Of the End of Dead Souls: The Next Adventure for Kazuma and Crew

Sega’s
American and European divisions confirmed that Yakuza: Of the End is being localized as Yakuza: Dead Souls. We kind of knew this already due to the
trademark by Sega of Europe being discovered about a week ago and the
teaser images being deciphered (the text was similar to the ones from many
Japanese trailers for the game), but it’s nice to get confirmation that the
franchise is continuing outside Japan. The Yakuza games are pretty niche, and with
games qualified as such being localized less and less these days (though many
of those are admittedly on PSP), it’s always refreshing to see some uncertain
ones coming.

 

It was once
“uncertain” because Dead Souls will be the first non-mainline Yakuza game to
leave Japan. Sadly, neither Yakuza:
Kenzan! or Black Panther for PS3
and PSP, respectively, are going to leave their home country at this point. And
though it’s not out yet, you can bet that Black Panther’s recently announced
sequel for the same system will suffer a similar fate.

 

Dead Souls
released in Japan in mid-June, being delayed from its March release due to the
earthquake in Japan — its content about a disaster befalling Japan could be
interpreted as insensitive if it released shortly after a sizable portion of
the population perished. Toshihiro Nagoshi and the franchise’s development team
wanted to take a break from the usual mainline title to make an installment
with a very bizarre concept by the franchise’s usual realistic standard. “What
if the Yakuza world was invaded by zombies?” one of them seemingly proposed at
a board meeting. And it appears Sega’s higher-ups were OK with that idea.

 

There are a
couple of things to be concerned about with this release, though. I
played the Japanese demo back in February, which I enjoyed mainly because
it retains many of the aspects I admire about the Yakuza franchise. But we live
in an environment where a glut of shooters are being released on a nearly
weekly basis, and Dead Souls’ controls don’t measure up to today’s standards.
Heck, they wouldn’t measure up six years ago either. There’s no word on whether
they’re changing them for the localized version, but if they don’t, I wouldn’t
expect the western press to be kind to this game.

 

There’s also
the concern that gamers are getting a little tired of zombies. Shortly after Dead Island‘s release, some editorials
about how passé zombies are becoming in games popped up. And here you have another game that uses shooting them as
its focal point. With worse controls to boot! Yakuza fans will probably enjoy
this, but they’re a small audience. Making this game your first Yakuza title
isn’t recommended since you’ll be missing quite a bit of the character
development from the previous titles. If anyone does, it could put them off the
franchise for good.

 

Yakuza: Dead
Souls hits America and Europe in March 2012, which is interestingly only around
a month after Nagoshi and his team’s other new game releases in Binary Domain. Even if they haven’t
changed the shooting controls, it will still be a fun game considering it will
still have the characters and side activities that make each of the franchise’s
installments unique. Enjoy it, because it seems like it’s going to be a while
before Yakuza 5 releases.