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.