Yakuza 0 takes you to the late 80s of the Tokyo night life in such a charming and unexpected way.
Kamurocho and Sotenbori (based on the real Kabuchiko and Dotenbori) aren't ashamed of showing their best and worst aspects, and are fully recreated in order to feel like real places with real people living in them: the way NPCs, shops, substories and minigames animate the game's world is one of the most charming aspect of Yakuza 0.
All the stories, despite being exaggerated for the purpose of comedy and action, are grounded in reality to the point where the game itself treats the narrative as if it was like a film narrating real events, just re-elaborated in order to give the player more suspense and adrenaline.
The gameplay isn't really deep, but its simplicity isn't necessarily bad: I would call the game a "modern" beat 'em up with RPG elements. It never feels boring and it has the right pace. Also, making the player switch between the two protagonists, Kiryu and Majima (which honestly stole the spotlight, at least for me), really helps.
The only thing that anyone with at least a bit of gaming experience can immediately notice is that, yes, this is a PS3 game indeed, so you'll notice very square-y hitboxes in the city, limited animations, some low quality textures hidden in the least interesting points and the pop-in effect.
The side content is fun and really vast but, dare I say, really redundant, making this game the worst nightmare of a completionist (I abandoned the idea of getting the Platinum Trophy after 90 hours). As for me, I immediately dropped the idea of getting the Platinum, but I spent a lot of time grinding to get to the Secret Boss and unlocking the fourth battle style for both the protagonists: those operations made me easily get to 100+ hour of playthrough, but I don't regret doing it and the game gave some good memories.

Overall one of my favorite games ever. I never did like the 80s (which, in Japan, feels more like the 70s in Europe), but this game made me appreciate them in a way I never expected to. Interesting how the developers thought about making the Economic Bubble event into a game trait (basically you'll get a tons of money, while in other Yakuza games they are much less. And you use that money to learn skills).

Edit as for 28/08/2023: Defeated both So and Jo Amon. What a ride.

A really solid 2D Mario with an interesting level design and an enjoyable vibe.

I think all of those who recently started to throw shit on this title are probably just biased towards the most recent Super Mario Wonder and, while waiting for its release, replayed this game without actually trying to dig into it and tought "Wow, this game from 2006 is not that other game from 2023, so it sucks!".
The "New" series may have been a little too repetitive after its 4th title, but this one was the first New Super Mario Bros. and the first 2D Mario platform in a long time, so at the time it was actually pretty sick.

Plus the game has a PvP mode which I remember loving as a kid, and some minigames to kill some times.

cant believe this game about fucking gators was one of the funniest experiences ive had this year its so wittingly written with the right kind of humor for me i feel like it was purposely made for me because i always brag about having a haute couture but for humor (sex jokes and piss and poop jokes) so pillow fight was like we are gonna show you a piece of our minds

leaving that for later this is a point and click disclaimer i fucking despise point and clicks i tried to play syberia because a friend recommended it to me and it single handedly made me pause gaming for like a month because i touched the fucking bottom of the well with that one umh wait there could be fans of syberia here umh … i meant it was a great experience but not for me <3 so i was saying point and clicks arent for me which is funny because i reviewed that furry brothel game which is a point and click but with the added flair of porn CGs to fap to therefore it actually had a very good reason for me to try it

as for the game in it of itself i cant say much because first this is about a an alligator trying to find out who in his family is trying to kill him so talking about the whole plot would make the mystery aspect go away and second this is a game whose charm you cant really understand until you boot it up theres so much love put into this game that its honestly a shame it isnt as popular as i want it to be the animations are GORGEOUS absolutely the best ive seen in these cartoonish type of style and add so much to the experience that i honestly cannot think about this game without thinking about the dumb as shit character designs that are gonna make you laugh so hard and the smooth idle animations to give life to the portraits UGHHHHHH its so good and i swear theres so much thought being put in everything here the single characters the streets and locales the landscape and minigames nothing is left to chance i can feel the hard work they put into this game THROUGH the fucking screen i kid you not

so i was saying the main character of the game pat the alligator is being threatened to life by some kind of mysterious family event + hes definitely schizo so he hires the protagonist to investigate the circumstances and to do that you will have to get to know every single relative of this stupid guy and rest assured his family is MASSIVE parents cousins siblings grandparents friends boyfriends and girlfriends of friends everyones in for the party and to actually get to know the true intentions of these people you have to do some minigames

now im not a fan of minigames but the ones in this game were quirky enough to actually make me enjoy most of them and i have to applaud the sheer about of creativity in these ones because professor layton can only learn from this ong theres so many of them i cannot spoil them to you yes but rest assured that they will play with the concept of minigame a damn lot i had my wig snatched more than ones theres something for everybody puzzles card games and even VNs like

so you get the pins of each relative put them in the family tree and if you get all of them you get the true ending which made me gag a little bit i gotta be honest plot twist of the century

now as i was saying theres not a lot of meat to the game because this is not a game to play its a game to live and breathe and i swear to god this is the funniest game ive played all year the character all have at least some one liners that made me crack tf up and genuinely bingoed most of the stuff i like in humor apart from obviously… sex but whatever and im gonna put this imgur link to give you an idea to what the kind of humor this is because i have no idea how to explain it but that being said it was TOO GOOD definitely the best part of the game and if you hear me say something like this it means its really damn funny because 2 things i rarely get me from videogames and those are horror and humor because i only fear far right wing ideologies and only laugh at butt jokes and i guess if you want to go completely blind dont look at the screenshots DUMBASS

so umhhhhhhhhh im at a loss of words rn because again its such a weird game to recommend to people but if you play this im gonna send you some nudes there you go how to get players 101