Yakuza 0 (2015)

after playing the Promise Mascot Agency game and while not being by japanese devs was made to be like japanese games (i think?) I figured i'd give yakuza ago.

AND GOD DAMN WHAT AN INCREDIBLE GAME

at first the story seems very silly but the game is fun so who cares, then the story gets really compelling. but the end tied it up so well and somehow made it make sense haha

the side stories are also ridiculous but also very fun. onto the next!

"What the shit is that? Dude is like a lust machine!"

"Bullshit! I saw you prancing around! You enjoy being dumb! And I'm gonna beat the shit outta you!"

"No! Your majesty queen ayu-sama! Your demeanor was truly regal, and your behavior the height of haughty scornfulness! You were utterly magnificent!"

There really isn't another franchise like Yakuza and I'm happy this franchise exists. It's so schizophrenic and nonsensical in the best ways possible. Seamlessly meshing together a histrionic plot with utter absurdism and comedy gold. It works surprisingly well having almost all of the side quests be so insane and hilarious but keeping everything with the main plot sincere and grave. The main plot is ridiculous but it does have legit great moments and character development (excluding Majima). The map of the game may look small but it's shockingly dense with so much to do and discover. I clocked in about 90 hours and most of that was spent on side content. Completely optional and wholly entertaining. Not every side quest was good or memorable, but the hit rate on them is impressive. It's profoundly more than what you see in most open world games of copy and pasted game play loops. Effort was put firmly into side content and it's amazing for it.

Here's just a simple outline of some of the absurd side quests:

Cult quest making fun of the absurdity of cults with weird lingo and a clear push for taking money.

Toilet talk leading to you getting jumped but revealing the lady was real. Clever subversion.

Teaching a dominatrix how to be better at her job.

Mr. Libido as a recurring character. First introduced as a man thrusting in whitey tighteys in the corner of a cabaret club.

The entire pocket racer side quest is awesome. Getting wrapped up in the drama of something so important but being taken so gravely is hilarious.

Helping the kid get the new video game and resulting in a chain of robberies ending with the kids own dad mugging a mugger to give his kid the game they wanted.

Delivering a "Pizza" for the immigrant worker.

Even on the more heart felt side you have the restaurant quest where a worker isn't trusted to cook food but grows into a talented chef and getting the toys from the crane machine quest lines for the kid who feels alone. Both characters end up having interesting character arcs that were engaging to complete.

What makes all the side content more brilliant is the inclusion of the radio show where you send in your side quest stories. it's a fun way to reminisce on what you've already done in the game and I kinda wished you could have sent in more cards after completing the quest to recall all the side content you've done.

The Cabaret club mini game was extremely engaging and fun. I did find the mentoring minigame to be kinda cringey but the general concept of a cabaret club is cringe to be fair so that's to be expected. It is well written. What I like about the cabaret club are the outrageous confrontations with the competing cabaret club owners. It always manages to have that zany Yakuza flair to make it funny. The real estate minigame in contrast was more of a slog to get through. You are time locked from progression by needing to wait real time to collect money. Then you need to run around town like a jackass clicking on every building to discover which properties you can actually buy. Everything that the business management mini-game in Like A Dragon changes is a massive improvement over what is here. I still competed the real estate game, mostly because I found the confrontations to be mostly entertaining with the other billionaires.

The Out Run minigame to beat Electronic King was brutally hard. I had to train for awhile until I could reach his high score (took probably at least 10-15 tries) then I had to reset a bunch, fighting his goons and spamming through his chat every time until I got both lucky and good enough to beat him. Compared to Leisure king where I beat him on my first go since karaoke is WAY easier. At least Out Run has a great sound track. Though it's one song. The media king was also pretty rough since you had to beat him at the dance minigame and there was high variation in the scores he could get. I got 3 stars (max score) multiple times but still lost by like 1000 points which was insane.

Even the sincere main plot, while convoluted, still has dramatic pay off. My only real gripe with the plot, which is an issue with most prequels, is how they make Majima a really captivating character then on a dime who goes full "I'm the Joker baby!" mode because that's the character already established by the franchise... it's disappointing because I thought Majima was a good character who is completely ruined by going Joker mode for no good reason. It feels like a nose dive in the quality of writing. I get that's who Majima is within the Yakuza world, but what they wrote for most of the game was just a far more compelling character. I still like the ending of the game.

I think the overall plot of Yakuza zero is stronger than Like A Dragon (my first Yakuza game), but the characters in Like A Dragon are by far more likeable. Kiryu is way more badass than Ichi, but Ichi is just such an endearing dingus with a heart of gold that he is far easier to love. Majima I found to be busted in a good way. His combat felt way stronger than Kiryu and his fighting styles were more entertaining. Break dancing, fighting with a bat then the fast and useless speedy fighting style I never bothered with. Combat is simple but satisfying. Playing out like the classic beat em up brawlers like Double Dragon and it's ilk with light RPG elements. After playing Yakuza Zero, Like A Dragon really does feel like a naturally extension for the franchise. You already had basically random encounters like in Like a Dragon. And so much of the Yakuza franchise takes plenty of nods and influence from classic JRPGS. It's more surprising they didn't make a JRPG Yakuza game sooner to be honest.

Yakuza Zero is a fun and zany ride. There is a ton to do and its mostly optional. I found myself intrigued and entertained enough to explore most side content. But I didn't need to. I WANTED to which is an important distinction. Yakuza isn't designed to waste your time. It's designed to give you a ton to do and it's all varied. No system in this game is deep, but it's certainly greater than the sum of its parts.

Picked this one up on sale without any expectations, unexpectedly found an all-timer.

My only two gripes would be:

• The story is good but not intricate enough to justify the sheer volume of cutscenes, my console turned itself off multiple times waiting for them to be done

• The combat is pretty samey and gets boring quite quickly, especially playing as Kiryu

Pretty much everything else is a pro. Special mention to the cabaret club game which is probably my favourite minigame ever. Highly memorable experience overall.

I had two sets of expectations going into this game, which I have been putting off playing for a long time.

The first, was that this was just like shenmue. I heard that constantly. 'You like Shenmue, Yakuza is just like Shenmue except better'. I am please that, for good and ill, this is not shenmue. Sure, it's set in the 80s in japan and involves arcades and punching things but that's where the similarities end. Where Shenmue had an obsessively detailed world where every little thing was delicately crafted; Each npc was a unique person with their own routine and agenda and personality, even the ones you would fight were all unique and they fit into the world somewhere. there were no generic npcs at all. the fighting system was deep and complex and attempting some sort of needless realism. every location had an interior, almost every item was interactable; Yakuza has a basic video game world of copy pasted assets. it's full of faceless people, you get into countless fights with meaningless enemies, the combat system is simplistic and bare bones, and gets rather tiring after a time.

all that aside, it's still very good. it says something about this game that dozens of hours after completing the story, I want to continue to be in this world, finding what there is to do, completing activities. Everything in Yakuza is rewarded. You will get something out of every little distraction you can do, and often side quests overlap with activities and you will make progress in one by being distracted with another. This cuts both ways, as to complete the game fully you have to spent unimaginable time on the most mundane actions. You have the hone skills at the most worthless things. it's not worth it. But it is a joy that it's there. If you really want to do it, you can get a little tweak of that dopamine lever for it all.

my second expectation was that the story would be an 80's style hyper masculine cis male fantasy. and it sort of is? but in a parody of itself. I expected something like The Warriors and it both tributes and mocks that kind of plot. It does lay out the hyper masculine tropes but they're more often embodied by the villains; meanwhile our protagonists are the sweetest and often most sensitive boys. They do solve all there problems by punching them but they also put great effort into helping perfect strangers with their wacky adventures. they are kind and encouraging and kind of morally positive despite being gangsters with no desire to ever be legitimate.

The story steers between melodrama and silliness, with every conflict narrowing down to all logic being abandoned for a one on one fist fight, inevitably. Every single enemy is convinced their secret weapon and path to victory is to just decide to beat the snot out of your characters. Except that you control what appear to be secret vampires that can shrug off groups of people beating on them, can heal gunshot wounds in a matter of hours if even that. it's a king of acceptable logic side step you just have to go with if anything magical is to come from this. They just have plot armor. It only adds to the playful absurdity.

The attempted drama of the story is broken up by the side quests which are almost always silly. You run the most bizzare errands but ernestly and it endears the player character and establishes how sweet and adorable they actually are. it's a good ebb and flow of emotions. When it wants to be sincere, the story beats are heart wrenching. But then something completely foolish can be indulged in until we resume.

One last point about the story, just because I think it's amusing how many descriptions I have read that are so completely clueless in this particular regard. I saw a thread on GameFaqs asking if anything about this game is gay and the overwhelming response was no, nothing gay about it. I wonder if we played the same game. because this game, is so homoerotic it's like watching Top Gun. Sure, none of the boys are making out or worse, in fact they don't do anything, with women or each other (well they objectify women they just don't *** them) but a good amount of men in the story get super horny to be punched and kind of fall in love with your player characters for punching them good. There is no heterosexual explanation for this.

the gameplay of Yakuza 0 is shallow, if existent at all, you walk from place to place and sometimes you punch some people, sometimes a lot of them; The story however is glorious in it's drama and it's absurdity. It makes all this worthwhile. The side activities are not remarkably deep but they are addictive and they are of some value. As I said already, I kept playing this long after I was done. There is a lot to enjoy here.

I don't know if I need to recommend a game this old. Honestly, I should have played it myself long ago. I have a lot to catch up on. But if you had doubts of if this is a game for you, as I did, but you like camp and punching, you'll have a good time.

This game is freaking gold.

Spent almost an hour at the batting center trying to get my timing just right. (And nailed it!)

Spent the next hour at Pocket Racing - before I knew it I was testing every component to see how many seconds I could shave off. Getting the right set and winning a race at the last minute feels AMAZING. And honestly, Kiryu posing all serious with the car is worth it alone.

Got roped up in a series of substories with the Pocket Racer and a bunch of kids. And Yakuza just keeps on layering funny stuff and absurd stuff and heartwarming out of NOWHERE. But Kiryu lifting everyone up never gets old.

Finally decided to head into the story. And all I can think about is this freaking, split-second QTE that absolutely blind-sided me. Just managed to hit it and was rewarded with the most dramatic business card handout of all time.

Now I've reached the real estate stuff, let's see how deep it goes.

(And I still can't believe I actually learned to play Mahjong...)

(This is a mini-review as part of my holiday project to try out as many games on my wishlist during the Steam Sales, and then getting them refunded if I don't think I will play them. In short: demo time!)

What is it: A console-to-pc brawler game with a huge story centered on being a Yakuza and getting framed for MOIDER

Played: 26 minutes

Wot I think: Man, this game looks good, the Tokyo aesthetic is on point! The many cut scenes are smooth and week written: you just know an epic and twisted story is about to go down. The main character looks super bad-ass and hot in his yakuza suit. I really want to want to play this, but but I'm not really in the mood for a spot of ultra violence right now. I want something cuter with less torture.

(Yes, I know I will end up playing Persona 5. It's okay, I've accepted my fate)

Is it a keeper? No, refunded

It's also one of the most popular games here. Some of the reviews I've seen go like this:

Apogee of creativity. Vertex of invention. Crest of ingenuity. Acme of imagination. Pinnacle of innovation. Epic of epics. Legend among legends. Peak fiction.

So what am I missing? Objectively, it's definitely a good game. I've been playing it for half a year now. Yakuza 0 is both a long game and I don't really have all that much spare time.

Subjectively, I didn't really like it that much. I honestly don't know if it's my own fault, though. I initially liked the combat, so I did just that, a lot of that. I hunted Mr. Shakedown for cash. Of course, after a while, I got bored with it, although I still had a long way to go story-wise. In a similar fashion, while not exactly loving the real estate mini game, I didn't mind it all that much. For a while, I enjoyed being this real estate mogul which played pool between every cash-in, but by the last real estate king I was exhausted. Same way with Majima, I loved the cabaret mini-game, but I got tired by the end. So, in a way, I guess I got some sort of game burn-out, if that's a thing. Writing this review I realize I actually have difficulties pointing out why I didn't enjoy all that much. The side-quests are awesome and very creative. Most of them are very, very fun.

To sum up this sorry review, I think I would've enjoyed the game much more if it were a tighter experience. At the same time, taking out all the unnecessary stuff from the game would probably not make the game so memorable, so there's that.

Steam Curator

Yakuza 0 is far from a polish experience, but it just goes to show how great its combat and characters are that I really didn't mind the inconsistencies all that much.

If you're a fan of epic narratives, tragic characters, or just have any interest in Japanese culture, get ready for for one of the most entertaining games you'll play this year.

Just do yourself a favor and ignore the substories.

For my full thoughts, check out the video review:

(Summary below if you dont want to read thoughts)

Yakuza 0 was a massive disappointment. I was excited to try this one based on the hype surrounding it with some gamers hailing this game as the ultimate modern-city type masterpiece. I cant stress enough how this game failed with many things it tried to do. The story is very inconsistent and its structure is weak, the pacing is sloggish and the overall theme was actually interesting, but its filled with many plot holes that takes me out of it, for each chapter i managed to find a couple, an example of that is around chapters 8-12 we have a person who gets shot in the back and suddenly few hours after we see him torturing a character and is acting strong and mighty as if nothing happens. Another example is slightly after that in a prison where one person opens the cell that contained 5+ people previously only for them to disappear after that making the whole thing nonsensical. On another occasion we find a person knows about a secret but we dont get to see how? its a major sin, tell dont show, and many more plot holes to count that i can fill this entire review with, in short the plot is weak and full of problems, for a game hailed as masterpiece story it was far from that. Next are the characters, they are unbelievably inconsistent, they keep switching and changing out of the sudden, well except for 2 major ones, a character will do a sudden 180 turn on his loyalty just when the author demands it, its a plot device tactic and its cheap plot convenience because the writers dont know how to advance the plot naturally without it, characters are flat and most of the villains act very stupid, to give an example we have the encounter with Kiryu when Dojima is on the hunt, the characters wanted to capture him, instead they resort to stupid plans and waste him, in fact a guy comes driving with a car and they are standing and watching the whole time, the game is filled with moments like this, and other edgy moments to show the poser villain how mighty and strong he is by shooting a harmless woman, he is angry listen to him...lol bad and edgy writing. For worse things Women are treated horribly in this game, they exist for pleasure only, which sucks too. A lot of the characters are a bunch of flat and boring angry faces that are dumb as rock.

Gameplay is also bad, the controls suffer from clunky movements and during combat it gets even worse, with inconsistent hitboxes and bad target system. The enemy A.I is very bad and they will take turns to get beaten. The movesets have some variety but they wore off quickly due to the game being long and it keeps the same human enemies with no variety at all, while also having a lot of useless weapons as a second arsenal that all play out the same. The visuals are bad even for their year 2015, with visuals that look like PS3 game. The music is actually good and the sound effect helps immerse the player in the city hubs. The side quests are weird and dont make sense within the context of the world, like why would a Yakuza drop by randomly on the street to help a girl pretend to be her boyfriend? or help a couple get married by play crosswords? or buy a girl panties? or play rock with a band..and so many other thing, not only they lack the impact on the world and multiple game and choice paths, they also make no sense in the context of the world and add nothing but pointless hours of text. The minigames are not inspired or anything but they give extra fun hours for those who seek more so im neutral on them. The cinematic cutscenes are good but inconsistent, transition from cutscene to ingame dialogue is very janky and kills the immersion and intense of it, with terrible animation (literally talking faces) lol. It's also very tedious, walking from point A to point B each quest only to fight the same 4 thugs around every corner of the street for each 30-60 second makes the game tedious and more of a slog to view the story.

Overall this game is a hugely overrated, i expected a lot better gaming experience from it. The flow of the story was enjoyable and i enjoyed watching Majima kick some ass, he is by far the best character of this game. It's not a terrible game, but it was a mediocre one. I was let down, sadly.

Summary:

Pros:

• Music and Ambient Sounds to enhance immersion
• Engaging Story that keeps you interested for more with its twists and turns
• Minigames to spend your extra time
• Great main character (Majima)

Cons:

• Badly written plot, filled with holes and inconsistencies
• A lot of characters are simple plot devices and a tool for asspulls out of nowhere
• Rely on over the top action that kills the tensions
• Stupid and flat villains
• Bad women representation
• Clunky movement and controls
• Generally basic and dull and shallow combat system with low enemy variety and easy challenge
• Tedious walking from A to B sections
• Uninteresting Side Quests
• Disappointing ending and pacing is off
• Janky transition of animation and text dialogue.

Rating: 9/10

In short, it's about par for the course for Yakuza, which means it's awesome.

I jumped into Yakuza with 3, taking a chance and renting it, and I was so pleasantly surprised with what it offered. I expected a normal action game because I knew nothing about the series, but what I got was a beat 'em up RPG genre bender where I could play sports and do other activities while engaging in a great, melodramatic story about the yakuza (the mafia that I am most interested in).

Yakuza 0 is that, except it's a prequel to the first one so it's the best place to jump in if you haven't. It has all the features of previous installments like the hand-to-hand fighting game battle system, but you can level up certain fighting styles, which does add some depth. There are also things like running a business that can make you money, which is used to buy things and upgrade yourself.

It also has a lot of side stories but to be honest, they're not very exciting from a story perspective. Sure, the developers tried to give a little bit of a story but Witcher 3 this is not. I'm not going to remember any of them that I did.

Yet when you're playing the story it clicks because Yakuza also has an interesting plot. And hey, indulging in an arcade game or batting practice is a welcome distraction when you just want to get away. Or you know, look at those hot Asian babes in the porn shops... which I would never do. Nope.