A bunch of my friends are into the Yakuza series. As such, its games have been recommended to me many times, but to be real honest, they never interested me much. I was pretty confident I wouldn’t like them. One day, though, there was a Steam sale and a bundle of this game, Kiwami 1 and 2 was up for crazy cheap, so I said “eh, why not.” But even then it still took me some more months to finally decide to start the series.
I’ve always heard comments about how great Yakuza 0 in particular was, with many people even including it on their fav games of all time rankings, and how it was the perfect starting point for getting into the series. Now that I’ve played it, I can vouch for everything people say about it - Yakuza 0 is one PHENOMENAL game, truly deserving of the fame it has, and it’s one of those games that kept growing on me over the months the more I thought about it, because there’s no better word to describe it than MEMORABLE.
Everything about this game is memorable: the characters, the story, the soundtrack, the substories, the combat, literally everything. As I mentioned before, going from this game to the Kiwami games felt deflating due to their lackluster stories, because Y0’s story is so gripping, there’s some moments that even give me chills just remembering them, such as Majima’s knife cliffhanger, Kiryu’s last encounter with Kuze, Nishiki and Kiryu’s emotional scene in the middle of a dark road (the best scene in the game btw), among many others.
And the reason the story is this good is because the characters are all great, you actually care about them and want to see more of them as you progress in the game. I haven’t played most games in the series yet, but I HIGHLY DOUBT there’ll ever be better antagonists than the trio of Dojima lieutenants: Kuze, Awano, and Shibusawa. They’re those characters you just love to hate and can’t get enough of them. Sagawa is also an incredibly layered antagonist, I actually felt bad for what happened to him by the end of the game.
The substories also deserve a special mention because there’s so many great ones, like Majima infiltrating a brainwashing cult (MUNANCHO!), Kiryu meeting Steven Spielberg and Michael Jackson, getting a living chicken as a reward for bowling (which can then become a real estate manager), becoming a pizza delivery boy... Nothing beats hearing that melancholic but hopeful tune starting as an NPC thanks Kiryu for helping them find meaning in their life and starts telling him their ludicrous backstory after he just smashed a whole bike on their head.
I'm writing this while the song for the long battles is blasting on my headphones, my favorite track out of a soundtrack that’s just full of banger after banger. Yakuza 0 is so damn good, man. I’m glad to have finally started this series just because it means I got to play this masterpiece. And if you still haven't gotten into Yakuza, don’t listen to elitists that tell you to start from something other than this game, they’re just plain wrong.
I’ve always heard comments about how great Yakuza 0 in particular was, with many people even including it on their fav games of all time rankings, and how it was the perfect starting point for getting into the series. Now that I’ve played it, I can vouch for everything people say about it - Yakuza 0 is one PHENOMENAL game, truly deserving of the fame it has, and it’s one of those games that kept growing on me over the months the more I thought about it, because there’s no better word to describe it than MEMORABLE.
Everything about this game is memorable: the characters, the story, the soundtrack, the substories, the combat, literally everything. As I mentioned before, going from this game to the Kiwami games felt deflating due to their lackluster stories, because Y0’s story is so gripping, there’s some moments that even give me chills just remembering them, such as Majima’s knife cliffhanger, Kiryu’s last encounter with Kuze, Nishiki and Kiryu’s emotional scene in the middle of a dark road (the best scene in the game btw), among many others.
And the reason the story is this good is because the characters are all great, you actually care about them and want to see more of them as you progress in the game. I haven’t played most games in the series yet, but I HIGHLY DOUBT there’ll ever be better antagonists than the trio of Dojima lieutenants: Kuze, Awano, and Shibusawa. They’re those characters you just love to hate and can’t get enough of them. Sagawa is also an incredibly layered antagonist, I actually felt bad for what happened to him by the end of the game.
The substories also deserve a special mention because there’s so many great ones, like Majima infiltrating a brainwashing cult (MUNANCHO!), Kiryu meeting Steven Spielberg and Michael Jackson, getting a living chicken as a reward for bowling (which can then become a real estate manager), becoming a pizza delivery boy... Nothing beats hearing that melancholic but hopeful tune starting as an NPC thanks Kiryu for helping them find meaning in their life and starts telling him their ludicrous backstory after he just smashed a whole bike on their head.
I'm writing this while the song for the long battles is blasting on my headphones, my favorite track out of a soundtrack that’s just full of banger after banger. Yakuza 0 is so damn good, man. I’m glad to have finally started this series just because it means I got to play this masterpiece. And if you still haven't gotten into Yakuza, don’t listen to elitists that tell you to start from something other than this game, they’re just plain wrong.