Review: Yakuza 6: The Song of Life (PS4)

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life looks and feels like the next-gen Yakuza that we've been waiting for. Taking the developer's Dragon Engine out for its first drive, this is the sixth (or seventh, if you count the fantastic Yakuza 0) mainline entry in SEGA's crime drama action role-playing game series, and it's bloody brilliant. The much needed lick of paint makes fictional red light district Kamurocho feel more real than ever before. The countless neon lights reflect in pavement puddles, and bustling crowds sweep across the streets looking for their next fix of adult entertainment. It's glorious.

Yakuza's never looked so good, but then the series has been stuck with passable PlayStation 3 era visuals for the last decade. It's not just the environments that are a real step up, though. The character models look great too, particularly during cutscenes – and Yakuza 6 has a lot of cutscenes. As we've come to expect of the property, this is an intensely story-driven experience – the game's never frightened of dropping huge amounts of dialogue when it's trying to get a point across.