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RubyEclipse has posted a pretty thoughtful blog post over at the SEGA Blogs about the fan support, the mistakes made over the edits, and the positive reviews garnered for the title thus far.

“If there’s one thing about Yakuza that these last few months have taught people,” I thought as I sat at lunch on Monday, “It’s that the fans are a force to take seriously…usually.” Fans can be the biggest allies and proponents of games that may not be the huge, multi-million sellers like (insert generic FPS here), or (insert additional generic FPS here). They can create amazing successes for games that were never expected to have them – looking at you, Valkyria Chronicles – and they can just as easily do the opposite, in some cases.”

Check out SEGA’s post and the scores over here. Yes, Ruby I was looking for a post yesterday when I picked up the title.

I understand the fan rage about the cuts but more importantly fans got the game translated -- and the main reason to play the title is still present and very much intact.

For example:

While exploring around Okinawa before Kizuma has to leave for Tokyo, I decided to spend some extra time with Haruka who couldn’t sleep. With her holding my hand, I unknowingly stumbled into the red light district and almost entered an adult club. Haruka asked me if I wanted to go in with child-like innocence and leave her to go home by herself.

I couldn’t go in and be terrible guardian. We left together because I found myself caring about this little NPC.  I’m a sap? Yeah, probably…but it was the moment I realized that I had bought into the Yakuza 3 narrative.

The more I get into the universe of Yakuza -- where family issues are paramount -- the less I care about Hostess Clubs, Mahjong, and Shogi.

However, I have to acknowledge that these things are missing from the title, it will all make for an interesting review of this PS3 exclusive as my main mission is to be as honest when comes to looking at games and that includes being honest to myself.