Yakuza 0

A dramatic story of struggle and yakuza pride surrounded by side-content that is essentially episodes of The Simpsons.

I had no idea what to expect from Yakuza 0.

Yakuza 0 is an extremely fun action game that saddles absurdity between heavy drama. Led by two very different, but equally lovable, protagonists, the game tells a story from differing perspectives. Graphically it's a little dated, but the soul of the game makes up for it. Oh yeah, the mini-games are fantastic fun to break up the heaviness of the story.

Runs great on older hardware, and the Steam Deck. It also regularly goes on sale for less than $10. Absolute steal.

I decided to write this review because i noticed an apparent lack of critical opinion on Yakuza 0 and i wanted to share my disappointing experience with it, to resonate with whoever feels the same about it.
After countless recommendations from friends to play the "supposed masterpiece" Yakuza 0, i finally bought the game and with much excitement i threw myself into it hoping for the best, little did i know that it would turn to be one of the most disappointing games i have ever played!
I just couldn't believe, all this praise and i kept looking for it, where does it come from? i couldn't understand, all i found was a total mess of a junk and tedious game.

Yakuza 0 is an action-adventure beat em up game about tough guys with angry faces solving everything by having street fights, at first the game does a good job of hooking you with its intriguing cutscenes and premise, however just after few hours the game issues start to appear and bring the experience down, which i'll explain why soon below.
The game follows the story of Yakuza members Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima and their interactions with the various Yakuza clans and their plots.

**Gameplay**

Yakuza 0 is a story-driven game first and foremost, however the game puts a significant emphasis on its gameplay time, and in my opinion its not good at all.

-Controls-
The game controls in third person perspective, i absolutely hated it, the controls are clunky and moving around with the character feels heavy and off, just doing a simple circular movement is extremely unresponsive and lags with input delay, this could be argued that it was done on purpose to give the game a realism momentum however this goal has failed because the animation was stiff and poorly designed to reflect on that. The poor feel of the movement is further highlighted in the combat system, where moving around is unresponsive and stiff to the point that it messes up the targeting system and the hitbox system, which gets me to the 2nd point.

-Combat-
When it comes to story-driven games im not so harsh/demanding on the combat system being fully mechanical and deep, however the story in Yakuza 0 wasn't good and didn't succeed in saving the awful combat system for reasons i shall mention later.
Combat in Yakuza 0 consist of styles for each character, each character has about 3 (+1 extra) style of beat em up combat, and i have to admit, coming from a game like God Hand, those styles suck, they are very shallow mechanically with low skill ceiling for combos, mechanics, synergies and execution. While the cutscene finisher can look badass, the actual input in the fight amounts to very superficial combos, which can consist of mashing Square x3 with a Triangle x1 then triggering a mini-cutscene which plays for you as Kiryu/Majima finishes up the thug in style.
Sadly, after few hours the novelty of those badass cutscenes starts to ware-off and what is left is a very braindead, easy, boring and repetitive combat system that feels awful because the game LOVES to shove in your face the same boring thugs over and over, with their braindead A.I and boring attacking patterns that keeps repeating itself for 50+ hours. Suffice to say the combat does not sustain the long game
Combat issues become even worse when you highlight that enemy variety is near 0, there is no different enemies to spice up the combat system, contrary to other games that may have mediocre mechanics, they can at least offer a variety of different enemies to keep the experience somewhat fresh or exciting. Yakuza's enemies are just the same thugs you beat with either a melee blunt weapon, a gun or their bare hands, this gets tedious and tiring just early in the game and you are forced to put up with this awfully shallow system for the rest of it.
Controls being stiff that mess up the targeting system and the hitbox being horrendous makes the combat even more disastrous, and to top it all off the boss fights are more of the same, i lost count to how many times i had to kick Kuze's ass, Mr.Shakedown in particular was a cakewalk, simply because even with the easy shallow system the game allows you to pause to the screen and freely heal the damage and put up whatever heat buffs you want which even solidifies my verdict on it.
Perhaps if the character progression was done better then it could have saved the combat system but alas it was just as bad.

-Character Progression-
Yakuza 0 is not a RPG, however it does try to implement RPG elements such as leveling up and a skill tree to progress the character and develop its gameplay systems.
Unfortunately, the game fails at creating an engaging leveling system, to unlock skills and abilities the player must purchase the skills with money earned from quests and side content, which is an abysmal design choice, as the game encourages grinding through minigames or grinding through its awful combat system, and money is plentiful which makes the challenge of unlocking the skills not rewarding and feeling half-assed and weird, who tf buys skills for money? lol.
Each style has a skill tree, the problem is the skills are shallow, the progression amount to the same things over and over, passive skills that are boring and very stat check, with the exception of a few new mechanics that you can use, which is way inferior to the basic combo that you will repeat anyway, so there is no reason to use them.
More HP, More Dmg, More Heat... this is basically what skill progression is in the game, which is lame and boring. Any other game with the same design gets shredded but this one gets a pass on its awful combat and progression systems.

-Mini-Games-
One of the highlights of Yakuza 0 is its countless minigames spread throughout the game, from 8Ball to Bowling to Darts to Mahjong to Cabaret to Estate manager to Karaoke, there is a lot of side activities in the game, and i have to be fair here, while i dislike minigames in general and i find most of them to just be lazy copy-pasted games from the real world that are designed to just waste the player time and fill the game with filler, in Yakuza's defense the minigames are good distraction and flesh out the world more and give it life and purpose, i dont give the game high credit for it, but i must say that its approach to this aspect was done right, i just wish there was more creative games and less generic ones, nothing special to say here, if you played those games anywhere else, the rules are the same, its just in Yakuza's world, they are designed to give you money and few chuckles, but thats where it ends, their value to the game is insignificant to me, and if i wanted to simply play 8Ball i will go to any flash website and do it there, why buy a game just for that, so what im trying to say is that while they are good extra content, they cannot save the game for me.
Personally i didn't enjoy most of the minigames with the only ones i liked being Cabaret and Karaoke.
Anyway, there is not much to criticize here since the game basically adapts popular games from the world and put them here without much innovation or thought.

Overall, i have to say the Gameplay aspect of Yakuza 0 is pure junk, its poorly designed, its tedious, its not satisfying and ultimately its boring.


**Writing**

I don't know where to start, the writing in the game is a total mess, and the story is such a trainwreck that barely hold itself together. This is very frustrating for me because this is supposed to be a story-driven game, heavy with texts and cutscenes that it can feel like a movie or a tv drama sometimes, yet the writing does everything in its power to bring it down.

-Story-
The story of Yakuza 0 starts with engaging premise, a group of Yakuza clans fighting among themselves to secure a empty lot, which is of very and utmost importance to the huge project they are looking to build in the city, Kiryu does a shady deal there and is framed with the killing of a citizen in the area, few hours later he finds out he has been kicked off the clan, and things get complicated and stakes start to go up. This is an interesting premise that admittedly hooked me right from the start, however with slow pacing and a lot of over the top moments it started to pull me out of its stakes, furthermore the game after Chapter 6, goes full trainwreck and starts to mess things up with inconsistent writing, for characters, plotholes, contrived writing, deus ex machina, plot armor and nonsensical progression.
This tone stays like that up until the ending which i also didn't like the conclusion and the catharsis for the characters was massively disappointing as well.
One of the excuses i saw online was that its a prequel to an already established series so that has its limits, but my answer to that is the writers can easily come up with alternative solutions and plot-points but they instead didnt and resorted to rather lazy and contrived plot device threads that killed any sense in the story.

Here are some examples of nonsensical plot points that prevented me from enjoying the game anymore and ruined whatever premise it sat up for it.
((Spoilers))


1- During the game Majima was hiding Makoto and was working to get her out to safety, yet right before they escape it appears that his partner Sagawa knew of his plan, this was not explained, when and how did he know that Majima was planning to escape?


2- Right after he caught them escaping he fires shot at Majima and proceeds to kill him for lying to him, at that moment Sera appears and shoots Sagawa near the heart, a fatal wound, leaving him dying on the ground, he takes Makoto with him and leaves, the issue here is right after that we get a scene where Sagawa is torturing Majima all alive and well, and actually in great shape, how did he survive the shot when we clearly saw the blood?


3- Later in the game Kiryu get banished and declared wanted dead or alive to the top of Dojima clans, they give a universal order to everyone to capture him, at one moment Kiryu was cornered by high ranking Yakuza officers and their lapdogs, so he was pretty much screwed and is either forced to surrender or fight back and die(thats after Kuze gets to toy with him again), in that moment Kiryu decides to not fight but the issue here is that the high ranking Yakuza members are just watching him making edgy poses and threats again and again, so Tachiban breaks in with his car and rescues Kiryu literally infrornt of them lmao, and then after he rides on with the car they finally pull out their guns and shoot at them but ofcourse they miss every shot, so how can high ranking Yakuza members be so much incompetent and bad at their job when this kind of job requires you to be merciless, ruthless and clever to climb up and survive? seems to be like a silly plot armor that fails to impress an asspull.


4- So Majima went with this officer or someone at the Police station to get a meeting with Nishitani in his prison cell, there they get pass the cop by giving him enough money to help his daughter who study at a college, after fighting and talking in the cell because apparently everybody needs a round of fistfighting before they talk in this game, so they open the cell and get out, the problem here is Nishitani men just disappeared?! they went Woosh, gone, they go out and suddenly this cop does a 180 turn and shoots the guy that came with Majima and proceed to shoot Nishitani, because apparently he NEEDED more MONEY, lol, a really lame asspull but whatever, so he shoots this Nishitani dude and then stops in shock and waits for him to murder him? why? he could have shot him on the head and escaped alive, that scene alone has like 3 plot holes.


5- Apparently this series loves to kill characters then revive them, i love Legend of the Galactic Heroes, theres a comment there "if it was a third rate tv series characters would come back alive after being killed" which came to my mind occasionally while playing Yakuza 0, so they went to Sera mansion and there after questioning him, Sagawa comes from the back and again shoots him a fatal wound making him fall on the ground dying, alone, yet somehow few moments later Sera comes back alive and saves the day! it seems like a regular thing at this point. So how did he survive and how is this guy always on time at the best moment?


6- The chinese hitman who is considered to be the best hitman in the world, ruthless, extremely professional and deadly, needs to capture Tachiban alive, but he shoot Kiryu without killing him, this makes me think he is rather incompetent or did it on purpose, which is weird, why didnt they get rid of Kiryu since this dude keeps getting in their way and ruins their plans, and if he wanted to kill him doesnt that makes him lame and unprofessional? and if that was one rare mistake, later he did the same with Makoto and surpassingly she survived the shot, is this guy really good or what? or did i miss anything here?


7- After rescuing Makoto and when she was in Osaka, they could sign the lot to Sera and save a lot of hassle but somehow they didnt and waited for the end of the game where many unnecessary gang wars and conflicts were made, why didnt they sign it earlier when they had a pretty good time for it? looks like a plot convenience more than anything


8-One thing i didnt like was the characterization, its very inconsistent and hardly makes sense, like Awano being edgy for no reason and killing that girl to scare Kiryu off despite him knowing Kiryu doesnt give a fuck about that, and many other examples, but one highlight is Oda, you see Oda appears to be a complex character but the last arc totally ruined his character, so he was fake working with Shibusawa and probably was conflicted to remove Makoto by telling the gang where she is and guarantee nobody finds out he was the one who sold her to get abused, right before he dies he keeps swearing he loves Tachiban and he is ultimately loyal to him, yet in the game he did leak their hidden location in little asia and screwed them over and wasnt really needed for what he was aiming to do, why did he do it if he was on Tachiban side all along, seems to me like an out of character moment and yet another asspull just to push the story forward.

And there is more, i found the plot of the game to be poorly written and filled with issues that really annoyed me, i expected a lot better from a game rated this high.

-Characters-

Similar to its story, the characters in Yakuza are halfassed and the only thing going for them was their posing and meme generator, okay im exaggerating a bit, i think Goro Majima is an interesting character and by far the best one in the game, followed by Tachiban, the rest of the cast were all either a mediocre shallow characters or simply a plot device with nothing else going for them, a lot of characters exist in the game just to solve any issue the writers may come up with, revive a character from the dead? no problemo! a 180 sudden change in a character so that we can make le plot twist?? no problemo! a characters that keeps talking trash without any acting and keeps bluffing for the million time already expecting it to work?? no problemo! after all these supposedly clever Yakuza members are ruthless and high ranking, NOT HERE, there are just cartoonish shounen characters who just do poses and be stupid punching bags for the hero., majority of them feel under-developed too, they just exist to carry the plot forward and what a shame as the plot turned out to be a mess.

-Sub-Plots-

I heard a lot of praise for the side quests of Yakuza 0, i was quite excited to complete them, however just after doing a bunch of them i started scratching my head thinking is that it? where did all this praise come from? for some of the most mundane, shallow and stupid side quests. To me a side quest should at least offer
- developing side or main characters arc
- has impact and ties to the main story
- has engaging and worthwhile plotline of its own
- offers choices and consequences, aka branching paths
- fleshes out the world and its lore
- gives you different gameplay tools
- gives you good rewards
Yakuza 0 side missions do nothing of that, i spent hours doing them because of the praise they got but all i got from them is filler gag comedy missions.
They also all play out in the same repetitive and predictable manner, a random strangers stops you, start talking some nonsense you dont care about and then presents you with a silly story.
For example: I was walking around with Majima, in a hurry to solve an urgent issue that threatens your career, then suddenly a random girl stops you walks up to you and wants you to pretend to be her boyfriend??!!. Then you sit there at the table she tells you what to do, you do what she tells you its like an exam for elementary school you remember the lines you are supposed to say then you say them infront of her father. Then her father tells you ok i knew you are acting and lying but im glad about that and i want you to be her boyfriend in real. Then you disagree and leave, its like...WTF what that?!

Another example is that dad who was stalking a girl working at a nightclub, he though it was his daughter so Kiryu passes by and sees him stalking her and asks why, long story short it appears this old man lost his daughter and is looking for her, a generic and shallow premise yet is interesting enough to make you care and help him, i went there to ask the girl and i was excited to see where was this going, you click on the dialogue boxes until you get to choose from 3 lines that leads you to know that her age and situation EXACTLY matches the description, Kiryu got her name that she goes by in the club because they want to avoid creeps so it makes sense, but imo he should have asked for her name, you dont get that option because few minutes afterwards they confront each other the dad and the girl and after setting up an emotional moment it goes YOINK TADA its just a prank bro, its not the girl, despite the story being very similar imagine this, i get that the quest is supposed to be a prank and a silly one at that, but this and in addition to many other stories i did, are in my opinion not worthy of such praise, those are just random filler stories without any writing or gameplay quality to back them up, if at least you get more choices and consequences or some character development or some meaningful impact of the game's world then i can get behind the praise but when its just filler gag episodes it just feels weird.

The game is filled with those gag comedy pranks that amount to nothing except giving you a few chuckles, after such a high praise i expected way better than this mess, i can give tons of other examples such as stopping by to help a random street rock band, or to deal with a girl who sells her underwear (by the way the game is filled with perverted content, its so uncomfortable and weird).

Suffice to say after trying a lot of side quests i decided to start ignoring them, the quality is simply very low. People say they like them precisely because of that weird prank tier content, but if i wanted memes i will browse 9gag or something, i just dont agree that this content makes a good side quest and i honestly question whoever praises it.


Overall the writing in Yakuza 0 is a total mess and epically fails to save the game from its poor gameplay, its a trainwreck with good premise and charming introductions and poser scenes, that ultimately crashes and burns as soon as its first impressions ware off, the writing ranges from mediocre to downright insulting, and i was very disappointed by it.

**Presentation**

Yakuza 0 is known for being heavy on cutscenes, sadly the presentation does not keep up, its inconsistent, for example you will be in the middle of some intense cutscenes, then after a minute the game freezes, goes black and then takes you back to the usual static faces and dialogue boxes that lack voice acting and has this annoying keyboard typing sound, the cutscenes are long but they are poorly directed, if you are a cinematic director this is not a good way to present your scene, you have to commit, either keep it dialogue only or cutscene only, this weird mish mash of cinematic and static ruins the immersion, kills the tension and makes the flow of events laughable.
Aside from its poor directing, the game has barely average voice acting, subpar graphics, subpar animations, and mediocre audio design.
I think its suffice to say even for its hardcore fans that Yakuza presentation is not up to the standard level, its not amazing thats for sure, but even as a standard for story heavy games i would say its mediocre, there is simply lack of good and consistent direction, for each Majima Introduction scene or a Kiryu->Kuze punch there is hundreds of poorly directed scenes that flips back and forth.
Thanks to its subpar animations, mediocre sound design and poorly thoughtout camera angels, the presentation failed to grab me most of the time, with my sole favorite scene in the game being the intro in Chapter 3 (Majima's Cabaret).

**World Design**

The hub area of the Yakuza games looks full of life, thats a plus, but sadly, how you interact with it is barebones, you can't jump around, you can't interact with NPCs, you can't interact with the levels, its all linear hallways, even in the quest you have to exactly follow the line, you can't stray from the path, its a shame because this cool looking place is just there as a setdressing, even Ubisoft style of games have more interactivity and better level design than this, the exploration of the hub-area is not worth it as you won't get worthwhile loot from exploring or any meaningful discovery, all you are going to find is more and more thugs to punch.
Sure you can go inside shops and restaurants but those places fall back into the same initial problem and thats generic design, and nothing to do, in the restaurant all you are doing basically is click on the menu and choose a meal, then watch a poorly made cutscene where Kiryu/Majima eat their food. All you ae going to do is follow a path from A to B and do Quests which all follow the same repetitive gameplay formula, what is left are the stories and i found them meh as i explained above.
Some people may claim that set-dressing creates more immersion and they are right! however thats a minimal immersion that is immediately shattered by any kind of interaction with it, its static and noninteractive nature basically takes away a lot from the immersion power its potential may hold.

Overall the world design in Yakuza 0 is shallow and serves the game just for the setdressing and nothing else, its basically Ubisoft with inferior scale and more minigames, no thanks i'd rather go to Japan, compared to games like GTA, it feels lifeless and plastic.


**Verdict**

Finally here we have my verdict on the game
I guess im a Yakuza hater at this point, i expected a good game especially after tons of hype and promises that this is the game, only to find it super underwhelming and actually bad, Yakuza 0 left a bad taste in my mouth, and i even started to resent it more because every time i criticized this series i was met with memes and driveby posting, trying to dust off the flaws of the game under the rug.
I seriously find the lack of critical analysis towards this game alarming, its a really annoying circlejerk, for a long time i kept questioning why is this game so beloved? what makes it really good? and i failed to come up with actual reasons, until i saw that its a meme generator for Twitter and Reddit users, so i guess this must be the reason.

To conclude Yakuza 0 is a massive disappointment and a poorly designed game through and through, from its janky and shallow gameplay systems to its messy poorly written story, to its subpar presentation and its generic world design, to its tedious game design choices and horribly looking UI, i declare that Yakuza 0 is a bad game and one of the worst "acclaimed" games i have ever played that i kept trying to force myself to love, only to hate it even more!

This marks the end to my huge rant, so thank you for bearing with me through this, thank you for reading!

So I got introduced to RGG’s work through Judgement and Lost Judgment. While finishing those games I had no idea they were based on the Yakuza universe. I was a big fan of those games so I played Like a Dragon as well. I thoroughly enjoyed all these games and I made up my mind that I will begin my journey in playing all yakuza games starting with Yakuza 0. This game is amazing, everything from the lighting, the combat and the mechanics lend to such an interesting experience. The story is pretty strong as well. You switch back between Goro and Kiryu until they become interconnected in the end. While I think game is phenomenal, I do have some minor critiques. One is the lack of depth. I don’t blame RGG at all for this. I got a little spoiled with the later games and their immersion that when I went back I was a bit disappointed in the level of depth within the gameplay. However this criticism is very minor and I still think this game is Amazing. All in all I’m excited to continue my journey with Yakuza and I can’t wait to begin playing Kiwami.

Yakuza 5
Lost Judgment
Yakuza Gaiden
Yakuza 6
Yakuza 0
Judgment
Sleeping Dogs
Yakuza 4