I think we should all take a moment and pat ourselves on the back for telling everyone Nier and Yakuza were good before it became cool to say so. It sorta makes me angry that I’m reading all these supposed hip sites like Waypoint where the writers are all like “oh man, like i had nier/yakuza but just didn’t think it looked good but, like, this new one is hot shit!” If the writers at these sites were actually cool, they would’ve played Nier or Yakuza when it wasn’t the hot thing to do.
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to be fair these new ones are really good
like I’m as amused as anyone that 2017 nier is being better received than 2017 mass effect (though, I think this is honestly not very contentious, and it’d be embarrassing if it weren’t thus), but it was evident a year ago that B-tier japanese PS4 releases were on the up and up in a way that eluded them for most of the past decade, and I’m just glad that actually turned out.
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Just know to take it with grace. It is a little hard when the crowd goes “WOW THIS IS GREAT” to not respond with “I know. I have been telling you for years.”
Automata is at least significantly different from Nier as opposed to Yak0 being more Yak.
Still yay! Buzz.
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Who cares about being Actually Cool
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whoa diplo that is such a cool thing to say
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nier:a is a lot more accessible because of the platinum action and the amount of funding squenix have been putting into the marketing of the game, i just hope these people do actually take the time to go back and play the first game.
yakuza 0 is a really good entry point into that series because it’s a prequel and you aren’t put off by trying to catch up with 3 or 4 games worth of story.
i wonder if nier:a would have been much less successful if it was just titled nier 2?
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It’s still so funny to me how much people care about this, given that the games give you plenty of recap on what you need to know in each one, and that the emotional resonance of both Kiryu/Goro/Nishiki/Dojima’s story arcs are kinda diminished if you don’t know who they become afterwards.
Obviously, it doesn’t mean the game isn’t enjoyable without having played the others, but having played the others, this one actually seems like the most linked to other games in the series. For example, the rival in Yakuza 2 gets a whole subquest line in 0, but is barely mentioned in most of the rest of the series aside from 2 (well, and Of the End), but nothing in 0 really indicates who he is aside from like a minor line from Goro as you wrap up his quests. Goro himself is never the playable hero again (aside, also from Of the End), and I worry that people are going to be alienated again from the series if they see what happens to him in Kiwami and later games.
It’s just funny that the internet seems to have taken the game that is maybe most tied to the other games in the series (aside from, one more time, Of the End) in just constant references and character development, and decided that that one is the one to get in on, as opposed to all the others in the series that tend to actually be fairly self-contained stories. Like I never really get the fear of playing sequels, but man, it’s really weird that people are playing 0 like it isn’t the 7th mainline game in a series, when it totally is written as such.
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started automata. got ending w a bunch of times. can’t play the rest because only the prologue was downloaded so far. loving it
it’s also anecdotally the only one other than 5 to have interesting-enough combat to be worth sticking with, and 5 was supposedly really messy
I really need to go play the older games again as a sample, because like the combat felt the same as the others to me, honestly. Well, as always, aside from Of the End.
before this all I’d played was like ten minutes of the first one a decade ago and I went “this is what nagoshi does now? this is stiff as hell, ugh”
I could see an argument that maybe I should’ve given it another chance by the third game (except that was still early enough in the PS3’s lifespan that most big-budget japanese productions were more likely to be disasterpieces than anything else) or the fourth (except most english coverage had evaporated by then), but I don’t think it’s that strange that 0 has been the one to renew interest, even if, as you say, it does have plenty of connections to the others for being a prequel – but have you considered that some people don’t actually want to play all of the games and therefore won’t have an opportunity to be disappointed by majima’s reduced role moving forward?
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Well, sure, but it’s silly when people are like “oh, this is the one you don’t need the others to get” when like the point of half the story is developing a character that has so much story already behind him, and trying to explain how he could get to be the weird lovable psychopath he is in all the rest of the series. And I hope they want to play more games going forward in the series, even if they don’t want to go back.
Good on the developer for making that enjoyable without knowing who Goro is, but like I said, I worry that people missed those story beats since they didn’t know how this all ends for him. And so, assuming they don’t go back and play the other games in the series (a pretty understandable choice, given hardware and availability at all that, can’t blame anyone on that), I worry that if Goro was their favorite character in 0 (which I have seen people post about outside of here, and is again understandable, as he is a lovable dude), how are they going to react to him being, well, nuts in the next game that comes out in the series here (Kiwami). The seeds of his nuts-ness are in 0, but I think they might be kinda miss-able to someone who doesn’t know to look for them.
Like I am super pumped to see a series I really like getting a lot of attention, but I worry that is gonna go right the heck away for people when the actual canon Goro (i.e. crazy Yakuza loose cannon, not heroic at all really) doesn’t line up with their headcanon of Goro as heroic dude. It will be interesting to see, either way, but I worry that given the money 0 has made, Sega is gonna ramp up marketing budgets and such for Kiwami and then have angry fans on their hands and not make enough of it back. Given that this is basically the story of Yakuza 1’s initial US release, and it led to the tenuous nature of the rest of the series getting released over here, I think it’s a reasonable enough worry for a fan.
Like, I wonder what people’s reaction to the post credit scene was if they had never seen Goro and Kiryu interact in the other games. Like that one line alone is very emblematic of the relationship between the two characters, but there’s not much in 0 to explain it.
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it’s true, I was hoping for most of the penultimate chapters for goro and kiryu to finally meet up and it didn’t occur to me they had to set up the first game until the very end scenes
I admit, a lot of this is just me being worried about a bunch of games I like, in a series that has been through some rough times (see the random clumsy removal of parts of 3 that mostly came off as a laziness/cheapness on localization), but I hope Sega doesn’t screw this up.
Personally, I tried to get in with Yakuza 4 and definitely felt like I was missing context; it was pretty distracting and I dropped it after a few hours. I then started waiting for 0 because:
- Boomtime 80s Japan is a perfect setting (I wish the final game leaned into it harder, actually)
- It held the promise of being an entry point for characters and storylines
So I decided I wanted to play a Yakuza game about three years ago and have been waiting since. I imagine the middlebrow press has similar stories, they would have been aware of it and finally built enough goodwill from the steady evangelism of the office otaku to wait for this one.
I also immediately liked it more than 4 and 5, by the way. No, I don’t think the combat is significantly improved, it’s always been shallow and with stiffness between moves and it always will be.
Also: The buzz did a good job setting expectations for the cutscene:gameplay ratio; I spent a fair amount of time in 4 wondering when I’d be released into sandbox.
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but the majority of people aren’t going to know this until they commit to playing one of these games.
also this is exactly where i am with the series, i played a couple of hours of 4 and 5 but mostly been waiting for 0 because it’s been on the horizon since i had an interest in these games.
I guess what I am getting at is they don’t feel like they would be complete stories without that information, but I can’t totally judge that because I had that information.
I mean, other people are enjoying it, so that is cool, but yeah. Also, man, 4 and 5 are not the best games to start with, given the multi-protag focus, but heaven help Sega bother marketing it well or clearing that up for people.
I can buy that, so for someone in the West who became interested in Yakuza post-2010 the smart choices seem to have been:
- Play Yakuza (PS2)
- Wait for Yakuza 0
lotta pent-up demand finally being filled
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I would add “play Yakuza 2” to that list, because I love that game, but then again, that time period was before it got reprinted so NOPE DON’T PAY FOR IT. you were cool skipping 3 (though its plot is ridiculous) and I still haven’t finished 4 or 5, so.
It is a good call to release Kiwami this summer though.