I have never played any Yakuza game before and on a spur of the moment, I just sort of decided to give Yakuza Zero a try. From what I read up on it online, it is a perfect starting point for a newcomer, since it serves as a prequel to the original saga. I was led to believe that this would be a serious mob story, something similar more to Puzzo's Godfather and maybe less of a Scarface. Oh boy, were both accounts so wrong... A disclaimer, before I start: I will not be recapping the main story (because honestly, that would be a novella on its own), although I will be spoiling some of the story elements. Sometimes, I do not want to describe the main story in its entirety, because it was not gripping enough and I do not want to go through with it. Other times, my descriptive paragraphs would not do the story justice. This is the latter. I want to divide this post into several parts - gameplay, characters/story and other elements such as music and visuals.
Yakuza 0 is a prequel to a game series by the same name that has started in 2005 and is carrying on until today with sequels, spin offs and a prequel that is this game. It is absolutely massive and until 2015, it had a bigger barrier of entry than the Resident Evil franchise. Despite that fact (and mostly because I was so disappointed with KCD2), I decided to jump onto this train with Zero. Well, it can be technically described as a "Japanese GTA", but that would be a disservice to Yakuza 0. There is a free roam in this game, even though during the story you are mostly guided down a certain path. There are side missions, called substories, which you can access as soon as Chapter 2 starts. There are total 17 chapters in this game. All in all it took me 32 hours to finish it, with some sub stories too. You cannot drive a car in Yakuza, nor cause mayhem on civilians like you can in GTA. So why the comparison? Well, essentially it is a story about the Japanese mob, its criminal activities. From a distance, it looks like a Rockstar game, right? Well, once you get closer, the similarities evaporate. There is a very deep dive into many characters in this game - their motivations, traumatized past, their hopes for the future and eventually their acceptance of all their failures in a very theatrical fashion. There are a ton of side activities too, such as karaoke (my favorite!), fishing, fight club/arena, there is baseball, mahjong, blackjack and disco-dancing, and many others! Each characters also has their own business management mini-game, which honestly, one is much better than the other, but both are alright.
The voice performances are so dramatic, so emotional and so very well done, that most of the game I just watched in silence and gasped whenever anything happened. No single performance felt flat, boring or phoned in. Every single person you talk to in the game is fantastic. There are no dips in quality. There never was an abundance of exclamations, sighing or any of that, which is typical to a Japanese game.
And you will be talking to a lot of NPCs. There is a varied cast of characters - yakuza bosses of several hierarchies, their underlings... you have the chairman, who rules the yakuza supreme, his various clans, their heads, their lieutenants and so on. You have your friends that you meet during the main story and those that you make while free roaming. There are hostesses, police officers, masseurs, there is a dominatrix friend for Kiryu and many others. No single character is simple either, from the two main protagonists that you switch between (every two chapters) to everyone else. Nobody is defined by their profession, but rather each and every person is different and you can get to know them.
How best to describe the protagonists?
Well there is Kazuma Kiryu, whose story best fits into the mob genre to a T. He is a rookie, who gets caught up in a multi layered pool of politics of the various Japanese yakuza clans, that are vying for power and control of a fictionalized nightlife center of Tokyo.
Kiryu himself keeps saying how he is a rookie and does not know what it means to be able to take care of himself, let alone others. Which in itself is a rather mature view on life, I must say. He constantly repeats how inexperienced his... and yet at every opportunity, he wipes the floor with everyone. Soon enough, the Dojima family that he is a part of, comes to hunt him as a result of the politics he gets swept up in and there is one particular yakuza boss that Kiryu has to beat several times during the game. Every time he appeared, I was in disbelief. He truly became the "how many times do I have to teach you the same lesson, old man?" The answer is five. Five times, I had to teach him the same lesson. That was one crazy old man. Even though, he became annoying at the end (from a gameplay perspective, his boss mechanics were just... ugh), I enjoyed his insane appearances. For his second boss fight, he charged Kiryu on a motorcycle, bare chested with a steel pipe roaring as if he were possessed!
The spectacle was so great, that at times I felt like I was watching a Japanese underground TV-Show directed by David Lynch, with Tommy Wisseau producing. Even though, it had many over the top situations and moments, the gravitas of the story never dropped and it never became too much. I am loathe to talk about it more, because you need to witness this sheer brilliance and insanity. Kiryu's story has its twists, turns and is somewhat gripping. Even though, I would describe it as very... cliché. Which does not necessarily mean bad, I really enjoyed Kiryu's story, even though it has been mostly to the characters that I have come to like.
The other protagonist that you get to know is Goro Majima... And let me just show you what his introduction looks like:
You get a nightclub with band, lights and a huge stage.
Majima is this one eyed suave, gangster looking type, who gets shit done. I was not really sold on Yakuza as a series until the game introduced him. Majima is extremely polite, sometimes flamboyant but that really is something he puts up as a cover; since when the game starts he lives as a prisoner of the clan he once served. For one reason or another, he is forced to oversee a famous nightclub called the Grand that is flourishing under his management, even though the only thing he really wants to do is go back to being a yakuza. As such, he is forced to smile, bow and sometimes take out the occasional (human) trash. What follows is a story that is impossible to describe. Where I found Kiryu to be somewhat cliché and not really that interesting, Majima was like an onion, constantly peeling and shedding layers where each one was so different from the other, that I was glued onto the screen. Despite the fact that Majima really just wanted to get back to being a yakuza asap, his feelings for what is right and wrong never waivered and soon he found himself going against all the rules, because when push came to shove, he just could not do wrong. Majima really is the hero of the story, who goes out of his way to help everyone he can, even if he plays it like that was not his intention. At the same time, Majima is an absolute badass. He might be the eye-patch wearing gentleman, but he is not afraid to show his other side too.
Of course, no good deed ever goes unpunished and this is doubly so for Majima. He suffers for everything, which ultimately breaks down all his layers of being a suave gentleman. This progressive transformation has reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Falling Down and how D-Fense abandons all reason by the end.
Majima does not have such a tragic end like Michael Douglas has, but Majima's story has certainly pulled on my heartstrings a lot. There are moments that are extremely sad and at this point, I fully empathize with everyone. I love these characters and I want to see them happy, I want them to succeed. But that is the drama. Make you care about the characters and then see them suffer. Ultimately, Majima has to decide between being a proper yakuza or love and friendship. It sounds corny as hell, but it is so amazingly done, I was heartbroken by the end.
It is just so rare these days for me to experience this in a video game. Which is to say, this is a 10 year old game. Have the times changed this much?
What surprised me, in regards to the story was how fantastically developed every character was. Even the obvious villains, who I hated throughout the story had a great arc and it has changed how I felt about them by the end. I was dumbstruck, how phenomenal the writing is here. I cannot stress this enough. If you play videogames for the story, play this! It does not matter whether you are interested in the Japanese mafia, culture or a neo-noir story. I firmly believe that anyone could find great enjoyment here.
Alright, I mentioned at the beginning that the game switches between characters. I did not mention, that you yourself cannot do the switch manually until the very end, once you have finished the story. That kind of blows, even though once the individual stories meet up near the end, the pacing is excellent. I have to say that every time I finished a Kiryu chapter and I saw that I was playing as Majima, I was very excited.
The opposite is also true. Whenever, I got back to Kiryu I was sort of let down, because I did not want to get away from Majima - I wanted to see more of him.
The only negative thing I would have to say about Yakuza 0 would be that it suffers from a trend that I have seen mostly in older videogames - there is this thing where the closer you are to the end of a game, the progressively more difficult it gets. This makes sense if you are fighting new enemies, new monster, etc. However, in this one, I was fighting the same guys in suits the whole game, but at the finale, for whatever reason, they would shoot me with guns for a 1/3 of my HP. They would also have insanely high health pools, making them essentially punching sponges. It got a little bit ridiculous at the very end.
Despite that little annoyance, I loved every moment of Yakuza 0 and I am going back to finish all the substories and finally get filthy rich at the all the property and cabaret management. I also want the S ranking at every karaoke song there is. I need to become a king of the arena, too. Holy shit, Yakuza 0 is a legendary 10/10 game. I cannot recommend it enough. If you have never played it, what are you doing with your life? Do it now! Also there are Shiba Inu doggos everywhere.
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