Kazuma Kiryu, protagonist of the Yakuza series. And a big bulky dude.
If you ever played the Yakuza series, playing as Kazuma could be a struggle--getting into back alley brawls meant being put up against the ropes. The tight alleys and streets of downtown Tokyo means limited room to maneuver. Kazuma’s wide frame and slow movement puts the player at a disadvantage. An enemy backing Kazuma into a corner is the worst: there’s no easy way to avoid a full frontal assault, save for blocking until your enemy tires out.
But then there’s Yagami--protagonist of Yakuza spin-off Judgment. And purveyor of tight shirts and skinny jeans.
Compared to Kazuma’s commanding physique, Yagami is slender and light-footed. Whereas I always wondered how Kazuma could grapple thugs while keeping a perfectly ironed suit, I wonder about Yagami’s ability to leapfrog dudes while wearing form-fitting jeans.
At the core of playing as Yagami is one of my favorite mechanics in recent games: wall running. In Judgment’s battles, you can, at any point, break into a sprint and run up a wall to land a drop kick, pull off a finishing grapple, or simply evade. This last use-case has made Judgment much less tedious for me. Yakuza’s combat system has always been robust, but felt too rigid and locked in. Being effective as Kazuma meant playing a certain way. Specifically, just avoid getting trapped in a corner.
But Judgment’s combat system encourages me to experiment in a way Yakuza never did. Wall running not only solves the issue of feeling stuck, but gives me a greater control of the battlefield. Enemies scatter to avoid wall-mounted attacks. So even if I leap from a wall, and fail to land a kick, the battlefield has been widened for combat.
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