The Yakuza Project
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
No. There's plenty you've done for yourself or somebody gave to you in mind. Plus, this one was relevant and I never posted before until now. The other two Yakuza 0 videos I posted somewhere in the games article thread years ago.
I managed to flow quite smoothly from 0 to Kiwami to Kiwami 2. While the gameplay is pretty much repetitive balls once you get over the super cathartic over the top violent finishers and whatnot, the story and setting as a lot of heart and that manages to keep me hooked.
Problem is once you reach Yakuza 3, which many people say is arguably one of the worse in the series and while "Remastered", it is fundamentally still an early PS3 era game and it really shows. As already mentioned, the enemies are a bunch of master blockers and I heard this was like some leftover mechanic from the Ishin! where they reused the engine. Apparently that game has swords and mechanics to bypass blocks, but that ain't present in this game. I ended up toning down the difficulty to Easy just to make the game less obnoxious and even then I have trouble really getting into the game. No idea when I'll completely my Yakuza journey but I ended up skipping ahead to Y7 and had a blast.
I personally feel playing 0 before Kiwami would be better. Akira along with some other characters might feel a bit shallow(even if Kiwami does expand the story from the PS2 Yakuza 1 with added scenes and whatnot), but 0 helps flesh out a number of characters more.
Problem is once you reach Yakuza 3, which many people say is arguably one of the worse in the series and while "Remastered", it is fundamentally still an early PS3 era game and it really shows. As already mentioned, the enemies are a bunch of master blockers and I heard this was like some leftover mechanic from the Ishin! where they reused the engine. Apparently that game has swords and mechanics to bypass blocks, but that ain't present in this game. I ended up toning down the difficulty to Easy just to make the game less obnoxious and even then I have trouble really getting into the game. No idea when I'll completely my Yakuza journey but I ended up skipping ahead to Y7 and had a blast.
I personally feel playing 0 before Kiwami would be better. Akira along with some other characters might feel a bit shallow(even if Kiwami does expand the story from the PS2 Yakuza 1 with added scenes and whatnot), but 0 helps flesh out a number of characters more.
It's funny you single out 3 as the worst game in the series, as it was the first one I've played and accordingly the one that got me into it. I imagine that'd be the case for a bunch of people, as it was the first one to come out for the PS3. Back then I liked it, but I will admit that it's not exactly one I'd eagerly go back to. I remember liking 4 better, and that for a pretty long time it was pretty uncertain whether 5 would be translated at all.
I think the series got a bit more popular from 0 onward, so that at this point even the spin-off games get localizations. Which I'm happy about, they are very unique games. Back when I first played 3 I expected the series to be those gritty gangster action games rather than the big verbose martial arts melodramas that they are.
I think the series got a bit more popular from 0 onward, so that at this point even the spin-off games get localizations. Which I'm happy about, they are very unique games. Back when I first played 3 I expected the series to be those gritty gangster action games rather than the big verbose martial arts melodramas that they are.
That speaks to the quality of the Yakuza games. Compared to all of them, Yakuza 3 IS the worse imo, but it's not a bad game itself. If it was your first Yakuza game and you liked it, then the other games would easily blow you away because they are all a significant step up. especially the Kiwami games.
Zero was definitely the game that got a lot more Western people into the series. And it's a good thing too because the series deserves the attention. And it means we are getting Ishin which is a game that never got a Western release and by all accounts (even when it was Japanese only) was really good. I'm excited to play it.
Yakuza Zero:
This was the Yakuza game that started it for me. i never consider the Yakuza games during their initial release periods growing up. I was very much "JRPG or bust" back then and it's a real shame because the Yakuza series is a JRPG and I was too stupid to know any better.
I picked up Zero at first when Yahtzee talking about it on a Zero Punctuation video and thought it would be a good place to give the series a try. But I didn't. In fact I didn't play Yakuza 0 until Covid lockdowns and FF7 got delayed a few weeks. Even then I didn't play Zero. I played Like a Dragon or Yakuza 7, which had actually become a JRPG, and I fell in love with the craziness of it all, this urged me to go back and play Zero, and thus the chain continued until I'd played them all except the Zombie on and the Japan only one (which is out now so that'll be fun).
Yakuza games are interested because they always take place in the time frame when they release in the real world. The original game took place in 2005, and Yakuza 7 took place in 2018ish. But with Zero they couldn't do that, but they managed to time-capsule the game anyway by setting it in the 1980's during the real estate boom in Japan, where the economic bubble was going crazy. We take control of Kazama Kiryu again only he's a green in the tooth kid who is still and unstopable badass, but nobody knows it yet. Kiryu is hired by a loan shark to rough up someone who owes money in a specific alley. Turns out the alley is an empty lot that the Yakuza clans really really want, and it turns out that Kiyru's beatdown resulted in death for his victim, except not really. Kiryu is framed and by making a crime scene take place in the empty lot everyone wants, aquiring the lot gets more complicated.
So Kiryu is sent to jail for the first (but not last) time. Someone set him up in order to make his mentor, a leader in the Tojo Clan, look bad and thus using that as leverage to move up in ranks. Kiryu gets out of prison with the sole goal of finding out who set him up and who's after his mentor.
Meanwhile crazy Goro Majima is...not crazy at all...in fact Goro is running a very popular hostess club. And for long time fans this is really jarring, knowing how Goro is the rest of the series. Goro here is laid back, calm, but also strong and sure of himself as well, nothing like what he eventually becomes. Turns out Goro owes people a lot of money, and they set him up as a Club Manager to pay back the debt and to be allowed to return to the Tojo clan. He is also very close to paying this debt off until the man in charge of that debt reminds him that there has been interest building up and he's nowhere close to paying off his debts.
But no worries because Goro is offer a deal. All he has to do is assassinate someone. Now if you've played Yakuza games before, you'll know that in these games the Yakuza don't shy away from crime in any way, except when it comes to killing people. Murder is super serious and most of the time they always try to avoid it. So Goro being offered a return to the Yakuza through murder is a pretty deep twist.
What Zero does so brilliantly here is it takes two very different people with two very different goals somehow manage to both circle back to the empty lot. It's done so well with such great twists that I would argue that Zero has the best mainline story in the franchise.
Zero's combat is also not only really good but also fits into the themes of uncontrolled wealth during this time period. Both characters have stances like they did in Kiwami 1, and each stance has a speciality and a talent tree used to make it stronger. However unlike other games where it's a matter of experience points and levels, in Zero all the skills are bought with cash. Cash rains from the sky in this game where being a Billionaire means you're still pretty poor. By the end of the game both character will spend 100's of Trillions in Yen to unlock skills as well as progress their mini games.
The big mini games in Zero are fantastic two, but Goro's mini game is better than Kiryu's easily. Goro gets a Host Club where you must learn hand signals and glame up your girls to make money in a Host Club tournament. It's a management game that has you assigned girls to the right customers to fit personalities together in order to get people to spend as much as possible. Whereas Kiryu's mini game is basically going around town and buying up all the businesses, then having money fights with leaders of specific zones in the city. It's fun and it makes you a shitload of cash, but it isn't as engaging as the Host Club.
Yakuza 0 all in all is probably my second favorite of all the Yakuza games so far. But I disagree that it is the best introduction to the series for people. Personally I think Kiwami 1 is the best place because a lot of Zero's surprises lean on player knowledge of future games. Without knowing about Goro for example, the impact of his personality and circumstances in Zero is lost on a new player.
This was the Yakuza game that started it for me. i never consider the Yakuza games during their initial release periods growing up. I was very much "JRPG or bust" back then and it's a real shame because the Yakuza series is a JRPG and I was too stupid to know any better.
I picked up Zero at first when Yahtzee talking about it on a Zero Punctuation video and thought it would be a good place to give the series a try. But I didn't. In fact I didn't play Yakuza 0 until Covid lockdowns and FF7 got delayed a few weeks. Even then I didn't play Zero. I played Like a Dragon or Yakuza 7, which had actually become a JRPG, and I fell in love with the craziness of it all, this urged me to go back and play Zero, and thus the chain continued until I'd played them all except the Zombie on and the Japan only one (which is out now so that'll be fun).
Yakuza games are interested because they always take place in the time frame when they release in the real world. The original game took place in 2005, and Yakuza 7 took place in 2018ish. But with Zero they couldn't do that, but they managed to time-capsule the game anyway by setting it in the 1980's during the real estate boom in Japan, where the economic bubble was going crazy. We take control of Kazama Kiryu again only he's a green in the tooth kid who is still and unstopable badass, but nobody knows it yet. Kiryu is hired by a loan shark to rough up someone who owes money in a specific alley. Turns out the alley is an empty lot that the Yakuza clans really really want, and it turns out that Kiyru's beatdown resulted in death for his victim, except not really. Kiryu is framed and by making a crime scene take place in the empty lot everyone wants, aquiring the lot gets more complicated.
So Kiryu is sent to jail for the first (but not last) time. Someone set him up in order to make his mentor, a leader in the Tojo Clan, look bad and thus using that as leverage to move up in ranks. Kiryu gets out of prison with the sole goal of finding out who set him up and who's after his mentor.
Meanwhile crazy Goro Majima is...not crazy at all...in fact Goro is running a very popular hostess club. And for long time fans this is really jarring, knowing how Goro is the rest of the series. Goro here is laid back, calm, but also strong and sure of himself as well, nothing like what he eventually becomes. Turns out Goro owes people a lot of money, and they set him up as a Club Manager to pay back the debt and to be allowed to return to the Tojo clan. He is also very close to paying this debt off until the man in charge of that debt reminds him that there has been interest building up and he's nowhere close to paying off his debts.
But no worries because Goro is offer a deal. All he has to do is assassinate someone. Now if you've played Yakuza games before, you'll know that in these games the Yakuza don't shy away from crime in any way, except when it comes to killing people. Murder is super serious and most of the time they always try to avoid it. So Goro being offered a return to the Yakuza through murder is a pretty deep twist.
What Zero does so brilliantly here is it takes two very different people with two very different goals somehow manage to both circle back to the empty lot. It's done so well with such great twists that I would argue that Zero has the best mainline story in the franchise.
Zero's combat is also not only really good but also fits into the themes of uncontrolled wealth during this time period. Both characters have stances like they did in Kiwami 1, and each stance has a speciality and a talent tree used to make it stronger. However unlike other games where it's a matter of experience points and levels, in Zero all the skills are bought with cash. Cash rains from the sky in this game where being a Billionaire means you're still pretty poor. By the end of the game both character will spend 100's of Trillions in Yen to unlock skills as well as progress their mini games.
The big mini games in Zero are fantastic two, but Goro's mini game is better than Kiryu's easily. Goro gets a Host Club where you must learn hand signals and glame up your girls to make money in a Host Club tournament. It's a management game that has you assigned girls to the right customers to fit personalities together in order to get people to spend as much as possible. Whereas Kiryu's mini game is basically going around town and buying up all the businesses, then having money fights with leaders of specific zones in the city. It's fun and it makes you a shitload of cash, but it isn't as engaging as the Host Club.
Yakuza 0 all in all is probably my second favorite of all the Yakuza games so far. But I disagree that it is the best introduction to the series for people. Personally I think Kiwami 1 is the best place because a lot of Zero's surprises lean on player knowledge of future games. Without knowing about Goro for example, the impact of his personality and circumstances in Zero is lost on a new player.
Also my first impressions of Like a Dragon Isshin are:
1. I don't know shit about Japanese history
2. Yakuza combat is better when you can also shoot people.
1. I don't know shit about Japanese history
2. Yakuza combat is better when you can also shoot people.
And Finally......
Yakuza 6
So Yakuza 6 is the first game in the Dragon engine which they went on to use for Lost Judgement, Kiwami 2, and Yakuza 7. I think it's also used for Like a Dragon Ishin, but I've heard it's actually on Unreal so I'm not sure about that.
Anyway the new engine does look great, but this first entry has a few stuttering problems. Not in the sense of framerate or anything that's been fine. But there is a weird lag between actions sometimes as if the models have to reach a neutral before accepting the input to continue on. Additionally during cutscenes there are sometimes pauses between dialog as if the engine has to load the next piece of conversation animation. It's all fairly minor, but when it goes on throughout the whole game it adds up to kind of a shitty experience.
Combat wise, the game is great much in the same way it was great in Kiwami 2, however it's less polished her so it isn't quite as deep which explains why long time fans found it disappointing to play. I never got too deep into combat systems, I'm admittedly a masher so it never bothered me much.
For me Yakuza 6 is kind of a let down since it's supposed to be Kiryu's final adventure and it's an adventure that doesn't make any fucking sense. Haruka abandon's being an idol at the end of 5, but in the time between the paparazzi kept stalking her because of her connection to Kiryu and the Yakuza. They would make up stories about her and the kids at the orphanage, who all are starting to fulfill their ambitions like wrestling and being a baseball player. Haruka feels like she'll ruin their chances in life if she stays so she bounces.
Kiyru goes to jail to serve the remaining 3 years on his sentence as a gesture of good faith and to supposedly clear himself of Yakuza ties. When he gets out he learns that Haruka bailed on the orphanage and goes to Kamarocho to look for leads to find her. Turns out she was in a hit and run car accident and is in the hospital. Shockingly she isn't there alone, her infant son is also there which is a bombshell for Kiryu. Kiryu takes the baby and goes on a quest to track down what Haruka has been up to the last three years and find out who the kid's father is.
It's a simple plot, and if it was just this I think it would have been a perfect send off for Kiryu. He hunts down the father, tracks the mystery of what his daughter had been up do while he'd been in prison, and maybe find the guy who did the hit and run. A mundane-ish plot but one that could transition Kiryu from Yakuza life into being a grandparent. Instead he gets embroiled as usual into a mystery that makes no fucking sense not only for what the mystery is but also because it makes no sense as to why Kiryu would or should give a shit.
Yakuza 6 has the weakest story of all the games imo, even though Yakuza 3's story is like an anime filler arch it still felt more logically connected to things than 6 does. Maybe they were just burnt out on finding things for Kiryu to get into and that's why it feels so dry.
The mini games are great though. There is like tower defense sort of mini game where you build a clan and gather generals to battle another gang in the city. And there is a baseball management mini game that's also a crazy amount of fun. It's a nice change of pace from the usual hostess club mini games....but uh, there is also one of those too where you pick dialog options and spend money to get a series of hostess to fall in love with you or something. I thought that was dumb and I didn't bother with it too much.
Yakuza 6 is the smallest of all the Yakuza games in terms of stuff to do and side missions and the like as well. Which adds to the game feeling like a half-hearted attempt to end Kiryu's saga and feels like they ran out of passion for his storyline.
Oh well.
Yakuza 6
So Yakuza 6 is the first game in the Dragon engine which they went on to use for Lost Judgement, Kiwami 2, and Yakuza 7. I think it's also used for Like a Dragon Ishin, but I've heard it's actually on Unreal so I'm not sure about that.
Anyway the new engine does look great, but this first entry has a few stuttering problems. Not in the sense of framerate or anything that's been fine. But there is a weird lag between actions sometimes as if the models have to reach a neutral before accepting the input to continue on. Additionally during cutscenes there are sometimes pauses between dialog as if the engine has to load the next piece of conversation animation. It's all fairly minor, but when it goes on throughout the whole game it adds up to kind of a shitty experience.
Combat wise, the game is great much in the same way it was great in Kiwami 2, however it's less polished her so it isn't quite as deep which explains why long time fans found it disappointing to play. I never got too deep into combat systems, I'm admittedly a masher so it never bothered me much.
For me Yakuza 6 is kind of a let down since it's supposed to be Kiryu's final adventure and it's an adventure that doesn't make any fucking sense. Haruka abandon's being an idol at the end of 5, but in the time between the paparazzi kept stalking her because of her connection to Kiryu and the Yakuza. They would make up stories about her and the kids at the orphanage, who all are starting to fulfill their ambitions like wrestling and being a baseball player. Haruka feels like she'll ruin their chances in life if she stays so she bounces.
Kiyru goes to jail to serve the remaining 3 years on his sentence as a gesture of good faith and to supposedly clear himself of Yakuza ties. When he gets out he learns that Haruka bailed on the orphanage and goes to Kamarocho to look for leads to find her. Turns out she was in a hit and run car accident and is in the hospital. Shockingly she isn't there alone, her infant son is also there which is a bombshell for Kiryu. Kiryu takes the baby and goes on a quest to track down what Haruka has been up to the last three years and find out who the kid's father is.
It's a simple plot, and if it was just this I think it would have been a perfect send off for Kiryu. He hunts down the father, tracks the mystery of what his daughter had been up do while he'd been in prison, and maybe find the guy who did the hit and run. A mundane-ish plot but one that could transition Kiryu from Yakuza life into being a grandparent. Instead he gets embroiled as usual into a mystery that makes no fucking sense not only for what the mystery is but also because it makes no sense as to why Kiryu would or should give a shit.
Yakuza 6 has the weakest story of all the games imo, even though Yakuza 3's story is like an anime filler arch it still felt more logically connected to things than 6 does. Maybe they were just burnt out on finding things for Kiryu to get into and that's why it feels so dry.
The mini games are great though. There is like tower defense sort of mini game where you build a clan and gather generals to battle another gang in the city. And there is a baseball management mini game that's also a crazy amount of fun. It's a nice change of pace from the usual hostess club mini games....but uh, there is also one of those too where you pick dialog options and spend money to get a series of hostess to fall in love with you or something. I thought that was dumb and I didn't bother with it too much.
Yakuza 6 is the smallest of all the Yakuza games in terms of stuff to do and side missions and the like as well. Which adds to the game feeling like a half-hearted attempt to end Kiryu's saga and feels like they ran out of passion for his storyline.
Oh well.