Yakuza 0 Review (PC)- Beginnings of The Mad Dog of Shimano and Dragon of Dojima

Overview

Yakuza 0 for PC is an action adventure/ Beat em' up game released on Steam August 1, 2018. It was originally released on PlayStation consoles (PS3/4) on March 12, 2015 in Japan, and January 24, 2017 in North America. The game was developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, and published by SEGA. The game is a prequel to the whole franchise as the game set in 1988, 7-17 years prior to the first game.

Graphics

Yakuza 0 uses the Kiwami Engine, an engine used since Yakuza 5. Kiwami engine graphics still hold up pretty well today. When the game released on PC they included some enhancements due to the hardware capabilities of PC hardware. Most notably of these enhancements are higher resolution support up to 4K, and high frame rate game play.

Yakuza 0 has noticeably better graphics than Yakuza 5 especially since it was originally built with the PS4. The two cities you explore, Kamurocho and Sotenbori are very bright and vibrant, and busy. Lots of npc walking around. I personally like the slight orange color pallet they used to catch the 1980's feel a bit better.

Sound

Like mentioned before, Kamurocho and Sotenbori are very busy settings and gives you an actual feel like you're actually in the the heart of the red light district. Lots of crowd chatter and distant sirens in the background.

The OST's in the game are in my opinion some of the best in the franchise. Most of the songs are pretty techno heavy, which is why I like the music in this game. Opinion aside, there are around 50 ost's in the game all ranging from regular battle ost, and boss fights to substories and mini-games. You do have 8 regular battle ost's for a 4 different fighting styles between two protagonist in the game.

Addictiveness

Now this game isn't going to catch the eye of everyone. Me personally, I find this game quite addictive, I spend a lot of intrigued by the story, doing substories (side quest), and playing some of the mini-games for long periods of time. There is a good amount of replay-ability in this game, you can replay this game over again especially when it comes to beating the game at a harder difficulty like Legend which can be only unlocked if you beat the game the first time on medium or hard. Yakuza 0 offers a pretty high amounts of content. Completely this game 100% is no easy feat at all. So this game can be really addictive and tedious at times especially if your going for all achievements.

Story

The Story is very well done, and has a bunch twist and turns. You won't really know whats happening til the very end, and theirs a lot to unpack. I'm not gonna go into the story in full detail to not spoil the whole thing but good enough description on what to expect.


Setting : Yakuza 0 story is focused on two protagonist, Kiryu Kazuma, and Goro Majima. The story takes place in 1988-1989 at Japan during the Japan Asset Price Bubble, more specifically Kamurcho, Tokyo and Sotenbori, Osaka.

Kiryu is a low-ranking Yakuza member in the Dojima Family of the Tojo Clan, one of the largest Yakuza organizations in Japan. Following the footsteps of his adoptive father and captain of the Dojima Family, Shintaro Kazama who was arrested and awaiting trial.

Majima is a disgraced former Yakuza. Forced to manage a cabaret club, Cabaret Grand, as punishment for failing to fulfill his role in an assassination on another Yakuza boss. Under the orders of his boss, Futoshi Shimano, Patriarch of the Shimano Family, Majima is tasked to deliver increasing profits to Cabaret Grand.

Depth

Yakuza 0 has a lot to bring to the table. As mentioned before the story and the extraordinary amount of side content like substories and mini-games has almost an endless amount of content to offer across two different protagonist and two different locations. Though neither location is a big open world map, but a lot of activities condensed in a small area. Some of the mini-games consist of Mahjong, Real-estate Royale, Bowling ,Pocket Circuit, Karaoke (Judgement Kazzy Time!) etc. The games features 100 substories, 60 for Kiryu, and 40 for Majima. Yakuza 0 is the only game in the franchise that uses money only to learn and upgrade skills. Other yakuza games use experience points. Likely this is because of the timeline that Yakuza 0 takes place, the Japan Asset Price Bubble, everyone in the game has money and I mean a lot of money. Enemies will always drop money during battles, the stronger the enemy the larger the sum. You even earn money during the end of each chapter. The more money you have the better the skills and upgrades you can get after you unlock them. You can never run of out of money you can never run out of thugs, yakuza, or even hooligans to fight. Some mini-games like Real-estate Royale will net you a large sum. This game has endless entertainment and if you're willing to complete it 100% you're gonna be spending well over 100 hours doing so.

Difficulty

This game has difficulty settings. Easy “for beginner players new to the series” , Normal “Standard difficulty”, Hard “for confident action game players”, Legend “The hardest difficulty, no data carried over and no continues. For true yakuza only!”. Outside of having difficulty settings, there are a few points in the game that have pretty difficult boss fights regardless of difficulty. What makes some bosses hard to fight is their fighting style, few bosses have particular fighting styles that are hard to counter and can result in a long agonizing fight of you mostly evading and landing very few hits. The worst offenders for that are Mr. Shakedown's. Mr. Shakedown are a bunch of extremely though enemies that wonder the map and will chase the player if they see you first. Their are 4 of them, 2 in each map. Though they're strong fighting them actually can net you a large reward. The reward even outweighs the risk. Winning fights with them can earn you millions of yen, while the opposite can said when you lose. Early game bosses tend to be challenging but once you get you close to the end and have a lot of your skills unlock and upgraded, the game starts to get much easier. One last detail I will add, this game like every yakuza game has a secret final boss fight or fights. They're are named the Amon Clan, highly skilled fighters. They have the highest HP and nasty attacks, and you're bound to lose many fights to them. They're not required to beat the game but if you're completing it, make sure you're prepare for them. They will not hold back

Overall

Yakuza 0 gets a nice 9/10 from me. It has a good story, good set of characters and enemies. Its a very engaging beat em up game. Yakuza 0 was the first yakuza game I played in the franchise. It was the first game in the franchise SEGA released on PC in 2018. So a large majority of PC gamers got their first taste of the yakuza franchise from this game, and because of that it exploded in popularity. If you have never played the Yakuza games I would say Yakuza 0 is a great game to start with.