The plot of Yakuza 0 is served up like a fresh bowl of udon noodles; simmering, full of twists and turns, and satisfying to the end. While I very much enjoyed the bone-cracking street fights, numerous oddball side characters, and the Lonely Planet guide’s worth of entertaining diversions along the way, it’s really the taut tale of betrayal and the bitter arm wrestle for power at its centre that kept me glued to the controller throughout.
Yakuza 0 is set in 1988 and serves as an origin story for two of the series’ most prominent characters, Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima, who find themselves caught up in a land war amongst rival clans. Whereas the previous game in the series, Yakuza 5, juggled five different storylines and felt somewhat convoluted as a result, Yakuza 0 benefits from focusing on the plights of Kiryu and Majima, each scorned by their respective families and whose paths ultimately converge in the end.It’s a gangster tale that adheres mostly to convention, with menacing mob bosses, car bombings, blackmail, and the like, but it’s a tale told well and told thoroughly. Much like the Metal Gear Solid series, Yakuza 0 isn’t afraid of taking control away from us for extended periods in order to deliver a lengthy cutscene to advance the plot and develop the characters, but I never felt in any way detached from the events onscreen thanks to the strong performances of the actors and the consistently powerful writing.Recent open-world releases struggle to compete when it comes to the sheer density of detail packed into Sega’s latest.
Although the slightly wooden character animations serve as a reminder that this is a game developed to straddle console generations (the Japanese version was simultaneously released on PS3), Yakuza 0 otherwise manages to nail the look and feel of its Tokyo and Osaka-inspired settings. Recent open-world releases like Mafia III and Watch Dogs 2 might dwarf the maps of Yakuza 0 in terms of scale, but both struggle to compete when it comes to the sheer density of detail packed into every nook and cranny of Sega’s latest.“
The neon-soaked streets tread a fine line between gorgeous and garish, the Don Quijote discount stores are claustrophobic caverns of consumerism, and vendors on the street keep handing you pocket tissues for no apparent reason. While Yakuza 0’s retro setting isn’t exactly Grand Theft Auto: Vice City when it comes to revelling in ‘80s nostalgia, there are enough nods to the era to reinforce the sense of time and place - from the pagers used by the characters to the authentic Walkman billboards and the playable OutRun and Space Harrier games in the local arcades.
Diversionary tactics
These arcade games are just the tip of the time-sinking iceberg. As is now customary for the series, Yakuza 0 always provides alluring C, D, and E options when you’re on your way from A to B. There’s fishing, bowling, batting practice, several kinds of gambling, pool, darts, karaoke, dancing, underground fight clubs, and plenty more.The bulk of these optional activities are well realised and fleshed out with fun challenges to complete, and they range from the addictively simple reflex-testing batting cage to the relatively deep real estate business run by Kiryu in Tokyo and Majima’s hostess bar empire in Osaka. The latter two management simulations in particular require a substantial time investment but yield maximum yen, and while I only scratched the surface of them on my way to completing the 30-hour story, I intend on returning to them in Yakuza 0’s post-credits ‘Premium Adventure’ mode in order to find out exactly how lucrative they can become.Streets of Rage
Of course, a more direct way of nabbing fistfuls of cash is by using your actual fists (and feet) to beat it out of the neverending supply of street thugs who engage you in a scrap on sight. Kiryu and Majima each have three different fighting styles that can be switched between on the fly, and I relished in the ability to tailor my technique to suit each individual scenario. For example, I found Majima’s button-mashing breakdancing stance that turns him into a human whirligig of spinning kicks to be perfect for carving through crowds of enemies, yet his baseball bat-toting slugger stance is a better choice for one-on-one boss fights where more powerful and direct attacks are required.
Yakuza 0’s fighting system is wonderfully brutal, and the context-sensitive finishing moves offer an especially satisfying way to curb-stomp a shoe-shaped exclamation point into an opponent’s face at the end of each encounter. However, a somewhat piecemeal counter system means that for all its flashy moves, the all-in brawling is never quite as fluid as the one-on-many fighting experiences of the Batman: Arkham games, at least when it comes to transitioning back and forth between enemies. This makes Yakuza 0 seem a little behind the curve in that regard, which is disappointing considering we’re now half a dozen games into the mainline of the Yakuza series.What Yakuza 0 does have in common with the Caped Crusader, though, is the fact that neither of these violent gangsters ever actually kills anyone. Each enemy that Kiryu and Majima dispatch is left to pick up their teeth rather than push up daisies, which is refreshing given that most open-world crime games are effectively exercises in casual mass murder. (Not that killing stops me from enjoying those games; it’s just nice to play something that approaches it differently for a change.) The general lack of killing in Yakuza 0 means that when certain character deaths do occur over the course of the story - whether they be good, bad, or grey - they land with significantly more impact.
