho town. These two places look so different and you can run from one to the other in no time at all, which brings me to another thing about this game I like.
The loading times are very minimal. In previous games, you would come across some enemies and it would have to load, but that is not the case here. There is still some loading at points in the game, but it is few and far between which makes things flow so much better.
The number of mini-games and side content in this game is also scaled back. You can play darts, baseball, go to a cat café and there are still things to do. However, it all feels much simpler than what came before it. To be fair, the story is more subtle and not as over the top so I guess the mini-games and activities that are here to kind of make sense.
One thing that made very little sense to me though was this new Clan Creator Mode. Clan Creator is exactly what it sounds like, you build a clan and then send them into battle. The idea is pretty good, but this never really grabbed me and it was one part of the game I knew pretty much right away I would not be doing all of.
I think that Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is a truly amazing game. After spending so much time in massive over-the-top mafia-style wars, this felt like such a nice change of pace. I get that the scaled-back nature of the game may upset some people, but I feel like this game was the first Yakuza game in a while to truly grip me from the start and not let go until the credits rolled.
