Having experienced this series second hand for so long, finally jumping in left me shocked by just how much I was missing. When all your experiences with a series comes from what other people talk about, your Baka Mitais, your Just Remember These Yakuza, your reaction gifs, it can be easy to not see just how much heart is contained within a game.

That's why going into Y0 and starting the series as a whole, I was really not prepared for the incredible tone it has. In the main story cutscene direction, voice acting, and pace of scenes are all downright immaculate. The way this tone contrasts the much wackier substories, which are entertaining in their own way, could maybe be seen as a negative but I found that they really just made Kamurocho and Sotenbori feel like fleshed out places with personalities of their own and full of stories. Where else can you take a break from being hunted by Yakuza only to walk into a random building and suddenly get pulled into a multi hour storyline about racing RC cars?

The only real issue here is that there is some tedium mixed in, mostly coming in from trying to clear every substory(especially the cabaret girl/telephone ones), or god forbid if you dare try to max the completion list/ability tree. Especially looking at the prospect of 8+ more games after this, I might skip out of a few minigames next time. Still! It was a great experience and after letting it sit for a while I look forward to continuing my way through these games.

Also Goro Majima please call me you are the hottest man in video games