The eclectic Toshihiro Nagoshi joined SEGA at 1989. He has participated in a great long list of games since then, but we should not forget his important role in Super Monkey Ball, in different SEGA arcade titles, his influence in Shenmue, he is credited as supervisor, producer and game director in the first iteration of Ryu Hazuki’s saga. However, the most important product developed by Nagoshi and his team is Yakuza by far.

Kamurocho, the infamous neighborhood of Tokyo, is the home of some Yakuza families and the place where the most of the plot of Yakuza games is developed. The titles combine deep narratives with an ample variety of gameplay mechanics that involve bombastic combats, extraordinary secondary missions and a varied collection of activities. Gambling are one of the most colorful secondary activities that the player can find in this universe.

Yakuza fine vision

After the years, the games produced by Nagoshi have gain a reputable status between gamers. All the titles that compound the series, I have to include Judgment in that list, have been able to keep the series in a high level of quality. The base structure, the nucleus, of Yakuza was established along the first two games and the rest of the titles have increased, decorated and refined the formula with new mechanics.

The paramount in these products are how simple and directional are their elements. The basics revolves around simple concepts that just simply works. Establishing a parallelism, it’s the same that you can find on Gamblerspro.com guide to betting on eSports. Keep things simple, but effective and leave margin to the gamers to evolve their skills.

Reportedly, there are around 1.000 of illegal casinos in Tokyo. The yakuza manages most of these places and this organized crime syndicate controls the pachinko parlors as well. The games reflected this underworld. Kazuma Kiryu and Takayuki Yagami, pass part of their way of life at these places in Kamurocho.

A view at the Judgment suburb of gambling

The script of Judgment could be one of the best written in this current gen. As a clock made in Switzerland, the latest Nagoshi’s piece of art, show the activities that the player could do in a logical sequence of actions. Judgment avoid any gratuitous movements to give the player the vision of the possibilities and after that, the player has the freedom to choose where to spend their roaming time in Kamurocho.

2 1 World of fortune in Yakuza series | VGLeaks 2.0

The offer includes a great variety of arcade games, darts and the gambling games as Blackjack or Poker perfectly designed to be played with a control pad. Those games are easy to learn after some rounds if you are not familiar with their rules and playable since the first contact. And that’s the magic behind Yakuza, keep just the content that is simple and playable.