I feel like this game is the closest we've gotten to recreating MGS4 in a game ever. The pacing in this game is all over the place, the villains are awful save for one who is written out of the story unceremoniously only to reappear out of nowhere before credits roll for an unearned finale. The constant need to grind for money/job levels/exp creates a feeling of immense bloat between the story's high points that essentially just exist to exhaust you. The ending might be the most unsatisfying these games have ended since Yakuza 3.

Now that I’ve had a day to sit on my thoughts of the game I will make an actual non-shitpost review.

This game is a mess. I wasn’t kidding when I said this is the MGS4 of the series. An extremely ambitious, earnest, heartfelt celebration of the series that has extremely high highs but also constantly falls on its face with extremely stupid writing.

The pacing is some of the worst we’ve seen from RGG. For a game that can easily be 100+ hours long it is both too long but also too short in areas. It constantly pulls you away from the main story to do very involved mini game/sub system tutorials but then has no time in the final hours to wrap up most of the story. At least 4 of the main characters this game is about don’t show up in the final cutscene. You just have to be told about what they are doing from a mouth piece so we can wrap shit up. Kiryu is just kinda left in this weird limbo as they don’t explain what the fuck got them to this point with an achievement titles “man who reclaimed his name”. It genuinely feels like there is either an entire chapter or at least a huge segment of one missing from the end. One of the main villains just stops showing up for 10+ hours only to be seen again in a cut away and is completely unrecognizable for at least another few hours. They then try to do the coin locker scene again with them and it feels completely unearned because they haven’t done anything. The two main villains you do fight are extremely forgettable and underwhelming. One is given what you’d imagine to be a super important connection to Ichiban but it never comes up. The two share a single cutscene at the start of the game and that’s it. Why was it even a plot point to begin with then???? So many plot threads just go no where or are left extremely unsatisfying as they hand wave them away so it can’t be viewed as “a plot hole”. I seriously think how they structure their stories needs to change because I don’t think the Yakuza writing formula they’ve had for 2 decades translates to a 100 hour JRPG. Imo the best way to enjoy the main story of these games is when you can just progress the plot freely and not be bogged down by side content or busy work. I usually save that stuff for premium adventure so the story isn’t so “start and stop”. But you can’t do that in these games because of the rpg leveling and just how the story constantly blocks you to do other shit I am currently not interested in. No RGG I don’t give a fuck about your Pokémon clone and it’s 30 minute+ forced tutorial I just want to get on with chapter 4 please.

Most of the cast has nothing to do in this game which would be fine if they didn’t force them to have boring ass drink links you need to do to make them objectively better in gameplay.

The gameplay needs massive changes going forward because Jesus Christ was I sick of the multiple grinds it imposes. The long battles they do in this game are terrible. In previous entries you’d have a long gauntlet where you’d have to fight to a location and they do this here but they constantly make you take the most out of the way route and block off better ones with excuses like “there are dudes over there!” Only to send you down an alley with 7 fights. If 9 does the same formula 8 repeated from 7 I might just drop the series. I do not want to go back to scrounging for money and being locked out of jobs till chapter 5 again. I do not want to have to do massive material grinds for good gear. I do not want to have 80% of the moves you get to be fucking useless because they aren’t an AOE and don’t deal elemental damage.

Highlights of this game is everything they do with Kiryu outside of the final chapter. Life links are overall goated outside of some implications of how no one reacting to Kiryu being alive despite you are only able to see them after Kiryu is broadcasted on national news to be alive.

There is honestly too much to talk about with this game So I’m just gonna end it by saying this: I’ll look back on the good in this game as some of the best but I never want to replay this game ever again. Also this game only makes Gaiden look even dumber and further cements it at as a $50 scam. Yokoyama fucking lied Hanawa is not important and he fucking knew that.

Mark my words that this game while currently being hailed as the best game in the series, that its perfect and other things like that will be looked back on a lot more negatively once the honeymoon phase is over, once hypebeasts move onto the next thing, once people won't freakout if you have anything negative to say about it. It won't be a hot take or "being contrarian" to think that the game is mid, super front loaded and falls apart in the end. It's fine if you do think its perfect and its your favorite game or whatever but the amount of people who lose their shit when you have anything negative to say about this game or gaiden is seriously annoying.

This game also made me get into a car accident so fuck it lol

YOU DON'T GET TO THE TOP BY CRYING

The buildup I experienced going into Yakuza 0 was intense for a multitude of reasons. Not only did my decision to go in release order (LAD notwithstanding) lead to me going through several games before reaching this one, not only did I have to endure trials to play this on PC, which ultimately ended in failure, but because this was built up as the best game in the series and one of the best games ever made. While I don’t think it lives up to THAT high of a standard, it’s still a fantastic game with some of the highest highs the series has ever seen.

To start with the gameplay, it has a pretty interesting innovation with its combat. This game introduces the style system, where you can switch between three different fighting styles for each character, with a fourth one based on their original movesets being unlocked after the Real Estate and Cabaret side games. I really like this system, it adds a good amount of variety to combat while also being really, for lack of a better term, stylish. Also, the more the gap between Yakuza and Devil May Cry is bridged, the better.

I’ll briefly go over each of the main fighting styles, starting with Kiryu’s. Brawler style is cool as a sort of early version of Kiryu’s normal fighting style. I noticed quite a few parallels between it and the Legend style he unlocks later, but with Brawler being quite a bit more scrappy, which is fitting for Kiryu’s place in the story. Rush was my personal favorite to use, especially for 1 on 1 fights. I really like the mobility it offers, and the bobbing and weaving you can do with some moves and the guard almost made me feel like I was playing God Hand at times. I wasn’t a fan of Beast style at first, I didn’t see much utility in the guarding mechanic it had, but once I unlocked more abilities, including some attacks that come out of the guarding stance, I realized that Beast style is completely broken. It was an easy go-to for tearing apart crowds.

Moving onto Majima’s, I feel like Thug is a similar type of early adoption of Majima’s fighting style that Brawler was for Kiryu, though I think Thug’s focus on movement and evasion is a bit more interesting. It feels like a closer equivalent to Rush than Brawler at times. The Slugger style rivals Beast in how meathead-y it can be, even with just the bat by itself. I think it ties in with how Majima has a much emphasis on different weapons between the two. The last one I want to go over is Breaker, which is my favorite in terms of choreography. Incorporating breakdancing into combat is really cool to see, and this is one of my favorite examples of it in a game. Really like the freeze poses too, those are dope. Overall I’m a big fan of the style system, I’m excited to see how the system is expanded on in the Judgment games.

A really cool piece of how it incorporates its mechanics into the story is the role of money. The most brought up example is the progression system, but it’s a recurring thread through every facet of the game. Most of the key facets of the plot are about making money and buying properties, it forms a handful of the villains’ ideologies, and a good chunk of the substories focus on money. It’s really cool that the focus on money, as symbolism of Japan’s bubble economy at the time, has a really large presence.

But the most notable one is its skill trees, which has a lot going for it. I think its structure is the best middle ground the series has had between the freeform skill orb system in 4 and the more linear progression of the other games in the series. I still think 4 has my favorite leveling system for how much freedom you have with spending orbs, but I see a lot of value in the skill tree. Speaking of value, I do like the idea of making money the indicator of your progress. Like I said, money is a large aspect of 0’s story and time period, so tying that into your growth for both characters is really neat. I also like how this means progression isn’t just tied to combat or substories. You can get tons of money from selling items, gambling in the Fate Extra catfighting ring, or engaging in each of the characters’ main side stories. Going through them as you move forward makes the feeling of progression satisfying in a pretty unique way for the series.

So there's all sorts of systems that help you make money and support this system really well. However, there's one teensy-weensy but ever so crucial tiny, little detail. None of them matter. For the purposes of gaining money, every single one of these methods is completely irrelevant. And that's all because of one man. Or rather, because of four men…

I like Mr Shakedown in theory, having a superboss walk down the street with steep consequences for losing, while resulting in a massive payout if you beat him. They even have funny little stories as you fight them. In execution, his presence completely ruins the progression of the game. It doesn’t take long for the fights to become incredibly easy to exploit, completely eliminating the risk element of the risk-reward system and making for a painfully easy way to get billions of yen in no time flat. It makes it so that any money management from the side games is nonexistent, making the possibility of doing them all in one go rather than doing them over the course of the game much easier, and, more importantly, you can max out skill trees incredibly fast. I feel like the team was slightly aware of this, so they had to balance the skill tree around him by making sharp price hikes in abilities, especially for Kiryu. But then the result of that is feeling the need to grind out Mr Shakedown to get anywhere close to getting more skills. Being able to max yourself out this easily, alongside the side modes for each character (which are much easier to do all in one go than people would have you believe), leads to the bosses feeling like complete jokes until the very last chapter of the game. This is by far the most exploitable progression system in the series, to the point that it was incredibly hard to ignore. I feel like the game would be better off without that system in place.

But let’s put all of that aside because, as much as I really like it, the gameplay isn’t really the main appeal of the series, the story is. I was originally going to start this by hardening my stance on its role as a starting point, (To summarize, I think starting with the originals is the best way to go about it, but if you start with 0 or LAD like I did, I won’t hold it against you) but I think focusing on that will distract from how it being the 6th title impacted the way I perceive the story. I think the game’s structure is the best execution of having multiple protagonists that they’ve done in the series. Frequently switching back and forth between Kiryu and Majima does wonders for holding my interest in both of them, especially with the TV serial style they’re going for with this. Kiryu’s side of the story is pretty awesome. It’s interesting to see Kiryu in a state where he’s still learning and not anywhere close to the level of dominance that he has in the other titles. It’s cool seeing the way he’s influenced by the people closest to him, and those that challenge him throughout the game. However, I felt that Majima’s side was much stronger in this regard. It might be a stretch to say, but this almost feels more like Majima’s story than Kiryu’s at points. My main intrigue for this was due to seeing him before the events of this game in Yakuza 4, and I’m glad to see they really capitalized on that. Seeing Majima start to cut loose due to his personal stake in the events of the story is the coolest thing. All of Majima’s dialogue in the final chapter had me absolutely giddy.

The villain lineup was also pretty good, I’ll go through each of them briefly. Kuze is great, easily my favorite of the three lieutenants. I love how persistent he is, he’s like a rival character in an action game that’s constantly testing Kiryu. He also happens to have the best boss theme in the game, but that’s besides the point. Shibusawa is pretty neat too, though I feel like he could’ve had a closer dynamic with Kiryu before the very end, like what Kiryu had with Kuze. Kuze and Shibusawa sort of remind me of Saix and Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts II, where the latter has a more imposing role in the narrative, but the former feels more like the main antagonist through his relationship with the MC. The third lieutenant, Awano was a bit of a letdown tbh. His speech to Kiryu was fantastic, but it feels like they didn’t know what to do with him after that point and kind of forced him into a boss fight. The last one I want to mention, Sagawa, is my favorite villain of the entire game. In each scene he’s in, he exudes so much pressure from his calm expressions and the way he talks. Every exchange he has with Majima feels like he’s seeing right through him and has him completely under his thumb. It makes it all the more interesting to see the kind of impact he has on Majima as a character. And that’s the key part of Yakuza 0, we get to see how the people that Kiryu and Majima meet and the actions they take influence them, and form the way they understand the world and themselves. But as satisfying as their growth is, all of it has a tinge of sadness to it, with the knowledge of what’s to come.

I think the most important part of having the context of the whole series as I played, was the way it unmasked the tale’s true nature. All the way through to the credits, Yakuza 0 is a tragedy. When I saw those very scenes of their growth, like any scene with Kiryu and Nishikiyama, or the epilogues of both protags’ stories, I found myself constantly thinking of what they would become in the future, how their decisions to follow these paths would lead to them being thrown into a world that will tear them apart, one that they can’t escape from no matter how many times they pull through. The dark undercurrents of every event, no matter how lighthearted or exhilarating a moment could be, really stung in so many moments. Even if you played 0 first, I urge you to go through it one more time after 5 just to feel the impact of this.

But beyond all the great writing, fun combat or tragic undertones, this game reminded me of my deep love for a series that, relatively speaking, I’ve only recently been acquainted with. I know it sounds superficial, but all of the the small moments of noticing references to past games, like certain music tracks or appearances of characters, and recognizing how the people that Kiryu, Majima and the others met over the course of these twin journeys made them into the people that are so close to my heart, it all really got to me. No amount of critiques I have, even the most damning ones, are going to change that for me. This and Like A Dragon make me really excited for the future of the franchise, and all of the twists and turns that come with it. I’m really happy that I got a chance to go through this series. RGG studios, for whatever your future has in store, I’ll receive you, cause you always brighten my life.

Whenever this game comes up, whether through casually thinking about it or watching Youtube clips, I end up going through a little thought experiment. What would it be like if Danganronpa 1 was the only game in the series? There's two easy answers to this: 1) we lose one of the best games ever made (and DR2) or 2) world peace. It's hard not to consider a world where the game stayed niche, and it's different, subversive elements weren't buried under the most obnoxious surface-level anime twitter-type discussions that plague the community and its reputation to this day. Recently, I started a replay of the first game with a friend, and even though plans sort of fell through, experiencing it from the top and looking into the game's history/context of its release on the side was almost eye-opening for how unique it must've been at the time. There's something about going back to this and seeing the series' themes and concepts explored in a much more down-to-earth manner than its sequels. (Which says a lot given how absurd this game is) Do I wish for a world where the franchise never blew up and it stayed in a super niche corner of the internet? Of course not, it deserves to reach a wider audience, and one of those sequels is one of my favorite games of all time. However, I can't help but lament how warped its public perception is, when it should be seen as so much more.