A meeting between Silicon Era and Sega has revealed the list of gameplay elements in Yakuza 4 that will not be coming to the west with it, when the game hits North American shores on the 15th of this month.

In our review of the game's predecessor, Yakuza 3, it was noted that there was a lot of content cut, such as shogi, mahjong, a number of substories (sidequests), and more, and the game felt poorly localized because of it.

Fans of the series here in the west will be pleased to know that the list of removed content is substantially smaller this time around. The first big item cut is that of the Answer X Answer arcade mini-game, a quiz game where you must answer questions for points. The reasoning for this was simple: because the mini-game's text is shown as pictures, it isn't editable, nor is it feasible to redraw the thousands of questions that the game has in English. Well, at least not if Sega wan't to limit the time between releases.

The second part of the game changed is a particular song from the opening credits, called Butterfly City. This couldn't be brought over to the west due some licensing issues, and will be replaced by a remix of "For Faith" by Hidenori Shoji.

And that's it! Everything else, whether it's Japanese tile games or hostess club side quests, remains.