Yakuza - PS2
26th February 2026
I am a big Yakuza series fan and my first Yakuza game was the third game on the PlayStation 3. I bought the very first Yakuza game on the PlayStation 2 after I played some of the PlayStation 3 games. I started the game, but I never did play much of the first Yakuza game because the English dub really put me off from continuing.
Every Yakuza game since the second has been voiced in Japanese with English subtitles and I have enjoyed the story of these games in the Japanese dialogue and I find it more immersive for the games to be voiced in Japanese, after all it does take place in Japan with Japanese characters.
To my absolute joy I discovered that the game has seen a fan mod released where you can play the game in English with the Japanese voices. Finally, I was able to play the original PlayStation 2 game in the way I always wanted to.
There is a point in the game where a section basically plays like Virtua Cop on rails and this part was rather frustrating and I very nearly gave up. I remember enjoying the section in the remake, but in the original it can feel rather clunky and out of place, although to be fair it did feel rather out of place in the remake as well.
I had fun with Yakuza, but sometimes the fighting was a little frustrating when compared to 3 onwards although it improved once I unlocked the roundhouse kick and it made dealing the awkwardness of sometimes facing enemies head on.
One of the biggest issues during the combat is the camera - it seems to be a sort of fixed camera (kind of like the RE games) and sometimes it is difficult to locate enemies because they can suddenly be off screen. This kind of camera works well in survival horror type games, but during fast combat it can sometimes be a hinderance. The camera is perfectly fine during exploration of the city, but can sometimes be frustrating in combat. I have never had a problem with camera issues during combat in the PlayStation 3, 4 and 5 Yakuza games as in those you are given camera control on the right stick.
Having already played the remake I roughly knew what the story beats were going to be, but it was interesting to see how some things differed in the original compared to the remake.
It was amazing to finally play the very first Yakuza game with the original Japanese voices actors and English texts. Now, if only someone were to create a mod for the Fatal Frame/Project Zero 1 - 3 with the original Japanese voice actors and English text then that would also be amazing!
I really enjoyed my time with the game and combat is fun, but can sometimes feel like a step backwards from the next generation Yakuza games, because of the camera and some clunkyness, but overall it was a great time.