I want to like these games so bad. Most of my friends are super into it but it just hasn’t clicked for me. There’s just… Sooooooooo much to do in these games. I get that is the appeal but it burnt me out hard. When 0 turned into a real estate management mini game I ended up calling it quits. I may get back to it eventually but dang. These games are huge despite their smallish maps

I’ve been trying to work my way through them. I’ve currently finished 0, 1, and 2. I played 0 twice, though, and will likely end up playing it again, lol.

I’ve been finding it difficult to get through longer games recently. Mainly because I only play them on the weekends. They keep releasing one every year or so which is also crazy. It feels like they are just pumping them out now, so I’ll likely take another 3-5 years before I get through them all.

I really enjoyed how zero let’s you explore. It feels like they took their time to model each area as close to real life as possible. I don’t know how true that is, but from the photos I’ve seen, it seems that way. I really liked shenmue 1 and 2, and these games feel like the closest thing I’ll ever get to that experience again.

While I had first heard of the series decades ago, I wasn’t really interested enough to actually pick it up for the longest time, even though I actually like limited open world games that put more detail into smaller locations. A few months ago, I bought Yakuza 0 on sale and recently tried it out on the Steam Deck. I’ve played a couple of hours at this point, so these are more first impressions than an actual review.

It’s a bit of a trip, both good and bad.

Starting with the technical side of things, the best way to describe it would be that it’s highly inconsistent. It runs well on the Deck, even connected to a 1080p external display, but that’s to be expected of a PS3/PS4 cross-gen title. It still feels like a PS2 game with a thick coat of paint though, especially the clunky movement and combat animations. Characters look incredibly well-modeled and textured, equal parts stylized and realistic - but the moment they are starting to move, the illusion falls apart. At least early on, the open world is a series of corridors in a district of Tokyo, with some locations connected via taxi. There are many, but poorly animated pedestrians. It can look impressive at night, with its countless authentic neon signs, whereas the daytime segments are more dated. I was expecting it to feel more believable and less like a set filled with poorly directed background extras that bump into things and each other, but perhaps my expectations were too high.

What’s truly bizarre and off-putting though is how this game switches between several different types of cutscenes, ranging from completely fleshed out and animated (those look great) over less well-animated (but serviceable), to nearly completely static (but still voiced)= cutscenes with barely any movement. There are also segments that aren’t voiced at all. In some cases, cutscenes appear to randomly switch between two or even all three of these levels of quality right in the middle of the scene. Maybe it’s some holdover from the series early days, but to me it feels jarring and unfinished, as if the developers ran out of money and/or time and had to push out the bare minimum product that almost like a cheaply made Japanese visual novel at the worst moments. Not what I was expecting of a Sega game.

Voice acting, which is completely in Japanese, does sound excellent, the speakers clearly being masters of their art, but the script - if the English translation is accurate, which it seems to be - about a young, idealistic Yakuza that gets cast into a web of conspiracies, with it’s long and overdramatic conversations, the insane amount of pathos, even a cheesy black and white retrospective (I’m sure there will be many more of those) is a mess, taking away from the generally interesting intrigue of the overarching plot with meandering conversations that would have benefited from an editor cutting them to a small fraction of their original length (which would have also permitted those to be actually fully animated with the same budget). I have seen a few clips of this game and others that make it seems like the series is able to make fun of itself (the new pirate spin-off makes this more than obvious), but at least early on, there’s not much of that in Yakuza 0 and to me it feels like it takes itself way too seriously.

The first time I played this game, I made a mistake and didn’t save the game manually at the telephone booths. Yes, I know they are marked with an ‘S’ icon on the minimap, but since I visited a booth during a cutscene, I thought the game had saved there automatically. When I discovered that about 1.5 hours of progress had been wiped, I was more than a bit furious. Having no auto-save is anachronistic for a 2015 game to say the least. I was considering giving up on this game entirely at this point, despite some desire to find out where the plot would be going, but I decided to try it again. It was then that it truly became apparent just how much of the game, at least during the introduction, is spent on narration and how little actual gameplay there is. Skipping all of the cutscenes and “cutscenes” the game allowed me to skip, which was annoying, and running through the world to the destinations, those 1.5 hours and change shrunk down to less than ten minutes of actual gameplay, which I haven’t even touched on yet. Even compared to a game by Quantic Dream, who are making perhaps the closest Western equivalents to this series (I’m expecting angry disagreements on this), this is quite a striking ratio. I like narrative games, I enjoy games that take their time exposing their world to the player - but the best way of doing this is through ludonarrative means, not by shoving an amount of cutscenes into the player’s face that clearly exceeds both the talent of the writers and the coffers of the publisher footing the bill.

Anyhow, on to the gameplay. Since it makes up so little of the game, at least so far, and is clearly an afterthought, I won’t spend much time on it. Yakuza 0 is a basic arena beat-em-up with limited open world exploration and mid-fight quick-time events that can catch you completely off-guard (as well as other quick-time minigames, like karaoke). Solid, but unspectacular combo system that permits the player to get by with button mashing, hard to notice button prompts, slightly unfair mini-boss and boss fights, at least to the inexperienced player, terrible lock-on system, AWFUL camera (one more aspect that makes it feel 15 years older than it is), no AI to speak of and animations that are decades out of date, apart from the crunchy and satisfying finishers (unless you’re at at the receiving end). The developers tried to make up for this with a charge up system that adds particle effects to the presentation and expands the available move set, which is probably another series tradition, but feels completely out of place. This isn’t a modern fantasy game, at least not yet, so I don’t know what they were thinking. Not that I was expecting realism - one guy beating up a dozen in a single fight clearly isn’t - but this feels cheap. They could have just made the UI more readable instead of compressing important information against the edge of the screen and compensating for it with effects. I’m sure this becomes less of an issue the more experienced one has with these games, but still, it’s hardly ideal.

Overall, it’s a weird package. I’m equal parts intrigued and annoyed by this game. Yakuza is clearly its very own thing. The formula is successful and well received, both in Japan and internationally, so maybe I’m the odd-one out for not fawning over it. It’s like a dish with two dozen ingredients, some of which taste great, others do not and the overall impression is mainly that of confusion. Despite frequent claims that Yakuza 0 was a great entry point into the series, it feels like watching a random episode of an obscure TV show 25 out of its 50 seasons in that some friend has been pushing me to watch for years, telling me how great it is. It’s like a (barely) playable Japanese telenovela, if that makes any sense, even though the story isn’t actually that hard to follow. The unremarkable gameplay, dated tech, unfinished presentation and meandering narrative kind of sour an intriguing setting that is bursting with character and detail. I want to explore late 1980s bubble-era Tokyo and I want to know how this story ends, but at least the early parts of this game feel like I’m being dragged along at a pace that seems both too fast and too slow at the same time.

If you’ve read this far already (I’m truly sorry for making you suffer through this stream of consciousness - just like the writers of this game, I should probably hire an editor), are familiar with both this game and the rest of the series, would you say that it makes sense for me to continue or should I move on? Has anyone else felt similarly baffled by the whole experience?

I’ve loved this series ever since I got 0 on a whim in 2020. I was vaguely aware it existed, but in my ignorance thought it was some sort of GTA clone. It was a pleasant surprise to find out it was actually a JRPG with beat em up combat. I subsequently played though almost every game on PS4 (including both Judgements and Ishin, but excluding Gaiden). I love how the location of Kamurocho is in (almost) every game and changes over time as the years go by. I was skeptical of the switch to turn-based combat in 7, but they won me over by making Ichiban such a charming protagonist. I can’t help but love the hopelessly optimistic guy! Majima’s my favorite character and I’m eagerly awaiting Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. As for my favorite, I’d have to say 0 because it was my first and it fleshed out Majima the most. The mini-sequel they added to his story in Kiwami 2 made it that much better.

One thing I love about the series is how detailed they are with food and drinks.

I started playing it for the first time last year and didn’t know really anything about it. I immediately noticed that how people talked didn’t seem respectful and it all seemed over the top comical. I learned that it was an English localization issue. I found the mod Yakuza Restored which makes it in Japanese but fixes the English subtitles to be accurate and the game was very enjoyable to play from that point on. I haven’t beaten it yet but I like how the main character is principle driven, it makes the story quite enjoyable.

I bought the whole collection on GOG when it was something like 80% off in 2023 I think. Still haven’t started. I hope it’s as good as people say. I know many people start with 0 but I think I’ll start with Kiwami for the close-to-release-order experience. Will probably start it sometime this year.

I have played all of the mainline games in the series in the last year, plus Ishin. It’s hard to pick a favorite, and the way they handled the transition to an RPG with the Ichiban games was very impressive. I think my favorite might actually be Ishin. I really enjoyed the feudal Japan setting, and it was a refreshing change from the usual Yakuza setting.

I will also add that the best thing I ever did to enhance my enjoyment of these games was to play them on easy. It allowed me to progress at my own pace and just enjoy the story and the side stuff without getting frustrated by massive boss difficulty spikes, although there were still a few boss fights that took a lot to beat even on easy difficulty.

https://youtu.be/eqGQEStnuwM

Yakuza 0 was my first and still has a special place in my heart. However, the new games with Ichiban have also been great. Slowly working my way through Infinite Wealth right now, but there’s just so much to do (I spent days just doing Dondoko island).

More people need to check out the Judgment games as well.

I’m not sure why I picked up Yakuza0 but I was so suprised by what I got in my hand I made a goal of mine to play the whole lot.

The presentation of the character of Majima in the casino is so good I ended up bringing in it up in conversations with non gaming dates and they still texted me back in the following days.