A fun, compelling, stupid game that's worth playing. The side content is fun (although the real estate stuff was kinda dull) and the main story is great. Combat is the usual you get from RGG, kinda clunky but fun. The balance seems even more insane than normal, though. Enemies often guard or just attack straight out of knockback so I ended up relying on the same few safe combos. Majima's Breaker style is especially broken, dishing out insane damage while making himself nearly impossible to hit. It's not balanced in the slightest, but destroying a boss by breakdancing on him is admittedly very fun. Much like the other Yakuza games I've played, it's a mess, and a fun one at that.

Yani genel olarak güzel bir tecrübeydi, özellikle hikaye anlatımını çok vurucu ve hoş verdi bana
mekanik olarak majimanın kiryudan bu kadar daha iyi olması şaşırtıcı kiryu çok daha düz kalmasına rağmen hikaye ilerleyişinde ikisini de eşit sevdim ki bunu yapması manyak bir başarı bence
kiryu da sırf beast mod ve arada 1. kullanırken
majimada her boku kullanıp elendim hatta ana yan görevi pavyonculuğu da bitirip mad dogu da açtım o bile çok güzeldi
ve emlakcılık sıkıcı pavyon siker atar
minik etkinlikler güzel discoya ve karaokeye çok kastım bi de beyzboll
yan görevleri bi notkada sladım ç,ünkü hiç ilgimi çekemdi ne blm
güzeldi ama cidden vurucu bossları ve karakterleri vardı
ha bi de kuze babama benziyor

dame da ne johnson here!!

this was my first yakuza and it has a special place in my heart

content 4 days and best part is, the content in general is pretty good

-story is phenomenal
-goro majumba my king
- i wish i made the same amount of money by beating up goons
- ost is fye
- fuck mahjong

oh man. not the greatest game of all time but shit, it may as well be. feels emblematic. not just the Most video game but above and beyond the video game. there's just an astonishing amount of things to do in this and none of it is bad. there's so much REASON to engage with the world, and so much reward in turn.
eat at a restaurant to restore health? good news, you can become friends with the cook as she learns to become more confident thanks to your compliments. want to blow off some steam with an arcade claw game? good news, there's a sad little girl outside in need of toys and a father figure. bowling? WIN A CHICKEN WHO CAN MANAGE YOUR BUSINESSES.
impressive doesn't begin to cut it. both kamurocho and sotenbori are vibrant, bustling, real and living cities with dozens of things around each corner. the substories that present themselves are uniformly excellent for both protagonists, whom I've not even begun to talk about, and these stories gave me hard laughing fits till tears fell... as well as moments of pure, moving, tenderness.
this is close to a 25 hour game and yet my first playthrough ended with 107 simply because I seriously wanted to engage with everything. sure, I found myself grinding certain aspects, and if you're going for a literally full completion you're gonna have to grind some more, but I never wanted to turn down any of these experiences.

and that's not to mention the main story itself. certainly what elevates it, I think, it's unbelievable how many twists, turns, and spins are thrown at you and yet they're all natural, believable, and more importantly SHOCKING. this thing gets thrilling on so many levels. all over a small plot of land. what unfolds is exciting, infuriating, tragic, all at once. even when there's an air of predictability as to where things may end up, the execution is undeniably masterful.
if there's literally anything to fault this game on it's just that it's a minorly taxing experience. long cutscenes and the need to pay attention to subtitles means you have to stay engaged. even then, fuck it, that's all on me. I was happy to keep playing, happy to come back, even if it took me time. completing this felt like the end of an era and yet it's the start of something entirely new.

both kiryu and majima have superb balancing, hardly a bad thing to say about either. if there's an award for what who does best then I'd have to say kiryu wins on: character writing and dialogue, substories, kamurocho is also better to navigate; but majima wins for plot, character, and fighting styles. there's that much to compliment these guys on that I'm entirely forgetting how much more I can list.

really just a blessing to finally beat this and already looking forward to replaying because I WANT to get every achievement here. already looking forward to playing the next game. and the next. and the one after that. it's rare that a game can infiltrate my top 10 so fast (tied for 7th?), but wow, I don't think I've ever had this much to say about one like this. good time!!

NO SPOILER REVIEW AND EXPERIENCE

Intro:
Yakuza was something I never paid any mind to. I'd briefly heard about the series through popular reviewers online and just thought it was another series that I'd always admire from afar because I didn't think I'd like it. Then, I saw a video of a small girl slapping a grown man that immediately cuts to a nude man walking away in silence. Enough was enough, I had to know what the deal with these games was. $20 a piece was too much of an entry fee for me, if I thought I would like these games as much as I wanted to, I needed to go all in. Luckily for me, the very next week a Steam sale bundled all 7 games in the main franchise for just $44. I went all in and I started playing.

Review:
Yakuza 0 is brutal, hilarious, emotional, and engaging. I was immediately drawn in by the drama that ensued in the first hour of the game. Then, I got lost in the vast and dense city where the game takes place. The first half of the game took me 40 hours to play. This isn't a bad thing. I kept becoming sucked into the lives of every citizen of the town and their weird problems. I would be on my way to progress the story, then all of a sudden I'm a real estate agent trying to prevent these billionaires from taking over my beloved city. There are games within games inside this title. I must have sunk 10 hours alone into pocket car racing. The music (while sometimes repetitive) is great. When a track kicks in, you know exactly the type of emotion to be feeling at that moment. The story is over the top, and while it loses its pacing sometimes, it tends to pick itself up just long enough to hit a home run of a story beat. I played the game on Hard first. The combat tends to fluctuate between too easy and aggravating. You quickly figure out that between the two protagonists, if you switch to a certain style and do a certain move, you can bulldoze almost every fight. The aggravating part is while you do have a block and dodge, they aren't reliable enough to use for most of the encounters. Group encounters end up encompassing up to 20 people. If you get caught in one attack, the group swarms you and stun-locks you as they pass you around the group. Again, this is a small issue. I found the combat fairly consistent until the end game and didn't struggle much. When you should utilize your dodge and block (mainly in one-on-one boss fights), the camera prevents you from consistently dodging in a direction to avoid combos. If you can tame the camera, the combat is extremely tight on the Hard difficulty. Lastly, I want to talk about the visuals. I don't think that graphics are what makes a game good. I grew up playing games 10 years behind my friends. While they were playing on the newest consoles with the newest games, I was playing games one to two generations back. When they had Xbox One's, I had a Wii. It did make me appreciate what makes a good game, however. I look for graphics last in a game. Now that I have more income, I can play these high-fidelity games higher than 30 fps. That being said, the graphics do fluctuate. However, they fluctuate on a scale from "incredibly life-like" to pretty damn good. The in-game cutscenes are stunning, so sometimes pulling back to the scrolling text scenes can be a bit jarring. This didn't phase me a whole lot and I don't think it detracts from the game at all. Wandering the colorful and lively streets of the city is still excellent eye candy and I never got bored walking back through areas.

Conclusion: I'm not one to rate games, so I'll offer this: Yakuza 0 is an excellent game full of dense content, well-produced music, incredible graphics, and fairly engaging combat that's wrapped up nicely in an engaging story that I assume sets up 5 rows of dominos each poised to fall during the next games. I highly recommend this game, even for those on the fence about it. And since this game often goes on sale for $5, it's more than worth the risk. If you do purchase this game, keep an open mind. Loosen up. It's ok to laugh, cry, and get lost in this game. When you get hyped for a man taking off his shirt, you've either unlocked a new sexuality, or you finally understand what makes this game great (or both).

TLDR: While wacky, the well-made content and story make this game a must-play.