Fans of the series will see familiar mainstays like Karaoke and Bowling. It would be an understatement to say there’s a lot to do in 0. It can be argued that the real substance of the Yakuza series lies not with its main story or combat, but with the side content. Not to mention a weapons crafting system that while feeling totally unique will keep you fully armed to deal with whatever the game can throw at you. There’s so many different context specific heat actions that we frequently found ourselves discovering something new which made the combat more exciting. If things get dicey there are also heat actions you can perform which are special moves tied to items or the environment. These are basically random battles and you’ll be rewarded with cash literally flying out of their pockets with each hit. Most of your fights will be with random thugs and other Yakuza on the streets. Some are locked behind side stories and extra training tieing the in game world to the combat together in a meaningful way.
You’ll have to purchase all the moves along the way, though, so you can’t always go right for the skills you want.
YAKUZA 0 POCKET CIRCUIT RACER UPGRADE
Then you follow the upgrade path of your choice on a sphere-grid style move tree. Instead of choosing a category and hitting upgrade, now you have choose which fighting style you want to improve on. Now cash is king – you need to spend it to level up. In the past you earned points from combat and used those to level up different skills. The upgrades systems have also been overhauled in Yakuza 0. We found ourselves changing stances depending on the fight at hand which made it difficult to decide which to focus on upgrading. There are 4 different combat styles to unlock for each character – some of which are upgraded versions of fighting styles from previous games and others are completely new. Although two characters might be a step back from the 5 different characters in Yakuza 5, both Kiryu and Majima have a vastly expanded upon set of fighting mechanics. Systems in previous games have been expanded upon and perfected into the gameplay experience of Yakuza 0. The gameplay is a culmination of 10 years of iterative game design. While every second chapter sees you swapping between Kiryu and Majima the game also has a ‘previously on’ style recap each time you switch so you’ll never forget what’s going on.
The villains are given mostly clear motivations at the beginning of the game and the supporting cast of characters keeps things moving along at a great pace. The unhinged psychopath is instead a lot more low key and reasonable. Majima, likewise, is not the mad dog we’ve seen in the earlier games. Kiryu has not yet decided on the kind of man he wants to be and you get to witness his coming of age. The story plays more like a 1980s shonan manga than a true crime novel and the young protagonists are far from hardened criminals. Organized crime might have a grim dark, serious connotation but Yakuza 0 is anything but. Meanwhile, Majima has been excommunicated from his Yakuza family and is being forced to run a cabaret club in Sotenbori to earn his way back in. Kiryu’s story starts with him being framed for murder and getting caught up in a conspiracy involving the purchase of an empty lot in the middle of the city. Having a flagrant disrespect for the law it’s easy to feel the brutality and disregard for human life that would be expected from a group of career criminals.Īs a prequel, the plot doesn’t rely on any past games to be coherent. Unlike previous games that make you feel sympathetic towards the Yakuza, this one really shows off how dark and violent the gangs can be. This fits well with the game’s criminal underworld in which both characters are intertwined. A tone we haven’t felt since the first game. Kamurocho specifically feels like it has its edge back. Trash lines the streets and the overall tone feels grittier than the other games in the series. One commonality they share, though, is the grime. Each city has distinct features based on their real world counterparts and unique characters, side stories, and extras. Everyone is rich and the cash is burning a hole in their pockets.Įach playable character is locked into their own fictionalized piece of Japan, Kiryu being in the neon filled paradise of Tokyo’s Kamurocho and Majima in Osaka’s Sotenbori. It was a great time to be alive – at the time Japan was going through a bubble economy. Set in 1988, Yakuza 0 stars a young version of series main character Kazuma Kiryu who’s joined by Majima Goro.
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