Unbelievably pandering to make an entire game based on that Dame Da Ne Guy meme
Veredito: Ambicioso, defeituoso, e maravilhoso.
Yakuza 0 é o típico jogo que acerta muito e erra muito. Não porque os momentos bons são sempre incríveis e os ruins são sempre uma merda total, não por ser um jogo de extremos. Ele não é. E sim porque ele tenta fazer tudo e às vezes consegue, às vezes não.
O grosso da experiência é um bitemup 3D com foco na história, e essa parte é excelente.
O combate flui redondo e tem bastante profundidade. Estilos de luta diferentes, esquiva, bloqueio, barrinha pra encher e dar golpes especiais que gastam ela, improvisar armas com o que estiver à mão, lutas de chefe, ondas e ondas de inimigos. Tudo bem balanceado, bem testado, sempre com variedade.
Já a história é incrível. Um drama no mundo do crime organizado, com foco nos personagens. São 2 protagonistas, 2 histórias que correm em paralelo, cada uma na sua cidade, com suas próprias reviravoltas, seus próprios problemas. De um lado, Kazuma Kiryu se vê na pior situação possível depois de um serviço que deu errado, e é inspirador ver o quanto ele se desdobra do avesso pra fazer o que acredita ser a coisa certa, mesmo tomando porrada atrás de porrada vindo de todos os lados possíveis. Do outro, Goro Majima se vê sendo explorado e chantageado pelo pior tipo de babaca que existe e, no seu desespero e convicção de sair da merda, ele se vê diante dos dilemas morais mais difíceis e cruéis. No meio disso tudo, um massagista imigrante que tá procurando incansavelmente um cara que ele nem sabe quem é, uma garota cega que não fez nada de errado mas é arrastada pro olho do furacão, uma figura paterna que está na cadeia, e um lotezinho minúsculo e todo fodido que vale mais do que vários anos do meu salário.
Além disso, Yakuza 0 tem uma quantidade OBSCENA de conteúdo não-obrigatório. Não só sidequests de descer a porrada, embora essas também existam aos montes, mas todo tipo de minijogo que você puder imaginar. Autorama, boliche, 2 jogos de ritmo diferentes, gerenciamento de imóveis, gerenciamento de um kyabakura, vários fliperamas com seus próprios jogos, casas de mahjong e shogi, bares com dardos e sinuca, espaços de apostas com pôquer e roleta e vinte-e-um e mais vários outros jogos de azar, TEM COISA PRA CARALHO. E com mais profundidade do que você imagina. Os carros do autorama são customizáveis, e você precisa montar o carro certo pra cada tipo de pista, saber a hora de acelerar e de se deixar ser ultrapassado. A empresa imobiliária e o kyabakura envolvem recrutar e treinar sua equipe, delegar os serviços certos para as pessoas certas, administrar o tempo e os recursos. E em alguma medida, menos ou mais, todos os minijogos têm essa profundidade.
E é aí que mora o calcanhar-de-Aquiles de Yakuza 0. Ele faz muita coisa, ele tenta casar bem a história principal, as minihistórias das sidequests, os minijogos, o bitemup, as duas cidades, o mundo aberto, tudo. E ele é um jogo MUITO BOM, mas daqueles jogos muito bons que também dão muitos tropeços. Em algumas coisas ele é ótimo, noutras ele é só mais ou menos, noutras ele é fraquinho, e não é perfeito em praticamente nada.
Por um lado, isso faz parte da graça. Não gostou do karaoke? Beleza, então tenta bater o recorde no beisebol aí. Seu estilo de porrada é mais força bruta ou mais agilidade? Você troca entre eles com um pressionar de botão. Você quer seguir na história principal ou quer ajudar aquela adolescente que tá sendo forçada a vender as próprias calcinhas usadas contra a vontade dela? A decisão é sua. Yakuza 0 te deixa livre pra fazer o que gosta. Inclusive, ele não é um RPG mas permite muito mais roleplay que vários RPGs por aí, e essa variedade esmagadora é uma das coisas que possibilita isso.
Por outro lado, tem coisa que é indefensável. A câmera às vezes é bem ruim. A conclusão da história do Majima, que tava maravilhosa até quase o último momento, foi amarrada e encerrada meio nas coxas. O minijogo de enviar agentes, para procurarem equipamentos e materiais, tem uma interface HORRENDA. Aliás, vários dos minijogos falham miseravelmente em te explicar como que se joga. Algumas lutas de chefe - estou olhando pra tu, Kuze - são quase idênticas umas às outras. A lista de reclamações continua, e continua, e continua.
Veja, o problema dele não é ser gigantesco, não é ser ambicioso. Isso não é defeito. O problema é que ele não conseguiu dar conta de tudo, ou pelo menos não sem dar uns tropeços aqui e ali.
Mas eu diria que no geral ele se saiu muito bem. É praticamente contra as leis da Física existir um jogo tão denso como este, com tanta coisa legal pra fazer, com um sistema de porrada tão caprichado, uma história tão foda, uma variedade tão ridícula de absurda de incrível, e achar que ele não vai pisar na bola com algumas coisas.
Yakuza 0 é o típico jogo que acerta muito e erra muito. Não porque os momentos bons são sempre incríveis e os ruins são sempre uma merda total, não por ser um jogo de extremos. Ele não é. E sim porque ele tenta fazer tudo e às vezes consegue, às vezes não.
O grosso da experiência é um bitemup 3D com foco na história, e essa parte é excelente.
O combate flui redondo e tem bastante profundidade. Estilos de luta diferentes, esquiva, bloqueio, barrinha pra encher e dar golpes especiais que gastam ela, improvisar armas com o que estiver à mão, lutas de chefe, ondas e ondas de inimigos. Tudo bem balanceado, bem testado, sempre com variedade.
Já a história é incrível. Um drama no mundo do crime organizado, com foco nos personagens. São 2 protagonistas, 2 histórias que correm em paralelo, cada uma na sua cidade, com suas próprias reviravoltas, seus próprios problemas. De um lado, Kazuma Kiryu se vê na pior situação possível depois de um serviço que deu errado, e é inspirador ver o quanto ele se desdobra do avesso pra fazer o que acredita ser a coisa certa, mesmo tomando porrada atrás de porrada vindo de todos os lados possíveis. Do outro, Goro Majima se vê sendo explorado e chantageado pelo pior tipo de babaca que existe e, no seu desespero e convicção de sair da merda, ele se vê diante dos dilemas morais mais difíceis e cruéis. No meio disso tudo, um massagista imigrante que tá procurando incansavelmente um cara que ele nem sabe quem é, uma garota cega que não fez nada de errado mas é arrastada pro olho do furacão, uma figura paterna que está na cadeia, e um lotezinho minúsculo e todo fodido que vale mais do que vários anos do meu salário.
Além disso, Yakuza 0 tem uma quantidade OBSCENA de conteúdo não-obrigatório. Não só sidequests de descer a porrada, embora essas também existam aos montes, mas todo tipo de minijogo que você puder imaginar. Autorama, boliche, 2 jogos de ritmo diferentes, gerenciamento de imóveis, gerenciamento de um kyabakura, vários fliperamas com seus próprios jogos, casas de mahjong e shogi, bares com dardos e sinuca, espaços de apostas com pôquer e roleta e vinte-e-um e mais vários outros jogos de azar, TEM COISA PRA CARALHO. E com mais profundidade do que você imagina. Os carros do autorama são customizáveis, e você precisa montar o carro certo pra cada tipo de pista, saber a hora de acelerar e de se deixar ser ultrapassado. A empresa imobiliária e o kyabakura envolvem recrutar e treinar sua equipe, delegar os serviços certos para as pessoas certas, administrar o tempo e os recursos. E em alguma medida, menos ou mais, todos os minijogos têm essa profundidade.
E é aí que mora o calcanhar-de-Aquiles de Yakuza 0. Ele faz muita coisa, ele tenta casar bem a história principal, as minihistórias das sidequests, os minijogos, o bitemup, as duas cidades, o mundo aberto, tudo. E ele é um jogo MUITO BOM, mas daqueles jogos muito bons que também dão muitos tropeços. Em algumas coisas ele é ótimo, noutras ele é só mais ou menos, noutras ele é fraquinho, e não é perfeito em praticamente nada.
Por um lado, isso faz parte da graça. Não gostou do karaoke? Beleza, então tenta bater o recorde no beisebol aí. Seu estilo de porrada é mais força bruta ou mais agilidade? Você troca entre eles com um pressionar de botão. Você quer seguir na história principal ou quer ajudar aquela adolescente que tá sendo forçada a vender as próprias calcinhas usadas contra a vontade dela? A decisão é sua. Yakuza 0 te deixa livre pra fazer o que gosta. Inclusive, ele não é um RPG mas permite muito mais roleplay que vários RPGs por aí, e essa variedade esmagadora é uma das coisas que possibilita isso.
Por outro lado, tem coisa que é indefensável. A câmera às vezes é bem ruim. A conclusão da história do Majima, que tava maravilhosa até quase o último momento, foi amarrada e encerrada meio nas coxas. O minijogo de enviar agentes, para procurarem equipamentos e materiais, tem uma interface HORRENDA. Aliás, vários dos minijogos falham miseravelmente em te explicar como que se joga. Algumas lutas de chefe - estou olhando pra tu, Kuze - são quase idênticas umas às outras. A lista de reclamações continua, e continua, e continua.
Veja, o problema dele não é ser gigantesco, não é ser ambicioso. Isso não é defeito. O problema é que ele não conseguiu dar conta de tudo, ou pelo menos não sem dar uns tropeços aqui e ali.
Mas eu diria que no geral ele se saiu muito bem. É praticamente contra as leis da Física existir um jogo tão denso como este, com tanta coisa legal pra fazer, com um sistema de porrada tão caprichado, uma história tão foda, uma variedade tão ridícula de absurda de incrível, e achar que ele não vai pisar na bola com algumas coisas.
eu sempre tive a visão de que yakuza era super bizarro e engraçado, mas nunca tinha dado uma chance real para a franquia.
Isso mudou depois de eu me interessar por obras japonesas e com subtexto de organizações criminosas, eu sei que é específico, mas foi justamente isso que fez eu me interessar pela franquia.
Quando eu comecei a jogar yakuza, logo de cara, a primeira coisa que eu reparei foi a sua ambientação e o seu combate, que por mais diferente que pareça, fica extremamente divertido depois de dominado.
A historia do jogo é o seu maior charme, e me quebrou completamente, pois eu esperava algo bobo, e acabei descobrindo um jogo muito sério e bem feito.
Hoje, depois de consumir a maior parte dos jogos da franquia, percebo como esse meu preconceito com o jogo era bobo, obvio que existem momentos enfadonhos, mas não é o cerne do jogo e nem sua totalidade.
amo o majima, casa comigo cara!!!
Isso mudou depois de eu me interessar por obras japonesas e com subtexto de organizações criminosas, eu sei que é específico, mas foi justamente isso que fez eu me interessar pela franquia.
Quando eu comecei a jogar yakuza, logo de cara, a primeira coisa que eu reparei foi a sua ambientação e o seu combate, que por mais diferente que pareça, fica extremamente divertido depois de dominado.
A historia do jogo é o seu maior charme, e me quebrou completamente, pois eu esperava algo bobo, e acabei descobrindo um jogo muito sério e bem feito.
Hoje, depois de consumir a maior parte dos jogos da franquia, percebo como esse meu preconceito com o jogo era bobo, obvio que existem momentos enfadonhos, mas não é o cerne do jogo e nem sua totalidade.
amo o majima, casa comigo cara!!!
To live is to not run away
The original Yakuza, the game that transitioned Sega out of the in-house console era onto the PS2, opens with this line. It embodies the spirit of the entire franchise that would come to be. Yakuza’s spirit was that of the romanticized Bushido code mixed with the rich atmosphere and contemporary setting of Yakuza crime movies. What distinguished Kiryu from the real-life yakuza was his way of life: his tenacity and insistence on walking the path laid out for him.
Yakuza 0, as a tenth anniversary celebration, looks to explore that tenacity, that insistence on looking past the inflating yen of the late 80s, and direct Kiryu and another man with a common conviction—Goro Majima—toward their personal truths.
> Through this whole ordeal, I saw a lot of people try to set things right. It blew me away, man. Not just yakuza. Civilians too. It really drove home just how green I still am.
The streets of Kamurocho in ‘88 were dirty and grimy. There’s a bed of trash coating the sidewalk, and gaudy lights and excess are laid out everywhere. It’s the kind of environment that breeds monsters willing to tear each other apart, tooth and nail, for a spot of land about the size of a doghouse. Perfect space for a 20-year-old Kiryu, aimlessly following the whims of others and vaguely following his adoptive father’s footsteps.
Kiryu’s philosophy and way of life is slowly being brought to the surface. Every surprise attack he gets from Kuze, every slimy wishy-washy opinion from Awano, and every piece of shit thing a yakuza takes the liberty of doing to those he cares about pushes him over the edge. There’s a level of reverence 0’s Kiryu plot has towards the character’s legacy as a whole – filling in some of the missing pieces of characterization that understandably couldn’t be explored in the original ‘05 game.
Kuze specifically is masterfully crafted as a benchmark for how Kiryu is doing, and his level of resolve. He’s a stubborn old man that tries to constantly beat Kiryu down through raw strength reminiscent of his boxer days. He’s the crown jewel of Kiryu’s antagonists in his simplicity and brutality. Tachibana was able to confide in a young Kiryu, but it took his death for a switch to flip in the kid’s head – he’s going to stop the lieutenants with his own two fists even if it costs him his life. Walking away, the old man’s able to acknowledge Kiryu as fit for the job.
Shibusawa isn’t nearly as competently written as Kuze, but his ability to challenge Kiryu’s beliefs and sense of direction by highlighting the futility of honorable yakuza and Shintaro Kazama’s disregard for the idea forces Kiryu to make a personal change – he’s no longer his oyabun’s puppet but wants nothing more than to carve out his own fate.
As he gets his last drink in at Serena, Kiryu throws on a gray suit: it’s not a pure white, but black isn’t particularly fitting either. It’s grounded by a passionate, burning red collared shirt underneath.
> Watchin’ you, I figured out just how important hangin’ on really is.
Soutenbori is similarly drowning in excess, but a level of sophistication comes from the sprawling cabaret scene and laid-back food-focused economy of Osaka. The indulgence of the settings hides the truth: it’s a jail for a Majima in his mid-20s, treated like a toy, and referred to as “Shimano’s project."
Yakuza 4 sets the groundwork for Majima as more than comic relief but establishes him as a broken man using the facade of the Mad Dog to get through to the next day. There’s a certain level of reverence both Majima and the story itself share in regards to the alleged “slayer of 18," Taiga Saejima.
Majima’s arc has a lot of highlights, one of the most prominent being the parallels drawn between a young, recently traumatized Goro and a young girl limited by her psychosomatically triggered blindness. Makoto grounds Majima’s story and forces him to punch above his weight and be shaped into more than just a hitman. The implication in Yakuza 4’s cutscene where he and Saejima prepare to gun down the Ueno Seiwa clan is that this isn’t their first time doing something like this. Saejima himself has done some dirty shit and no way his sworn brother hasn’t tagged along.
Unfortunately, Makoto is frustratingly passive throughout most of the story. She is entirely aware of this, but this self-awareness doesn’t really sway me over to loving her character. It doesn’t help that her big statement of independence is where she foolishly puts her life at risk in front of a cabal of hardened yakuza.
Sagawa is excellent and stands as a checkpoint for Majima to look at as he grows and experiences the storyline. He’s always right around the corner, taunting Majima and being a stick up the guy’s ass. It’s unfortunate that no one else really has the staying power he does consistently throughout the narrative. Lao Gui feels like a last-minute addition that is hamfistedly Majima’s final boss.
Goro Majima’s story is one that pushes the guy into his own twisted way of life – even if he pushes everyone away from him and destroys his ability to be engaged with seriously. As a mad dog, nobody can throw him into a bullshit scheme. No one can trick and deceive him, nobody can pull out weird underhanded tactics, and no one can ever toss him into an alley and gouge out his eye.
Majima is not Kiryu. I wish this could have been further reinforced throughout Zero. This might be a bit of a hot take, but I genuinely wished Majima had taken out Lao Gui with his own two hands. Sera bullshits him with weird excuses like “Makoto wouldn’t want to carry that weight”, knowing full well the girl still resents the Dojima Family deeply and openly expresses a desire for their destruction. Majima’s big poignant moment could have been giving Lao Gui a quick gash to the head with a knife, refusing to take orders from anyone he doesn’t feel like. Majima didn’t have a Nishiki-type figure to stop him at the moment – Saejima is in jail. I was really hungry for the more unstable, vicious Majima we see in Yakuza 1, and the lack of these moments in the main story make it hard to believe the guy organically transitioned into that older iteration.
While Zero continues this exploration beautifully, its characterization of Majima doesn’t quite strike the balance of moral grayness in his earlier iterations with the more archetypal heroism of past RGG protagonists—he's forced to be a Kiryu-type in substories, side content, and at points in the main story.
The grind of the bubble
Zero is in love with the legacy of the franchise, and as a last-ditch effort to encourage newcomers, it pushes the player into engaging with its side attractions. As this isn’t my first time experiencing the game, it really got on my nerves.
Majima’s Cabaret Club Czar starts off as a fun minigame that espouses traditional Yakuza protagonist beliefs of fair play and fair treatment of women. It takes the awful cabaret hostess minigame from Yakuza 3 and 4 and flips it on its head, making it an enjoyable bite-sized experience you can knock out in 3-minute intervals.
The different women you interact with are really likable and fun to be around. Their presence is made clear through the cabaret “practice” dialogue you go through with them, and the outings like pool, disco, and karaoke feel very emblematic of the era. I think my favorite hostess was Ai.
It follows a very predictable pattern that side content tends to follow in these games in the same vein as Yakuza 5’s racing. You’ve got five big bads that each answer to an even bigger bad, and after beating the shit out of each of them, they join your side. While you can see the progression from a mile, you’d have to be a real cynical person to not get even a grin out of the interactions.
The problem is, like most of 0’s side content, you’re pushed into doing an entire session of the mechanic starting the game out, and if you want to meaningfully level up your skill tree and remove its blockages, you really have to thoroughly and consistently engage with it. CCC is grindy, and if you’re not doing it on the side, you’ll have to just dedicate days of your life to catching up if you want to really level up the game’s styles.
You end it with the Mad Dog awakening, which is less a thematic parallel and more a gesture of fan service.
Looking at Kiryu’s Real Estate Royale, things are a lot worse. While CCC was a minigame that demanded your active attention, Real Estate Royale is entirely passive and expects you to dedicate real life time to it. The subplot with your two coworkers and the Five Kings is a less engaging version of Majima’s. Real estate is far more inflexible to different players’ preferences on how they engage with side content. The expectation is that the user would be tending to real estate on the side between the plots, but not only does this fundamentally break the airtight pacing of the main story, but it’s far too common for players to be too engaged to care for the extraneous bits of a completely disconnected narrative. There’s also an irony in the core mechanic being real estate and accumulating absolute mountains of money that eclipse anything the main story is fighting over.
RER also expects you to accumulate a lot of money through purchases of various properties in the seedy Kamurocho underbelly. If you haven’t figured out the common fan strategy of cheesing Mr. Shakedown and getting multipliers off your collection of money, you’ll have to manage by grinding the real estate mechanic itself, gambling on janken half-naked wrestling games, and hopefully running into a couple Nouveau Riche enemies.
At the end, you’re greeted with the legendary Dragon of Dojima style, but about one-third of its usual speed thanks to Yakuza 0’s heat meter system.
That brings me to combat.
Zero’s combat in some ways tries to clean up the extravagant and incredibly long heat moves and over the top nature of Yakuza 5, the last mainline game with the traditional fist-to-fist brawler combat. The multiple style approach from the samurai spin offs Kenzan and Ishin was implemented here and in theory it’s a great idea. You have different approaches to handling combat scenarios and different flavors of enemy. However, the experience is held back entirely by an asinine decision – tying the heat meter’s increases to an increase in speed. This means if you have an empty heat meter, you’re incredibly slow. This happens quite a bit entering fights after having drained your heat on a previous encounter or boss fight, and it makes it increasingly more difficult to even land a hit in.
The point of Heat is to reward the player for staying on top of combat fundamentals by granting them the ability to pull off high-damage spectacle. It was nailed as early as the first game, but somehow they managed to take a step back in Zero? Like I mentioned above, Dragon of Dojima becomes a completely unviable style in this game simply because of how it’s clearly not designed to be played at .75x speed. The style you busted your ass for isn’t really worth using at any point in the game.
A true love letter
Despite it all, Yakuza 0 is an incredibly competent love letter towards the Yakuza franchise as a whole. Its consistent tone, airtight pacing, and avoidance of over-the-top twists characteristic of this franchise helped push Yakuza into the modestly successful franchise it's currently become in the West. Without this game, me and a lot of other people wouldn’t even know it existed. Zero raised the bar for maturity in the series’ storytelling and the games that would follow took the lessons from Zero to great success.
The original Yakuza, the game that transitioned Sega out of the in-house console era onto the PS2, opens with this line. It embodies the spirit of the entire franchise that would come to be. Yakuza’s spirit was that of the romanticized Bushido code mixed with the rich atmosphere and contemporary setting of Yakuza crime movies. What distinguished Kiryu from the real-life yakuza was his way of life: his tenacity and insistence on walking the path laid out for him.
Yakuza 0, as a tenth anniversary celebration, looks to explore that tenacity, that insistence on looking past the inflating yen of the late 80s, and direct Kiryu and another man with a common conviction—Goro Majima—toward their personal truths.
> Through this whole ordeal, I saw a lot of people try to set things right. It blew me away, man. Not just yakuza. Civilians too. It really drove home just how green I still am.
The streets of Kamurocho in ‘88 were dirty and grimy. There’s a bed of trash coating the sidewalk, and gaudy lights and excess are laid out everywhere. It’s the kind of environment that breeds monsters willing to tear each other apart, tooth and nail, for a spot of land about the size of a doghouse. Perfect space for a 20-year-old Kiryu, aimlessly following the whims of others and vaguely following his adoptive father’s footsteps.
Kiryu’s philosophy and way of life is slowly being brought to the surface. Every surprise attack he gets from Kuze, every slimy wishy-washy opinion from Awano, and every piece of shit thing a yakuza takes the liberty of doing to those he cares about pushes him over the edge. There’s a level of reverence 0’s Kiryu plot has towards the character’s legacy as a whole – filling in some of the missing pieces of characterization that understandably couldn’t be explored in the original ‘05 game.
Kuze specifically is masterfully crafted as a benchmark for how Kiryu is doing, and his level of resolve. He’s a stubborn old man that tries to constantly beat Kiryu down through raw strength reminiscent of his boxer days. He’s the crown jewel of Kiryu’s antagonists in his simplicity and brutality. Tachibana was able to confide in a young Kiryu, but it took his death for a switch to flip in the kid’s head – he’s going to stop the lieutenants with his own two fists even if it costs him his life. Walking away, the old man’s able to acknowledge Kiryu as fit for the job.
Shibusawa isn’t nearly as competently written as Kuze, but his ability to challenge Kiryu’s beliefs and sense of direction by highlighting the futility of honorable yakuza and Shintaro Kazama’s disregard for the idea forces Kiryu to make a personal change – he’s no longer his oyabun’s puppet but wants nothing more than to carve out his own fate.
As he gets his last drink in at Serena, Kiryu throws on a gray suit: it’s not a pure white, but black isn’t particularly fitting either. It’s grounded by a passionate, burning red collared shirt underneath.
> Watchin’ you, I figured out just how important hangin’ on really is.
Soutenbori is similarly drowning in excess, but a level of sophistication comes from the sprawling cabaret scene and laid-back food-focused economy of Osaka. The indulgence of the settings hides the truth: it’s a jail for a Majima in his mid-20s, treated like a toy, and referred to as “Shimano’s project."
Yakuza 4 sets the groundwork for Majima as more than comic relief but establishes him as a broken man using the facade of the Mad Dog to get through to the next day. There’s a certain level of reverence both Majima and the story itself share in regards to the alleged “slayer of 18," Taiga Saejima.
Majima’s arc has a lot of highlights, one of the most prominent being the parallels drawn between a young, recently traumatized Goro and a young girl limited by her psychosomatically triggered blindness. Makoto grounds Majima’s story and forces him to punch above his weight and be shaped into more than just a hitman. The implication in Yakuza 4’s cutscene where he and Saejima prepare to gun down the Ueno Seiwa clan is that this isn’t their first time doing something like this. Saejima himself has done some dirty shit and no way his sworn brother hasn’t tagged along.
Unfortunately, Makoto is frustratingly passive throughout most of the story. She is entirely aware of this, but this self-awareness doesn’t really sway me over to loving her character. It doesn’t help that her big statement of independence is where she foolishly puts her life at risk in front of a cabal of hardened yakuza.
Sagawa is excellent and stands as a checkpoint for Majima to look at as he grows and experiences the storyline. He’s always right around the corner, taunting Majima and being a stick up the guy’s ass. It’s unfortunate that no one else really has the staying power he does consistently throughout the narrative. Lao Gui feels like a last-minute addition that is hamfistedly Majima’s final boss.
Goro Majima’s story is one that pushes the guy into his own twisted way of life – even if he pushes everyone away from him and destroys his ability to be engaged with seriously. As a mad dog, nobody can throw him into a bullshit scheme. No one can trick and deceive him, nobody can pull out weird underhanded tactics, and no one can ever toss him into an alley and gouge out his eye.
Majima is not Kiryu. I wish this could have been further reinforced throughout Zero. This might be a bit of a hot take, but I genuinely wished Majima had taken out Lao Gui with his own two hands. Sera bullshits him with weird excuses like “Makoto wouldn’t want to carry that weight”, knowing full well the girl still resents the Dojima Family deeply and openly expresses a desire for their destruction. Majima’s big poignant moment could have been giving Lao Gui a quick gash to the head with a knife, refusing to take orders from anyone he doesn’t feel like. Majima didn’t have a Nishiki-type figure to stop him at the moment – Saejima is in jail. I was really hungry for the more unstable, vicious Majima we see in Yakuza 1, and the lack of these moments in the main story make it hard to believe the guy organically transitioned into that older iteration.
While Zero continues this exploration beautifully, its characterization of Majima doesn’t quite strike the balance of moral grayness in his earlier iterations with the more archetypal heroism of past RGG protagonists—he's forced to be a Kiryu-type in substories, side content, and at points in the main story.
The grind of the bubble
Zero is in love with the legacy of the franchise, and as a last-ditch effort to encourage newcomers, it pushes the player into engaging with its side attractions. As this isn’t my first time experiencing the game, it really got on my nerves.
Majima’s Cabaret Club Czar starts off as a fun minigame that espouses traditional Yakuza protagonist beliefs of fair play and fair treatment of women. It takes the awful cabaret hostess minigame from Yakuza 3 and 4 and flips it on its head, making it an enjoyable bite-sized experience you can knock out in 3-minute intervals.
The different women you interact with are really likable and fun to be around. Their presence is made clear through the cabaret “practice” dialogue you go through with them, and the outings like pool, disco, and karaoke feel very emblematic of the era. I think my favorite hostess was Ai.
It follows a very predictable pattern that side content tends to follow in these games in the same vein as Yakuza 5’s racing. You’ve got five big bads that each answer to an even bigger bad, and after beating the shit out of each of them, they join your side. While you can see the progression from a mile, you’d have to be a real cynical person to not get even a grin out of the interactions.
The problem is, like most of 0’s side content, you’re pushed into doing an entire session of the mechanic starting the game out, and if you want to meaningfully level up your skill tree and remove its blockages, you really have to thoroughly and consistently engage with it. CCC is grindy, and if you’re not doing it on the side, you’ll have to just dedicate days of your life to catching up if you want to really level up the game’s styles.
You end it with the Mad Dog awakening, which is less a thematic parallel and more a gesture of fan service.
Looking at Kiryu’s Real Estate Royale, things are a lot worse. While CCC was a minigame that demanded your active attention, Real Estate Royale is entirely passive and expects you to dedicate real life time to it. The subplot with your two coworkers and the Five Kings is a less engaging version of Majima’s. Real estate is far more inflexible to different players’ preferences on how they engage with side content. The expectation is that the user would be tending to real estate on the side between the plots, but not only does this fundamentally break the airtight pacing of the main story, but it’s far too common for players to be too engaged to care for the extraneous bits of a completely disconnected narrative. There’s also an irony in the core mechanic being real estate and accumulating absolute mountains of money that eclipse anything the main story is fighting over.
RER also expects you to accumulate a lot of money through purchases of various properties in the seedy Kamurocho underbelly. If you haven’t figured out the common fan strategy of cheesing Mr. Shakedown and getting multipliers off your collection of money, you’ll have to manage by grinding the real estate mechanic itself, gambling on janken half-naked wrestling games, and hopefully running into a couple Nouveau Riche enemies.
At the end, you’re greeted with the legendary Dragon of Dojima style, but about one-third of its usual speed thanks to Yakuza 0’s heat meter system.
That brings me to combat.
Zero’s combat in some ways tries to clean up the extravagant and incredibly long heat moves and over the top nature of Yakuza 5, the last mainline game with the traditional fist-to-fist brawler combat. The multiple style approach from the samurai spin offs Kenzan and Ishin was implemented here and in theory it’s a great idea. You have different approaches to handling combat scenarios and different flavors of enemy. However, the experience is held back entirely by an asinine decision – tying the heat meter’s increases to an increase in speed. This means if you have an empty heat meter, you’re incredibly slow. This happens quite a bit entering fights after having drained your heat on a previous encounter or boss fight, and it makes it increasingly more difficult to even land a hit in.
The point of Heat is to reward the player for staying on top of combat fundamentals by granting them the ability to pull off high-damage spectacle. It was nailed as early as the first game, but somehow they managed to take a step back in Zero? Like I mentioned above, Dragon of Dojima becomes a completely unviable style in this game simply because of how it’s clearly not designed to be played at .75x speed. The style you busted your ass for isn’t really worth using at any point in the game.
A true love letter
Despite it all, Yakuza 0 is an incredibly competent love letter towards the Yakuza franchise as a whole. Its consistent tone, airtight pacing, and avoidance of over-the-top twists characteristic of this franchise helped push Yakuza into the modestly successful franchise it's currently become in the West. Without this game, me and a lot of other people wouldn’t even know it existed. Zero raised the bar for maturity in the series’ storytelling and the games that would follow took the lessons from Zero to great success.
Undoubtedly one of the best games i have ever played.
Yakuza 0 features extremely fun combat and multiple combat styles that suit a million different play-styles and allow anyone to play how they want. the music and quick-time events during fights are incredible and add an amazing feeling of flow to every combat encounter, and the boss fights are absolutely amazing.
One of this games most impressive feats is that it has side quests that are actually fun. I often find side quests in games to be extremely boring and uncompelling, often being just fetch quests or just completely uninteresting. But in Yakuza 0, Every side quest is fully voice acted and masterfully crafted and is either compelling, funny, fun, or all of the above. the world is also visually littered with detail everywhere, especially for a game from 2015.
Yakuza 0's most impressive aspect however would have to be its story. I think this is probably one of the best examples of an excellent story that could only be told through a video game. Its extremely long and is so interesting and full of twists and turns that it keeps you on the edge of your seat for the games 30 hour run time. The characters are all so lovingly crafted and filled with personality that despite the ridiculousness of their surroundings at times, they all feel so incredibly real and relatable. This game has the best character writing of any game i have ever played, and has probably permanently raised my standards for games i play in the future.
Yakuza 0 is overall absolutely incredible and has me incredibly excited to check out the rest of the Yakuza series.
Yakuza 0 features extremely fun combat and multiple combat styles that suit a million different play-styles and allow anyone to play how they want. the music and quick-time events during fights are incredible and add an amazing feeling of flow to every combat encounter, and the boss fights are absolutely amazing.
One of this games most impressive feats is that it has side quests that are actually fun. I often find side quests in games to be extremely boring and uncompelling, often being just fetch quests or just completely uninteresting. But in Yakuza 0, Every side quest is fully voice acted and masterfully crafted and is either compelling, funny, fun, or all of the above. the world is also visually littered with detail everywhere, especially for a game from 2015.
Yakuza 0's most impressive aspect however would have to be its story. I think this is probably one of the best examples of an excellent story that could only be told through a video game. Its extremely long and is so interesting and full of twists and turns that it keeps you on the edge of your seat for the games 30 hour run time. The characters are all so lovingly crafted and filled with personality that despite the ridiculousness of their surroundings at times, they all feel so incredibly real and relatable. This game has the best character writing of any game i have ever played, and has probably permanently raised my standards for games i play in the future.
Yakuza 0 is overall absolutely incredible and has me incredibly excited to check out the rest of the Yakuza series.
4.25/5
Game good never played Yakuza game before but really enjoyed
Some substories are the same but with a different story (select the correct dialogue options)
Combat repetitive but fun (chain grab with beast overpowered)
Game good never played Yakuza game before but really enjoyed
Some substories are the same but with a different story (select the correct dialogue options)
Combat repetitive but fun (chain grab with beast overpowered)
Yakuza 0 is generally considered the modern day gateway into the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise for numerous reasons. Not only is it a prequel that doesn’t require any prior series knowledge to understand what’s going on, it’s constantly regarded as one of the best games in the series by a majority of the fanbase. While I had emulated the original Yakuza prior to my first playthrough of Yakuza 0, I didn’t really have a desire to play the rest of the franchise until after I finished Zero, so for all intents and purposes, it was my gateway too. After playing it back in 2022, I spent a good chunk of 2023 playing through every single game in the series currently available on Steam, including the spin offs. Needless to say, I’ve become a huge fan of the franchise. After playing almost every game in the series, I wanted to return to Yakuza 0 and re-evaluate it with my knowledge of the titles that come before and after it. I was really pleased to find that I still consider it the best of the Kazuma Kiryu-centric games.
Coming from Yakuza 5, which had five playable protagonists, Yakuza 0 scales down to just two: series star Kazuma Kiryu and his long-time rival/eventual close ally Goro Majima. I think that dialing back on the amount of playable characters was absolutely the right call. It allowed for both Kiryu and Majima to have plenty of room to breathe in each other’s own lengthy campaigns.
The story is undeniably one of, if not the best in the franchise. It’s more straightforward compared to the complex conspiracies of Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5, and I think that it’s better off for it. Its focus is on telling an emotional narrative that enriches the background of both Kiryu and Majima while giving some sorely needed additional context to the original Yakuza game, and it absolutely knocked it out of the park. This is in part due to this game’s mostly original cast of characters. These characters and events do an absolutely tremendous job explaining how Kiryu and Majima become the characters that we know today. The clash of each character’s extreme and over the top personality is what makes Yakuza 0 such a thrilling and emotional joyride.
The three lieutenants of the Dojima family are some of the best and most memorable antagonists in the series, with Daisaku Kuze in particular standing out with his venomous tenacity. Other characters such as Makoto Makimura and Tetsu Tachibana serve as the core of the story’s emotion and mystery, as getting to the bottom of their true aspirations and learning about Makoto’s tragic backstory is a huge appeal of the narrative. Then there’s Akira Nishkiyama, Kiryu’s sworn brother. He was the primary antagonist of the original Yakuza, but one of the biggest problems with that game’s narrative was that it barely featured him. We had no real context to their relationship and how close they were, so the character was completely forgettable as a result. This game fleshes out their relationship immensely, with some of the most heartbreaking and hypest moments of the entire series featuring the two brothers.
To make up for the lack of multiple characters to play as and to keep combat feeling fresh and varied, the game uses the Style System that was introduced in the original version of Like a Dragon: Ishin to offer multiple ways for both characters to approach combat. I really like how the Style System was implemented in Zero. Each of Kiryu and Majima’s Styles concentrate on a particular element that makes up the complete moveset that they would go on to use in the games that take place after Zero. It’s a brilliant idea, even if it does come with some flaws.
Kiryu’s Styles are Brawler, Rush, and Beast. Brawler feels like a slower and less snappy version of his moveset from the prior games. It feels like he hasn’t quite figured out his approach to fighting yet, but he’s on track to getting there. It’s a solid all-rounder Style that’s good for just about any occasion. Rush is a boxing-inspired Style that places emphasis on speed. It’s mainly used for taking out a single, troublesome enemy, as well as during boss fights. Beast is Kiryu’s crowd control Style. It places emphasis on his raw strength. He becomes extremely slow in this Style, almost immobile. In exchange, his attacks become a lot stronger and way more effective at clearing out a group of enemies… so long as he has a large object in his hands. By itself, Beast is not a very effective Style. Kiryu’s attacks are just too slow unless you’ve got a large object that you can use to help you armor through attacks while swatting away groups of enemies at a time. Otherwise, enemies are generally able to get easy potshots in on him and keep him from getting started simply because his attacks just have way too much wind up. More often than not, this Style is a hindrance, and you can do some smaller scale levels of crowd control with the Brawler Style, so I tended to mainly swap between that and Rush when I played.
Majima’s Styles are Thug, Slugger, and Breaker. Thug is Majima’s equivalent to Kiryu’s Brawler Style, only Majima has had more experience as a yakuza than Kiryu at this point, so this Style feels faster and more precise compared to Brawler. Slugger has Majima wield a baseball bat. He can swing the bat in very wide arcs which makes this Style great for crowd control. He also has access to a really easy and brutal Heat action with this move. Breaker is a bit confusing. It also seems to be a crowd control focused Style, only it’s a lot less effective than Slugger. Similar to Kiryu’s Beast Style, it takes too long to perform the crowd clearing attacks that Breaker has. It’s not as unwieldy as Beast, but Slugger just provides easier and more effective crowd control, so I saw little reason to use Breaker.
There is a fourth Style that Kiryu and Majima have which are both referred to as Legend. Both Legend Styles have Kiryu and Majima play the way that they do in previous games. I can’t really give my opinion on these Styles because they’re locked behind two obnoxiously long and grindy mini games that I’ve never bothered to complete. I wish that weren’t the case and that these Styles were either unlocked by reaching the climax of each character’s narrative or by simply beating the game. I think that it would’ve been extremely satisfying unlocking them after the biggest emotional moments of the story to use during each character’s finale segment as opposed to completing two overly long mini games.
The game has 16 total chapters, and it’s structured so that every two chapters, you swap between Kiryu and Majima. This does unfortunately lead to some pacing issues early in the game, as in addition to both characters’ narratives being slow at the start, you have to sit through a tutorial for every single combat style. All six styles come with their own little mini-story completely separate from the main plot. They make the opening hours of the game a bit of a drag. Once the narrative begins to pick up however, it really picks up, and the game becomes immensely hard to put down once you make it past those early hours. There’s also all of the various substories and side activities that you can do, which can add some spice to those slow early hours. The substories might not be as effective if you haven’t played the other games in the series, because a lot of them feature younger versions of characters that you’ll go on to meet later in the franchise, like Shinji, Daigo, and Ryuji, so the significance of them isn’t apparent. It’s not a big deal though, as it just makes it all the more rewarding when you do encounter them in the future and remember the funny substory they were featured in here. There’s still plenty of substories that are just there for pure fun, in fact, I think that Yakuza 0 has the best substories in the series. There are so many memorable and satisfying ones that are worth going out of your way to complete.
Yakuza 0 is such a good time. Returning to it after playing the other games has been an absolute joy. It was really fun comparing and contrasting it to the games that come before and after it. It perfectly captures every single aspect that makes the series appealing. The fun and satisfying combat, the exciting and heartstring tugging story, and the enticing side content are all mostly at their peak here. It’s a game that’s truly earned its reputation, and I feel like I’m never, ever going to get tired of revisiting it in the future.
Coming from Yakuza 5, which had five playable protagonists, Yakuza 0 scales down to just two: series star Kazuma Kiryu and his long-time rival/eventual close ally Goro Majima. I think that dialing back on the amount of playable characters was absolutely the right call. It allowed for both Kiryu and Majima to have plenty of room to breathe in each other’s own lengthy campaigns.
The story is undeniably one of, if not the best in the franchise. It’s more straightforward compared to the complex conspiracies of Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5, and I think that it’s better off for it. Its focus is on telling an emotional narrative that enriches the background of both Kiryu and Majima while giving some sorely needed additional context to the original Yakuza game, and it absolutely knocked it out of the park. This is in part due to this game’s mostly original cast of characters. These characters and events do an absolutely tremendous job explaining how Kiryu and Majima become the characters that we know today. The clash of each character’s extreme and over the top personality is what makes Yakuza 0 such a thrilling and emotional joyride.
The three lieutenants of the Dojima family are some of the best and most memorable antagonists in the series, with Daisaku Kuze in particular standing out with his venomous tenacity. Other characters such as Makoto Makimura and Tetsu Tachibana serve as the core of the story’s emotion and mystery, as getting to the bottom of their true aspirations and learning about Makoto’s tragic backstory is a huge appeal of the narrative. Then there’s Akira Nishkiyama, Kiryu’s sworn brother. He was the primary antagonist of the original Yakuza, but one of the biggest problems with that game’s narrative was that it barely featured him. We had no real context to their relationship and how close they were, so the character was completely forgettable as a result. This game fleshes out their relationship immensely, with some of the most heartbreaking and hypest moments of the entire series featuring the two brothers.
To make up for the lack of multiple characters to play as and to keep combat feeling fresh and varied, the game uses the Style System that was introduced in the original version of Like a Dragon: Ishin to offer multiple ways for both characters to approach combat. I really like how the Style System was implemented in Zero. Each of Kiryu and Majima’s Styles concentrate on a particular element that makes up the complete moveset that they would go on to use in the games that take place after Zero. It’s a brilliant idea, even if it does come with some flaws.
Kiryu’s Styles are Brawler, Rush, and Beast. Brawler feels like a slower and less snappy version of his moveset from the prior games. It feels like he hasn’t quite figured out his approach to fighting yet, but he’s on track to getting there. It’s a solid all-rounder Style that’s good for just about any occasion. Rush is a boxing-inspired Style that places emphasis on speed. It’s mainly used for taking out a single, troublesome enemy, as well as during boss fights. Beast is Kiryu’s crowd control Style. It places emphasis on his raw strength. He becomes extremely slow in this Style, almost immobile. In exchange, his attacks become a lot stronger and way more effective at clearing out a group of enemies… so long as he has a large object in his hands. By itself, Beast is not a very effective Style. Kiryu’s attacks are just too slow unless you’ve got a large object that you can use to help you armor through attacks while swatting away groups of enemies at a time. Otherwise, enemies are generally able to get easy potshots in on him and keep him from getting started simply because his attacks just have way too much wind up. More often than not, this Style is a hindrance, and you can do some smaller scale levels of crowd control with the Brawler Style, so I tended to mainly swap between that and Rush when I played.
Majima’s Styles are Thug, Slugger, and Breaker. Thug is Majima’s equivalent to Kiryu’s Brawler Style, only Majima has had more experience as a yakuza than Kiryu at this point, so this Style feels faster and more precise compared to Brawler. Slugger has Majima wield a baseball bat. He can swing the bat in very wide arcs which makes this Style great for crowd control. He also has access to a really easy and brutal Heat action with this move. Breaker is a bit confusing. It also seems to be a crowd control focused Style, only it’s a lot less effective than Slugger. Similar to Kiryu’s Beast Style, it takes too long to perform the crowd clearing attacks that Breaker has. It’s not as unwieldy as Beast, but Slugger just provides easier and more effective crowd control, so I saw little reason to use Breaker.
There is a fourth Style that Kiryu and Majima have which are both referred to as Legend. Both Legend Styles have Kiryu and Majima play the way that they do in previous games. I can’t really give my opinion on these Styles because they’re locked behind two obnoxiously long and grindy mini games that I’ve never bothered to complete. I wish that weren’t the case and that these Styles were either unlocked by reaching the climax of each character’s narrative or by simply beating the game. I think that it would’ve been extremely satisfying unlocking them after the biggest emotional moments of the story to use during each character’s finale segment as opposed to completing two overly long mini games.
The game has 16 total chapters, and it’s structured so that every two chapters, you swap between Kiryu and Majima. This does unfortunately lead to some pacing issues early in the game, as in addition to both characters’ narratives being slow at the start, you have to sit through a tutorial for every single combat style. All six styles come with their own little mini-story completely separate from the main plot. They make the opening hours of the game a bit of a drag. Once the narrative begins to pick up however, it really picks up, and the game becomes immensely hard to put down once you make it past those early hours. There’s also all of the various substories and side activities that you can do, which can add some spice to those slow early hours. The substories might not be as effective if you haven’t played the other games in the series, because a lot of them feature younger versions of characters that you’ll go on to meet later in the franchise, like Shinji, Daigo, and Ryuji, so the significance of them isn’t apparent. It’s not a big deal though, as it just makes it all the more rewarding when you do encounter them in the future and remember the funny substory they were featured in here. There’s still plenty of substories that are just there for pure fun, in fact, I think that Yakuza 0 has the best substories in the series. There are so many memorable and satisfying ones that are worth going out of your way to complete.
Yakuza 0 is such a good time. Returning to it after playing the other games has been an absolute joy. It was really fun comparing and contrasting it to the games that come before and after it. It perfectly captures every single aspect that makes the series appealing. The fun and satisfying combat, the exciting and heartstring tugging story, and the enticing side content are all mostly at their peak here. It’s a game that’s truly earned its reputation, and I feel like I’m never, ever going to get tired of revisiting it in the future.
Definitely a solid game, but this series is a bad fit for me. For one, side content is considered borderline mandatory, and I often only focus on the main plot, like I did here. Secondly, I am not in the right headspace to continue the series for now. I am not very fond of the combat system and I wouldn't be able to handle what is now 10+ games in this setting, especially when friends who are long-time fans tell me there is a status quo in the series. The plot and characters were good but it didn't feel very ambitious thematically or just in general, it went exactly as I would expect a story about the yakuza to go. I am aware that 0 is an outlier in the series and is divisive for long-time fans (unlike general reception), and that there is some prejudice on my part, but I will not be coming back to this series at this time.
What makes Yakuza 0 special is that you can go from your best friend wishing to mercy kill you so you're spared from Yakuza torture, to bowling for a chicken that manages your real estate monopoly, in less than 10 minutes.
This game is good and credit where it's due saved this series in the west. That said, the consequences of this game being so successful will coat this series in goofy guitar twangs until the day it dies.
The 70 hours I have spent on this game in the last couple months have ruined any social interaction I have had since I am forever cursed to have the SubStory theme playing in my head when I am accosted by crackheads walking home from work trying to sell me spice…..
But in all honesty it’s incredibly worth it this is easily one of the best times I have ever had in a video game the stories incredibly interesting blending humour and a serious tone in an effortless way with some of the most likeable characters in any piece of media I’ve experienced. Goro Majima is absolutely the highlight of this for me i wasn’t sure what to expect from a origin story for the guy who stalks you as a traffic cone in Kiwami but was completely floored by how emotional his half of the story was coming out of this as one of my favourite characters of all time.
I also really loved the gameplay as a whole I really enjoyed learning the ropes of the franchises combat in Kiwami and this is a perfected version of that system the additional protagonist also gives you access to more combat styles that are completely different to Kiryus moveset which I really enjoyed with Slugger and Breaker easily beating out anything I’ve tried so far in the franchise.
The side content as well is also some of the best I’ve come across before with me getting distracted by the story too many times by my side hustle of being a landlord and owner of a Caberet club which I’ve had to explain as being a little more sophisticated than “being a pimp” to my girlfriend on multiple occasions….
Overall 10/10 would recommend I am very grateful I succumbed to peer pressure and gave this franchise a go.
But in all honesty it’s incredibly worth it this is easily one of the best times I have ever had in a video game the stories incredibly interesting blending humour and a serious tone in an effortless way with some of the most likeable characters in any piece of media I’ve experienced. Goro Majima is absolutely the highlight of this for me i wasn’t sure what to expect from a origin story for the guy who stalks you as a traffic cone in Kiwami but was completely floored by how emotional his half of the story was coming out of this as one of my favourite characters of all time.
I also really loved the gameplay as a whole I really enjoyed learning the ropes of the franchises combat in Kiwami and this is a perfected version of that system the additional protagonist also gives you access to more combat styles that are completely different to Kiryus moveset which I really enjoyed with Slugger and Breaker easily beating out anything I’ve tried so far in the franchise.
The side content as well is also some of the best I’ve come across before with me getting distracted by the story too many times by my side hustle of being a landlord and owner of a Caberet club which I’ve had to explain as being a little more sophisticated than “being a pimp” to my girlfriend on multiple occasions….
Overall 10/10 would recommend I am very grateful I succumbed to peer pressure and gave this franchise a go.
Apenas aos poucos se tornando um dragão, uma grande história, muito bem escrita, uma luta divertida e diversos minigames que entretém e apresentam uma cultura nova. O primeiro passo, para chegar no like a dragon 8 quando lançar
que JOGASSO
no começo eu demorei pra engatar pq era minha primeira entrada pra franquia e os vários diálogos não me ajudaram muito, além do fato do jogo não ter localização, mas a história é muito boa e cheia de reviravoltas bem escritas, tô empolgado pra jogar os próximos
no começo eu demorei pra engatar pq era minha primeira entrada pra franquia e os vários diálogos não me ajudaram muito, além do fato do jogo não ter localização, mas a história é muito boa e cheia de reviravoltas bem escritas, tô empolgado pra jogar os próximos
Tachibana definitely had secret psychic powers he kept hidden to make things fair
Obrigado Ryu Ga Gotoku, por me dar forças para me tornar uma pessoa melhor a cada dia.
This review contains spoilers
Now outta my way, YOU MEAT SACKS!
Yakuza 0 is the most popular entry of the franchise and it is widely considered to be the best one. After beating Yakuza 0, it became one of those games where i sit through the credits looking like a sad idiot, and that's one of the highest praises that i could give to a videogame. It's also a game where it felt like the hours flew by, i could sit down, boot up the game and then BOOM! 4 hours gone.
You have 2 playable protags: Kiryu and Majima. Yakuza 0 is a prequel set in 1988 where we get to see Kiryu before he became the dragon of dojima and Majima before he became the mad dog of shimano. Both Kiryu and Majima have multiple fighting styles that you can switch whenever you want during fights. I already talked about Kiryu's fighting styles on my kiwami review so i'm not gonna do that again.
Thug style is quicker and more accurate than Kiryu's brawler style but it does less damage and it doesn't have a very wide range making it not good against group of enemies, but if you're fighting only 1 enemy then you can easily kick their ass.
Slugger style is absolutely op, you have a bat that is good for literally everything, and slugger can tear down bosses with ez.
Breaker style is EASILY my favorite style in the entire game, even tho it isn't very good against bosses, it makes fighting groups of enemies a walk in the park. I didn't unlock the 4th style because the management games really suck! But you know what doesn't suck? That's right the disco minigame. On the disco minigame you get to pick between a bunch of songs that have 3 difficulties, and once you pick a song it is time to murder the dance floor! You take control of a silly little avatar that you have to move and hit a button on the tile it shows up on. The more steps your avatar takes the more points you get when you hit a button on the correct time. You can also have dance battles but no matter how hard you try you will never beat the GOAT Miracle Johnson.
You also have a fever meter which is really helpful to earn some points. Also quick hot take but queen of the passion is the best disco song, and yes i even prefer it over friday night. The bosses in this game were surprising really great, all the yakuza games i've played so far had mostly alright bosses with some exceptions of course. Anyways here are my favorite bosses of the game:
1.Keiji Shibusawa and Lao Gui.
It's very hard for me to decide which i one i prefer, they both have sick ass movesets that change and dope arenas that also change! Both of them also have amazing boss intros and an awesome theme.
2.Hiroki Awano
FINALLY I GET TO BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THIS CLOWN
3.Kuze (final fight)
Oath of enma is genuinely a top 3 boss theme for me, and goddamn this fight made me realise how fucking cool Kuze is.
4.Homare Nishitani
Majima before Majima
5.Masaru Sera
Sera has one of the coolest fighting styles imo and i personally found this to be the hardest boss in the game.
The substories in this game are on par with Y5's substories which is saying a lot! More games should have sidequests where you have a dance battle with Michael Jackson. ALSO MY BOI SHINJI GOT HIS OWN SUBSTORY.
Ok now lets talk about the story, and oh boi what a story. Kiryu and Majima have fantastic stories filled with amazing characters that are brought to life by awesome voice acting. Most of Kiryu's story is in kamurocho but most of Majima's story is in sotenbori which is a new city. Kiryu's story is fricking amazing. My favorite side character in this game is Tachibana.
At first Tachibana had an air of sketchiness to him and i never would have thought that this dude would later earn my trust and get me on the verge of tears TWICE. I still get sad knowing that Tachibana died before seeing his sister. Even Kiryu shed tears when Tachibana died.Y0 has some gud villains like Sagawa or Shibusawa but the one that stands on top for me is Kuze. At the start of the game Kuze is presented as an asshole but as you progress through the story and after so many fights with him, you discover that Kuze is the most respectable dojima family lieutenant and he is easily the most memorable out of the 3. If you pay attention on the dialogue of the final Kuze fight, you would notice that Kiryu starts to call him sir, so yeah even Kiryu respects Kuze. Shibusawa started off as the most respectable lieutenant but it turns out that he is a dick! But something good that Shibusawa did was getting his ass beaten by Kiryu which made Kiryu become the dragon of dojima. Awano is still a bit of an asshole but he gained a bit of respect when he saved Majima. Another scene that got me on the verge of tears on Kiryu's story is the last scene with Nishiki and Kiryu on chapter 6, this scene hits harder when you know the events of kiwami 1, and this scene in particular is when i started falling in love with Y0's story.Now its time for Majima's story which i personally found to be better than Kiryu's story. I am used to the crazy Majima that everyone knows and love, but like i mentioned before we see Majima before he becomes the mad dog of shimano which was very intriguing. My fav part about Majima's story is Makoto, a blind girl who is very important to the story of the game. Majima was hired to kill Makoto but he couldn't do it, but instead he did the opposite and helped her, and why did he do that? Love. Sadly at the end of the game Majima cuts his ties with Makoto, because he knows that being with Makoto could put her in danger. Wen Hai Lee was also an interesting character, he was an ally to Majima and Makoto and he also looks like a discount Saejima, but sadly he went out with a bang. Sagawa is a very underrated villain, similar to Kuze he is a character that i first despised but at the end he grew on me. I could keep gushing on and on about this game's story and characters, Y0 has without a doubt one of my favorite stories in videogames and Majima is easily one of my fav characters oat.
You can't make a review about a yakuza game without talking about its music. So is the Yakuza 0 ost any good? Well out of all the yakuza games i played this has my favorite ost out of all of them, and that is really impressive considering that both yakuza 4 and 5 are in my top 10 videogame OSTs. Anyways here are my favorite songs:
Pledge of demon is one of the 2 boss themes of Kuze, and this theme in particular certainly makes you feel like you are fighting a badass old man.
Reign plays when you kick everyones ass on the dojima hq as Majima, and oh my god this god tier song just made that already amazing moment so much better
Oath of enma is Kuze's 2nd boss theme and it only plays during his final fight, and i personally think that this is a better boss theme than pledge of the demon.
I've already said this before but i'll say it louder, QUEEN OF THE PASSION IS THE BEST DISCO SONG!
With vengeance is Awano's boss theme and it is on par with oath of enma for me.
Two dragons is Shibusawa's boss theme and idk man they just cooked with the boss themes of all 3 lieutenants.
Firelight plays during the 8th long battle and similar to reign it makes an already amazing moment even better. The leveling system is one of complaints about the game, i wasn't a very big fan of it and i wish they kept the leveling system of yakuza 4 and 5. Another complaint i have is that the 4th styles are locked behind those stupid and unfun management minigames. I don't have any other complaints about this game. It is crazy that i bought this game for 5 euros, for such a cheap price i got an excellent game that easily sneaked into my favorites.
10/10 not my favorite yakuza game but it is my favorite 2015 game
Yakuza 0 is the most popular entry of the franchise and it is widely considered to be the best one. After beating Yakuza 0, it became one of those games where i sit through the credits looking like a sad idiot, and that's one of the highest praises that i could give to a videogame. It's also a game where it felt like the hours flew by, i could sit down, boot up the game and then BOOM! 4 hours gone.
You have 2 playable protags: Kiryu and Majima. Yakuza 0 is a prequel set in 1988 where we get to see Kiryu before he became the dragon of dojima and Majima before he became the mad dog of shimano. Both Kiryu and Majima have multiple fighting styles that you can switch whenever you want during fights. I already talked about Kiryu's fighting styles on my kiwami review so i'm not gonna do that again.
Thug style is quicker and more accurate than Kiryu's brawler style but it does less damage and it doesn't have a very wide range making it not good against group of enemies, but if you're fighting only 1 enemy then you can easily kick their ass.
Slugger style is absolutely op, you have a bat that is good for literally everything, and slugger can tear down bosses with ez.
Breaker style is EASILY my favorite style in the entire game, even tho it isn't very good against bosses, it makes fighting groups of enemies a walk in the park. I didn't unlock the 4th style because the management games really suck! But you know what doesn't suck? That's right the disco minigame. On the disco minigame you get to pick between a bunch of songs that have 3 difficulties, and once you pick a song it is time to murder the dance floor! You take control of a silly little avatar that you have to move and hit a button on the tile it shows up on. The more steps your avatar takes the more points you get when you hit a button on the correct time. You can also have dance battles but no matter how hard you try you will never beat the GOAT Miracle Johnson.
You also have a fever meter which is really helpful to earn some points. Also quick hot take but queen of the passion is the best disco song, and yes i even prefer it over friday night. The bosses in this game were surprising really great, all the yakuza games i've played so far had mostly alright bosses with some exceptions of course. Anyways here are my favorite bosses of the game:
1.Keiji Shibusawa and Lao Gui.
It's very hard for me to decide which i one i prefer, they both have sick ass movesets that change and dope arenas that also change! Both of them also have amazing boss intros and an awesome theme.
2.Hiroki Awano
FINALLY I GET TO BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THIS CLOWN
3.Kuze (final fight)
Oath of enma is genuinely a top 3 boss theme for me, and goddamn this fight made me realise how fucking cool Kuze is.
4.Homare Nishitani
Majima before Majima
5.Masaru Sera
Sera has one of the coolest fighting styles imo and i personally found this to be the hardest boss in the game.
The substories in this game are on par with Y5's substories which is saying a lot! More games should have sidequests where you have a dance battle with Michael Jackson. ALSO MY BOI SHINJI GOT HIS OWN SUBSTORY.
Ok now lets talk about the story, and oh boi what a story. Kiryu and Majima have fantastic stories filled with amazing characters that are brought to life by awesome voice acting. Most of Kiryu's story is in kamurocho but most of Majima's story is in sotenbori which is a new city. Kiryu's story is fricking amazing. My favorite side character in this game is Tachibana.
At first Tachibana had an air of sketchiness to him and i never would have thought that this dude would later earn my trust and get me on the verge of tears TWICE. I still get sad knowing that Tachibana died before seeing his sister. Even Kiryu shed tears when Tachibana died.Y0 has some gud villains like Sagawa or Shibusawa but the one that stands on top for me is Kuze. At the start of the game Kuze is presented as an asshole but as you progress through the story and after so many fights with him, you discover that Kuze is the most respectable dojima family lieutenant and he is easily the most memorable out of the 3. If you pay attention on the dialogue of the final Kuze fight, you would notice that Kiryu starts to call him sir, so yeah even Kiryu respects Kuze. Shibusawa started off as the most respectable lieutenant but it turns out that he is a dick! But something good that Shibusawa did was getting his ass beaten by Kiryu which made Kiryu become the dragon of dojima. Awano is still a bit of an asshole but he gained a bit of respect when he saved Majima. Another scene that got me on the verge of tears on Kiryu's story is the last scene with Nishiki and Kiryu on chapter 6, this scene hits harder when you know the events of kiwami 1, and this scene in particular is when i started falling in love with Y0's story.Now its time for Majima's story which i personally found to be better than Kiryu's story. I am used to the crazy Majima that everyone knows and love, but like i mentioned before we see Majima before he becomes the mad dog of shimano which was very intriguing. My fav part about Majima's story is Makoto, a blind girl who is very important to the story of the game. Majima was hired to kill Makoto but he couldn't do it, but instead he did the opposite and helped her, and why did he do that? Love. Sadly at the end of the game Majima cuts his ties with Makoto, because he knows that being with Makoto could put her in danger. Wen Hai Lee was also an interesting character, he was an ally to Majima and Makoto and he also looks like a discount Saejima, but sadly he went out with a bang. Sagawa is a very underrated villain, similar to Kuze he is a character that i first despised but at the end he grew on me. I could keep gushing on and on about this game's story and characters, Y0 has without a doubt one of my favorite stories in videogames and Majima is easily one of my fav characters oat.
You can't make a review about a yakuza game without talking about its music. So is the Yakuza 0 ost any good? Well out of all the yakuza games i played this has my favorite ost out of all of them, and that is really impressive considering that both yakuza 4 and 5 are in my top 10 videogame OSTs. Anyways here are my favorite songs:
Pledge of demon is one of the 2 boss themes of Kuze, and this theme in particular certainly makes you feel like you are fighting a badass old man.
Reign plays when you kick everyones ass on the dojima hq as Majima, and oh my god this god tier song just made that already amazing moment so much better
Oath of enma is Kuze's 2nd boss theme and it only plays during his final fight, and i personally think that this is a better boss theme than pledge of the demon.
I've already said this before but i'll say it louder, QUEEN OF THE PASSION IS THE BEST DISCO SONG!
With vengeance is Awano's boss theme and it is on par with oath of enma for me.
Two dragons is Shibusawa's boss theme and idk man they just cooked with the boss themes of all 3 lieutenants.
Firelight plays during the 8th long battle and similar to reign it makes an already amazing moment even better. The leveling system is one of complaints about the game, i wasn't a very big fan of it and i wish they kept the leveling system of yakuza 4 and 5. Another complaint i have is that the 4th styles are locked behind those stupid and unfun management minigames. I don't have any other complaints about this game. It is crazy that i bought this game for 5 euros, for such a cheap price i got an excellent game that easily sneaked into my favorites.
10/10 not my favorite yakuza game but it is my favorite 2015 game
I couldn't have started the yakuza series in a better way. Even if you're not interested in playing the other games in the series, please give this one a chance, there is not another series like Yakuza on the market.
To have a game cater to my wishes of punching a hole straight through some guy's head just for looking at me funny is really all that I needed currently. But, for this game to offer up a metric ton of bananas side content with it was giving way more beyond any and all expectations, not to mention the genuinely thrilling plot to boot as well.
There's something so inherently batshit about how serious the main plotline is in comparison to how extremely unserious the other 85% of the game is. Everything is so masterfully exaggerated, from doing the most simple tasks, to the wildly different mini-games, to breaking someone's head open over Kiryu's kneecap. It's got a punch that will leave a lasting impression, mixed with such an emotionally delicate storyline that finally smashes together in the climax. This game is rad as fuck and holds absolutely nothing back.
Having known really nothing about this series going in, it's interesting to see the origin story of characters you've only ever seen in passing through various youtube clips and meme gifs. Oh, how joyous it is to finally understand the context of said moments and realizing that, nope, this game is just as batshit insane as it looks on the outside. Somehow they've made it work, while the bulk of your hourly playtime is coming from the business and substory segments of the game, it's sparsely broken up by the very serious crime soap opera that would often lead to some doom and gloom without the karaoke and disco mini-games to bleach your eyeballs afterwards. It never really felt like anything was overstaying its welcome, (save for the end, but I'll get there), and the pacing was completely self-driven. If you want to shotgun this plot rather quickly, by all means, but the benefits you get from some of the substories are more than worth it. Especially with the business ventures. Sure, there’s a person who is terrified and starving in a storage unit waiting for you to get back to them, but god damn it, someone has to take their hostesses on dates.
I feel like once you do a mini-game you don't.. really have to do it again, but they're interesting time wasters for sure. You can pretty much do anything from bowling, to poker, or pocket circuit racing or even watch a wide range of girls try their best to look cutesy sexy and totally not like they're trapped in a bathroom at gunpoint. I do however find it really funny that most of these activities lead to smaller plot threads that neither of the characters really have any business learning or caring about. Oh, you want to do some little mini-car racing for a bit? Well, the owner of the establishment is a lonely guy who doesn't understand his worth and could use a self-confidence boost. Oh, you want to eat some sushi because your health is a bit low? Well, the owner is a dickhead to his nice employee that should be treated way better for the amount of effort she puts towards running the restaurant when he's not around. It's so funny, every time. The phone mini-game would be less ass without the RNG substory elements added to it, however I do wish that there were more karaoke and disco songs though.
I did enjoy the combat for the most part, but to say it's perfect would be a bit of a lie. It's pretty simplistic by nature, but has huge room for growth. When you upgrade your characters, you really do feel more powerful with every heat action or special ability unlocked. I love the various styles you can pick from and how each one may affect different bosses in different ways, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't tend to lean towards some over others. The Brawler style for Kiryu has the fast paced wombo combo dream for me that the Beast style lacks, without losing the strength behind the punch that Rush often would. I knew that if a bicycle was in range, that shit would be done in 30 seconds flat. That being said, I think I much preferred playing as Majima, as his three styles were bonkers BUSTED. Making him a lot easier to play and also a ton of fun as well. The combos that the Slugger style offers are just satisfying to pull off, with devastating results. The Breaker style would go absolutely nutty if you pulled a string of attacks off correctly. I don't think I game over'd once as Majima, it was only ever as Kiryu. Kiryu is supposed to be the main character of the whole series and I played him like straight ass the whole time. Sorry, man. This doesn't even mention the final styles of each character as well, a very worthwhile reward for putting up with the long as shit business segments that ate up most of my playtime. It was such a treat to run away from Mr. Shakedown with full pants for 90% of the game, to finally get the pleasure of breaking his spine in half once the characters were fully upgraded. The combat can get repetitive at times, especially near the end, but it never truly stopped being fun. However, the bosses always felt like a special occasion. Except the one, or two technically, optional bosses. Not sure what the lore on that was about yet but you can add this game to the list of RPGs with some of the most dogass optional bosses you've ever seen.
I'm so glad they added the ability to avoid battles by using money, but it doesn't quite work all the time if you're a little late on the draw, which is when the combat would drive me bananas. Near the end of the game, the regular enemies beef up to annoying amounts of health and attack you in droves. It makes trying to waste time and partake in business activities a nightmare sometimes. Boy, do I love getting sandwiched between a triangle of 3 dudes that are just punching me endlessly with perfect succession. Or how the later game bosses really love to somehow skate behind you and kick you into a stun that takes what seems like an eternity to break out of. This was pretty constant in the end-game, but for the most part it’s not really an issue. It’s very fun to punch into enemies and then break their bones with heat actions nonetheless.
I think most of my gripes actually come from a money balancing issue I ran into while playing. Majima seems to obtain money at a much more exponentially insane rate in comparison to Kiryu. His business mini-game is also much more interactive and while it takes longer to get through a cabaret session, the profits for defeating a Star are always humongous. The only real issue I had with it was the atrocious fashion you had to put some of those poor women through for the best results, but it’s the 80’s I guess. Anyways, he gets money insanely quickly which in turn upgrades him at a much faster rate. Kiryu on the other hand has to invest into his business, which means saving a lot of his money to advance the real estate rather than himself. Not to mention, Majima doesn’t have to invest in Mr. Moneybags nearly as much as Kiryu does, which I found odd. I ended up getting through the Cabaret plot line rather quickly, while the real estate seemed like it took ages. There was a good chunk of gameplay near the end where I’d have to go find things to do while I waited for my profits to come in, which kind of sucked and it left Kiryu behind in terms of his upgrades. Which is realistically why I probably preferred one character’s playstyle a lot more than the other.
The substories in this game are goofy as hell and I like them for the most part, but I do think we could have done with a bit less of them to be honest. Some of the best involve bowling for a turkey and some of the worst includes Kiryu buying pornography for.. a child. But, for the most part, they all end in exactly the same way with the exact same lessons to be learned for the random Joe and Smough you came across. Someone needs help with something, it turns out there’s a big miscommunication, shenanigans ensue, some dudes try to kick your ass, then rinse and repeat. Either have less substories in my opinion or, at the very least, shake up the formula on a lot of them so that the next one doesn’t feel exactly the same as the last one. They’re pretty funny at first, but later on I had to speedrun the dialogue on them to not feel like I was going absolutely insane.
All in all though, the narrative is masterfully told and definitely the best part of the game. You knew when the Japanese voice acting started, you were in for some popcorn munching shit. It starts off the rails almost immediately for both characters and never really stops. You have Kiryu thrown into what seems like a battle royale where everyone and their mom is coming for his ass no matter what he does, fighting for his damn life every second of the day. Then every so often, you switch to Majima’s much more kind-hearted, but desperate segments that contrast so well with what I can only assume his character is like in the other games. (An insane madlad.) The buildup of tension is heart pounding and it never falters. The OST fuckin’ rips. It’s just absolutely jaw dropping from the beginning and ends on such a refreshingly tender note. I’m sure there was a lot of contextual air that I was missing having played the prequel before everything else, but I am pilled enough to finally try out all the other games that came before this one.
Baka Mitai (I’ve Been a Fool) for leaving this unplayed in my Steam library for so long.
Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
There's something so inherently batshit about how serious the main plotline is in comparison to how extremely unserious the other 85% of the game is. Everything is so masterfully exaggerated, from doing the most simple tasks, to the wildly different mini-games, to breaking someone's head open over Kiryu's kneecap. It's got a punch that will leave a lasting impression, mixed with such an emotionally delicate storyline that finally smashes together in the climax. This game is rad as fuck and holds absolutely nothing back.
Having known really nothing about this series going in, it's interesting to see the origin story of characters you've only ever seen in passing through various youtube clips and meme gifs. Oh, how joyous it is to finally understand the context of said moments and realizing that, nope, this game is just as batshit insane as it looks on the outside. Somehow they've made it work, while the bulk of your hourly playtime is coming from the business and substory segments of the game, it's sparsely broken up by the very serious crime soap opera that would often lead to some doom and gloom without the karaoke and disco mini-games to bleach your eyeballs afterwards. It never really felt like anything was overstaying its welcome, (save for the end, but I'll get there), and the pacing was completely self-driven. If you want to shotgun this plot rather quickly, by all means, but the benefits you get from some of the substories are more than worth it. Especially with the business ventures. Sure, there’s a person who is terrified and starving in a storage unit waiting for you to get back to them, but god damn it, someone has to take their hostesses on dates.
I feel like once you do a mini-game you don't.. really have to do it again, but they're interesting time wasters for sure. You can pretty much do anything from bowling, to poker, or pocket circuit racing or even watch a wide range of girls try their best to look cutesy sexy and totally not like they're trapped in a bathroom at gunpoint. I do however find it really funny that most of these activities lead to smaller plot threads that neither of the characters really have any business learning or caring about. Oh, you want to do some little mini-car racing for a bit? Well, the owner of the establishment is a lonely guy who doesn't understand his worth and could use a self-confidence boost. Oh, you want to eat some sushi because your health is a bit low? Well, the owner is a dickhead to his nice employee that should be treated way better for the amount of effort she puts towards running the restaurant when he's not around. It's so funny, every time. The phone mini-game would be less ass without the RNG substory elements added to it, however I do wish that there were more karaoke and disco songs though.
I did enjoy the combat for the most part, but to say it's perfect would be a bit of a lie. It's pretty simplistic by nature, but has huge room for growth. When you upgrade your characters, you really do feel more powerful with every heat action or special ability unlocked. I love the various styles you can pick from and how each one may affect different bosses in different ways, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't tend to lean towards some over others. The Brawler style for Kiryu has the fast paced wombo combo dream for me that the Beast style lacks, without losing the strength behind the punch that Rush often would. I knew that if a bicycle was in range, that shit would be done in 30 seconds flat. That being said, I think I much preferred playing as Majima, as his three styles were bonkers BUSTED. Making him a lot easier to play and also a ton of fun as well. The combos that the Slugger style offers are just satisfying to pull off, with devastating results. The Breaker style would go absolutely nutty if you pulled a string of attacks off correctly. I don't think I game over'd once as Majima, it was only ever as Kiryu. Kiryu is supposed to be the main character of the whole series and I played him like straight ass the whole time. Sorry, man. This doesn't even mention the final styles of each character as well, a very worthwhile reward for putting up with the long as shit business segments that ate up most of my playtime. It was such a treat to run away from Mr. Shakedown with full pants for 90% of the game, to finally get the pleasure of breaking his spine in half once the characters were fully upgraded. The combat can get repetitive at times, especially near the end, but it never truly stopped being fun. However, the bosses always felt like a special occasion. Except the one, or two technically, optional bosses. Not sure what the lore on that was about yet but you can add this game to the list of RPGs with some of the most dogass optional bosses you've ever seen.
I'm so glad they added the ability to avoid battles by using money, but it doesn't quite work all the time if you're a little late on the draw, which is when the combat would drive me bananas. Near the end of the game, the regular enemies beef up to annoying amounts of health and attack you in droves. It makes trying to waste time and partake in business activities a nightmare sometimes. Boy, do I love getting sandwiched between a triangle of 3 dudes that are just punching me endlessly with perfect succession. Or how the later game bosses really love to somehow skate behind you and kick you into a stun that takes what seems like an eternity to break out of. This was pretty constant in the end-game, but for the most part it’s not really an issue. It’s very fun to punch into enemies and then break their bones with heat actions nonetheless.
I think most of my gripes actually come from a money balancing issue I ran into while playing. Majima seems to obtain money at a much more exponentially insane rate in comparison to Kiryu. His business mini-game is also much more interactive and while it takes longer to get through a cabaret session, the profits for defeating a Star are always humongous. The only real issue I had with it was the atrocious fashion you had to put some of those poor women through for the best results, but it’s the 80’s I guess. Anyways, he gets money insanely quickly which in turn upgrades him at a much faster rate. Kiryu on the other hand has to invest into his business, which means saving a lot of his money to advance the real estate rather than himself. Not to mention, Majima doesn’t have to invest in Mr. Moneybags nearly as much as Kiryu does, which I found odd. I ended up getting through the Cabaret plot line rather quickly, while the real estate seemed like it took ages. There was a good chunk of gameplay near the end where I’d have to go find things to do while I waited for my profits to come in, which kind of sucked and it left Kiryu behind in terms of his upgrades. Which is realistically why I probably preferred one character’s playstyle a lot more than the other.
The substories in this game are goofy as hell and I like them for the most part, but I do think we could have done with a bit less of them to be honest. Some of the best involve bowling for a turkey and some of the worst includes Kiryu buying pornography for.. a child. But, for the most part, they all end in exactly the same way with the exact same lessons to be learned for the random Joe and Smough you came across. Someone needs help with something, it turns out there’s a big miscommunication, shenanigans ensue, some dudes try to kick your ass, then rinse and repeat. Either have less substories in my opinion or, at the very least, shake up the formula on a lot of them so that the next one doesn’t feel exactly the same as the last one. They’re pretty funny at first, but later on I had to speedrun the dialogue on them to not feel like I was going absolutely insane.
All in all though, the narrative is masterfully told and definitely the best part of the game. You knew when the Japanese voice acting started, you were in for some popcorn munching shit. It starts off the rails almost immediately for both characters and never really stops. You have Kiryu thrown into what seems like a battle royale where everyone and their mom is coming for his ass no matter what he does, fighting for his damn life every second of the day. Then every so often, you switch to Majima’s much more kind-hearted, but desperate segments that contrast so well with what I can only assume his character is like in the other games. (An insane madlad.) The buildup of tension is heart pounding and it never falters. The OST fuckin’ rips. It’s just absolutely jaw dropping from the beginning and ends on such a refreshingly tender note. I’m sure there was a lot of contextual air that I was missing having played the prequel before everything else, but I am pilled enough to finally try out all the other games that came before this one.
Baka Mitai (I’ve Been a Fool) for leaving this unplayed in my Steam library for so long.
Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
What a cool fucking game man. I'm just gonna splurt my thoughts out for this review because I literally just finished it, but man I really enjoyed it.
The story was a highlight, it starts slow but once you get to around chapter 4 it really starts going and I was equally engaged in both Kiryu and Majima's stories. Majima's in particular was a real highlight and I loved the way it ended. Loved a lot of the characters, and the ones that I disliked at first I ended up enjoying quite a bit. Kiryu and Majima might be some of my favorite male protagonists in a game. I really love the brand of sensitive masculinity that they portray in this game. They get their strength from protecting the people in their lives that they care about as opposed to just being strong for strength's sake. I love that.
The side content was pretty cool. None of it was too deep on its own, but it was just deep enough for the sheer amount of it in the game to be impressive. The dance mini-game is gas, I would play a full game of that tbh. Then there is Real Estate Royale and the Cabaret Club Mini-game. I wasn't a huge fan of the Real Estate mini-game, it just felt a little too hands-off for me. It was cool seeing the characters from the sub-stories again, but there wasn't much drive to play it outside of it being a passive money-making farm at end-game. The cabaret club is really fun though and the management sim aspect scratched a deep part of my brain lol. I definitely would like to play more stuff like that in the future.
The only thing I really didn't like in this game was the upgrade system for the combat? It kind of felt like the progression was wonky. It felt too expensive to invest in the early game and then by the time I had enough yen to afford it I just kind of maxed out the entire tree? Idk, I would have preferred a normal exp system here, but I get what they were going for thematically. Styles were pretty cool, I felt like I got use out of all of Kiryu's styles except the legend one. That one just felt like a slower version of Brawler. I realize the fighting style is based on how Kiryu plays in the other games, but I just wasn't really using it effectively idk. Majima's styles were even more of a mixed bag especially since I had less upgrade money for him. I didn't use Slugger at all. Thug I found useful during the early and mid-game fights and Breaker was my go-to in crowds. The counter that his legend style has is broken, so I used that for the end-game fights lol.
Anywho, this game fucks and I look forward to playing the original on Ps2 next.
The story was a highlight, it starts slow but once you get to around chapter 4 it really starts going and I was equally engaged in both Kiryu and Majima's stories. Majima's in particular was a real highlight and I loved the way it ended. Loved a lot of the characters, and the ones that I disliked at first I ended up enjoying quite a bit. Kiryu and Majima might be some of my favorite male protagonists in a game. I really love the brand of sensitive masculinity that they portray in this game. They get their strength from protecting the people in their lives that they care about as opposed to just being strong for strength's sake. I love that.
The side content was pretty cool. None of it was too deep on its own, but it was just deep enough for the sheer amount of it in the game to be impressive. The dance mini-game is gas, I would play a full game of that tbh. Then there is Real Estate Royale and the Cabaret Club Mini-game. I wasn't a huge fan of the Real Estate mini-game, it just felt a little too hands-off for me. It was cool seeing the characters from the sub-stories again, but there wasn't much drive to play it outside of it being a passive money-making farm at end-game. The cabaret club is really fun though and the management sim aspect scratched a deep part of my brain lol. I definitely would like to play more stuff like that in the future.
The only thing I really didn't like in this game was the upgrade system for the combat? It kind of felt like the progression was wonky. It felt too expensive to invest in the early game and then by the time I had enough yen to afford it I just kind of maxed out the entire tree? Idk, I would have preferred a normal exp system here, but I get what they were going for thematically. Styles were pretty cool, I felt like I got use out of all of Kiryu's styles except the legend one. That one just felt like a slower version of Brawler. I realize the fighting style is based on how Kiryu plays in the other games, but I just wasn't really using it effectively idk. Majima's styles were even more of a mixed bag especially since I had less upgrade money for him. I didn't use Slugger at all. Thug I found useful during the early and mid-game fights and Breaker was my go-to in crowds. The counter that his legend style has is broken, so I used that for the end-game fights lol.
Anywho, this game fucks and I look forward to playing the original on Ps2 next.
Enjoyment - 9/10
Difficulty - 7/10
Holy moly. Why haven't I played these games sooner?! Nights I could be vibing to this series... wasted. Instead, I was probably playing Fantastic 4 for PS2.
🏆
Difficulty - 7/10
Holy moly. Why haven't I played these games sooner?! Nights I could be vibing to this series... wasted. Instead, I was probably playing Fantastic 4 for PS2.
🏆
Genuinely perfect. It is truly astonishing that this game can do so many things at once and nail all of them. It's silly, dramatic, sad, and by FAR the best Yakuza to date in both story and gameplay. The three styles allow endless expression in your combos, and the heat actions are either the funniest or most brutal thing ever. The minigames never got boring no matter how many times I played all of them and the substories are perfect side missions. Even if you have no interest in the Yakuza series, you're doing yourself a disservice by not playing this masterpiece of a game.
The craziest game i have played. There is no game that combines a heavy and serious narrative with the most outrageous side quests and mini games like Yakuza . This game has quality and love written all over it.
i got 3 strikes in a row at the bowling alley and was rewarded with a chicken who managed my real estate empire, netting me billions of dollars in the process
perhaps the greatest game ever made
perhaps the greatest game ever made
I read a book detailing JRPGs a little while ago that had an entire section about Action JRPGs and made an interesting case for including the entire Yakuza series, even before Like A Dragon, among the catalog. Playing Yakuza 0, and stretching our accepted definition of what an RPG is just a tiny bit, I can definitely understand how one can make a compelling case in favor of it. I don’t think this is a fully fledged RPG due to how kitchen sink the game is with itself but there’s definitely a lot of elements that pushes it pretty close. The enemy encounter design function exactly like the random encounters of any JRPG, there’s a sense of progression with how you can level up your character to gain higher stats and better attacks, the skill tree is literally just a streamlined Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X, and the overall design of the plot and substories are very akin to any RPG with a main story and sidequests to dick around with. It’s interesting how much I came to generally agree with this because Yakuza 0 is such a uniquely designed game. It’s a pure jack-of-all-trades type of game. It’s not easy to squeeze this into one narrowed down genre descriptor because of the amount of variety packed in meant for appealing to different players. It’s part beat ‘em up action brawler, part RPG, part open-world, part social sim, part mini-game galore sidetracker, and part cinematic story-driven narrative.
Though, when you cook a bunch of different ingredients like these together you end up leaving with some half-baked ideas like the weapon shop system which I dunno who but active completionists really bother much with and even some areas of the map design are just weirdly undeveloped. There’s a part in the back half of the game where you can switch between protagonists and travel to Kamurocho/Sotenbori and nothing really changes when you visit each other’s respective maps. The locales that also aren’t just a springboard for minigames to happen are pretty barren in terms of fun interactivity or liveliness. It’s weirdly disappointing when the game already handles how substories are naturally opened up to the player through casual exploration incredibly well, on top of feeling like worthwhile substantial side content that makes Kamurocho/Sotenbori feel like their own engaging characters. The first two chapters of the game start off kinda rough, despite setting up the plot and intrigue well enough, the things you actually do in them are mostly just a whole lotta nothing and slow. Case in point; when you had to scout around the map for a fetch quest to find 5 different bottles of alcohol for a group of homeless guys to shovel through the story. Once you get past that, especially starting Chapter 3, it immediately kicks into stylish high gear as the game allows you to set your own pace with how you can approach the main story, substories, side activities, and the hustling grind to make as much money as possible to level yourself up or invest to make even more money. This can lead into slight exhaustion because of how excessive the grind is with currency being important for pretty much everything in the game. You’d have to get into constant fights with random Yakuza thugs on the streets to hustle so much money that the combat becomes repetitive pretty quick. Kiryu’s especially, where his styles and moveset feels too simple compared to Majima’s which was more fun and varied to use against a bunch of thugs. I can’t think of going back to Kiryu’s moveset when Majima has you breakdancing on the floor for close crowd control and stunlocking enemies by effortlessly slugging them with a bat.
Actually, I think lots of the weak points in the game stem down to whenever you play as Kiryu, funnily enough. This is meant to be a prequel and origin story for the entire franchise and his role in the story, though still quite competent and engaging, just pales in comparison for how much more interesting and captivating Majima’s side was which is where most of my favorite narrative beats stacked together. It still works as a nice introduction to Kiryu as the leading man for the next six games who’ll no doubt get more substantial character-work obviously but part of me wishes this was more upfront in sidelining him to give more focus for Majima who elevated this game pretty hard.
Though, when you cook a bunch of different ingredients like these together you end up leaving with some half-baked ideas like the weapon shop system which I dunno who but active completionists really bother much with and even some areas of the map design are just weirdly undeveloped. There’s a part in the back half of the game where you can switch between protagonists and travel to Kamurocho/Sotenbori and nothing really changes when you visit each other’s respective maps. The locales that also aren’t just a springboard for minigames to happen are pretty barren in terms of fun interactivity or liveliness. It’s weirdly disappointing when the game already handles how substories are naturally opened up to the player through casual exploration incredibly well, on top of feeling like worthwhile substantial side content that makes Kamurocho/Sotenbori feel like their own engaging characters. The first two chapters of the game start off kinda rough, despite setting up the plot and intrigue well enough, the things you actually do in them are mostly just a whole lotta nothing and slow. Case in point; when you had to scout around the map for a fetch quest to find 5 different bottles of alcohol for a group of homeless guys to shovel through the story. Once you get past that, especially starting Chapter 3, it immediately kicks into stylish high gear as the game allows you to set your own pace with how you can approach the main story, substories, side activities, and the hustling grind to make as much money as possible to level yourself up or invest to make even more money. This can lead into slight exhaustion because of how excessive the grind is with currency being important for pretty much everything in the game. You’d have to get into constant fights with random Yakuza thugs on the streets to hustle so much money that the combat becomes repetitive pretty quick. Kiryu’s especially, where his styles and moveset feels too simple compared to Majima’s which was more fun and varied to use against a bunch of thugs. I can’t think of going back to Kiryu’s moveset when Majima has you breakdancing on the floor for close crowd control and stunlocking enemies by effortlessly slugging them with a bat.
Actually, I think lots of the weak points in the game stem down to whenever you play as Kiryu, funnily enough. This is meant to be a prequel and origin story for the entire franchise and his role in the story, though still quite competent and engaging, just pales in comparison for how much more interesting and captivating Majima’s side was which is where most of my favorite narrative beats stacked together. It still works as a nice introduction to Kiryu as the leading man for the next six games who’ll no doubt get more substantial character-work obviously but part of me wishes this was more upfront in sidelining him to give more focus for Majima who elevated this game pretty hard.
A luta com o Shibusawa mudou minha vida
I know it's unintended but Kiryu is the best autistic rep ever. I relate to this man more than anyone else.
"But there's not a person in this world who knows what's waiting down the road.
All we can do is choose. Stand still and cry...
Or make the choice to take the next step."
Em controvérsia com a maioria dos fãs da série, ter deixado pra jogar por último Yakuza 0 foi com certeza a melhor decisão que fiz. Jogar a prequel com tamanha bagagem de conhecimento da franquia me permitiu uma maior imersão da narrativa.
O game conta a história de como Goro Majima e Kiryu Kazuma se tornaram as lendas da máfia japonesa; Dragão de Dojima e o Cachorro Louco de Shimano.
Durante os anos 80 no Japão, no período denominado "Bubble Economy" o valor do yen estava muitíssimo em alta, as pessoas estavam vivendo sua melhor vida, principalmente para quem estava envolvido em qualquer tipo de negócio, sendo este legítimo ou não. Dessa forma, a trama gira em torno do "Empty Lot" um local que possui um valor exorbitante, e que futuramente se tornaria um local um tanto quanto conhecido e respeitado dentro da série. Enquanto Kiryu está tentando provar sua inocência ao ser incriminado, Majima está tentando voltar a ativa após ser expulso por insubordinação, o caminho de ambos acabam se entrelaçando em meio a um turbilhão de acontecimentos.
Após 6 jogos em perspectiva com Kiryu, confesso que meu maior interesse em Yakuza 0 estava voltado para a lore do Majima; de onde veio tanta loucura?? Procurei por respostas e o resultado me fez passar a admirar o personagem x100 mais!
Isso também me ocorreu em respeito de gameplay, me diverti demais no estilos de luta do Majima. Break é um tanto quanto engraçado, ótimo contra grupos de inimigos e muito efetivo se combado com Slugger, esse que acabou por ser meu estilo favorito. HR!
O que torna Yakuza 0 excepcional é seu enredo dramático muito bem escrito e executado. Não só uma história de um romance melancólico, mas também sobre encontrar a humanidade por trás da sujeira e do lucro. Repleta de emoção e significado, abordando introspecção em prol de gerar sua própria identidade.
Pra você que conhece Yakuza apenas por seus memes, saiba que esses são apenas uma parte meramente significante das várias camadas que formam a franquia que melhor descreve o Japão no universo dos video games, e Yakuza 0 é sua porta de entrada para conhecer essa obra de arte.
All we can do is choose. Stand still and cry...
Or make the choice to take the next step."
Em controvérsia com a maioria dos fãs da série, ter deixado pra jogar por último Yakuza 0 foi com certeza a melhor decisão que fiz. Jogar a prequel com tamanha bagagem de conhecimento da franquia me permitiu uma maior imersão da narrativa.
O game conta a história de como Goro Majima e Kiryu Kazuma se tornaram as lendas da máfia japonesa; Dragão de Dojima e o Cachorro Louco de Shimano.
Durante os anos 80 no Japão, no período denominado "Bubble Economy" o valor do yen estava muitíssimo em alta, as pessoas estavam vivendo sua melhor vida, principalmente para quem estava envolvido em qualquer tipo de negócio, sendo este legítimo ou não. Dessa forma, a trama gira em torno do "Empty Lot" um local que possui um valor exorbitante, e que futuramente se tornaria um local um tanto quanto conhecido e respeitado dentro da série. Enquanto Kiryu está tentando provar sua inocência ao ser incriminado, Majima está tentando voltar a ativa após ser expulso por insubordinação, o caminho de ambos acabam se entrelaçando em meio a um turbilhão de acontecimentos.
Após 6 jogos em perspectiva com Kiryu, confesso que meu maior interesse em Yakuza 0 estava voltado para a lore do Majima; de onde veio tanta loucura?? Procurei por respostas e o resultado me fez passar a admirar o personagem x100 mais!
Isso também me ocorreu em respeito de gameplay, me diverti demais no estilos de luta do Majima. Break é um tanto quanto engraçado, ótimo contra grupos de inimigos e muito efetivo se combado com Slugger, esse que acabou por ser meu estilo favorito. HR!
O que torna Yakuza 0 excepcional é seu enredo dramático muito bem escrito e executado. Não só uma história de um romance melancólico, mas também sobre encontrar a humanidade por trás da sujeira e do lucro. Repleta de emoção e significado, abordando introspecção em prol de gerar sua própria identidade.
Pra você que conhece Yakuza apenas por seus memes, saiba que esses são apenas uma parte meramente significante das várias camadas que formam a franquia que melhor descreve o Japão no universo dos video games, e Yakuza 0 é sua porta de entrada para conhecer essa obra de arte.
Why does Shimano have the scariest face in all of gaming holy shit
Best story ive ever seen in a game, this shit keeps you on edge from start to finish, the combat is a bit wonky at first but its great once you get used to it. Its setting is basically a very detailed recreation of kabukichou from tokyo and dotonbori from osaka and its wonderful. Also contains 2 of the most baller protagonists ever in a game. Highly reccommend.
This was a brilliant introduction to a series I've only seen my friend play up til now. It was every bit of the rich, conspiracy filled, double-turn twist, over the top action I expected. I'm honestly not sure why THIS is the one that finally broke through with western audiences, it doesn't really seem too different from the other games in the series I've seen. But it's a hell of a game to kick it off for new fans. Even though it's got its share of problems.
The story was intriguing, filled with some big twists and great characters. I didn't expect Majima's story to be so compelling. Although I wish I understood a little bit more why he's so serious here, but so insane in the other games, it didn't feel like a believable transition. But that's okay, his story was still mostly interesting. Kiryu's started slow and boring, but eventually picked up, and I was happy to see that.
Combat feels great, but battles all feel the same, so it's easy to get sick of them. And with Majima's slugger style, the game just kind of ended up playing itself. So not difficult, but just long with so many waves of enemies. At least the music for fights was great, and the boss fights and especially the boss characters were EXTRAORDINARY. Props to the guy who played Kuze, I will never forget your performance here. S+.
Music, I mean, what do you say? Incredible. IN-fucking-CREDIBLE. These composers are geniuses.
I will say that I thought the final parts of the game were filled with a little too much time wasting, and taking out all those unnecessary scenes and fights, the game would have felt a lot more snug in its runtime. I'm excited to see the rest of the series, I just hope this isn't the peak at the very start and it's all downhill from here.
The story was intriguing, filled with some big twists and great characters. I didn't expect Majima's story to be so compelling. Although I wish I understood a little bit more why he's so serious here, but so insane in the other games, it didn't feel like a believable transition. But that's okay, his story was still mostly interesting. Kiryu's started slow and boring, but eventually picked up, and I was happy to see that.
Combat feels great, but battles all feel the same, so it's easy to get sick of them. And with Majima's slugger style, the game just kind of ended up playing itself. So not difficult, but just long with so many waves of enemies. At least the music for fights was great, and the boss fights and especially the boss characters were EXTRAORDINARY. Props to the guy who played Kuze, I will never forget your performance here. S+.
Music, I mean, what do you say? Incredible. IN-fucking-CREDIBLE. These composers are geniuses.
I will say that I thought the final parts of the game were filled with a little too much time wasting, and taking out all those unnecessary scenes and fights, the game would have felt a lot more snug in its runtime. I'm excited to see the rest of the series, I just hope this isn't the peak at the very start and it's all downhill from here.