Perhaps the most intriguing element of the game if not the most original, the plot finds the player in the role of Kazuma Kiryu - an influential yakuza well on his way to establishing his own ‘family’ - who gets ten years in the slammer after taking the fall for a friend who murdered a powerful gang leader. Fast forward a decade and Kazuma has managed to survive numerous brushes with death to discover that not only has he been approved for parole, but that a world he used to call his own has become completely unrecognisable in his absence. As the plot progresses, a missing ten-billion yen, the appearance of a mysterious nine-year-old girl, and an enigmatic Oyabun make life all the more complicated for Kazuma.

Despite the original premise, Yakuza falls foul of some age-old design dilemmas. Despite being billed as a free-roaming adventure, Yakuza is surprisingly linear with the player rarely afforded time to explore their surroundings in any depth. Furthermore, the game has an awful tendency to lock the player in small rooms and demand they battle a horde of enemies before a door is unlocked or a necessary item is located. As frustrating as these grievances are they don’t compare to the outright atrociousness of the camera system. Rarely has a game boasted a camera that proves as problematic as Yakuza’s, with rarely one of the game's many brawls passing without the system trying its best to hinder actions. The fixed camera perspective during exploration sequences also grates after a while doing more harm than good and regularly hiding key locations and/or items due to its angle.

For all the pre-release hype, Yakuza actually shares very few similarities with the Shenmue series. Aside from an ongoing investigation conducted by the protagonist and a vast, open interactive world in which the game is set, Yakuza has much more in common with straight action titles such as Namco’s Urban Reign and Dead to Rights. Much like the aforementioned titles, combat is largely restricted to hand-to-hand and melee combat with a vast amount of weapons available to the player - from baseball bats to bicycles - in order to fend off the near endless onslaught of hoodlums and rival yakuza. It’s perhaps this aspect of the game which gives it an edge over the majority of contemporary action titles currently flooding the market - games like GTA and Just Cause task the player with subduing enemies (or in GTA’s case, whoever the player perceives to be an enemy) in increasingly lethal, sometimes gratuitous, fashion. In Yakuza, you never actually kill anyone, you merely incapacitate them through a steady string of P,P,P,K,K combos. While there’s no denying it’s violent (some QTE scenes in later boss battles do get rather nasty), it’s refreshing to play a game of this ilk which has the maturity to deliver adult-oriented content without resorting to needless amounts of gore. In this respect, Yakuza is probably the closest thing a game has yet come to replicating the mature subject matter of TV shows such as The Sopranos and films like The Godfather with violence not acting as a means to incite undue chaos, but rather as a last resort.

Similarly, the protagonist in Yakuza is refreshingly different from the video game norm with the character of Kazuma proving a more appealing prospect than the morally corrupt figures that feature prominently in most games. It’s established fairly early on that Kazuma is not a heinous monster like most characters in the game, but a caring, compassionate individual reluctantly embroiled in a dangerous and violent underworld. This is no more obvious than during Kazuma’s frequent encounters with Haruka and his general concern over her well being despite her actions frequently hindering his progress.

Graphically, Yakuza is quite a disappointment with under-detailed characters and a strange colour filter applied to the in-game graphics which makes everything seem decidedly low resolution and grainy. The visuals are all the more disappointing when contrasts are once again made to Shenmue which, despite being six years its senior, still manages to sufficiently impress in ways Yakuza can only dream. In recent years the PS2 has dazzled gamers with its deftness in churning out increasingly complex, spectacular graphic engines. Indeed, the scale of Shadow of the Colossus, the vibrant colours of Okami and the all-out visual tour de force that is Devil May Cry 3 all conspire to make Yakuza look as cutting-edge as a loaf of bread. Add to this a frail frame rate which always seems on the verge of total collapse and you have yourself a technically unremarkable game at a time when the opposite should be true.

Yakuza’s combat is straightforward with most manoeuvres pulled off by constant button presses. While the system is a lot more satisfying than those of similar games, it feels a little lightweight compared to Shenmue’s.

While the main story is of admirable length, Yakuza also includes a number of side-quests and mini-games that can be explored at the player's discretion. The majority of side quests are merely expansions of missions found in the main story and will probably only appeal to completists who want to access the hidden boss battle. It’s the mini-games, however, that will hold players’ attentions long after the story is done and dusted. Alien catchers, batting cages and chatting up women all provide senseless enjoyment outside of the main game and ensure that the quirkiness of Yakuza won’t be forgotten any time soon.

The aspect in which Yakuza truly falters, though, is in its localisation. The game's dialogue suffers from the same Japlish that plagued many early western adaptations of Japanese-created titles. Not since the original Resident Evil has a game's script been the source of so much amusement, and it’s all to happy to hide the discrepancies in its translation with some colourful expletives which embarrass more than they do shock. The game's voice acting is equally droll and suffers from the age-old problem of quantity over quality; with the exception of possibly Bill Farmer’s Detective Date, all voiceovers lack conviction and, in some cases, seem forced. Eliza Dushku’s lines sound like they were phoned in, for example. Strangely, the two biggest names the game's voice cast boasts - Mark Hamill and Michael Madsen - are wasted on secondary characters that, after a couple of hours into the story, dissolve completely into the background, not to heard from again until the climactic conclusion. It’s strange that in its localisation Sega chose to only ‘westernise’ the game's voice cast and not any of the more perplexing aspects that’ll seem alien to anyone not versed in the ways of Japanese culture. This brings up an even more interesting point as to why Sega even bothered to modify any aspect of the game. It would have been as effective - perhaps even more so - if it retained the original release’s voice talent with English subtitles. This would’ve also added to the authenticity of the portrayal of yakuza members.

With Yakuza, Sega has once again shown the gaming world that, when it comes to establishing new concepts, they aren’t totally out of their element. With a few refinements Yakuza could have proved just as revolutionary as Yu Suzuki’s Dreamcast masterpiece. Sega has confirmed that Ryu ga Gotoku 2 will be receiving a US and European release at some point in 2007, so it’s more a question of when the potential of the franchise will truly be exploited rather than if it will.