09/09/2025
Yakuza 0 – Journey to the East
From the moment of Yakuza 0’s first guitar slams in its opening cutscene Sega wants you to know it's alive. From the comfort of your desk chair, sofa, bed or moving van passenger seat Japan is waiting for you (as long as you only want to go to a very small portion of it). Set during the bubble era of the late 80s Tokyo a realised pastiche of Yakuza tinged media in the streets of a truncated Kabukicho and Dotonburi invites you to another man’s nostalgia. The vast majority of western players most likely have never seen a yakuza film, know as much Japanese as you’d learn either from anime, porn or both and generally have the orientalist's joy of being given a tour of Japan by the hardest coolest locals possible.
In 2021 I played Like a Dragon, it was great. In 2023 I made the mistake of buying the full Yakuza collection in preparation for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. This vow I made to play all the Yakuza mainline games has led me here to Yakuza 0 almost three years later after having played Yakuzas 1,2,3,4 and 5. It's been an exhausting journey across these multitudinous and plenitudinous titles. A Yakuza game expects you to move in, having paid your key money and expect a visit from the NHKman. You live in the game’s preferred section of Japan for the foreseeable future.
Yakuza 0’s reputation precedes it as I was in the mires of Yakuzas 3,4 and 5 the glistening future of finally being able to play “the good one” was forever insight at the end of the tunnel. Starting it up and being shown those PS4 graphics after some 90 hours of PS3 grey sludge. The lights of 80s Tokyo, the westerner’s dream of a cool cyberpunk future and the easterner’s nightmare of a fleeting ephemeral past. I was surprised on my return to Kamurocho that the promised perfect Yakuza felt a hell of a lot like Yakuzas Kiwami 1 and 2. Sure those were remakes in its engine, makes sense. But, why then is this the one that everyone recommends? I guess it's the story.
The style system immediately falls to the principle of least effort. Where the game gives the player 3 different ways of punching guys as the two main characters I just found myself using only brawler for Kiryu as beast felt far too slow and rush didn’t make health bars go down fast enough and Majima’s slugger style just felt like it hit the hardest. I seldom experimented with the styles, maybe using beast or breaker if the game sought to throw large groups of goons at me. Early in my notes I wrote the line “battles never feel like they get old though, very simple” though I can tell this didn’t remain true as by the midpoint of the game I was desperately avoiding the angry men on the street looking to give my Kiryu a beating. Feeding into the bubble period aesthetic money being XP makes some real ludo-narrative sense. These ludicrous wealth stats being thrown around at the time feed into a bigger number meaning more muscles for our guys. Grinding out levels in this obfuscated SNES JRPG takes the form of leading the soon to be most successful property corporation in Tokyo or the best hostess club in Osaka.
Here I found the downside of my dirge through Yakuza games. Yakuza Kiwami 1, I luxuriated in the expansive side content and thick atmosphere. 2 had me equally enthralled though going by my steam play times less so than the first game though the story is longer. Going through 3, 4 and 5 I found myself engaging less and less in its myriad distraction offerings. Particularly when the game grants you multiple characters and their menus and items don’t carry over to each other. The game opens with a mission to Entertain Yourself and at moments asks you to waste some time enjoying the delights of the entertainment district. Each mini-game on offer feels like a worse version of a much better game. Any real rhythm game is better than karaoke no matter how good Baka Mitai is. Spending time letting Kiryu have fun feels like time I could be spending having better fun in a digital version of whatever activity he's partaking in. The secret truth is that you’ll have an inconceivably more fun just doing any of these activities in real life. It's 2025, everyone seems to have gone to Japan or they’re planning to. Just go and do that rather than getting high scores on the batting cages in Kamurocho.
For those that have been to Japan though there is a pleasure in examining digitally rendered street corners you’ve stood on waiting for your group to decide how to most efficiently suck the marrow from life. Though this is a joy experienced just as well on google street view though and there again like the various batting cages and mahjong parlors the activities on offer have been done better elsewhere and even then those are monochromatic whispers compared to the full colour majesty of reality. Though im not a full “touch grass” extremist and I do think that there is value in the mundane being represented in art though the juxtaposition of the melodrama of a hard-boiled yakuza teledrama, with streets of rage beat em up, the verisimilitude of 80s Japan and finally the whimsy of the comedy of side missions and side games the game groans like the belly of a glutton. Though if a game is going to have an open world with mini-games and side content I’d much rather it go down this route rather than a list of useless collectables.
The opening two chapters introduce Kiryu and his Yakuza world. A strong first impression to the grand narrative that tales have told of. The game demands that you take a serious interest in crime syndicate hierarchy and Tokyo property investment to comprehend its somewhat winding yarn. Though it takes somewhere around 40 minutes to actually let you walk around, the game tutorialises hard. Just as you’re finding yourself fully immersed at the end of chapter 2 the game pushes you onto the shinkansen to Osaka and introduces its deuteragonist, Majima. His opening is great cinema, not great game. There’s such a problem with game designers who want to be film directors and I think Yakuza falls to this here. Beyond the obvious ludo-narrative dissonance found through the series there's a ludo-cutscene dissonance where the two feel quite separate most of the time. Huge sections of the game are just minutes upon minutes of cutscene which is fine but I’ve chosen to play a game not watch a film. After the twin introductions the pace does increase a bit though this one is definitely a slow burn. As the game trudged on, my attention to its cutscenes dwindled as the skip button looked more enticing. Perhaps my choice to play these games in release order rather than chronologically was my mistake. As I had Yakuza-weary eyes. These games have all melded into one for me.
The game is good. Despite my myriad complaints. The sheer amount of work on display is a marvel. The deception of the Japanese underworld the developers seem to admire and wish to join. The commitment to giving a full simulation of Japan no matter how dull it may actually be is impressive. The game reeks of love and you can feel it dripping off of each concrete wall. Though it's not financially sensible I think Ryu ga Gotoku should slow down with these games because they could create a real masterpiece. If they managed to distil their love into a pure gaming experience I’d love to share it with them.
I guess I’ll play Yakuza 6 soon.