I believe I didn't posted my review for Yakuza 0 here, just my general impressions before I even finished the game, so here it is.
Yakuza 0
Yakuza (in Japan known as Ryu ga Gotoku, which can be translated as Like a Dragon) was one series that caught my eye many years ago, around the time Yakuza 3 was coming out, but since it was a Sony exclusive, I was unable to check it out myself, but that changed with the release of the PC ports for Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami and Kiwami 2. What's more, Yakuza 0 act as a prequel to the whole series, while Kiwami games are the remakes of the first two Yakuza titles, so that made them quite a nice entry point for a new fans such as myself.
As one can expect after title like that, Yakuza 0 is a game heavily inspired by the style of the japanese gangster movies, the world of more or less honorable, tattoos and fancy suits wearing badasses, whose every word sound like a clang of steel, following (when it's convenient) only their own set of rules and resolving heated disputes via bare fists more often then with lead. Game number Zero takes place in the 80's in Kamurocho, Tokio's entertainment district, and Sotenbori, part of Osaka famous for it's cabarets, in the middle of japanese economy golden hour, when yen seems to flow almost endlessly, each business brings more profits then ever before and the overworked office workers spend millions on various pleasures the city has to offer. In a paradise for an opportunistic businessmen like that, the presence of Yakuza is pretty much unavoidable, in case of Kamurocho the one pulling the strings on their side is Dojima Family, who also wishes to obtain their own piece of that delicious cake.
In above circumstances, we meet the franchise main protagonist, Kiryu Kazuma, Dojima Family's soldier, for whom a regular extortion in, seemingly, random alley turns into a frame job for an unauthorized murder which he didn't commit. And not just any old murder, but one that puts in jeopardy Family's plans worth billions of legally owned yen. Becoming a target of his own organisation, Kiryu now needs to prove his innocence and find out who is behind it all... or so it seems in the beginning, but his goals change with time, which of course I'm not going to spoil. Story of Kiryu is connected to the second playable protagonist, Majima Goro, Mad Dog of Shimano, who after falling out of grace with his boss, gets banished from Yakuza and is now forced to make up for his betrayal by working as a manager of cabaret in Sotenbori, but unexpectedly he gets a chance to return to organisation. In order to do so, he just needs to complete a single task: first time in his career take someone's life.
Right away I must say that story and characters in Yakuza 0 are one of it's greatest strengths. Story cutscenes are expertly directed, written, acted out (in Japanese only) and full of style typical for above mentioned Yakuza movies (developers even got an actors known for this genre to provide a look and voices for some major characters). Sure, sometimes it might feel a little like a soap opera, which is not uncommon even in the movies it's inspired by, but the narrative as a whole is so well done, it's hard to get angry about it. Characters are very engaging and memorable thanks to game writing and their voice acting, which includes our two leads. Kiryu is honorable, loyal, noble in his own way, direct and takes everything very seriously (which is a great source of comedy during some of the side activities), so it's difficult to not like him. Majima is a charismatic and cunning businessman who behind pretty and gentle face hides a caged beast ready to take over (in metaphorical sense, of course). Even less important characters didn't left me indifferent to them, although at times I felt like some of them were removed from the story a little too soon, like developers had not enough time and money to fully implement the storyline that they planned for them.
Three paragraphs about the plot and I didn't even mentioned anything about the gameplay, but I assure you, it's not because I found it lacking. Yakuza is an action RPG, in which combat plays out in a style similar to classic beat'em ups. In battles we use two types of combo attacks, ability to grab enemy in order to smash their face from up close or to throw them on the ground, blocks, dodges, various interactive objects that we can use as a temporary weapons (like signs, bikes or... oranges) and equippable weapons (swords and guns, among others), which we can only use a limited number of times, after all our primary form of combat is fist fighting. Kiryu and Majima have four different combat styles, in both cases the fourth one is a combination of the other three and unlocked only after completion of a long sidequest. Styles used by Kiryu are Brawler (solid balance between the speed and the attack power), Rush (greater mobility with less power) and Beast (low mobility, but great attack power), while Majima relies on Thug (similar to Brawler, although it relies more on dirty tricks, like shoving your fingers into enemy's eyes or choking him from behind), Slugger (weapon based style with baseball bat as default mean of pressure, with great power and solid range, but not very useful in closed spaces) and Breaker (mix of martial arts and breakdance, making up for a lack of power with attack speed and range). Each fighting style has it's own skill tree with additional buffs, new abilities and moves to unlock, but instead of experience points, for that purpose, in a spirit of prosperous japanese economy, we are using our own cash, literally investing into ourselves. The crucial part of the combat system is a Heat Gauge, which increases during the fight, as long as we avoid getting hit. After it's reaches a certain level (represented via aura around our character), we become stronger and tougher, but on top of that we can use up our Heat Gauge on so called Heat Actions, a contextual special attacks dealing a significant amount of damage. Those Heat Actions depend on certain conditions, like environment (for example, smashing someone's head with a door of the car next to us), position (for example, to perform the chokehold in a Thug style, we need to find ourselves behind the backs of disoriented enemies) and the weapons we are currently using (like bike, which we can literally break on someone's head). Each style serves a purpose in the game and learning them might lead to a pretty flashy combat encounters.
Outside of combat and the main story, we are free to explore above mentioned districts, which combined are closer in size to Vizima from The Witcher 1 then Novigrad, however in such a limited space developers packed a tons of additional content. There is around 100 sidequests, in which, as opposed to more serious main story, devs were allowed to go crazy and came up with some really creative issues for Kiryu and Majima to deal with. Most of them have something unique in them and tell a full fledged story, some even introduce characters and plotlines from earlier/future parts of the series. Like with a Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you don't know what exactly you will find in it, sometimes quest which starts in a really absurd way might lead to a heartfelt story or it might be the other way around. Some of my favorites are the dialogue heavy ones, like Kiryu doing job interviews or Majima infiltrating a sect.
Even if we would choose to ignore sidequests, Kamurocho and Sotenbori offers a wide variety of different side activities, so many in fact that hardly any open world game matches Yakuza 0 in this category. Shops with various items, restaurants and booths with local dishes to try out, bars when we can have a drink while listening to trivia from the bartenders about the beverages we are having (there is one interesting sidequest tied to that, so it's better to pay attention), mahjong, shogi, fishing, collecting the telephone cards with the photos of (dressed up) porn stars, karaoke, disco dancing, watching softcore porn videos, illegal martial arts tournament, billard, dart throwing (with a few variations, including the drunken one), RC cars racing (with car customization), phone dates, several types of games with dice, betting on a "catfights" (as I said before, of scantily clad women, not actual cats, thank God), real estate management, cabaret club management (best minigame in a video game history, Gwent and Pazaak have nothing to say on that), blackjack, baccarat, texas hold'em, roulette, bowling, UFO catcher machines, a few Sega games for arcades, baseball and some others as well. Yes, I spend this whole paragraph on just naming most of them. Thanks to their variety, everyone should find something for themselves. Many of those minigames can be played online as well.
Some people might be turned off from the game due to it's low budget in a certain aspects, like for example scenes which are not related to the main story are not voice acted, they have very limited animation in the cutscenes, much lower quality models and very repetetive music (which otherwise is amazing). Even story cutscenes are not exactly consistent when it comes to presentation, they can jump between beautiful prerendered cutscenes, much uglier in-game cinematics and even occasionally switch to still shots with a voice over. However if we can look past that, Yakuza 0 is an insanely stylish and robust game with great story and enjoyable combat, which offers dozens hours worth of content (main story with majority of quests and some side activities took me more then 80 hours and you can easily get more then 100 out of it). It's one of my new favorites and personally I can't recommend it enough.
Pros
+ engaging story and characters
+ general style and presentation
+ fun combat with a lot of variety
+ creative and interesting sidequests
+ staggering amount of side activities
+ excellent soundtrack
Cons
- side content is made on a budget, which might turn some people off
- repetetive music during sidequests
- certain characters could use a little more screen time
My rating: 9/10