The Yakuza 6 demo has been released today on the Japanese PlayStation Store, and it’s a massive 36.27 GB in size (although you can start playing as soon as you downloaded 12.646 GB). Below you can find my impressions on the demo after playing it for around two hours.
The first 45 to 60 minutes of the game feature minimal gameplay and is largely spent on explaining the events that happened between the ending of Yakuza 5 and the start of Yakuza 6. This might be bit long for people who would prefer to dive straight into the action, but anyone who played the previous games is unlikely to be bored by the story that unfolds here.
Afterwards you can head into town, but there appears to be very little in terms of story progression at this point. Following the main plot, you quickly bump into an area that’s blocked in the demo, at which point all is left is to enjoy sub stories, play some of the mini-games and level up Kiryu. The latter is worthwhile if you intend on playing the Japanese version of the full game, since you can transfer the savegame. While you can’t play the arcade games in Club SEGA nor visit the hostess club in the demo, you can still visit the karaoke bar, purchase food from stores, take selfies, go to the batting stage, … The sub stories I discovered so far are the Nyan Nyan Cat Cafe sub story where you end up managing a cat cafe, and one that involves Kiryu learning to “Live Chat” with a cam girl (for those wondering, the cam girl isn’t shown in the demo).
Graphically the game looks solid, although the aliasing is noticeable and causes a lot of shimmering in the background. It’s likely that the PS4 Pro enabled version of the game will help mitigate this issue when it’s downsampled to 1080P. However, it doesn’t seem like the demo itself is already PS4 Pro Enhanced. I also noticed some framerate drops, but nothing particularly problematic. And the lack of loading times in the city is a very welcome addition to the game, as it makes progressing through the city a lot faster. Overall, I definitely enjoyed playing the demo, and I hope that the game will eventually head to the West. But first things first: Yakuza 0 is coming to North America and Europe on January 24, 2017, and buying that game is still the best way of supporting the series. I’ll leave you with some screenshots of the Yakuza 6 demo, which you can find below!
