This is a big break from how previous Yakuza games have handled experience, but it’s a break for the better.

Rather than having a separate experience system, abilities (like new combos, more contextual actions, and health bonuses) in these styles can be unlocked with cash. Pulling off spectacular cinematic QTE nonsense cool. It’s a pretty ugly world all said.īut it’s just … so cool. Crime is business and business is crime, and Yakuza 0’s depictions of this period are unflinching. Between the beepers in their pockets, the Out Run machines in the arcades, and the glossy veneer of bubble-era Japan, it’s pretty hard to ignore the game’s setting. Majima, on the other hand, is stuck managing a cabaret in the hopes of earning his place in the yakuza back after being cast out. Kiryu is little more than an up-and-coming yakuza foot soldier when the story begins, framed for a crime he didn't commit. As a prequel set in 1988, it offers a glimpse at what made these characters who they come to be in later games. Yakuza 0 divides its time equally between two characters: series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu and recurring eccentric Goro Majima. But here I am, and Yakuza 0 has blown my expectations out of the water.

And I absolutely did not expect a story with so much of what I would usually describe as 'tough guy bullshit' to draw me in so completely. I also wasn't expecting to invest so profoundly in the struggles of a small nightclub and its staff, either. I wasn't expecting to leave Yakuza 0 with a deep emotional connection to a character who shrieks and beats people with a baseball bat.

Yakuza 0 fight music