I finally beat Yakuza 0 last night. I started it in 2018 and took a VERY long break about halfway through it. When I picked it back up a couple months ago, I mainly just wanted to find out why everyone loves the cabaret club stuff so much.
Now I get it! That minigame was so much fun, I got completely hooked on it. I ended up doing all of the real estate stuff too. I had a very difficult time getting my head back into the over-complicated, kind of boring main story, but it helped a lot to be able to go back and watch a few of the chapter recap videos.
By the time I got to the finale I was so in. They really know how to get your fists pumping! And then Majima’s ending showed surprising subtlety and depth of emotion.
And yet, through the entire game, the one bit I had the most fun with was the virtua cop style helicopter assault setpiece. I wanted more of that!
Fantastic game. I never thought I’d say this, but after spending over two years on Yakuza 0, I’m about to start the new one tonight.
I’m very curious about the English dub in 7. Zero’s dialogue was written in such a wonderfully over-the-top way, with completely bizarre, deeply overwritten phrasing that nobody would ever say aloud, even in something like a pulpy crime movie.
Like roaches to the slaughter… It’ll take more than a few bugs to stop me!!
If that’s what ya really think, why don’t ya come try me, ‘stead of wastin’ both our time with sorry excuses? Save ya the trouble of justifyin’ your weak-ass way of livin’ through that smarmy-ass grin.
I’m very curious whether this game’s localization is written in that same style, and if so I really want to hear what lines like that sound like when actually vocalized.
Yakuza kinda has two delivery styles (puntastic text and heartfelt VO) and a lot of the most ridiculous punny lines tend to be reserved for text only iirc. I’ve been playing Japanese dub but I am starting to wonder how the English handles certain scenes.
I’d actually be happy if they cut out some of the arcade games and added back in other minigames like pool, bowling. At the moment Yokohama feels a bit sparse for things to do, so more venues scattered around for different minigames instead of just a couple of arcades would have been good.
Kinda disappointed that karaoke seems to have been cut, that was one of the best things about the other games even if the actual game part was pretty basic.
I’m only up to chapter 4 so I imagine more things will unlock, though. Judgment was like that too in the first few chapters before things like drone races became available
ah, maybe it’s just not unlocked it yet? I got to Survive Bar when the story dictates that you go there and saw the karaoke machine, but couldn’t use it so assumed it was the same thing as Judgment where they just didn’t include that minigame.
Edit: just saw the karaoke minigame on youtube, faith in humanity restored etc
I pretty much did nothing but work and play this for the last week and just finished it. Normally I’d do all the substories but you have to max out all your social stats and fuck what a pain. brief but somewhat spoilery thoughts: yak games always have the most eye rolling twists and this isn’t really any different. most of the big moments still hit though. i was underwhelmed by the ending til the post credits which i ended up finding touching so that’s cool.
Ichiban as a protagonist is a breath of fresh air. Hitting rock bottom and getting your shit together at age 40 hits close to home so I was rooting for him all the way. Looking forward to more!
I just played the first two chapters. This has the most drawn out intro of any game I’ve ever played, lol. But it makes up for it with some of the most compelling writing and direction I’ve seen in any game’s cinematics. I actually really do feel like I’m watching a decent TV show here. I’m feeling very invested in Ichiban’s predicament and I want to know how he’s going to deal with it.
The RPG battle system, what little I’ve been able to play of it so far, feels pretty good. This game actually does little Earthbound style RPG battle jokes! I fought a couple of capitalists, and one of them tried to call in backup on his cell phone, “but no one came.” Love it.
I wonder if this was a localization of salaryman? Although I like imagining these are the local McDonald’s franchisees, wandering the back alleys of Yokohama looking to bloody their knuckles
As someone who has only played 4 (and has no great attachment to most of the characters plot of the other games) I’m pretty excited to jump into this one eventually, and I’m a big fan of the turn-based battle idea as opposed to being a brawler.
I’ve been approaching jobs from kind of an RP standpoint, mainly giving people jobs I think they’d actually take on. Sad there’s no ‘salaryman’. Either the game expects a lot of time grinding or I feel like you aren’t meant to really multi-job extensively.
Am enjoying the strange metagame of grouping enemies to get hit by larger hitboxes. It’s not something you can really directly control but is a fun aside that is somewhat janky.
Loving how much the game presents an extremely urgent objective and then let’s you just sidestory for what seems like 5 in-game days’ worth of time.
Is anyone else confused about how taxis work in this one? Are there just less of them and they only take you to taxis in their specific region?
I just started chapter 4. Ichiban and Nanba enjoying their new room was pretty touching. Is it just me, or is this game even better than Yakuza 0, by kind of a lot? I care way more about this main plot. Granted, I haven’t really gotten to the substories yet so I don’t know how those compare.
Yeah so far the side stuff has been consistently fine. And I dunno if exploring Yokohama is gonna be as fun as Kamurocho or Osaka. But the game’s held my interest 100% of the time which is not something I can say about many other games. Like, I’m about to enter a dungeon and I’m looking forward to it. I can’t remember the last time that happened!! For once I’m growing more invested as the crime drama intensifies and these goofs hatch more ridiculous schemes.
Though now that I actually care about this shit I may get real cheesed off if they drop the ball later on so let’s hope they don’t do that!!
