I am rarely wrong. That is, I rarely admit that I have been wrong, which is pretty much the same. Was it wrong to purchase a Korean manservant over the Internet? Matter of perspective. Was it wrong to place him in a series of underground MMA fights against his will? No more wrong, I’d argue, than his so-called “job placement organization” lying about his God damn glass jaw. Was it wrong to lie about his weight so he would be pitted against men three times his size, potentially inflating my payout? Ethically, but not morally. Learn the difference, hippies. 

But I’m going to admit that I was wrong now, which is even more out of character, because I’ve never publicly stated the opinion I’m about to contradict. It would be very easy for me to say that I liked Yakuza 3 right from the beginning, that I instantly understood what it was trying to do, that I’m president of its fan club, that I could totally do any of the sweet martial arts from the game in real life, that I am not, as some people and/or international police forces might have you believe, “a scourge on the moral fabric of society.” All of these things are easy to claim. But bandying about hollow statements would make me scarcely more credible than a duplicitous Southeast Asian slave ring that only offers refunds in credit. I have a reputation to consider, you know.

Indeed, my first impressions of Yakuza 3 were mighty sour. I used words like “slow,” “dull,” “talky,” “indulgent,” “excessive,” and “stultifying” to describe my first few hours with it. After that first session, I considered putting it down and not returning. I even considered doing something I haven’t done with a game in over a decade. I considered—gasp!—returning it. Between my usual buyers’ guilt and wanting to find something more comprehensible than Final Fantasy XIII to write about this month, I decided to give over the last half of my Saturday to the wacky Japantasia simulator in the hopes that continued investment would eventually pay dividends.

I was not disappointed.

Make no mistake, Yakuza 3 gets off to a slooooooooow start. The game begins with our hero, the preposterously square-jawed Kazuma, managing an orphanage in rural Okinawa. The early hours of the game had him cook meals for the kids, deal with petty conflicts and chill on the beach. Occasionally, during trips into the city, Kazuma would be challenged to a brawl by a professional criminal, petty criminal or just some dickhead. He would resist only until the battle started, whereupon he would fight with such brutal relish I was beginning to suspect his dorky flowerprint shirt had been explicitly designed to attract bullies for him to pulverize.

The two minute dust-up completed, Kazuma would then encounter a man who needed some financial advice that, despite my vocal protestations, was not given by hammering it out in morse code on his skull. Then he encountered a cat that did not in any way turn into a devil for him to punch. It was just kind of a weird cat. Then he found an old lady who needed some liquid to take her heart medicine. Her heart, sadly, stayed in her body until Kazuma returned with some mineral water. Then he had to buy a rare fish. He did not punch the fish even once.

I will yell at my television with the littlest provocation, but between Yakuza 3 and Heavy Rain a few weeks ago, it hasn’t heard so many cries of “dooooo soooomethiiiing” since Gerry.

Of course, all of this was punctuated with the incongruously vicious random fights, cut scenes setting up a needlessly complex political subplot, and one go-nowhere side story where Kazuma helps a local Yakuza boss (Japanese mafia) retrieve his mute, adopted daughter from the clutches of M. Bison.

I was confused. Every time I thought the game was taking off, some tubby asshole would stop me and ask how to set up a 401k. For every time I got to bust heads with an extendable staff, I had to listen to some stupid orphan cry about not having parents. Hey, maybe if you weren’t so whiny and boring, your parents wouldn’t have hated you so much they wanted to die rather than live in a world with in you in it. You ever think of that? Hand me my extendable staff.

(This was not a conversation option).

After struggling through Yakuza 3’s tedious opening hours, I figured out what the problem was. Rather, I figured out what my problem was. I had come to Yakuza 3 right after playing Heavy Rain, a game with pretenses to cinema that understood neither cinema nor games. Heavy Rain asked the player to carry out an assortment of mundane tasks without ever assigning any of them meaning or significance to the character performing them. It was littered with lazy exposition, clichés, and scenes that contributed precisely nothing to the story—things we would never, ever abide in a pure narrative medium. It was a badly written, ten hour quick time event. In Yakuza 3, I thought I was seeing shades of Heavy Rain in the pacing. No matter how I came at it, it seemed a lot like a badly written, gagillion hour minigame collection. 

But then, seven or eight hours into Yakuza 3, I saw what it was doing, and felt profoundly dumb for not seeing it earlier. This, I thought, is how Heavy Rain could have been done properly.

Tune in tomorrow for when I talk about why Yakuza 3 does boring “right,” and Heavy Rain does it oh-so wrong.

(UPDATE: Part two is live. Click here to read.)