played through yakuza 0, probably the one game i put the most time into to try and get better at but man it is brutal. the best ive done is get really close to the third checkpoint and i haven't replicated it since. this one is a lot of fun but also so frustrating because of how small your margin of error is. while you can definitely get into the groove of driving through each level and maintain a good speed to make it to the next checkpoint, if you make one mistake you may as well throw your run out the window and go next. i do just need to suck it up because it's an older arcade title that wanted you to improve so you could finish one run-through of the game on a single play but man it definitely seems like it takes a lot to get better at this one. i will say though i think its really cool that this game has several branching paths you can take so if you learn to master one route there are more to learn and get better at going through. i can see myself coming back to this one to try and get better at it, i think this would be a cool game to dedicate myself to and learn

played through yakuza 0, i thought it was a pretty neat shmup, but i don't know if it's one i have it in me to actually try and dedicate myself to beating. i definitely like aspects like the way the main gameplay loop is and the fact there's an entire shop with upgrades for your ship which i was not expecting at all, but man after level 2 or 3 i get my ass whooped in this game and it is pretty annoying to lose powerups i just bought in the shop after losing a life. i might try and come back to this one though, i think it may just take some time to appreciate more because i think there's definitely something here

i really really really loved this game, so much so to the point i couldn't really put it down for a few weeks straight until i beat it. this being my first yakuza game i definitely see now why the series is so respected and beloved. when people say you can either be decent at many things or a master at one, this game completely throws that out of the window and is able to do so many things at once to make most if not all aspects of the gameplay feel masterfully crafted. a whole slew of minigames that keep you coming back either for their rewards and/or just because they're fun to play, combat with a decent amount of variety and two playable characters with their own combat styles that are drastically different from one another, side quests that are really well written and feel worth your time, a captivating story that you want to get to the bottom of with characters you will care for, a fucking banging soundtrack with a pretty wide spread of genre coverage, and so so much more. when i think about this game there's just so much that comes to mind that i love. and on top of it all, for anything that i wasn't really interested in in this game like mahjong or shogi or the weapon crafting, the game will rarely ever force any side content on you that you might not wanna do, and if they do do that it won't really eat up much time in comparison to how big this game is and how packed it is with other stuff. the game wants you to experience it in a way you are comfortable with and in a way you will be able to enjoy, with all of the mandatory things about it being exemplary in my opinion. while the feeling after beating this game was one that left a hole in me knowing that i was done with the story and the bulk of what i wanted to do in it, i pretty quickly began to look up because there is so so much more yakuza out there to play that i don't have any time to be sad that just this one game is over, there's like 9 more games in the series to look forward to and counting as more titles come out in the future