For a number of years I’ve heard great things about the Yakuza series. I’ll admit, I slept on it a little bit. Somehow, likely during a steam sale or something, I ended up having Yakuza 0 in my library. I booted it up once in 2021, played around half an hour, found out that saving wasn’t available from the menu and decided it wasn’t worth playing right then.
Between major game releases this year, I decided to boot the game up again. And honestly, the game blew me away. It takes about an hour to really let the guiderails down and let you get going, but I was continually astounded, the amount of side activities, the depth that those activities generally had, the interesting story, the list goes on.
All that is to say, the Yakuza series struck a chord with me, and luckily the entire series went on sale a few weeks ago, giving me a chance to pick up everything but the newest game for a bargain price.
So, at the point of writing this post I’m around 1/4th of the way through Yakuza 4, and I’d like to start writing about my experiences so far, as I don’t want to forget anything notable as I continue through the remaining games. Below you’ll find the games I’ve played in order from my favorite to least favorite. Obviously I welcome any comments if you disagree with my feelings on any entries.
Yakuza Kiwami 2
The jump from Kiwami 1 to Kiwami 2 was incredible. The city literally shines now! In actuality, this game is a massive step up graphically from the previous entries, and it makes playing the remasters right after it even harder, unfortunately.
The new engine implements a new physics engine to the series, and it’s as janky and weird as it is fun to play around with. The ragdoll physics when you knock an enemy down, or when you end up knocked down, are absurd. That’s not necessarily a knock against the game, but I did end up missing the animations that 0 and Kiwami had for ending fights.
On a more positive note, this game uses a different leveling system from it’s predecessors, and I would say so far this is my favorite. You can earn 5 different varieties of experience. Generally fights will give you an equal amount of each, but other side activities may skew towards specific categories. This adds a layer to your personal character advancement, as most upgrades will only use 2 or 3 different type of exp. So you end up advancing in a well rounded way. Choosing to upgrade your quickstep means you’ll use blue exp, but that will still leave the remaining types for other upgrades, unrelated to agile things.
Added onto the leveling system, I’d be remiss not to write about the food system. This, I would also call a series high for the mechanic. Where in previous games you could either only eat until you were at full health, or in the case of 0 and K1 you could use completion points to give yourself a bottomless stomach, in this game you just have a proper meter for hunger. It ties in nicely to the experience provided by the foods, and a new feature where getting specific foods in one order provides a set bonus, providing bonus exp on top. To put it simply, I found myself going a bit out of the way to hit up restaurants in this game way more frequently than in other games.
I would be remiss to not mention the scale of the city in this game as well. They took the city that you know and love from the previous entries and scaled it to be significantly more true to life. And, since this obviously increases movement time from A to B, they’ve also added more taxi dropoff points to the middle sections of the map. And speaking of vehicles, they added vehicles that drive down the streets! It’s such a minor addition, but it adds so much to the feel of a city when there’s moving cars going down the streets.
Minigames in this game are, for me, way more hit than miss. you have the absurdity of Toylets, old classics like Karaoke, and my personal favorite, being the driving range. The Bingo mode in the driving range might be my favorite golf related activity in any game, at least it gives the ring more in Mario Golf a run for it’s money! I once again tried to learn Mahjong in this game, and while I have a better understanding now, I still feel like I get blindsided every time I play it, but it’s there if you like it! Shogi as well.
The story in this entry is, in my opinion, also a high for the series. At the very least it beats out 0, K1 and 3. The most negative thing about the story is how often people end up taking bullets, but that seems to be a Yakuza series staple at this point I suppose.
Yakuza 0
What a great game to start the series with! Because of the way the series is split in terms of remakes, remasters, and outright new games like this one, I would say the only “good” way to get into the series would be to start with this game, or Kiwami 1. But it’s worth noting that between the two I’d say this game is vastly better in numerous ways.
Now the real question is where to start when writing about this game? I’d say the story should get it’s hooks into you around the time you get let off the tutorial leash. And once the story gets going it’s a wild ride the whole way through.
The gameplay is at a great point in both this game and Kiwami 1. I believe release order was this followed by K1, so the combat may be slightly improved in that game, but this game gives you more than enough to work with. Over the course of the game you’ll get 3 combat stances for each character, and through a lot of grinding you can get a fourth. Truthfully I found the fourth stance to be enjoyable, but extremely weak. I didn’t put the work into maxing it out, but I would have expected it to be on par with the first 3 when starting and it seems like you’d want to invest a lot before really using it at all. The 3 other stances can be described generally as Balanced, Agile, and Tanky. And I found it pretty fun switching between them as the situation required. I may have slightly favored the Agile style, but for the most part they all ended up being useful! This game will often match you up against 5-10 enemies at once, which is when you can switch to the tanky style and really just let loose.
In terms of boss fights, I never found any of them to feel unfair. In all honesty this entry may have the most enjoyable boss fights for me. Each of them feels pretty well justified, and none of them felt like pushovers. To me, the combat was balanced enough that I never felt like I was chipping away at a boss, even when they had insanely stacked health bars, it always feels like your attacks have weight. It’s worth noting, in this section if nowhere else, that for the second character the agile style is absolutely busted. One of the combo moves, I think the LLLLH, where you can spin while moving literally just chunks away every single enemy in the game, including bosses.
Character progression is tied directly to your money in this game, as most other systems are in some way or another. It’s a bit weird to get your head around when you start, but after that it ends up being quite enjoyable, since it allows you to use a variety of means to increase your combat capabilities. The most unfortunate part of this however, is that street goons end up being a tremendous waste of time even faster in this game than basically any other, since there’s so many better ways to gain money.
In terms of side activities, this game has so much. Off the top of my head it’s got; Bowling, the arcade, Pool, slot cars, a weird time based thing where you can get rare weapons and items, Mahjong, Shogi, numerous gambling games, a Catfight Arena, a Real Estate Investment mode, and a Cabaret Club Management mode. Of those, I’d say the Cabaret Club Management is a notable standout. I had entire play sessions where I just played that mode, it feels like a really really well put together flash game from when I was younger. That mode actually comes back in K2, and is an upgrade to a mode that started in Yakuza 2 originally I believe.
Side stories at another high point in this game. They’re so easy to run into, and almost every one of them is extremely enjoyable to go through. Highlights for me are the Pizza Delivery and the one where you need to find the password. The comedy is turned up to just about the right point in this game on the side stories. I often audibly laughed at the absurdity of the situations and outcomes.
Yakuza 4 Remastered
I have a great many thoughts about this game after finishing it. I think the thought that sits at the forefront is this, Yakuza 4 was very experimental. 4 playable characters, each with unique fighting styles, areas they can and cannot access, rooftop areas and underground, this game added a lot of interesting new stuff.
Now, how much of that is actually good? In short, I would say that the 4 playable characters is fun mechanically, and adds to the story as you get to experience a number of perspectives throughout. That being said it does make the game feel more like 4 short Yakuza games. I think if I was part of the development team though, I would have just added a feature to allow switching to other characters that you’ve already played as when you access your hideout. It wouldn’t change much, but it’s unfortunate that between the start and the end of the game I can’t play as the character I started the game with. Alternatively, you could go with the pacing that Yakuza 0 uses, switching between characters every few chapters. I’d say that approach wouldn’t work with this story, nor with this many characters though.
The unique fighting styles adds a lot to the game. In fairness I’d say that if you look at each character you might find similarities to the stances that we ended up with in 0 and K1, but this was a cool first version of that in the series. I honestly enjoyed playing with each style, and it would be hard to pick a favorite.
The added areas don’t do much for me. Most of them are more or less just glorified hallways. I like the underground stuff a bit more, since I’ve been looking at those subway entrances up till now and wondering why I can’t go down there, but none of it is fantastic.
As mentioned, I think the story here shines in a very unique way. This game sets up quite a lot of pieces, and as they gradually get knocked down it’s quite thrilling to watch. I will say that there’s a few plot points that are utterly laughable. The second usage of rubber bullets makes less than no sense, and I legitimately laughed out loud when it was explained leading into the end of the game.
Speaking of the end of the game, there’s 3 great fights, and one that’s so unbelievably bad that I actually had to pause the game to laugh again. After the agonizing end of Kiwami 1, I actually looked that boss up to find many discussing it and saying that boss, and one from Yakuza 4, are the worst the series gets. And honestly, this game takes what was awful and adds so much bullcrap to it, that all you can do is laugh. And I mean that somewhat literally, since you’ll end up being stunlocked by the ten or so bodyguards all shanking you, while the main antagonist shoots from across the arena. Now, luckily I played the game on easy, after starting Y3 on normal and hating it I just decided to blitz this game. I was actually enjoying it so much I was looking into hex editing to switch to normal around the midpoint. But when I got to this fight, after already beating 3 fights leading up to it, I was so glad that I didn’t.
My strategy for the fight, for those interested, was to kite the literal army of bodyguards away from the main guy, then run back towards him and try and get a 3-4 hit combo, before running back away. I don’t know if that’s a generally agreed upon strategy, but it worked well enough to take him down so I could focus on the army he brought with him. But for anyone that wants to enjoy the end of the game, just take the bonus pack 8 from Bob and light that crowd up at the start of the fight.
Yakuza Kiwami 1
The worst thing about Kiwami 1 is that Yakuza 0 exists. If you end up playing the series sequentially, even with a decent break between 0 and 1 you’ll likely find that this game feels weaker than 0, while otherwise being largely the same.
The biggest downgrade here is the side stories. Where 0 was a series high, this game doesn’t improve basically at all on the side stories from the original, and it’s very obvious when playing. Therefore I would say I think Kiwami 1 is a series low for side stories, which in a series like Yakuza is quite unfortunate.
From a low to a high though, I’d say the “Majima Everywhere” system is an incredible addition. I did have to resort to a guide at key points to figure out what I needed to do to progress it, but it was always fun to end up in a fight with Majima. And it was always well worth doing too, as throughout the game the experience you get from these fights far surpasses any other options.
And from a high to a low once more, I’d say that this game is marred by what is quite frankly the absolute worst boss fight I’ve ever experienced in any video game I’ve ever played. Without spoiling it, the second to last boss fight is against a man who dual wields guns, and his two henchmen that also carry guns. If you try to attack any of these enemies you will immediately be shot by the other 2, get stunlocked in an animation where you fall to the ground because you were just shot, and while that happens you’ll likely be shot a few more times. The only strategy I could manage to make work was exploiting the agile style’s dodge to build heat, and then pulling out a weapon and using a heat attack to deal damage. It’s actually unbelievable to me that this boss fight got through QA, and were I to give this game a numbered grade this fight would absolutely drop it by at least 2 points.
Yakuza 3 Remastered
As I made my way through Yakuza Kiwami 2, I actually dreaded getting to the end and starting the “remastered” trilogy. And after giving Y3R as honest of a go as I could, I gave up and chose to watch a nearly 2 hour long video going over the story, and other gameplay mechanics instead.
However, it’s worth noting that I was caught off guard by the reason that I hated Yakuza 3 Remastered. As I played through the quite frankly gorgeous Yakuza Kiwami 2, I was most worried about the graphical downgrade that I was sure to face. And while that is extremely jarring, it’s not my main issue.
The reason this game ends up so far down the list, is the combat. During the 4 or so hours I spent trying to play this game, I looked repeatedly to forums and such to find out how to make the combat more enjoyable. Unfortunately it seems to majority of people online give 2 options. The first being to use your quickstep to try and end up behind enemies when they start attacking you, and the second being to immediately get the “Komaki Tiger Drop” when you’re able to.
But I’ve put the cart before the horse a bit, describing the solutions without going into the problems. Yakuza 3 has been lovingly coined as “Blockuza 3” in many circles online, and for very good reason I would say. Unlike any of the games to that point, or any since, you can’t hit an enemy more than twice without them putting up their guard. Couple that with the quite frankly insulting damage all of your attacks do, and I ended up with the first 2 boss fights in the game taking me over 15 minutes each. And believe me when I say that time spent was not even slightly enjoyable.
Now as for my counters to the arguments given, quickstep is actually broken in the pc port of the game. Something to do with framerate, it ends up barely moving the character at all when you use it. There is a mod that apparently fixes this glaring issue, but when I tried installing it I ended up with errors every time. And I’m sure if you’ve played the game before you probably know that getting the “Komaki Tiger Drop” takes quite a long time, which I didn’t end up investing.
Now, the combat isn’t the only issue with this entry, although I do firmly believe (and Yakuza 4 Remastered affirms this largely) that if the combat was less bad, I would have stuck it out for the sake of completing the story more fully. To get into other issues:
- UI: The “remaster” chose to leave the menu’s completely in their original state. Coming off of YK2, this was also really hard to get used to. Two of the worst things to come of this are the inventory ending up being 20 or so slots total, with armor and weapons having to share that space, and the map being relegated to the pause menu.
- Movement: Having a default movement speed at all times in the overworld just feels so slow after having a sprint option in every game so far. I also could not get Kiryu to move in a straight line using a controller, and ended up very gradually weaving back and forth as I made my way through the streets.
- Button Mapping: Again, I have two egregious things of note here. The first is that the “select” button is a hotkey to return to the main menu, in a game where you can only save at specific locations. Granted there’s a confirmation, but why couldn’t that be bound to open the map instead? Secondly, the button to charge heat at the end of boss battles is the right trigger. If you’ve never tried to mash the trigger on a controller, it’s really really bad. Go try it and let me know if you disagree.
Anyways, I’ve ripped enough on this game considering I largely didn’t even play it. So I’ll end by saying that many people will tell you that you need to play Y3 because it’s integral to the overall story. I’ll admit the story seems like it was fine, and worth knowing, but it doesn’t justify the atrocious gameplay in my personal opinion.
Unplayed (Yet)
Yakuza 5 Remastered
Yakuza 6
Like a Dragon
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