It's hard to say how much of this rating is due to return on investment ($19.99 during a PSN sale), amount of joy derived from the product (I first watched Giant Bomb play through the game in its entirety for a feature called Beast in the East that aired three years prior to my purchase) and actual fun had playing the game (I started playing this game on February 11th, 2020 and finished over a year later with nearly 80 hours played) but I do know that the rating is duly earned via some combination of the three.
What is there to say about Yakuza 0 that hasn't already been said better or just as well by so many others? There's plenty to quibble with, mainly a few janky combat scenarios I suppose, but the beauty of Yakuza 0 is that you can take as much or as little from it as you want. Some, like me, will fall in love with the hostesses and begrudgingly complete the real estate management out of a sense of duty to the community. Others will dig deep into the arcade units, or the gladiator arena, or the RC car races, or the obscure (to Western audiences) gambling games. It says a lot that I put so much time into this game and only walked away with 50% of its trophies, though I do take solace in all but one of those missed cheevos are sub-20% completion rate.
But even if I could conjure up some odd memory that'd make me want to knock this game down to a 4 (like the long break I took after starting it, thinking maybe I actually preferred Kiwami more...) ultimately the most important thing anyone can say about Zero is this: without this game's existence, I would've let Yakuza Kiwami linger forever in my PS+ inventory rather than downloaded it immediately. If this game hadn't been as great as it was, I wouldn't have immediately glued my eyes to Kiwami 2, the Remastered Collection, Song of Life and the Judgement games for equally great sales.
And the sales have come, the games are here, and all I see before me on my shiny PS5 dashboard are games developed by RGG between the years 2009 and 2021. Yakuza 0 fucks y'all, and I'm just another Kamurocho baby now.
What is there to say about Yakuza 0 that hasn't already been said better or just as well by so many others? There's plenty to quibble with, mainly a few janky combat scenarios I suppose, but the beauty of Yakuza 0 is that you can take as much or as little from it as you want. Some, like me, will fall in love with the hostesses and begrudgingly complete the real estate management out of a sense of duty to the community. Others will dig deep into the arcade units, or the gladiator arena, or the RC car races, or the obscure (to Western audiences) gambling games. It says a lot that I put so much time into this game and only walked away with 50% of its trophies, though I do take solace in all but one of those missed cheevos are sub-20% completion rate.
But even if I could conjure up some odd memory that'd make me want to knock this game down to a 4 (like the long break I took after starting it, thinking maybe I actually preferred Kiwami more...) ultimately the most important thing anyone can say about Zero is this: without this game's existence, I would've let Yakuza Kiwami linger forever in my PS+ inventory rather than downloaded it immediately. If this game hadn't been as great as it was, I wouldn't have immediately glued my eyes to Kiwami 2, the Remastered Collection, Song of Life and the Judgement games for equally great sales.
And the sales have come, the games are here, and all I see before me on my shiny PS5 dashboard are games developed by RGG between the years 2009 and 2021. Yakuza 0 fucks y'all, and I'm just another Kamurocho baby now.