This is just pure fun with an interesting story and tons of content.

The story is super interesting and swaps between Kiryu (the main protagonist from other Yakuza games) and Majima (pre KIRYU-CHAN!!!!!!!) that does come together nicely in the end. The main plot revolves around a plot (ba dum tsss) of land that various Yakuza families are trying to buy but the owner is missing so it's a hunt to find them. Kiryu is framed for murder within this small plot of land so his story is about proving his innocence and preventing a power struggle happening within the clan. Majina is an ex-Yakuza, forced into a civillian role to try and get back into the Yakuza lifestyle. It really is a massive difference between this Majima and future him but it actually makes me sad about how Majima ended up the way he is like in the future games and really develops his character from being this one joke character to add some humor.

The combat is the main attraction to this game. It is brutally fun, rediculous and super stylized. You have different fighting styles for each character that feels unique and great. The breaker style for Majima has him fighting like he's break dancing and the beast style for Kiryu has him feeling like a tank; slow and hard hitting to give some examples. The environmental "heat" moves are also ridiculous from smashing a guy's head in a door to dropkicking them out of a tower window. No killing though! Kiryu hasn't killed a single man. That highway shootout bit? Rubber bullets! Oh they exploded? Rubber explosions! It's a running joke in the series.

Now the open world aspect of the game. Most sorts of open games are massive with barely anything in them. This is the opposite. There's 2 areas to explore, each with A SHIT TON OF STUFF TO DO. I am not exaggerating. The substories are abundant everywhere you go and range from being very serious to downright hilariously stupid and I love it. One substory has you protect "Miracle Johnson" as he moonwalks through an area from zombies for his music video. Yep. That happens.

Then you also got the minigames. Holy crap there's a lot. To name a few, you got karaoke, batting cages, arcades, fighting arenas and dancing. I can't name everything cause there's just so much you can do!

All in all, this really is just scratching the surface of the game. The story is great, there's tons to do and it's just pure fun to play. Highly recommended.

9 años desde que salió este juego (salio en 2015 pero llegó a pc en 2018) siendo que ya casi cumple una década desde su creación asi que senti que debia profundizar mas en que es lo que significa para mi este juego y porque es que es el mejor de la saga (de kiryu)

Habiendo jugado el resto de juegos de yakuza antes de este puedo destacar que esta es la perfecta combinación de historia, jugabilidad y gráficos; este juego iguala la atmosfera de los juegos de ps2 y tiene excelentes mejoras en la calidad de vida.

Yakuza 0 is one of the best games in this series. Narrowing down the playable cast to two characters and constantly switching between them every two chapters helps keep both characters constantly relevant in the story until the very end. 0 also manages to make up for the smaller playable cast compared to previous games by giving Kiryu and Majima 4 different fighting styles to use, helping vary up gameplay significantly.
The game also has a lot of fun and memorable sidequests, and is part of the reason the series is so popular nowadays. Yakuza 0 is the culmination of all of the ideas of the previous and executed at their best.

I remember starting this series around Yakuza 3. Just out of curiosity. And managed to find myself stuck into what I think is an amazing series of games. Fast forward from Y3 to Y5, word of a new RGG/Yakuza game makes the rounds. This magnificent bastard appears. Yakuza. Zero. It follows the same template of the previous games. A crime drama story with a awesome beat em up and slight RPG elements thrown in. But this is the prequel. Takes place in the 80s before a large chunk of what I know even remotely takes place. This game starts out a bit slow but once you're past the first chapter... the ride is only gonna continue to be amazing. This game will blow your mind. It's a great place to start for anyone who wants to experience a great story that's almost movie like. The action is frantic. The drama is astounding. You learn to love these characters and learn their plights. You also get to take time out with tons of side missions to improve your character and gain new items. It's something I'd recommend to anyone. This game is excellence. So please if you can go find a copy of this game. It is 20 bucks! You'd be hard pressed to find a game that will have you going crazy beating up thugs on the streets and then probably losing your mind at the turns in the story. Please give this game a chance if you have not. It'll be a ton of fun.

I would rate this game down even further, but this actually a great starting point to get yourself into the Yakuza series. It's badass, dramatic, serious, and knows when to be funny. Yeah the skill tree is not the best, and some of the combat needs more stuff added on to it to be desired, but this is great to play nonetheless. This story doesn't affect the mainline story as much, so it's a big breather for everyone to know whether they think Yakuza is the series for them. I played this as my first Yakuza game and it was a good choice on my part.
Gameplay is eh, but what I really is the money multiplier and heat action system. Hit enemies, gain heat, and unleash devastating attacks which make you wince seeing them in the form of mini-cinematics. Doing this can drastically increase the money you offer so performing these moves as much as possible to reap yen. The money multiplier is also a great mechanic that contextually fits with the setting of 80s Japan due to the Bubble Economy of 1986 to 1991 in its country. For more money, you also have Mr. Shakedowns which are essentially super bosses that hit like trucks and take all of your money if you lose, but you have chances to take it all back from him when you defeat them.
The overworld is possibly my favorite of any video game I've played as in it's not too big, but it's not too small. You also have the option of doing side activities such as karaoke, disco, mahjong, and more. In addition, if you want to take a break from the story, Kiryu can participate in substories which are little events that happen to be hilarious always.
It's a shame though that most of these characters that are apart of the main story never get mentioned outside of this game.
Yakuza 0 is the best game in the series. It has its major problems, but I love this game to death.

This was my first Yakuza game and I was absolutely not ready for it. It was legitimately overwhelming at first, not only in the sense that the open world has a billion things to do, but also in the sense that the story has approximately 1000 characters to keep track of.

However, by the time I got a handle on all this stuff I was having a great time, and THEN they switch over to Majima's perspective which threw a whole lot more at me. The plot was really engaging from that point onward, it shifts in tone pretty drastically sometimes, but overall it's great. I can't even begin to name all the highlights, but the villains are all top notch, the bits between Kiryu & Nishki are great, and seeing Majima's character development was super interesting.

Gameplay wise it's a lot of fun too, the general combat is a pretty mindless beat-em-up, but there's so many mini-games and side quests to distract from that. The real-estate and cabaret club mini-games in particular kept me busy for multiple days IRL.

Overall, this is a masterpiece, and I hope that the rest of the franchise can live up to it when I get around to playing those games.

Yakuza 0 goes above and beyond at everything, this game did everything it did beyond the point that it needed to. It's obnoxious but still extremely admirable for that, there are at least 30 minigames and dozens of fascinatingly hilarious substories to fulfil and all of them don't manage to distract from the emotional potency of its main story.

Just about every moral and lesson could be extracted from Yakuza 0, it seemingly touches on everything. From family struggles, selflessness, pride, financial debts, crumbling friendships and brotherhoods, you can find valuable morals about all of this and more in either the lead story or the wacky side quests and it's determination to go the extra mile throughout all of it is a consistently engaging sight to behold.

Tons of heart given to the two lead characters as well, with their lovable personality quirks even shining through in their respective combat styles and upgrade systems, all of it making for an addictive gameplay loop. First open world title in a while that i've actually felt compelled to go back and explore further after finishing, that side stuff is truly a whole separate package in itself.