The world has been very crazy recently! It's like every week now some controversial event has to happen and gets flashed into our face through the news. Bushfire season began late last year, but Australia is seeing some of the fiercest wildfires they have ever seen in history. Covid-19 made its way to other countries and forced people isolate to prevent the virus from spreading. isolating ourselves from one another for what feels like eternity. Several businesses have shut down and many individuals have lost their jobs over quarantine. Basically the world is on f*cking fire! "We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning since the world’s been turning." Sorry, I had to make that reference.
A lot of bad things have happened in the past few months, and if you're an introvert like me you are probably trying to ignore it. Waiting for the day when everything returns back to normal so we can go back outside, talk to our friends again friends, and live life peacefully amongst one another. Unfortunately that day is taking longer to come than we thought, so until that time let’s play a bunch of video games. I guess that’s how I solve all my problems, video games. School is stressful? Video games! Parents having another argument? Video games! You feel like you haven’t accomplished anything in life and doubt your very existence? F*cking video games will solve the problem! Despite the overly introduction sequence, playing video games and getting to review them is one of my few hobbies, because nothing beats getting lost in a fictional world and going on a grand adventure. Fulfilling the fantasy the developers had envisioned for the player.
Once in a while there’s a game that is made just to be weird. Games with so many obscure ideas they come back around to being actually good. They are funny, stylish, and a joy to play. Isn’t that what video games were made for? To be fun and ridiculous. Why am I blathering on about weirdness when the title of the review states what game we’re reviewing today? Anyways back during the Dreamcast era, that console Sega failed to capitalize on, there was a little game called Shenmue. At the time Shemue was a pretty revolutionary game, but after more than two decades gamers have begun to realize how poorly Shenmue has aged. Sega stopped supporting the series after the second entry, but ideas for a game similar and much better than Shenmue began to spring in their heads. A game where players could wander around a fictional Japan and be entertained by activities that would usually come across as boring.
What came was Yakuza, a game that followed an ex-yakuza named Kazuma Kiryu as he ventures around the streets of Kamurocho fighting goons and getting caught up in complicated events that tie in with the Yakuza and maybe politics. No one thought Yakuza would be that successful, but Sega was determined to make profit from their new IP. Developing new entries and constantly trying to improve upon the last. What started as a game trying to follow up Sega’s worst franchise soon turned into one of Sega’s most successful franchises to date. Spanning countless sequels, spinoffs, and even influencing other games to follow a similar formula. The Yakuza series is pretty good and I finally decided to step into the series with the acclaimed Yakuza 0.
I chose Yakuza 0 because I was told it’s the most accessible, it’s a prequel to the entire series meaning it takes place before the first game, and it appealed to me the most with all the memes flowing around the internet. After finishing Yakuza 0, I can say it’s pretty good. Not extraordinary as there were flaws that prevented me from giving it a strong recommendation, but this could be me not being used to something different from what I'd usually play and in the end it's still worth checking. I had a blast fist fighting my way through Kamurocho when fights got intense, and outside of that I experienced the weird crazy sh*t the city had to offer. From dancing the night away to helping weirdos in the streets. Today we’ll be talking about why I liked Yakuza 0 and why it deserves your attention. So let’s dine at a beef bowl shop, go to a karaoke bar, and have some good old fun in Kamurocho. I would have written something more serious, but I couldn’t think of anything. Plus it’s a Yakuza game so you know what to expect.
Story
Oh good lord, this part is gonna be a little hard to explain. Take out a note pad and jot down whatever you can, because this is a confusing one. We follow the role of two characters, Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima, both related to the yakuza in some way and get caught in a complicated series of events with fate lying on their shoulders.
Kiryu was following his usual orders. Tracking down another target and collecting money for a debt they failed to meet in time. However, his recent target was found dead by the police. Shot up in a plot of land known as The Empty Lot. Kiryu claims that while he did bloodily beat the man to a bloody pulp, he didn’t kill him. Especially since he has never used a gun and solely relies on brute strength. He confronts the three heads of the Dojima family, one of the many yakuza families of the Tojo clan, and asks what will happen next now that they are searching for the killer. They state that his recklessness will be owned up by the Kazama family, the yakuza family Kiryu is part of, and the members of the Kazama family will turn themselves into the police to prevent any further trouble. Kiryu, wanting to protect his sworn brother, Akira Nishikiyama, and other members of the Kazama family finds that the only way to prevent them from turning themselves into the police for his alleged crime is to leave the yakuza entirely.
Kiryu does leave the yakuza, but the Kazama family still has to owe up to the murder menaing his departure was meaningless and now he wanders the streets alone. Kiryu then meets Tetsu Tachibana, the owner of Tachibana Real Estate, and is aware that Kiryu was part of the yakuza and responsible for causing the recent murder. Tachibana claims the Dojima family is actually after the owner of The Empty Lot and if they find the owner they will gain a considerable amount of profit and carry out the Revitalization plan. A plan that will allow the Dojima family to grow in power and spread widely across Kamurocho. Becoming the dominating force of Kamurocho. Tachibana asks Kiryu for his help. If he can track down the owner of The Empty Lot then he will help prove his innocence. Kiryu, having no other options left, agrees to help Tachibana.
Meanwhile in another district known as Sotenbori, we follow the role of an ex-yakuza member named Goro Majima. Several years ago his sworn brother Taiga Saejima and him were assigned to assassinate a target, but while Saejima went ahead, Majima decided to confront the head boss of the Shimano family, the yakuza family he is part of. He is told that he and his brother were supposed to lay off from the target, and now Saejima is about to run in blindly, gun down a bunch of random ordinary people, and get arrested for mass murder. Majima tries to run off and warn Saejima, but the leader orders the Shimano family to punish him for disobeying orders. Makima was tortured for more than a year and banished from the Tojo clan afterwards.
Majima now runs a famous cabaret club known as The Grand, trying to make back the money to rejoin the Shimano family and get his revenge. He works for Tsukasa Sagawa, who is basically his employer, and tries to find a way into getting back into the Shimano family. Sagawa one day offers him the chance to get back in. Assassinate somebody named Makoto Makimura who works within Sotenbori. Majima takes the deal, and this eventually leads him to a chiropractic clinic. He meets the owner of the clinic who turns out to be extremely buff, but he figures out quickly he isn’t Makimura. Rather a young blind innocent woman who works for him and he is looking after. The clinic owner who is jacked, Wen Hai Lee, is brutally beaten by incoming yakuza members and begs Majima to protect Makimura no matter what. Majima, knowing what he is doing is wrong, decides to hide Makimura and protect her at all cost. Even if it means breaking his calm face and unleashing the devil that lies deep within him.
The entire world is after these two characters and they don’t know who they can and cannot trust. But hopefully they can figure out the truth, and punch their way through the endless waves of yakuza members that stand in their way. (Pops a champagne bottle) (Pours a glass to drink) What? A guy can't drink while beating his way through a city full of neon signs of lights. You peasants disgust me. (Proceeds to drink ale down)
Gameplay
Oh thank Jesus, the story paragraph is out of the way. I can feel each of my brain cells catching on fire trying to comprehend all of it. Time to move onto what makes Yakuza 0 stand out most, the gameplay department. There are mainly two aspects to Yakuza’s gameplay, the combat and the dinking around the two open ended cities of the game.
Let’s start off with the combat, because it’s much simpler to explain. Yakuza is mainly a third person action beat em up, so expect to see Kiryu and Majima pummeling down groups of enemies and pulling off some stylish combos. You have a health bar and if you run out of health you die, pretty basic stuff. What’s new this time around are the three fighting styles each two characters have and the heat meter. You can change your fighting style whenever you want during combat and during the right occasions they make some combat scenarios much easier. Kiryu’s three fighting styles include casually beating down enemies, hitting them with rapid attacks and dodging easily, and wildly thrashing about like a gorilla and dealing heavy damage with environmental objects. Majima’s three fighting styles on the other hand include twirling around a baseball bat, literally breakdancing, and casually beating down on enemies like Kiryu. There's even a fourth fighting style you can unlock with both, but it requires an excessive amount of grinding. Then there's heat. The more enemies you defeat the higher your heat goes up. Using heat on enemies allows you to execute them instantly or deal mass amounts of damage on them. Making difficult group fights end much quicker.
Everytime you kill an enemy you obtain an absurd amount of cash, and you can use it to buy equipment, upgrade your abilities through a skill chart, or engage in fun side activities. There are a couple of RPG elements in Yakuza 0 and this mainly comes into what gear you equip and the stats you unlock through said skill tree. These skill trees are extremely complex and each fighting style has one. They require a lot of money, and sometimes you'll have to go gambling to raise the money to upgrade at least one tiny dot on a single skill tree. Some skills can’t be unlocked without upgrading certain categories, so invest whenever you can. Anyways, lets move onto the sandbox.
Dinking around the miniature open world is what I was talking about earlier. This is probably my favorite part of Yakuza 0, because there are just so many things you can do. Go to the batting cages, gamble at a casino, dance at a disco club, karaoke, race with miniature race cars, play classic Sega arcade games at an arcade, there is just so much to list off. You can also encounter NPCs throughout the world who will offer side quests and give you some pretty cool stuff in return. I recommend doing them, because they don’t take that long and you’ll need a lot of cash to upgrade your characters as mentioned. These quests are bizarre and help add to the goofiness that is the world of Yakuza. It reminds you that you're supposed to be having fun.
I can’t really think of anything else to talk about Yakuza 0. A lot of people say the game has a ton of depth to it due to all its systems and mechanics, but the game is still easy to understand going in with a casual look. Run around, beat up some guys, chain some combos, eat out, play cool mini games, and do more of whatever else I listed. It’s a little concerning how the Yakuza series was able to prosper all these years using this formula and not get repetitive or old, but the more I think about it, that's actually a good thing. It’s not selling out so much to the design decisions of today and worrying about innovation. It embraces how weird the overall game is and strengthens the aspects that make the series so enjoyable. Hopefully you can defend yourself from all the crazy men that come your way and bring peace to these crooked streets.
Thoughts
Yakuza 0 is an exciting game that a majority of people are bound to fall in love with. I don’t extremely like it, but reaching the end was worth it. Combat can feel clunky at first and fights get tedious after like the twenty five hour mark, but once you start pulling off some sick moves it becomes fun to play and watch. I could be twirling around a baseball bat one second to then push a guy towards the ground and smack his head like a baseball. Then I could be breakdancing, which is not only cool but apparently it is also very deadly, and whirls everyone around me to death. It allows the player to get creative although you can still beat the game in just one style.
Spending my time exploring the world and meddling around doing fun activities is the most fun I had with this game. Winning a miniature car race and raising my toy into the air to show how reliable it was during that moment. Going to a disco room and nailing every beat of a song. Going to a batting cage and swinging a homerun. I did something like this in Persona 5 and I remember really enjoying it there. Come to think of it, I think Persona takes a lot of cues from the Yakuza series and converts it over to a JRPG format. Both games have studios owned by Sega, so it makes sense they haven’t tried suing each other yet. Karaoke is probably my most favorite side activity to do in Yakuza. I don’t play that many rhythm games, but my god it’s ridiculously funny and satisfying to master a single song. Sometimes a song will have a ridiculous imaginary animation and that’s what makes the player laugh out loud. Knowing this what the character thinks while singing these overly dramatic soap opera songs. It's charming.
If the game is this goofy and fun then why am I not giving it like a 9/10 score which it deserves, especially since this is a formula that has worked for more than a decade. Well this is a review, so I suggest you keep on reading instead of skipping right towards the score number. Okay? Okay. One of the few problems I had isn’t really a complaint and more of how invested I was. The story is pretty good and there is a ton of depth to it when you pay attention to it. It's about economy, politics, inner conflicts, and what a man will do to justify his actions. Presentation and drama for Yakuza 0 is at its peak due to how serious the game takes its plot... and I think that’s the game's problem. It takes itself more seriously than it really needs to during story segments and you get bored very easily. Sometimes you’ll spend ten consecutive minutes listening to a bunch of old men talk very slowly. You don’t want to skip because you want to know what happens, but you wish they would just get to the point already. By the end I had a hard time comprehending everything that happened. That and the disconnect between the story and gameplay. One moment it's very funny and energetic. Next, it's really boring.
Next major complaint is that for a game on the Playstation 4 it looks like it released on previous generation consoles. Now it's said the Yakuza games aare known for reusing assets and elements across each entry. It helps make development for each Yakuza title much easier, and why add new elements to locations from before and players are really familiar with. However, the engine Yakuza 0 runs on feels a bit outdated and they could have done more to spice up the world and make it more intriguing. I've been told later entries like Yakuza 6 improves upon this, so that's good. Some characters outside of cutscenes looked like dead emotionless animatronics, and the animation was just jaring to loo at. In some ways you can say Yakuza contains the look of an older PS2 or PS3 title and that's fine, but it's 2020 folks. Games are advancing and looking much better now. Graphics aren't everything and Yakuza makes up for it's gameplay, but I want to see a huge leap forward from the developers. Finally, upgrading your characters is complicated with the bizarre upgrade charts that span across three fighting styles. It's suppose to be a simple brawler where performing combos should be easy. If they were to streamline the skill tree system a bit or maybe even introduce a stat leveling system instead then maybe Yakuza 0 would have had a confident action RPG formula.
Despite my complaints, Yakuza 0 is a delight and I’m glad I stuck with it till the end. I do recommend the game and hopefully the upcoming Yakuza: Like A Dragon can fix some of the problems I had with this game, but seeing how they are going for a JRPG formula which is very niche they'll really have to try when it comes to appeasing this franchise up to more people. In the end I give Yakuza 0 an 8/10 for being pretty good.
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