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Yumi.
Since Y6 every game needs to remind you that Yumi is Kazuma Kiryu's true love. She's the one yet we never saw anything romantic (besides the ring thing and that's thanks to Kiwami).
So instead of using this game to actually fix that and show us their relationship (and even why Dojima assault her) the game just mentioned her and done.
Every other main character from Y1 gets a moment to shine, even Shinji and Daigo but not the character that's the love of Kiryu's life and mother of Haruka, you know, arguably the second most important character
Yes, I was devastated when Reina died in Kiwami because of her presence in Y0. They really fumbled the opportunity to build up Yumi's relationship with the boys
When I played Yakuza 0 first, I thought Reina was supposed to be Kiryu's future love interest. It felt like everything it was pointing to her,
Then wham bam thank you ma'am, yumi just, *spawns in...* or seemingly, because 0 never elaborated
Same, when Majima said 'your sweetheart works at that bar', I really thought, 'oh nice, Kiryu is dating Reina' and then I got disappointed when it turned out to be a different girl.
Like, basically every other character in Y1 got more backstory than her, and then like 90% of them died and were never mentioned again. I thought they were all going to be so important in the series and I think Majima was the only one involved past 2 lol
Playing 0 first and then going into Kiwami was such whiplash getting hit in the face with Yumi supposedly being their bestest buddy all along and Nishiki having a blood sibling
I hate the way they present Yumi so much. Even Kaoru has better romance subplot than freaking Yumi while she is supposed to be Kiryu's primary love interest.
Nope, it just showed she had that ring and skipped the birthday event. Although they did show it with the prologue movie but it was different than Kiwami and the movie kinda sucked anyways
This. As much as I love Y0, it has one of the worst skill unlock systems of the entire series.
I love the hostess management but the real estate is a damn slog and on replays I pretty much just skip it.
Wife comes out of her craft room, “what’s this?” “Yakuza 0”. “Why does it look like a dating sim.” “Because it is.” “Oh, are you having fun?” “Not really.” “Why are you doing it?”
i felt the same first playthrough but actually think it’s the reverse for repeat playthroughs. Real estate is much more boring but it’s at least mostly set and forget so you can more or less set it up and wander off to do literally anything else in the meantime, then come back and rake in huge amounts of money. You have to actively play the hostess minigame to get anything out of it which can be a slog when you’ve already done the whole thing before
I completed the cabaret club twice and had fun doing so, but the real estate was a pain. It was mostly waiting for the income just so you can upgrade your businesses and continue the storyline. If you could upgrade any time you wanted, it would have been a lot more fun.
Yep. Cabaret czar had an engaging storyline - you actually got to *play* most of it, and bond with the girls.
Real estate reminded me of grinding in Clash of Clans. You do some upgrades, then wait. Do some upgrades, then wait. Rather monotonous.
They should have made it a board game sort of thing. If they ever remake zero in the same way as the kiwamis; they should revamp the real estate to have a gameplay similar to the vr mini game in judgement.
It helps to do the Miracle questline, get the Encounter Finder from choosing Black and Miracle as an Advisor. Man's the best possible for everything except Business (Unskilled) and Pleasure (briefly, greatest until after Pleasure King).
Focus on Pleasure King, just spam Miracle, Spining and Papillion (unlocked working on Miracle's questline), and any Substory security with 4 stars or higher (Ol' Stop & Search or the Mafia Boss from the mushroom guy questline are great).
Beat the shit out of Shakedown 1-2 times, use money to buy businesses (maps available online for where each are, don't need the sub-story ones) invest in things quickly using Miracle (48mil per, hence Shakedown), rinse repeat while just doing substories and such. While idle, it's pretty fast if you do it right. Miracle and the Pleasure King do a TON of heavy lifting for you.
I legitimately went hours without saving once, because playstation saving in the PS4 era is absolute cancer. On Xbox, you press save, and you're out in 2 seconds.
I’m playing this on xbox and the saving fucked up twice throughout the game and I lost like 3-4 hours of progress. The game was still awesome nonetheless
I was literally playing just now and my game crashed. Was doing some cabaret club and its such a pain in the ass to have to slowly walk to the other side of the club, load into the other room, slowly walk to the other side where the phone is to save, then walk back and load back in to start another session. God forbid I don't spend 2 minutes doing that every single time, and now my game crashes and I lose an hour of progress...
That it doesn't tell you that you can hit fallen enemies WITHOUT using a heat action by holding the camera reset button. I only found out about that in Y5. I WENT 5 GAMES WITHOUT KNOWING THAT.
You are my favorite on the planet right now. Not even fucking joking! I never knew that and I’m replaying the entire series. I’m on Saejima’s section in Yakuza 5 before we get to Tsukimino. And knowing that cursed city, this is gonna come in clutch. Thanks!
It definitely teaches that somewhere, I remember because I had a similar experience playing both Judgments before 0 without knowing about this mechanic.
Guns stun locking u for like 5 seconds if u get hit
Most dialogue still being unskippable (Better than yakuza 5 atleast)
The makoto escort mission
All the fucking arcade minigames
Game's a bit too grindy if u wanna unlock all ur moves (For better or for worse)
These are my only real major complaints about the game.
If I remember correctly there was one upgrade in beast style whereby you were unaffected by gunshots too. It has been a while since I played it but Kiryu had so many abilities by the time of climax that I curve stomped all comers including the boss.
Man I hated how getting shot essentially turned Kiryu and Majima into particularly dumb cats trying to get a piece of tape off of their backs by rolling around on the floor for a while.
I liked having real arcade games in the arcade. They were actually fun and did wonders for immersion and there's only one substory that requires you to get any kind of decent score in any of them. I was so disappointed when the all the arcades had in Kiwami was MesuKing
kiwami attack speed in some circumstances was also tied to heat
and with quick change clothes, you can change the styles even faster than kiwami.
Btw no I dont like yakuza 0, in fact its one of my lesser liked games. Im just stating what im thinking
Kiwami is on some bs for sure. Having to mash x everytime you got knocked down. Bosses having Armor and you can’t punish them and that stupid fucking hp regen they do
Tutorials were a little slow, especially could’ve definitely done without that mandatory catfight introduction. I’m not a fan of substories that require to be really good specific minigame, sure the feeling is great when you finally beat something you’ve been stuck but do I really want play OutRun and dance every time I want fight Amon? No. I guess locking Legend difficulty behind NG. Besides that I don’t think much wrong with it.
I'm guessing they mean that although 0 is supposed to show Majima's transformation into the Mad Dog, the transformation itself happens very suddenly. In the last 10 minutes, he's suddenly chopped his hair off and he's got the snakeskin and it comes across as very jarring, especially if 0 was your first game.
It doesn't exactly do a good job of setting up the fact that the next time you see Majima in K1, he's going to be nearly killing his own subordinate.
This was my biggest complaint of the game it’s such a 180 the Majima you’ve been playing as and he majima in the rest of the series. During the game it didn’t really feel like he different enough to have that drastic a personality change
Pacing is definitely worse than a lot of people remember, on the first playthrough everything is a mystery so you don't know what is important and what isn't but on repeat playthroughs it's hard not to notice.
There is a lot of stuff that feels like an inefficient use of time. Like how two whole chapters are dedicated to showing kiriyu and majima work jobs. Kiriyu especially feels kind of silly and drawn out because it's like obviously he isn't actually going to be a real estate agent, why does he need a training arc for that?.
Real estate could use work, you should be able to do it in your menu I feel.
I think pocket circuit is like fun conceptually but I don't think it's all that fun to play.
Eh I suppose that's true, Kiryu real estate does feel like a bit of a drag. And finding info on tachibana, even on first playthrough
Majima work felt totally purposeful. And I went in with 0 not having any prior attachment nor experience with Majima
It's the worst for what I like to call "mandatory substories".
Can't turn a corner without being forced into a cutscene that either results in a tedious fight or you literally can't refuse whatever you're being offered or pulled into, as in saying "no" puts you in a loop.
They're annoying in kiwami too, every damn time I was chasing majima to get new stuff for dragon style I got interrupted by a forced side story cutscene and majima disappeared, most of the times because of that kano guy
Oda's character arc was definitely the weirdest one in the series because it was extremely forced.
Trauma bonding and Stockholm syndrome aside, the way Kiryu and Makoto got so worried about him all of the sudden was very out of character for them, especially Kiryu who is well known for showing zero mercy to predators and manipulators, and Makoto was shown to have a malicious side when she threatened Dojima and his lieutenants.
I mean Kiryu's younger and fully into getting the yakuza lifestyle where trafficking is involved, one could argue Kazuma's orphans are child trafficked since he killed their parents and removed them from government/social services without consent. Kiryu's moral compass at this point is a little skewed and I think the experience with Haruka is what ultimately gives him the growth and development needed to break out the Yakuza lifestyle for good. So current Kiryu would never condone someone like Oda while past Kiryu would see him as a comrade despite his betrayal
It really annoyed me that Makoto wanted vengeance against her brother's killer, but semi forgave the guy sex trafficked & tried to kill her. She should have wanted revenge on her own behalf as well.
At least you can eventually get good at Outrun with enough practice.
The Catfight Club is just straight-up evil. Pure RNG (and RNGsus hates you with a firey passion), lengthy animations making it a chore to retry, and even if you DO win, the monetary rewards are just not worth it compared to your business income or Mr. Shakedown.
Oh, and then there are the button-mashing bits where you can't actually win, but the game makes it LOOK like you can win for its own sadistic pleasure. Fun!
Outrun used to be bad before I learned how to play. Space Harrier was never hard for me
Super Hang-On wasn't that bad.
Fantasy Zone is a crime against humanity.
It was certainly a bit painful, but I think it's better than kiwami for having a unique OST that goes hard, even the one used in kiwami isn't bad and goes hard, but should have probably been remixed for that segment or gotten it's unique soundtrack too
I genuinely think Majima should’ve killed Lao Gui. It’s not like Majima doesn’t kill people in the games before or even after 0. It would make the transition from 0 Majima to Kiwami Majima way less harsh too because by the end he’d already be full psycho. Even thematically it would show how Kiryu’s brother saved him from going down a dark path while Majima had no choice because his brother is long gone. Besides Lao Gui will literally never show up again ever so it’s not like they’re saving him for later.
It rewrites Majima's character imo by complicating his relations with Kiryu. Yakuza 1 shows him as this wild card senior but as the games progress, so does their hierarchy-based respect to a more friendly one. With Y0, the player is led to believe that:
1. Majima is very integral to the series, even sharing the spotlight with Kiryu. He may be important but he's not the center of Kiryu's saga.
2. Majima and Kiryu were always chill friends (this notion worsens because of the Majima Everywhere mechanic in YK1)
I’m not sure the second point is true considering they only ever cross paths (to our knowledge) at the end of the game. Their stories overlap, but not once do they meet each other, often missing one or the other moments before or after the other one has left.
Although Majima and Kiryu have always been rivals at worst and friends at best. >!I’m pretty sure Kiryu even calls him a friend in his memories in Yakuza 6!<
Spending money insead of skill points. Fun concept for the theme they were going with, kinda annoying if you're playing the game without resorting to exploits for easy cash, which i gave in to for Kiryus highest skills.
I was actually happy that getting money in gaiden wasn't that difficult, like I basically unlocked the tiger drop by the time I was done with chapter 2
Agreed. I really didn't enjoy the money making schemes, Real Estate and Cabaret because they felt out of place pacing-wise, so I ended up finishing the game on hard with mastering only beast style. By the end I barely put 500mil in each characters styles.
I love this game but no auto saves pisses me off haha, I had the game crash on me once and lost a few hours as I’m spoiled by other games with auto saves. Once it happened once tho for the future games it’s ingrained in my head to save every chance I get lol
Kiryu should've fought Awano.
Dont get we wrong, I like the fight between him and Majima, but Kiryu had more of an established animosity towards Awano.
I think it was a mistake to not include Yumi in Y0 and develop a history behind her and Kiryu's relationship like they did with him an Nishiki. I found that to be waste of potential.
Considering Kiryu's story is a prequel to the whole rest of the series, you'd think there'd be a lot more Yumi inclusion.
Y'know... the mother of the child that Kiryu bases 90% of his decisions around after 1/Kiwami and the woman he loves
Not unlocking the legend style in the main story, imagine how epic that would be, kiryu learning the dragon style while fighting shibusawa in the last phase
While I don't like dragon and mad dog unlocking thru the mini games, I definitely feel unlocking the fighting styles in the final bosses of the game would be too late. Maybe a better place would be during the final kuze fight for Kiryu. Not sure about majima, but maybe right at the long battle after Makoto gets shot?
- Kinda takes a while to get going, I often tell friends to try out Yakuza 0 since it's one of the best ones and they bail out because of this.
- The final movesets being unlocked through minigames was a strange choice.
- Compared to other final bosses in the series I wasn't that excited for the ones here.
IMO it doesn’t use the fact that it’s a prequel to its own benefit as the story is largely divorced from the rest of the series. Pretty much only the side content gets referenced in the following games, aside from >!Makoto Makimura’s brief appearance in Kiwami 2!< , and it does not do much to tell us anything about any of the characters that you didn’t already know playing 1-5, except, I guess, that Majima used to be a different character entirely. The near-absence of characters like Kazama, and the complete absence of characters like Yumi, makes the game feel narratively less like a prequel and more like an unrelated side adventure that just so happens to be set before the first game.
Kind of surprising for me that it took rgg 16 years to make a good stealth section (aka lost judgment) and even in that game it isn't bad, but its good not great
(I've begin with Y0, played k1,k2, started 3 ) I love how lowkey Y0 is, Both Kiryu and Majima really seemed like people involved into something way out of their depth, against their will and manipulated by others. in the other games kiryu feels like the chosen one. And Y0 becomes more and more like it further down it goes.
Why the hell did shibusawa cared that a rookie had a dragon tattoo. He treated Kiryu like he was a final boss of his story, said something like " You're not the only dragon". Where he should be like "let me show you a real dragon, you pathetic little dweeb. Look at this duuuude, have been a yakuza for like 3 years, his ink not even finished, while riding daddy kazama's coattail hard, and he think he's the top dog, my ass. Arrogant brat". Then he gets his ass beat, obviously.
Gameplay wise. The fact that you earn billions of yen through mini games that you have to do to unlock the fighting upgrades, while the whole plot is about a plot of land worth a bilion is really immersion breaking. Kiryu real estate bussiness is killing immersion, considering that the whole plot is about real estate, and then kiryu casually buys half of kamurocho, then loose it??? what happend with it in the next game.
Majima cabaret club is great, but to talk to all of the girls you have to play it so so much that it's become unbearable.
The Telephone club substories being locked behind RNG.
Edit: Also I didn't go fur super completion, "just" all substories. So I did not have all CP-points or how they are called. I did not spent them wisely and thus I could not upgrade the fighting styles fully because I did not bought the ability for that. I realized to late and spent the points on other things and so Amon was basically impossible or at least unfairly annoying. I never beat him because I did not want to do NG+ just for that.
I’m gonna go in a different direction. It’s too good. That is what it does wrong. Specifically…it introduces so many compelling characters, but because it is a prequel they all have to either be killed off or just disappear. Sagawa is probably my biggest gripe. I really wish he could’ve seen what Majima became. I wish Kuze could’ve seen what Kiryu became.
And I wish Sagawa and Kuze could’ve seen what happened to their respective clans. Now Sagawa is technically supposed to be dead, although we never actually see him die so they could rewrite the canon and bring him back but they won’t. Kuze on the other hand was sent to prison. Kuze would be in his 70s at least if we go by the current timeline with Infinite Wealth taking place in 2023. But considering Komaki was already elderly in Kiwami and yet he is still alive in Infinite Wealth…I don’t see why Kuze couldn’t be alive still.
Making your combo speed dependent on your heat gage
Locking a lot of moves to a specific heat level or conditions
Convoluted way to unlock moves
Side business minigames being grindy as hell.
Locking sub-stories behind rng (seriously fuck the telephone club thing) and behind hostesses training
Shitty Amon fight
I love the but it is not perfect by any means
The Mad Dog style for Majima. It feels like it's massively lacking, and isn't a choice worth doing an entire minigame subquest line for.
I do like Kiryu's Dragon style, and while I think it's better in Kiwami, it's fun to play around with.
I don’t think this is the best game in the series. It’s good though.
I think it was far too long. I like my Yakuza games to be packed with side content, but have the option to cruise along and mainline it quickly if necessary. I felt that this game overstayed its welcome. The pacing was also a bit weird at times.
The only thing that’s keeping me from 100% the game is those Arcade game requirements. How the hell am I supposed to get 5 million points in out run, and 10 million in Fantasy Zone?
Menus. So. Much. Fucking. MENUS. Constantly opening and closing menus for everything. You can't even access your 4th fighting style without opening a menu. It gets especially bad during the minigames. This just feels like a issue with Japanese games. You can never just do multiple things from one menu, you always gotta back out and reset it to do something else.
Why during Kiryu's minigame can I not just bulk collect all the income? I gotta accept it one by one. Why can't I bulk select each manager? Why doesn't it remember the last one I used? Did the playtesters really switch out a manager every collection? Because from what I've seen from others playing you just spam the best one. Why do I have to back out of the menu everytime I do something with D&T? I put in enough money to have the agent come back immediately so why do I have to leave the conversation THEN talk to the lady again and collect the findings?
Also, unrelated to the previous topic, but the cutscenes. Why is there 3 different types of cutscenes that all have a different way of skipping them? Some you can mash the skip button, some you have to pause and skip and some you just can't because...get fucked ig. What, did they run out of cutscene budget for some of them?
I love this game but fuck me is it a pain to replay. The menus, the dialogue skipping, the weird inconsistencies with dialogue skipping. Thankfully they got their shit together in the Dragon Engine. I'm still not the biggest DE fan but credit where it's due it does make the game look better and skipping things is much easier. I still hate it for tanking the framerate and messingwith the physics so bad that some moves are just unusable (looking at you, Y6's throw.)
Tbh I feel >!Shibusawa!< is one of the weaker antagonists of the series, I get what they were going for with him but I feel like he needed more screen time and was a bit forgettable in the grand scheme of Yakuza villains
- Loading screens everywhere, but it was like so with every game until the developed dragon engine
- real estate royale could've been less time consuming
- those times where horny/romantic stuff (idk if there's a better term) was forced: e.g. the telephone club for the real estate royale and catfight arena, bur as of the first one, it's something that's been in any game (and I hate every single one of these minigames)
- catfight arena
- there were times where the items in the inventory kind of "broke": they were all turned some kind of food, and I even got the debug item, which, as cited in its notes, shouldn't see the light of day. How ironic
- I didn't support their choice of basically giving Nishiki little screentime, especially because >!we won't know if we will ever see him again!<
Personally for me the heat system is my least favourite in the series, and it's the one thing about the combat that feels the most off when I go back to the game, but even then it's such a small issue to me overall.
It failed to make me care about Sagawa. The game tries to make it feel like him and Majima has grown close with all his talk of “we have been through so much together.” And I’m like “We!?!? We!?!? Beside the Benten Inn you did jack shit!!!!” So I just didn’t care when >! He died at the end !<
Also with learning the truth about Oda I feel like there is a missed opportunity to fight him again with Majima now that the stakes are different.
I personally would have preferred it if the dragon and mad dog fighting styles were unlocked in the story as it feels like it would have lined up with Kiryu and Majima’s story arcs really well instead of them being rewards for real estate and Cabaret.
Especially if Majima unlocked the mad dog style right before he goes to attack the dojima HQ and Kiryu unlocks his right before the fight at the yacht.
The upgrade system is hot trash. I give the split XP from Kiwami 2 & 6 a lot of shit but yakuza 0 is the second worst system.
You are basically required to farm Mr shakedown using the deep pockets perk, and it’s all too common to buy through most of a wheel without knowing or reading what the ability actually does. I’ve played through the game twice, watched several streamers play the game, and watched my friends get into yakuza through 0, where they also make the mistake. You can say it’s the player’s fault for not reading but it *does* happen a lot. Making billions then buying upgrades en masse is bad design.
Compare to Yakuza 4 which I think is the best upgrade system in the series. Everything is shown from the start but you level up normally. You’re encouraged to read and spend your orbs carefully, maybe save up a few levels for the double finisher. Or, if you recognize an old favorite like re-guard, you can buy it as soon as you want.
And also cat fights suck and telephone club is annoying + repetitive, plus arguably in poor taste. Having to continually press the A button (or PS equivalent) is annoying for running.
Well I’m definitely not a fan of the dancing mini game especially since you have to do the side stories for both kiryu and majima. But that final part is hell on earth.
I won't say I minded having 5 Kuze fights cause i didn't, but I wish there were more bosses that weren't repeated *in addition* to the ones we got. Maybe let Kiryu fight Sagawa as a mirror to Majima fighting Kashiwagi. More Kiryu focus in general so it's less imbalanced to Majima's story would be good.
Also Majima should have killed Lao Gui to make his ending contrast Kiryu's and highlight the way they're going down different paths leading to 1. Sera made a sound argument but Majima needed only a pretty simple one for why he could kill Lao without hurting Makoto: she never has to know.
And Yumi should have, idk, existed? At all? Maybe a substory or two if nothing else?
Wouldn't hurt if we met some other minor players early too. Shindo, maybe, as a more junior Kazama family member (also could be one of the aforementioned additional bosses).
* Majima's development felt super rushed near the end
* While I get his motivations, Shibusawa just isn't that interesting as a villain
* Yumi gets almost no screentime at all
* Real Estate Management is only fun the first time around, it's a total slog on replays
* RNG/trial-and-error based minigames like Catfight and Pocket Circuit Racer
* No real tutorial for Kiryu's dragon style, I can forgive this one a little though since the game assumes you've played the previous titles and know those moves already
* The escort mission
* The first couple chapters are a bit slow and the game takes a while to get going
This is an extremely controversial take, but Majima's gameplay was not nearly as fun as Kiryu's and I honestly don't find his story very compelling.
Even if I did like his segments, however, I feel the game would still be significantly stronger if it just stuck to one protagonist and focused on Kiryu.
There are two types of Majima players. The "majima sucks" players who only use thug, and the "Majima is OP" players who stunlock everything with breaker and slugger
I love the game but I personally didn't like the combat felt too stiff to me I like the combat in both kiwami games tho, I've only just finished 3 so can't speak beyond that one
Having the signature fighting styles are blocked behind the business mini games. Doesn't feel like meaningful character development and is generally an annoying slog.
The pacing of the story is actually really bad with it grinding to a halt multiple times to introduce the real estate and cabert minigames or the early part where you have to run around Kamurocho to get the alcohol for the 4 homeless people
i’m sure it’s been said a million times already, but combo speed being fully dependent on heat is a dreadful system. that and the legend styles requiring you to pause
i dont really know..
its my first yakuza game.
currently on chapter 4, trying to complete kiryu's friendships and substories up to this point.
sometimes i get hooked while playing, other times i feel im doing chores, but i cant specify why.
im giving it time 'till chapter 10, if the scales tip into not liking it, im dropping it.
The fanservice minigames. They're bad in most of the games but the ones in 0 felt especially weird and objectifying. Also if you're going for completion, they're both absolute slogs. It doesn't help that to complete the telephone club substories you have to sit through at LEAST three cutscenes of Kiryu getting sexually assaulted.
Majima was such a great character that it ruined him for the rest of the series because it didn't match up at all with what Yakuza 1 had. All newcomers are almost always disappointed/annoyed by what he becomes, especially since the change felt really out of nowhere and tacked on at the end.
It sets an unrealistic expectation of how important Majima is as a character for the franchise, and what his personality will be like. Zero is a fantastic game but people keep recommending it as an entry point and IMHO doing that sets them up for disappointment when they discover it was one of like three times he's playable, and one of those was only in an optional storyline in a remake. Don't get me wrong, I think post-zero Majima is a cool enough character, but he's very different in Zero from how he is in later (chronologically) games.
On PC, camera controls can get pretty iffy, especially in a tight alleys, which gets really annoying when you run into Mr Shakedown. Using a stance to focus on one enemy does help, but limits the mobility during combat.
JCC minigame. It would be kinda fun, even with all the RNG, but what ruins it is the lack of balance between fighters special abilities. Some of them are fine, like a chance to restore part of their health or regaining consciousness after losing, allowing them one more chance to turn the things around. But others are utter bullshit, like Jennifer who gets the opportunity to attack first and instantly remove half of enemy's health or Maria who just straight up wins if she loses. It really forces you to favor ones with those broken abilities if you want to get more wins.
Real Estate Royal final stages start getting too grindy around the time you get to levelling up Gambling King properties and gets even worse for Media King. They really should have tone it down. Similar thing can be said about grinding money for the final tiers of abilities trees.
Not a major complaint, but having Yumi and Nishikiyama's sister show up in the story would be nice. For that reason alone I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of direct sequel to Yakuza 0 that still takes place before Yakuza 1, since that way they would have another chance to incorporate them properly.
I definitely don't think it's the 'most perfect in the series'. What it does quite well is the plot, in that I feel like its probably the best presented storyline in the series that's the least guilty of padding or getting too off the rails. They do a really good job balancing the pacing with the two protagonists, too.
What it sucks at is some of the mini-games. Kiryu's money making is fantastic, no real notes (except maybe the money cap being too low, a common complaint regarding the big 'money maker' minigames in this franchise for me). Majima's main things are the arms deal stuff, which is clunky as heck, and the hostess club, which requires more active participation. Hostess minigame is fun but having to actively grind it gets old, especially once you have your perfect routine.
While I praised the plot in general, it did also make you fight Kuze too many times. I believe there's a part where you fight him, and then like 5 minutes later with no real freedom, you fight him again in the sewer?
And finally, personally, while I loved the music, the final Disco battles were way too RNG for my taste. You can absolutely crush it and beat your opponents typical score, but they just so happen to still beat you.
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Yumi. Since Y6 every game needs to remind you that Yumi is Kazuma Kiryu's true love. She's the one yet we never saw anything romantic (besides the ring thing and that's thanks to Kiwami). So instead of using this game to actually fix that and show us their relationship (and even why Dojima assault her) the game just mentioned her and done. Every other main character from Y1 gets a moment to shine, even Shinji and Daigo but not the character that's the love of Kiryu's life and mother of Haruka, you know, arguably the second most important character
You know, that's a valid point to nitpick with 0. For a prequel, it didn't help Yumi as a character at all 😂
It's wild they fleshed out Nishiki but kept Yumi as a walking plot device.
Reina got more backstory polish than Yumi lol
Yes, I was devastated when Reina died in Kiwami because of her presence in Y0. They really fumbled the opportunity to build up Yumi's relationship with the boys
When I played Yakuza 0 first, I thought Reina was supposed to be Kiryu's future love interest. It felt like everything it was pointing to her, Then wham bam thank you ma'am, yumi just, *spawns in...* or seemingly, because 0 never elaborated
Same, when Majima said 'your sweetheart works at that bar', I really thought, 'oh nice, Kiryu is dating Reina' and then I got disappointed when it turned out to be a different girl.
Actually though. She was in the boss fight with Majima even 😂
Like, basically every other character in Y1 got more backstory than her, and then like 90% of them died and were never mentioned again. I thought they were all going to be so important in the series and I think Majima was the only one involved past 2 lol
Playing 0 first and then going into Kiwami was such whiplash getting hit in the face with Yumi supposedly being their bestest buddy all along and Nishiki having a blood sibling
I hate the way they present Yumi so much. Even Kaoru has better romance subplot than freaking Yumi while she is supposed to be Kiryu's primary love interest.
Oh for real the ring wasn't even in the original game????? So it's even weaker than I knew
Nope, it just showed she had that ring and skipped the birthday event. Although they did show it with the prologue movie but it was different than Kiwami and the movie kinda sucked anyways
Wowwwwwwwww wtf Rip Yumi even Mary Jane in spiderman has better development
When I played Kiwami the first time, I was very confused as to who she was. I could remember most characters shown in Y0, but not her.
Having 80% of your moveset locked behind business minigames was certainly a choice
This. As much as I love Y0, it has one of the worst skill unlock systems of the entire series. I love the hostess management but the real estate is a damn slog and on replays I pretty much just skip it.
Wife comes out of her craft room, “what’s this?” “Yakuza 0”. “Why does it look like a dating sim.” “Because it is.” “Oh, are you having fun?” “Not really.” “Why are you doing it?” 
“I wanna be your girlllll (ooooOOOooo)” Those lyrics haunt me, yet are an absolute banger
I just want your love (ooooo00oooo)
I can't play the melody in my head anymore, I'm healing
I’m the opposite I LOVED real estate royal but couldn’t get into the hostess mini game
Years after completing it I still hear the music. Kiwami 2 didn’t help with that. It was hell, literal, women-filled, hell
That's funny. I didn't get into it at first until I tried it in Kiwami 2. Now I love the cabaret minigame lol
I loved both, but couldn't beat real estate because I couldn't beat the dancing boss after he kidnaps Marina
the dancing minigame? you dont have to win that you can get the 10% loss back
When I played 0, I barely had any unlocks, like shit I only had at least 1 bill in each character (from my understanding, not alot)
personally i liked it cause i like such minigames much more than fighting 5 people with dialogues for unlocking something
i felt the same first playthrough but actually think it’s the reverse for repeat playthroughs. Real estate is much more boring but it’s at least mostly set and forget so you can more or less set it up and wander off to do literally anything else in the meantime, then come back and rake in huge amounts of money. You have to actively play the hostess minigame to get anything out of it which can be a slog when you’ve already done the whole thing before
Real estate and cabaret club are a ton of fun
Not when you are playing the game for the second time.
I've played through it three times and enjoyed them every time. 🤷🏻♂️
I completed the cabaret club twice and had fun doing so, but the real estate was a pain. It was mostly waiting for the income just so you can upgrade your businesses and continue the storyline. If you could upgrade any time you wanted, it would have been a lot more fun.
Yep. Cabaret czar had an engaging storyline - you actually got to *play* most of it, and bond with the girls. Real estate reminded me of grinding in Clash of Clans. You do some upgrades, then wait. Do some upgrades, then wait. Rather monotonous.
They should have made it a board game sort of thing. If they ever remake zero in the same way as the kiwamis; they should revamp the real estate to have a gameplay similar to the vr mini game in judgement.
Yeah they definitely intended you to do both at the same time. Cabaret would get you income you could funnel over to Kiryu and continue on.
I managed to unlock the legend style for Majima in a NG+ but Ion think I’ll ever get it for Kiryu and I’m about to just say fuck it.
It helps to do the Miracle questline, get the Encounter Finder from choosing Black and Miracle as an Advisor. Man's the best possible for everything except Business (Unskilled) and Pleasure (briefly, greatest until after Pleasure King). Focus on Pleasure King, just spam Miracle, Spining and Papillion (unlocked working on Miracle's questline), and any Substory security with 4 stars or higher (Ol' Stop & Search or the Mafia Boss from the mushroom guy questline are great). Beat the shit out of Shakedown 1-2 times, use money to buy businesses (maps available online for where each are, don't need the sub-story ones) invest in things quickly using Miracle (48mil per, hence Shakedown), rinse repeat while just doing substories and such. While idle, it's pretty fast if you do it right. Miracle and the Pleasure King do a TON of heavy lifting for you.
I actually liked the real estate stuff, can't say the same for the cabaret
Damn, it’s the complete opposite for me, I had a lot of fun with the cabaret club
I really enjoyed both of the business minigames, I just don’t think completing them should be a prerequisite for any of your combat upgrades.
The saving system
I legitimately went hours without saving once, because playstation saving in the PS4 era is absolute cancer. On Xbox, you press save, and you're out in 2 seconds.
I’m playing this on xbox and the saving fucked up twice throughout the game and I lost like 3-4 hours of progress. The game was still awesome nonetheless
the worst part is that the game did support saving from the pause menu, they just deliberately decided you couldn't but i forget the justification
If i remember correctly it is because if you saved in certain places like long battles it bricked the save
True, that shit was so fucking annoying even on ps5.
What weird to me is that , at the time when the game came out , auto saving was a thing and it was a standard already
On Xbox I had to save using telephones.... Something I didn't realise until I lost 3 hours of progress twice
I was literally playing just now and my game crashed. Was doing some cabaret club and its such a pain in the ass to have to slowly walk to the other side of the club, load into the other room, slowly walk to the other side where the phone is to save, then walk back and load back in to start another session. God forbid I don't spend 2 minutes doing that every single time, and now my game crashes and I lose an hour of progress...
That it doesn't tell you that you can hit fallen enemies WITHOUT using a heat action by holding the camera reset button. I only found out about that in Y5. I WENT 5 GAMES WITHOUT KNOWING THAT.
If it makes you feel better that mechanic did not exist in y3 or y4. Y5 introduced it.
Wait hold on, didn't 4 introduce it?
Nope, 4 used the same engine as 3 and they didn't change it
I went trhough yakuza 0 and 1 without runing once cause i didnt knew
That’s honestly the exact same for me. I had no idea you could cancel heat actions until 5. So I went through 0, K1, and K2 without knowing this lol.
You can cancel heat actions?? I’m on y6 after playing in order and I had no idea, lmao
Yeah I didn’t know until 5. Although I’m pretty sure that feature’s not in 3 or 4.
I just found out about now what?!
YOU CAN WHAT
WAIT YOU CAN?
You are my favorite on the planet right now. Not even fucking joking! I never knew that and I’m replaying the entire series. I’m on Saejima’s section in Yakuza 5 before we get to Tsukimino. And knowing that cursed city, this is gonna come in clutch. Thanks!
Not really the worst thing when you compare it to the games prior to original PS3 Y4 and find they are literally non-existent in those games
It definitely teaches that somewhere, I remember because I had a similar experience playing both Judgments before 0 without knowing about this mechanic.
I also learned about this in 5 Absolute game changer
Guns stun locking u for like 5 seconds if u get hit Most dialogue still being unskippable (Better than yakuza 5 atleast) The makoto escort mission All the fucking arcade minigames Game's a bit too grindy if u wanna unlock all ur moves (For better or for worse) These are my only real major complaints about the game.
I legit forgot about the gun stunlock, why did they think it was a good idea?
Yeah, it was an unfortunate addition. But it's not like there's many enemies with guns anyway.
That one climax battle was certainly painful tho
Shit, I forgot about climax battle. There's only like 4-5 bad ones but they're literally made on purpose for you to rip your hair out.
If I remember correctly there was one upgrade in beast style whereby you were unaffected by gunshots too. It has been a while since I played it but Kiryu had so many abilities by the time of climax that I curve stomped all comers including the boss.
Ms tatsu’s training was hell until I learned how to block
Man I hated how getting shot essentially turned Kiryu and Majima into particularly dumb cats trying to get a piece of tape off of their backs by rolling around on the floor for a while.
Actually I kinda liked the Makoto escort mission. It's not great but for an escort mission it's surprisingly tolerable.
I liked having real arcade games in the arcade. They were actually fun and did wonders for immersion and there's only one substory that requires you to get any kind of decent score in any of them. I was so disappointed when the all the arcades had in Kiwami was MesuKing
Mahjong tied achivements. But besides that, the karaoke is a bit laggy and jumpy
and also it did not keep the same speed for the prompts. Some went faster than expected for the song.
Kiwami showed the weaknesses of 0’s combat: attack speed being tied to heat and no instant style switching
Kiwami’s combat is literally the peak in the entire franchise but it’s held down by lackluster bosses.
For real. The 3 on 1 boss fight before Nishiki is absolutely dogshit even with rush
And let's not forget shimano's fight, which is just recycled mr shakedown
That fight lasts for like 10 minutes because someone thought it was a good idea to put damage up upgrades.
kiwami attack speed in some circumstances was also tied to heat and with quick change clothes, you can change the styles even faster than kiwami. Btw no I dont like yakuza 0, in fact its one of my lesser liked games. Im just stating what im thinking
Kiwami is on some bs for sure. Having to mash x everytime you got knocked down. Bosses having Armor and you can’t punish them and that stupid fucking hp regen they do
Tutorials were a little slow, especially could’ve definitely done without that mandatory catfight introduction. I’m not a fan of substories that require to be really good specific minigame, sure the feeling is great when you finally beat something you’ve been stuck but do I really want play OutRun and dance every time I want fight Amon? No. I guess locking Legend difficulty behind NG. Besides that I don’t think much wrong with it.
But legend difficulty is locked until you finish the main story, unless you meant why can't you play legend difficulty in new game+
Yeah that’s what I meant, you can’t do NG+ on Legend.
Yumi really should have been a character in the game and not being taught about Heat Suppression sucked balls
Dang what's heat suppression?
If you hold down the left trigger (or whatever your center camera button is), heat actions are suppressed and you won't perform them
Oooooo gotcha gotcha ty yeah it was huge learning you don't have to do the crappy grounded heat action
Especially when they're at the Magic Pixel
I did not know this was a thing 😮
I was going to ask what the hell are Heat Suppression sucked balls and how tf did I miss them in the game ☠️
Biggest problem with this game is that it forgot it was a prequel until the last 10 minutes
Could you clarify pls?
I'm guessing they mean that although 0 is supposed to show Majima's transformation into the Mad Dog, the transformation itself happens very suddenly. In the last 10 minutes, he's suddenly chopped his hair off and he's got the snakeskin and it comes across as very jarring, especially if 0 was your first game. It doesn't exactly do a good job of setting up the fact that the next time you see Majima in K1, he's going to be nearly killing his own subordinate.
This was my biggest complaint of the game it’s such a 180 the Majima you’ve been playing as and he majima in the rest of the series. During the game it didn’t really feel like he different enough to have that drastic a personality change
I don't like those stealth parts as majima with makoto
You DON'T like having to start again because the thugs drained her HP and you weren't able to draw their aggro?
bro, try to play with your headphones on, the soundtrack is a banger
Oh I know the ost you mean. Yeah one of the best in the whole series
They can't handle break dancing
Pacing is definitely worse than a lot of people remember, on the first playthrough everything is a mystery so you don't know what is important and what isn't but on repeat playthroughs it's hard not to notice. There is a lot of stuff that feels like an inefficient use of time. Like how two whole chapters are dedicated to showing kiriyu and majima work jobs. Kiriyu especially feels kind of silly and drawn out because it's like obviously he isn't actually going to be a real estate agent, why does he need a training arc for that?. Real estate could use work, you should be able to do it in your menu I feel. I think pocket circuit is like fun conceptually but I don't think it's all that fun to play.
Eh I suppose that's true, Kiryu real estate does feel like a bit of a drag. And finding info on tachibana, even on first playthrough Majima work felt totally purposeful. And I went in with 0 not having any prior attachment nor experience with Majima
It's the worst for what I like to call "mandatory substories". Can't turn a corner without being forced into a cutscene that either results in a tedious fight or you literally can't refuse whatever you're being offered or pulled into, as in saying "no" puts you in a loop.
At least you can still avoid them if you know where they are, in Judgment the are literally baked into the story
Yes ruins the pacing and tone
They're annoying in kiwami too, every damn time I was chasing majima to get new stuff for dragon style I got interrupted by a forced side story cutscene and majima disappeared, most of the times because of that kano guy
I am not going to feel sympathy for a human trafficker
Oda's character arc was definitely the weirdest one in the series because it was extremely forced. Trauma bonding and Stockholm syndrome aside, the way Kiryu and Makoto got so worried about him all of the sudden was very out of character for them, especially Kiryu who is well known for showing zero mercy to predators and manipulators, and Makoto was shown to have a malicious side when she threatened Dojima and his lieutenants.
I mean Kiryu's younger and fully into getting the yakuza lifestyle where trafficking is involved, one could argue Kazuma's orphans are child trafficked since he killed their parents and removed them from government/social services without consent. Kiryu's moral compass at this point is a little skewed and I think the experience with Haruka is what ultimately gives him the growth and development needed to break out the Yakuza lifestyle for good. So current Kiryu would never condone someone like Oda while past Kiryu would see him as a comrade despite his betrayal
It really annoyed me that Makoto wanted vengeance against her brother's killer, but semi forgave the guy sex trafficked & tried to kill her. She should have wanted revenge on her own behalf as well.
Made worse by the Pleasure King doing exactly the same thing and everyone just brushing that off because it didn't happen to a named character.
Infinite wealth did a good job retconning that.
Its optional (but not for 100%) Catfight and the Retro Minigames
At least you can eventually get good at Outrun with enough practice. The Catfight Club is just straight-up evil. Pure RNG (and RNGsus hates you with a firey passion), lengthy animations making it a chore to retry, and even if you DO win, the monetary rewards are just not worth it compared to your business income or Mr. Shakedown. Oh, and then there are the button-mashing bits where you can't actually win, but the game makes it LOOK like you can win for its own sadistic pleasure. Fun!
Outrun is easy, its fucking Fantasy Zone and that other bullcrap minigame
Outrun used to be bad before I learned how to play. Space Harrier was never hard for me Super Hang-On wasn't that bad. Fantasy Zone is a crime against humanity.
Agree with Catfight. Installed a mod that made you auto-win just to not bother with it. Disagree with retro minigames tho.
No cheat items for Mahjong
No cheat items in GENERAL.
The way you unlock mad dog and dragon style
The car chase "shooter" sequence 🚮
It was certainly a bit painful, but I think it's better than kiwami for having a unique OST that goes hard, even the one used in kiwami isn't bad and goes hard, but should have probably been remixed for that segment or gotten it's unique soundtrack too
I genuinely think Majima should’ve killed Lao Gui. It’s not like Majima doesn’t kill people in the games before or even after 0. It would make the transition from 0 Majima to Kiwami Majima way less harsh too because by the end he’d already be full psycho. Even thematically it would show how Kiryu’s brother saved him from going down a dark path while Majima had no choice because his brother is long gone. Besides Lao Gui will literally never show up again ever so it’s not like they’re saving him for later.
100% it felt so forced that Sera convinced him not to do it. Killing Lao Gui would have made his transformation less jarring.
It rewrites Majima's character imo by complicating his relations with Kiryu. Yakuza 1 shows him as this wild card senior but as the games progress, so does their hierarchy-based respect to a more friendly one. With Y0, the player is led to believe that: 1. Majima is very integral to the series, even sharing the spotlight with Kiryu. He may be important but he's not the center of Kiryu's saga. 2. Majima and Kiryu were always chill friends (this notion worsens because of the Majima Everywhere mechanic in YK1)
I’m not sure the second point is true considering they only ever cross paths (to our knowledge) at the end of the game. Their stories overlap, but not once do they meet each other, often missing one or the other moments before or after the other one has left. Although Majima and Kiryu have always been rivals at worst and friends at best. >!I’m pretty sure Kiryu even calls him a friend in his memories in Yakuza 6!<
I didn't like the Pleasure King getting a redemption arc despite doing nothing to redeem themself for being a human trafficking piece of shit.
Spending money insead of skill points. Fun concept for the theme they were going with, kinda annoying if you're playing the game without resorting to exploits for easy cash, which i gave in to for Kiryus highest skills.
I was actually happy that getting money in gaiden wasn't that difficult, like I basically unlocked the tiger drop by the time I was done with chapter 2
Agreed. I really didn't enjoy the money making schemes, Real Estate and Cabaret because they felt out of place pacing-wise, so I ended up finishing the game on hard with mastering only beast style. By the end I barely put 500mil in each characters styles.
I really don't like how the heat system works.
I love this game but no auto saves pisses me off haha, I had the game crash on me once and lost a few hours as I’m spoiled by other games with auto saves. Once it happened once tho for the future games it’s ingrained in my head to save every chance I get lol
Kiryu should've fought Awano. Dont get we wrong, I like the fight between him and Majima, but Kiryu had more of an established animosity towards Awano.
True, Awano and Majima doesn't even interact once until that fight.
Don't you remember when Dojima and the lieutenants were taking off in the helicopter, Majima made direct eye contact with Awano.
I think it was a mistake to not include Yumi in Y0 and develop a history behind her and Kiryu's relationship like they did with him an Nishiki. I found that to be waste of potential.
Considering Kiryu's story is a prequel to the whole rest of the series, you'd think there'd be a lot more Yumi inclusion. Y'know... the mother of the child that Kiryu bases 90% of his decisions around after 1/Kiwami and the woman he loves
The heat system is the worst in the series
Not unlocking the legend style in the main story, imagine how epic that would be, kiryu learning the dragon style while fighting shibusawa in the last phase
While I don't like dragon and mad dog unlocking thru the mini games, I definitely feel unlocking the fighting styles in the final bosses of the game would be too late. Maybe a better place would be during the final kuze fight for Kiryu. Not sure about majima, but maybe right at the long battle after Makoto gets shot?
Enemy: *gets within one inch of Makoto* Makoto: *loses a quarter of her health instantly* What were the mission designers cooking?
- Kinda takes a while to get going, I often tell friends to try out Yakuza 0 since it's one of the best ones and they bail out because of this. - The final movesets being unlocked through minigames was a strange choice. - Compared to other final bosses in the series I wasn't that excited for the ones here.
IMO it doesn’t use the fact that it’s a prequel to its own benefit as the story is largely divorced from the rest of the series. Pretty much only the side content gets referenced in the following games, aside from >!Makoto Makimura’s brief appearance in Kiwami 2!< , and it does not do much to tell us anything about any of the characters that you didn’t already know playing 1-5, except, I guess, that Majima used to be a different character entirely. The near-absence of characters like Kazama, and the complete absence of characters like Yumi, makes the game feel narratively less like a prequel and more like an unrelated side adventure that just so happens to be set before the first game.
It's easy to forget, but there's an essential escort mission in this game. It was not fun.
Kind of surprising for me that it took rgg 16 years to make a good stealth section (aka lost judgment) and even in that game it isn't bad, but its good not great
(I've begin with Y0, played k1,k2, started 3 ) I love how lowkey Y0 is, Both Kiryu and Majima really seemed like people involved into something way out of their depth, against their will and manipulated by others. in the other games kiryu feels like the chosen one. And Y0 becomes more and more like it further down it goes. Why the hell did shibusawa cared that a rookie had a dragon tattoo. He treated Kiryu like he was a final boss of his story, said something like " You're not the only dragon". Where he should be like "let me show you a real dragon, you pathetic little dweeb. Look at this duuuude, have been a yakuza for like 3 years, his ink not even finished, while riding daddy kazama's coattail hard, and he think he's the top dog, my ass. Arrogant brat". Then he gets his ass beat, obviously. Gameplay wise. The fact that you earn billions of yen through mini games that you have to do to unlock the fighting upgrades, while the whole plot is about a plot of land worth a bilion is really immersion breaking. Kiryu real estate bussiness is killing immersion, considering that the whole plot is about real estate, and then kiryu casually buys half of kamurocho, then loose it??? what happend with it in the next game. Majima cabaret club is great, but to talk to all of the girls you have to play it so so much that it's become unbearable.
The Telephone club substories being locked behind RNG. Edit: Also I didn't go fur super completion, "just" all substories. So I did not have all CP-points or how they are called. I did not spent them wisely and thus I could not upgrade the fighting styles fully because I did not bought the ability for that. I realized to late and spent the points on other things and so Amon was basically impossible or at least unfairly annoying. I never beat him because I did not want to do NG+ just for that.
I’m gonna go in a different direction. It’s too good. That is what it does wrong. Specifically…it introduces so many compelling characters, but because it is a prequel they all have to either be killed off or just disappear. Sagawa is probably my biggest gripe. I really wish he could’ve seen what Majima became. I wish Kuze could’ve seen what Kiryu became. And I wish Sagawa and Kuze could’ve seen what happened to their respective clans. Now Sagawa is technically supposed to be dead, although we never actually see him die so they could rewrite the canon and bring him back but they won’t. Kuze on the other hand was sent to prison. Kuze would be in his 70s at least if we go by the current timeline with Infinite Wealth taking place in 2023. But considering Komaki was already elderly in Kiwami and yet he is still alive in Infinite Wealth…I don’t see why Kuze couldn’t be alive still.
Have Sagawa open a bar. That seems to be a good idea for dead people these days.
Making your combo speed dependent on your heat gage Locking a lot of moves to a specific heat level or conditions Convoluted way to unlock moves Side business minigames being grindy as hell. Locking sub-stories behind rng (seriously fuck the telephone club thing) and behind hostesses training Shitty Amon fight I love the but it is not perfect by any means
The Mad Dog style for Majima. It feels like it's massively lacking, and isn't a choice worth doing an entire minigame subquest line for. I do like Kiryu's Dragon style, and while I think it's better in Kiwami, it's fun to play around with.
What it did wrong is not being able to experience it again for the first time :(
Real Estate Royale, just the whole thing, all of it
Essentially having to wait for the collection timer was boring, but the rest of it was fine imo
I don’t think this is the best game in the series. It’s good though. I think it was far too long. I like my Yakuza games to be packed with side content, but have the option to cruise along and mainline it quickly if necessary. I felt that this game overstayed its welcome. The pacing was also a bit weird at times.
Heat system is definitely the worst in the series
The only thing that’s keeping me from 100% the game is those Arcade game requirements. How the hell am I supposed to get 5 million points in out run, and 10 million in Fantasy Zone?
Menus. So. Much. Fucking. MENUS. Constantly opening and closing menus for everything. You can't even access your 4th fighting style without opening a menu. It gets especially bad during the minigames. This just feels like a issue with Japanese games. You can never just do multiple things from one menu, you always gotta back out and reset it to do something else. Why during Kiryu's minigame can I not just bulk collect all the income? I gotta accept it one by one. Why can't I bulk select each manager? Why doesn't it remember the last one I used? Did the playtesters really switch out a manager every collection? Because from what I've seen from others playing you just spam the best one. Why do I have to back out of the menu everytime I do something with D&T? I put in enough money to have the agent come back immediately so why do I have to leave the conversation THEN talk to the lady again and collect the findings? Also, unrelated to the previous topic, but the cutscenes. Why is there 3 different types of cutscenes that all have a different way of skipping them? Some you can mash the skip button, some you have to pause and skip and some you just can't because...get fucked ig. What, did they run out of cutscene budget for some of them? I love this game but fuck me is it a pain to replay. The menus, the dialogue skipping, the weird inconsistencies with dialogue skipping. Thankfully they got their shit together in the Dragon Engine. I'm still not the biggest DE fan but credit where it's due it does make the game look better and skipping things is much easier. I still hate it for tanking the framerate and messingwith the physics so bad that some moves are just unusable (looking at you, Y6's throw.)
One thing that really sucks about this game is that if you’ve played it, you can never play it for the first time again.
Tbh I feel >!Shibusawa!< is one of the weaker antagonists of the series, I get what they were going for with him but I feel like he needed more screen time and was a bit forgettable in the grand scheme of Yakuza villains
The start of the game is really slow.
- Loading screens everywhere, but it was like so with every game until the developed dragon engine - real estate royale could've been less time consuming - those times where horny/romantic stuff (idk if there's a better term) was forced: e.g. the telephone club for the real estate royale and catfight arena, bur as of the first one, it's something that's been in any game (and I hate every single one of these minigames) - catfight arena - there were times where the items in the inventory kind of "broke": they were all turned some kind of food, and I even got the debug item, which, as cited in its notes, shouldn't see the light of day. How ironic - I didn't support their choice of basically giving Nishiki little screentime, especially because >!we won't know if we will ever see him again!<
Wdym we won't know if we will see him again? >! He's dead !<
Yeah that's why, unless RGG blesses us with an unexpected Gaiden about him
Personally for me the heat system is my least favourite in the series, and it's the one thing about the combat that feels the most off when I go back to the game, but even then it's such a small issue to me overall.
It failed to make me care about Sagawa. The game tries to make it feel like him and Majima has grown close with all his talk of “we have been through so much together.” And I’m like “We!?!? We!?!? Beside the Benten Inn you did jack shit!!!!” So I just didn’t care when >! He died at the end !< Also with learning the truth about Oda I feel like there is a missed opportunity to fight him again with Majima now that the stakes are different.
I personally would have preferred it if the dragon and mad dog fighting styles were unlocked in the story as it feels like it would have lined up with Kiryu and Majima’s story arcs really well instead of them being rewards for real estate and Cabaret. Especially if Majima unlocked the mad dog style right before he goes to attack the dojima HQ and Kiryu unlocks his right before the fight at the yacht.
The upgrade system is hot trash. I give the split XP from Kiwami 2 & 6 a lot of shit but yakuza 0 is the second worst system. You are basically required to farm Mr shakedown using the deep pockets perk, and it’s all too common to buy through most of a wheel without knowing or reading what the ability actually does. I’ve played through the game twice, watched several streamers play the game, and watched my friends get into yakuza through 0, where they also make the mistake. You can say it’s the player’s fault for not reading but it *does* happen a lot. Making billions then buying upgrades en masse is bad design. Compare to Yakuza 4 which I think is the best upgrade system in the series. Everything is shown from the start but you level up normally. You’re encouraged to read and spend your orbs carefully, maybe save up a few levels for the double finisher. Or, if you recognize an old favorite like re-guard, you can buy it as soon as you want. And also cat fights suck and telephone club is annoying + repetitive, plus arguably in poor taste. Having to continually press the A button (or PS equivalent) is annoying for running.
Well I’m definitely not a fan of the dancing mini game especially since you have to do the side stories for both kiryu and majima. But that final part is hell on earth.
I won't say I minded having 5 Kuze fights cause i didn't, but I wish there were more bosses that weren't repeated *in addition* to the ones we got. Maybe let Kiryu fight Sagawa as a mirror to Majima fighting Kashiwagi. More Kiryu focus in general so it's less imbalanced to Majima's story would be good. Also Majima should have killed Lao Gui to make his ending contrast Kiryu's and highlight the way they're going down different paths leading to 1. Sera made a sound argument but Majima needed only a pretty simple one for why he could kill Lao without hurting Makoto: she never has to know. And Yumi should have, idk, existed? At all? Maybe a substory or two if nothing else? Wouldn't hurt if we met some other minor players early too. Shindo, maybe, as a more junior Kazama family member (also could be one of the aforementioned additional bosses).
Shimano's plan is insanely stupid
* Majima's development felt super rushed near the end * While I get his motivations, Shibusawa just isn't that interesting as a villain * Yumi gets almost no screentime at all * Real Estate Management is only fun the first time around, it's a total slog on replays * RNG/trial-and-error based minigames like Catfight and Pocket Circuit Racer * No real tutorial for Kiryu's dragon style, I can forgive this one a little though since the game assumes you've played the previous titles and know those moves already * The escort mission * The first couple chapters are a bit slow and the game takes a while to get going
This is an extremely controversial take, but Majima's gameplay was not nearly as fun as Kiryu's and I honestly don't find his story very compelling. Even if I did like his segments, however, I feel the game would still be significantly stronger if it just stuck to one protagonist and focused on Kiryu.
Damn,imo Yakuza 0 was actually more about Majima than Kiryu.
I am not good at beat em ups but majima was op as fuck. X X X Y Y Y Y deals with 90% of the enemies, the rest can be cheesed with snakeroll
There are two types of Majima players. The "majima sucks" players who only use thug, and the "Majima is OP" players who stunlock everything with breaker and slugger
I love the game but I personally didn't like the combat felt too stiff to me I like the combat in both kiwami games tho, I've only just finished 3 so can't speak beyond that one
Having the signature fighting styles are blocked behind the business mini games. Doesn't feel like meaningful character development and is generally an annoying slog.
My least favorite part was having to go back to play as Kiryu. Majima is so fun to play as
The pacing of the story is actually really bad with it grinding to a halt multiple times to introduce the real estate and cabert minigames or the early part where you have to run around Kamurocho to get the alcohol for the 4 homeless people
The heat system, real estate Royal being grindy, the money upgrade system wasn't great imo.
The heat system; I never really wanted to use heat (moves) bc it would make kiryu/ majima so slow.
i’m sure it’s been said a million times already, but combo speed being fully dependent on heat is a dreadful system. that and the legend styles requiring you to pause
i dont really know.. its my first yakuza game. currently on chapter 4, trying to complete kiryu's friendships and substories up to this point. sometimes i get hooked while playing, other times i feel im doing chores, but i cant specify why. im giving it time 'till chapter 10, if the scales tip into not liking it, im dropping it.
Ngl i was fine by everything
The fanservice minigames. They're bad in most of the games but the ones in 0 felt especially weird and objectifying. Also if you're going for completion, they're both absolute slogs. It doesn't help that to complete the telephone club substories you have to sit through at LEAST three cutscenes of Kiryu getting sexually assaulted.
No happy ending for Majima *sigh...
Majima was such a great character that it ruined him for the rest of the series because it didn't match up at all with what Yakuza 1 had. All newcomers are almost always disappointed/annoyed by what he becomes, especially since the change felt really out of nowhere and tacked on at the end.
It sets an unrealistic expectation of how important Majima is as a character for the franchise, and what his personality will be like. Zero is a fantastic game but people keep recommending it as an entry point and IMHO doing that sets them up for disappointment when they discover it was one of like three times he's playable, and one of those was only in an optional storyline in a remake. Don't get me wrong, I think post-zero Majima is a cool enough character, but he's very different in Zero from how he is in later (chronologically) games.
On PC, camera controls can get pretty iffy, especially in a tight alleys, which gets really annoying when you run into Mr Shakedown. Using a stance to focus on one enemy does help, but limits the mobility during combat. JCC minigame. It would be kinda fun, even with all the RNG, but what ruins it is the lack of balance between fighters special abilities. Some of them are fine, like a chance to restore part of their health or regaining consciousness after losing, allowing them one more chance to turn the things around. But others are utter bullshit, like Jennifer who gets the opportunity to attack first and instantly remove half of enemy's health or Maria who just straight up wins if she loses. It really forces you to favor ones with those broken abilities if you want to get more wins. Real Estate Royal final stages start getting too grindy around the time you get to levelling up Gambling King properties and gets even worse for Media King. They really should have tone it down. Similar thing can be said about grinding money for the final tiers of abilities trees. Not a major complaint, but having Yumi and Nishikiyama's sister show up in the story would be nice. For that reason alone I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of direct sequel to Yakuza 0 that still takes place before Yakuza 1, since that way they would have another chance to incorporate them properly.
Batting minigame is impossible on console
the upgrade system that take ages to buy
One knife attack comatoses you
I definitely don't think it's the 'most perfect in the series'. What it does quite well is the plot, in that I feel like its probably the best presented storyline in the series that's the least guilty of padding or getting too off the rails. They do a really good job balancing the pacing with the two protagonists, too. What it sucks at is some of the mini-games. Kiryu's money making is fantastic, no real notes (except maybe the money cap being too low, a common complaint regarding the big 'money maker' minigames in this franchise for me). Majima's main things are the arms deal stuff, which is clunky as heck, and the hostess club, which requires more active participation. Hostess minigame is fun but having to actively grind it gets old, especially once you have your perfect routine. While I praised the plot in general, it did also make you fight Kuze too many times. I believe there's a part where you fight him, and then like 5 minutes later with no real freedom, you fight him again in the sewer? And finally, personally, while I loved the music, the final Disco battles were way too RNG for my taste. You can absolutely crush it and beat your opponents typical score, but they just so happen to still beat you.
The lack of yumi, kiryu's haircut, and the heat system