Yakuza 0
As I'm sure people could tell as they scroll through my blog, I'm a pretty big Sega fan. Their personality that they put into a lot of their older games, as well as being a major part of video game history that has shifted so much over the course of 40 years is awesome and I think underappreciated from modern perspectives. That being said, I understand why people aren't huge fans of modern Sega. Their business decisions have been questionable, most recently acquiring Rovio Entertainment for some of their mobile games for a large sum of money (why?), and their modern franchises can be niche at best. The Yakuza franchise as a whole however, has been a decent success for the company. The series has had remakes, spin-offs and is 6 main games released in the west as of this year, and it doesn't look like its going anywhere. Yakuza 0 was released in 2015 for PS4, Xbox One and on Steam. It's canonically the first game in the series following the stories of Kazama Kiryu and Goro Majima leading up to the 1st game. With the prior knowledge of my love for Sega, you might be surprised that this is my 1st game that I've played from the series. Is Yakuza 0 a good lead-up for the series, and a good first game for Yakuza players?
Story
This review will have some spoilers, but not for the entire story as I haven't beaten the game in its entirety. For reference I have about 30 hours in the game and just beat Chapter 10. The story starts following Kazama Kiryu, a yakuza grunt member of the Dojima Family, subsidiary of the Tojo Clan. He's seen at the very beginning collecting a debt from someone that owes money to the Family in a back alley. After giving a good roughing up to the guy, Kiryu meets up with his closest friend and fellow yakuza, Nishkiyama. They go to a local ramen joint after having some fun out on the town, and while watching the TV in the store, they see a police report that the man Kiryu had roughed up was dead, and they're searching for the murderer. Kiryu and Nishki freak out rightfully so, especially since Kiryu didn't kill the guy. Another important piece to know is that the murder took place on the Empty Lot, which is the last piece of land within Kamurocho that the Dojima Family needs to redevelop the area, which the head of the family believes will lead to him running the Tojo Clan in it's entirety. Kiryu then decides to resign from the yakuza, taking full responsibility in hopes to avert the punishment for supposedly killing the man in the empty lot from his adoptive father and higher up yakuza, Shintaro Kazama. He helped raise Kiryu and Nishki in an orphanage, and is currently in jail so he's unable to speak for himself. Kiryu then becomes exiled and leaves the Dojima family and stops being a yakuza, not before a good few fights just to leave the family. After finding out that the murder that took place on the Empty Lot was not done by Kiryu and he's actually being framed for the murder by a captain in the Dojima family vying for the Empty lot for recognition within the family, Kiryu now has to clear his name to the police as well. Enter Tachibana Real Estate, a mysterious group that approaches Kiryu by name, referencing his adoptive father, asking for his assistance in acquiring the Empty Lot, and having their own agenda for redeveloping Kamurocho. After interfering with some of the Dojima family's businesses, The Dojima family decides to send just about every man within their family after Kiryu and finding out who actually owns the Empty Lot and stopping Tachibana's plans. They avert the Dojima family and go straight to the Tojo Clan headquarters to negotiate Kiryu as being a target to the Dojima Family. They succeed and then decide to not rest on their laurels, and go after the owner of the Empty Lot, who is located in Sotenbori, Osaka.
In between every 2 or so chapters in the story, we cut from Kiryu's perspective to a new character named Goro Majima. Majima is the manager of the largest cabaret in Sotenbori. We see him taking care of a rowdy customer in a spectacular manor, and turning it into a profit for the business. However, Majima isn't just running this cabaret for shits and giggles, this operation is part a larger yakuza led operation, and Majima is manager as a form of punishment for being part of an assassination attempt. He is under constant watch from Sagawa, member of the Omi Alliance, competitor of the Tojo Clan. Majima wants to get back into good standings with the yakuza, saying he will do anything. Sagawa says in order to get back into the yakuza, he has to kill a Makoto Makimura. On Majima's journey to do so, you find out Makoto is a young women who works at a chiropractor's office. The chiropractor himself is a Wen Hai Lee, who was a Chinese assassin who's undercover and protecting Makoto. Majima decides not to kill Makoto, as he cannot bring himself to finish the job, and after some scuffles, teams up with Lee to protect Makoto. Lee pressures Majima to fake Makoto's death in order to stop surveillance from Sagawa. Majima doesn't do so, but someone else does and is found out by Sagawa that the death was faked and that Makoto is still alive. Sagawa's men go after Lee, Makoto and Majima, and ends with Makoto being taken away by someone we don't know.
Overall, the story is full of twists and turns, and I enjoy how the story is split up over the 2 perspectives of Kiryu and Majima. The game does a good job for providing recaps for each of the character's perspectives, so if you haven't played the game in a while and are forgetting some key information, the game will let you know. The perspectives almost remind me of a Quentin Tarantino movie, where the story takes place over multiple perspectives of characters that have little to no relationship, only for everything to come together, with Kiryu now going to Sotenbori to where Majima is located. Kiryu and Majima are great characters to view the story from as well. Kiryu is a little bit more stoic and will do anything to protect others before himself. Majima is similar to Kiryu in that way, but he doesn't have anyone to protect from the jump, which develops as you play through the story. However, Majima while his situation is just as serious as Kiryu's, he has a great sense of humor and is much more animated overall. The story is enthralling, and makes you want to play more of the story based events, but you may take your time getting there because of all the side quests. A lot of these side quests are varied in nature, and a lot of them aren't to be taken seriously. This can become a bit jarring, where the story wants you to take it seriously and to be dramatic, but then side quests are pretty ridiculous. It's not for everyone but, I'm enjoying it because it lets me take on the story at my own pace, and let me have a lot of freedom with what I can do during the downtime.
Gameplay
Gameplay in Yakuza is quite varied, and that is an understatement. Similar to a GTA, Yakuza gives you a sandbox for you to play with, albeit a much more condensed and more so "quality over quantity" sandbox. The main story-based gameplay involves you running around Kamurocho or Sotenbori respectively, following waypoints and destinations to go to and getting into a beat em' up style of fighting. Several different buttons do light, heavy, blocking, guard breaking, grabbing to opponents in order to beat the shit out of them. One of the big selling points to this combat is the different styles of combat. Some are more balanced, like Kiryu's Brawler style, with big swinging punches and grabs. Others are more weapon based, like Majima's Slugger style where you just swing a bat around. Each style is customizable through a skill tree by "investing in yourself" meaning by spending money that you earn you can unlock skills and traits for each style. This customization of each style gives you the option to really go ham with one style, or spread your money out over multiple styles to adapt to any scenario. One thing that is uniform among the styles, are the heat moves. When you build enough heat in battle by landing hits, you can press a button to perform a special move, whether it be smashing someone's head in a car, or kicking them while they are down, they do a ton of damage to opponents and have fun cutscenes to go along with them. I wish there were maybe a few more heat moves, as watching Kiryu punching some guy's face into the ground can get a little stale after the 500th time, but when you do find a way to pull off a new heat move it is very satisfying. My only other gripe with combat sometimes is that enemies can gang up and corner you sometimes unfairly making it hard to just get back on your feet to run away. These moments are few and far between however, and often when you switch styles the problem can be solved. What you do outside of the story is really up to you, and this can be where Yakuza shines is its effort into the minigames.
Once Kamurocho or Sotenbori opens up, the world is your oyster in what you choose to do. Whether its as simple as going fishing, going to the bowling alley and bowling a few games, going to the Sega arcade and playing Outrun or going to play Mahjong in a dusty parlor, the choice is yours. Some highlights for me in the minigames include going to the disco as Kiryu, some of the song choices are very catchy and the rhythm minigame itself is very well put together. Another would be Majima's cabaret club where you can make a ton of money by making sure clients are happy with the girls that sit with them. My new favorite now is the telephone club, where you call random girls and try to get them to meet you in person. Some of the responses that you can mistakenly choose are hilarious and once you actually meet the girls, all have their own storylines. Walking around the cities also can trigger some special side quests as well from just overhearing some conversations. An example of one you can find early on is the Case of the Ara-Q3, which is a fictional game coming out within the universe. You come across a young boy who wants to get the game and is in line to purchase it. At first you don't think much of it, but then you see after he purchases the game, a bully comes by and steals the game so it's up to you to get the game back. You track down the bully, who gets the game then stolen by some punk, who then gets the game stolen by a low level yakuza. You confront the yakuza and beat him up to get the game back, and it turns out that the yakuza was the son's father, and he was just trying to get the game for his son. This is a pretty tame example of some of the side quests that can happen, but I don't want to spoil too much as that's all part of the experience. The best part about these side quests is that they're all optional. Similar to a Majora's Mask, you're missing a lot of the experience if you choose to skip a lot of the side quests, but the story itself holds up well enough, and the beat-em' up action is fun enough for you to complete the game without doing minigames and side quests. For me personally, I love all of it. Yakuza's personality as a game I believe is a great modern representative of what Sega used to be and how much personality they could cram into any experience of theirs.
Visuals, Sound, and Control
Overall, the visuals are what I come to expect out of a modern game of this sort. Kamurocho looks beautiful at night, with all of the neon lights and reflections coming from every corner of the city are awesome. With the game taking place in the 80's in Japan, it really immerses you in it. Cutscenes happen in a few different ways, either in engine or are fully animated separately. The animated sequences look awesome, and really give a movie like level of story telling when they are on the screen. In engine cutscenes can look a little underwhelming sometimes however. Characters lip syncing can be a little off, and faces don't really have a ton of expressional change in them while they're talking. Side quest cutscenes can be even more so, shock from other minor NPCs for example is just the screen shaking a little bit. For a game with as much to do as Yakuza however, I can accept the minor stuff like NPC's cutting in and out in between fights, and not a ton of expression. I haven't ran into many graphical glitches, maybe once or twice where something got a little jittery, but overall stable.
TL:DR
Yakuza 0 is a fun experience with a thrilling story that keeps you asking "what happens next" or saying "just one more chapter". Characters have a lot of personality and growth over the course of the story, and the separate perspectives between main characters is an interesting concept. The sandbox gameplay is fulfilled with plenty of side quests and minigames that hold your interest for a lengthy amount of time, if you so choose to. I had some minor issues as far as control and certain situations that hampered a few moments for myself personally, but not the experience overall. The game looks and sounds great on my PS4 Pro, and can tonally shift on a dime if the game needs to. I would recommend this game to fans of a more gritty serious story, but also has some time to let loose and and not take everything so seriously.
Written and Edited by: Tyler Moeggenberg
All characters, ideas, games etc. belong to SEGA
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