Is this game anything like Sleeping Dogs?
It's in the OP.
But no not really, the similarities are there's an 'asian' lead character and there's hand to hand combat in both, and there's a story about crime and triads/mafia. That's about it. Aside from that, they're really different.
Sleeping Dogs - In Sleeping Dogs, the developers were influenced by Hong Kong action movies from the 80s and 90s like Hard Boiled, The Killer and Jackie Chan movies like Police Story. The game takes place in a fairly large open world of Hong Kong where you can drive around in cars and motorbikes. The game does a really good job of getting the look and feel of Hong Kong during the day and at night and there are small touches of authenticity like the Pork Bun meme, that clearly show the dev team embraced the culture. The game excelled at switching between car chases, brawler and gun battles on the fly. The story seemed like it was influenced by Infernal Affairs/The Departed, a hit movie at the time, about an undercover cop infiltrating a triad. It was an amazing game and everyone should play it.
Yakuza - I'm going to talk about the series as a whole here. In Yakuza you play as a yakuza member, Kazuma Kiryu. It's set in Kamurocho, an area based off Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku in Tokyo, the red light district. The game will usually thrust you head first into the main storyline, which consists of story cut scenes and in the older games text dialog. The story mostly centres around Yakuza mafia gangs, Tojo clan and Omi Alliance. To progress the story, you're going to have to beat up a lot of bad guys, using anything from your fists, to heat moves (special moves that are usually ridiculous and fun), to random objects lying around that you can pummel the enemy with. Once the game lets you loose, you can explore the area at your leisure, and because the area is quite small, there are always distractions in the form of NPC's to help (side stories) or mini games (bowling, pool, mahjong, karaoke, dancing etc) or eating and drinking your way through every menu in the eateries in the game. What's special about the Yakuza series is that people really enjoy the storyline, the characters, the atmosphere of Japan, the fun combat, the amount of stuff to do in each game and the humour.
Most Yakuza games, have a secondary area, and in Yakuza 0, its Sotenbori (Osaka's Dotonbori). You get plenty of time to explore the area here when you control Majima, the second playable character in Yakuza 0.
