I know it's pretty crazy to start the Yakuza franchise here, but I honestly really enjoyed it. I was aware about the cameras going in but I honestly didn't mind it in the open world, though it did cause issues in the combat. Speaking of the combat, I actually thought it was pretty solid, it felt like a 3D Streets of Rage. If I'm going to be honest, the main reason I played this over Kiwami was Mark Hamill, I'm obsessed with his Joker, but the game was really fun, story was great, and I'm really excited to see the rest of it

It has been almost 4 years since I last played the original Yakuza game, released on the PlayStation 2.
It started a whole series, giving way to not only sequels, but spin-offs, a movie, a TV drama series based on one of the spin-offs, and merch (especially perfumes).

Back in 2020, I had a big Yakuza mood, and I played through 1, 2, 3, Kenzan!, 4 & 5 all in that year.

I haven't played any other Yakuza games since, not just because of the lack of consoles to play them on, but also because after 5, I got a bit burnt-out, and 5 was the biggest Yakuza game yet.

It's been a few years, and I decided to revisit the 1st game in the series, not only to see what I would think of it now, but also because it's gonna be important for my current college thesis.

Yakuza 1, in many aspects, still holds up!
The story is really engaging, and throws you into a big mystery regarding the Tojo Clan, the 10 billion yen surronding it, and the little girl known as Haruka.
It has many twists and turns throughout; some characters even double-crossing, or fuck it, even triple-crossing, playing games with each other.

There's a lot to unpack in this story, but I do believe it is well-written, even with all these twists, each can be something easy to fuck up, but thankfully, it all makes sense by the end, and the character's motivations also make sense.

With that in mind, I feel like I do need to discuss the game's voice acting.
It's no secret to everyone who has heard about this series, that the 1st game was, for the longest time, the only one to ever get an English Dub.
The biggest thing about it, is that they actually got some pretty well-known and talented voice actors in it, ranging from Bill Farmer, Debi Derryberry, Robin Atkin Downes and, of course, Mark Hamill, playing Goro Majima.
The problem is, even if these actors try their best with what they're given, the overall direction feels stitled, and some lines even have slight cuts in the middle of dialogue, or some emotions are not conveyed properly... or fuck, some of them are trying too hard, it seems.

One of the worst examples has got to be Darryl Kurylo as the main protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu.
Now Kazuma Kiryu is, perhaps, one of the most bad-ass characters in gaming and a total gentlemen, and his original Japanese voice conveys that so well, being voiced by Takaya Kuroda.

But it really seems like, with the direction he was given, Kurylo had a hard time emoting the right amount for many scenes or, and this is most likely a consequence of having to try to lip-sync dialogue properly, he speaks too quickly.
The voice in general is good, and he has some pretty bad-ass lines, but it's clear that the voice direction overall makes the voice acting suffer.

And that's not even to talk about the sometimes excessing swearing the English Dub has, but that didn't really affect me as much. Actually, many times it was understandable, considering the Japanese language barely has swears of the typical type, so with people like the yakuza or punks swearing, it makes sense.

Okay, time to go to the actual gameplay, and... it's fun!
While you're not exploring the red-light district of Kamurocho, you're engaging in battles that function pretty much like a 3D beat'em up, using a combination of punches, kicks, grabs and throws to put your opponents in their place.
It can feel a bit clunky sometimes locking on to the target you want, but after learning some of Komaki's techniques later in the game, you gain more options for crowd control, which is nice.

Outside of that, you can participate in various activities in Kamurocho, such as playing arcade games, gambling in the casino, go to hostess clubs and try to hold a conversation, or simply eat food at a convenience store or a restaurant.

There's plenty of side-missions for you to do too. I didn't engage in all of them, I think I only ended up doing 16, but they were alright, and get you more engaged with the world around you, even if some of them are not very interesting.

The overall presentation of the game is nice. Graphics are nice and detailed, even if some NPCs take a hit in graphical fidelity, and the music is pretty good too, with the main battle theme, Funk Goes On, being one of my favourites.

Overall, while Yakuza 1 does have its share of flaws, I believe it's a good first game in a long-running series, and it holds up pretty well in my eyes.

I understand why people like Y1 more than Kiwami even if I don't necessarily agree. It's such a compact and interesting experiment by Sega, at the time I truly believe there was nothing like it. Calling it "like Grand Theft Auto 3" is obviously a bad comparsion, but it's hard to compare Yakuza to other contemporaries. The stiffer combat with fewer options makes every new option you obtain more important. This is the first game I've played in the series that made the dropkick feel worthwhile to use. In Kiwami, I had no clue why anyone would use the reversal options in combat, but Kiryu in Y1 doesn't have turn-tables on the bottoms of his feet so he really needs them for crowd control. The necessity of engagement with its mechanics makes Yakuza 1 the only character action game in the series (except maybe 2 IDK).
Kiryu's stiffness isn't an unfortunate consequence of fresh devs trying a new idea, it's not a weird bug that detracts from the game - it's an intentionality of the design.This wrinkle in the fabric of gameplay is what gives reversals their purpose. Forcing the player to develop an understanding of their toolkit is actually good design, not bad. Not to say that later Yakoozers are inherently worse because they're more accessible - their intended emotional responses are simply different. Later games are much more about the power fantasy of being the tallest man in Tokyo and living in a walkable city.
This is actually an aspect of later titles I prefer over the original: the pseudo-vaction escapism elements. Maybe it's just because I've played 1,000 games set in Kamuro but Yakuza 1 feels the most matter-of-fact about its settings. Kiryu's lived his whole life in and around Kamurocho - there's not much new for him to discover. It's an element they really wanted to home in on in later entries, especially 3 and 8. 3 is actually the first game in the series with karaoke because the devs wanted to showcase Kiryu finally being able to relax after two games of pure action.
I primarily play games for escapism (free Palestine, trans rights, and black lives matter though) and I find RGG's life-adjacent heightened reality to be a perfect escape. But because player choice is at its weakest in Yakuza 1, the escapist elements don't flourish as well as they eventually will. Absolute lowest number of minigames and side activities, the camera is not under the player's control, and the player has far fewer options in combat than later games - Yakuza 1 is not an escapist fantasy, it's a sobering crime genre.
Every change to the combat that I could describe as "better" comes with a change to the music or atmosphere that takes away from the overall experience. The lack of all the goofy bullshit from modern Yakuza games makes the comparitively-simple story a lot easier to swallow. Plus there's none of those stupid Super Duper Heat Moves you have to use on bosses. Also I think this might be my favorite soundtrack in the series. The remixes of the battle tracks in Kiwami are like dogshit, but Funk Goes On and Intelligence for Violence go fucking crazy..
I do seriously like the voice acting, overall I think the actors do a good job even if the editing doesn't do them any favors. I actually really like Kurylo as Kiryu, even if he's no Kuroda. Goofy as Date is pretty good too. I'm actually impressed by how much dialogue is just untranslated Japanese that they hope players understand. And they pronounce most of it correctly! The constant swearing didn't really bother me, I work in a factory so I hear and say worse than this on a daily basis. Plus I really like the combat barks enemies have. STUPID OLD FUCK would have stuck with me if I had played this game in 2005.
A shoulder camera would have been nice but these are highly-detailed environments for a PS2 game, filled to bursting with NPCs, I understand that it probably would have hampered the atmosphere and taxed the hardware if the player could control the camera.
There's very little [subst]ance to these [subst]ories, they're all stories that have been repeated in other Yakuza games even outside Kiwami. I'm sure some people appreciate that they're simple and to the point, unlike modern substories that have 30 cutscenes and 4 distinct group battles.
In conclusion, Yakuza 1 is the best in the series because there's NO FUCKING MAHJONG

I played this using the Yakuza Restored Patch on my jailbroken ps2, you can find that patch here and I'd highly recommend it. Ive heard this game has some obnoxious loading issues, but considering I was playing this off of my HDD I won't really factor that into my review as it never was really a problem. https://youtu.be/YXsiu9PUbxM?si=AebYm1WSkwDOm7NV

This game definitely gets a bad rap nowadays. People will just say to play the remake or skip it entirely. I've heard people say it's unplayable and that the combat is so bad. I really wanted to challenge that perception and start at beggining. Playing them from the two remakes, back to the older three games, then back to the new stuff just sounds a bit unappealing to me. I'd much rather see it's roots and how it grew mechanically. I'm glad I did because I found a lot to love about this despite its issues.

The star of the show here is Kamurocho. It's such a well realized setting, it's densely packed with unique interactions, big crowds, beautiful fixed camera shots, and fun stuff to do. I don't think I've felt an open city setting feel quite as alive as this. It's also just drenched in atmosphere. Thick fog, appropriate use of motion blur, very unique lighting are all indicative of the strengths of the ps2 aesthetic.

I think the story is quite good here and it helped me truck through the game. I really love all the characters. There were some really neat twists that actually got me, and it all comes together by the end. Kiryu's relationship with Haruka is the heart of this game and I really like how despite losing so much he finds a new family in her. I do have a hard time following these dense kind of noir stories, so I'm glad the broad strokes of the story satisfied me.

I think the combat isn't great, but it's definitely not unplayable. I think an issue with it is that it makes a bad first impression. Your dodge sucks, the lock on has a strange learning curve to it and your move set is very limited. But as you upgrade stuff and do more side missions that give you new moves, it does start to open up and become more functional. This is one of those where you just get stunlocked and knocked on your ass a lot which can be annoying. And also the game is just a bit too easy? Other than some weird bosses that kicked my ass it never really presents a challenge. And when it does get more intense the game showers you with restorative items. So you kinda just get into a lull of repetition with it. But I'd argue the game isn't really trying to give you the deepest combat system, what makes the game special is the experience of it and all the things you can do in the city, and that aspect of it really worked for me. It gets dangerously close to being boring but the game always picks itself up.

This series is definitely prohibitive to new players to catch up, I totally understand if someone wants to start with one of the more recent ones. But I think Yakuza 1 has a lot going for it and shouldn't be forgotten. If you really appreciate the ps2 era then you really should try it and see if you like it. It's a very unique experience and it was fun to experience the humble begginings of this giant series.

the streets are soaked in melodrama. To Live Is To Not Run Away. hell yes brother.
see, what sega did here was basically update kunio-kun for 3D because nobody else was gonna do it, and god bless em for it because this game rocks. a game from the golden era of open worlds, with a razor-sharp sense of scope and locations only as detailed as they needed to be for 480i.
yakuza opens with a sleek, stylish and totally unique sega logo, and from that point the presentation never lets up. the opening song "recieve you" instantly sets the tone, and the soundtrack as a whole consists of tasteful funk-rock and alt-metal motifs alongside some brilliant sampling work. visually, the game's a killer too. city streets are adorned with gorgeous baked lighting, and the fixed camera angles paint beautiful portraits of the night life. UI elements are given a clean modern look that reflect kiryu's stoic yet transparent personality. good shit.
storytelling as always is something i'll have trouble articulating my thoughts on but i enjoyed how soapy this was. i could see the big twist coming from 200 miles away but it didn't matter to me. the game successfully makes you care about haruka and yumi and nishiki and everyone else and that's all i can ask for. the notorious voice acting in all fairness WAS pretty bad (save for mark hamill as majima; what an inspired casting!!!) but it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the story in any way. i am also soooo glad this one doesn't have that many substories... not looking forward to the RGG games that mainly consist of those.
the traversal and exploration is very understated though i found it incredibly novel here. kamurocho, being only one district of tokyo, makes for a very small "open world" but one i adore. this is the only game to recreate the feeling of finding a shop/restaurant in your hometown you never knew about, and that rules to me. lots of fun stuff tucked into every corner, like the arms dealer hidden inside a porno dvd shop.
the combat to my surprise was mostly very fun! crowd control is very tough early on, but once you get more upgrades it becomes a fun puzzle to solve for each encounter. keeping the heat gauge up is tricky but it's also incredibly rewarding. almost all good but my two main complaints lie here: most weapons are useless, and turning around is needlessly difficult. you learn to work around these issues but "work around" is the right term here unfortunately.
in the end i'm glad i chose to play this after 2 hours of kiwami left me disappointed years ago. yakuza 1 kicks major ass and part of that is due to how streamlined it feels. that sense of scope i mentioned earlier is there, but it never feels overwhelming. never trust a remake, kids.
(late review, this took me a while to write)

(I played the undub patch btw I couldn't take the game seriously in English LOL)

Welcome to my rushed, not proofread review.

I was both scared and excited going into this. I had recently finished Yakuza 0, a game that I frequently think about and appreciate more and more as time passes, and was eager to explore the rest of this series that so many of my friends adore. I was scared, however, of the chance that I’d get scared off by Yakuza 1 due to how much older it was. I mean, I play PS1 dungeon crawlers for fun so I definitely didn’t have much to worry about, but still. I was adamant to play PS2 rather than Kiwami, both because I planned on playing Kiwami afterwards to see the differences, and so that the notorious age gap between K2 and Yakuza 3 wouldn’t strike me as hard as it did many others.
I was quickly surprised at how familiar Yakuza felt. I’m genuinely impressed at how much of the series identity and feel had already been captured by RGG in the very first entry. Running around Kamurocho felt like I was coming home after years, probably just like how Kiryu must’ve felt. Though I will say the side-content wasn’t too compelling. I don’t think I can remember a single substory, though perhaps a part of that is due to me deciding to completely focus on the main quest partway through.
I’d like to talk about that main quest now, actually. It’s pretty decent overall, albeit held back by a multitude of factors. This game is no longer than 20 hours yet it somehow still feels really padded. There are a lot of useless quests throughout the game that make you run around all corners of the map that are very obviously there to increase your playtime, and it always kept me from staying engaged. I thought the story was good though, particularly in the final stretch which seems to be a pattern in these games. It was certainly what kept me coming back to this one.
I don’t think I articulated my thoughts on the combat in my Yakuza 0 review very well, so I’ll try my best to do better here. Yakuza combat, on a systemic/mechanical level is good fun! But the enjoyment of its combat is directly tied to the battle design, which can unfortunately get really poor at many points during this game’s runtime. Yakuza PS2 shines when you’re fighting a small amount of enemies at once, both due to the game’s general clunkiness and because the battle arenas are almost always a little too small for the amount of foes the game loves to throw at you. For this reason, I was enjoying battles the most during the fights against Shimano, for example. It was just a good fun brawl, but I’m sad to say that these fights are in the minority. Most of them are just the game spawning a dozen goons in a tiny-ass room with half of them armed with guns that’ll stunlock you and prevent you from doing anything. Enemies armed with pistols in Yakuza 1 might be the worst ever. I hate them with a deep, burning passion. The combat would be infinitely more fun without them. The ‘difficulty’ in this game barely ever feels like a true challenge, it’s just armed goons who won’t let you make a single move without knocking you down for seconds at a time over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and…. Yeah, I think you get the point. This game’s combat is the definition of hit-or-miss.
Also, I’d like to give a quick shoutout to that car chase mission in chapter 10. It sucked. I hated it. Chapter 10 was the worst part of any Yakuza game I’ve played the controls sucked so bad I wanted to jump off the nearest building like a full swan dive. But I digress.
On the whole, I think this game is decent. It has a cool story and can be quite fun at times. I think it’s aged a lot better than you’d assume, though it definitely has a lot of annoying clunk. This game is held back by a multitude of issues that I don’t think are tied to its age, its more of a general design thing. I do plan on playing Kiwami someday, so I’ll know if those issues ever get fixed then. But yeah, I don’t really have too much to say. It’s just a decent game. Very excited to play Yakuza 2 I hear its #fire.

Now, there isn't ACTUALLY a game with this title, but it's the best way to describe the first game that got a Japanese-only rerelease (Ryuu Ga Gokuto 1 & 2 HD Edition) bundled with the second game on an HD collection (it's on Wii U too for some reason O.o ). This remake looks and plays great, and it really shows (mostly because the cutscenes are recorded from the PS2 version and look dramatically muddier than the in-game stuff :P ). I'd never played a Yakuza game before, but BOY should I have. I LOVE crazy 3D brawlers, and if I'd have known a Streets of Rage-ish RPG like this had existed for so long, I totally would've been all over it years ago. I played through on normal, beat 51 sidequests, got all but 2 locker keys, and got max level all in 23.5 hours (and very little guide usage).

The presentation is excellent. I don't know if the American releases have English voice acting, but god I hope they don't. The Japanese voice acting is excellent, and really gets across the emotion so well. The story isn't plotted quite as tightly as I'd like, with some characters really coming out of nowhere to have very profound impacts on the story, but the impact is always there. I even teared up a bit at the deaths near the end. The side quests range from equally serious to just silly and funny, and really break up the heat of the main story well if you choose to do so. Given how this game ended, I'm quite interested on how the second game tells its story, given as how this story wraps up nicely but very open for a sequel.

The gameplay is such fun crazy brawling. It reminds me a lot of UPPERS, but with only one character. Slowly learning moves over time, especially the ones from the martial arts master, really gives the combat a great learning and difficulty curve outside of just the normal enemies becoming smarter. Stomping the crap out of people really never became boring, although it usually doesn't for me :P

Verdict: Highly recommended. If you like mafia dramas and/or beat-'em-ups at all, you will likely love Yakuza to death. It's beautiful presentation, good story, and very satisfying combat make for a fantastic RPG that really doesn't play like any other game I can think of. I can't wait to start more of them :D . My only hesitation in recommending this remake or the original is there's a BETTER remake already out in Japan that has more content and story stuff. I'd say waiting until that is out is probably a better choice :)

I really hate this mindset that preferring the original Yakuza 1 and 2 over the Kiwami remakes is nothing but elitism.

I started playing this franchise when 0 came to PC in 2018. Even with that, I still prefer these versions of the games. These games have a unique grit to them that the Kiwami games do not capture well at all. For Kiwami 1 in particular, it feels more like 0 but worse and with less content more than a remake of this game. Worst part is that Sega is actively treating the Kiwami games as replacements instead of alternatives.

In terms of the game itself I think it mostly holds up well. Even without the ability to change the directions of combos it does not take long to get used to. Story is still entertaining with my only issue being Nishiki's sudden betrayal (the one thing Kiwami objectively did better).

If you can I do recommend starting with this game and the OG Yakuza 2 and go from release order from there, and playing 0 in between 5 and 6. You'll appreciate how the series naturally grows instead of starting with 0 (which is the best game in the series) then following up with the Kiwami games.