Vidjama Gmaes Work

Chapter 1 of Yakuza 0.

I haven’t played a lot of the Yakuza games, but what I have played has been incredibly enjoyable. Why haven’t I played more of them? I have no clue. When your attention is drawn to as many games as mine is as fast as it is, you tend to lose sight of series until they are neck deep in their remakes. And Yakuza is like ten titles in at this point, and I’d like to get caught up without the motivation being to get caught up.

Because I flame out fast if I’m not properly motivated, and I’d like to take the time and just enjoy each game by itself. Which is why I’m going to talk about each chapter as I play it. Like digesting your food before you eat other food. Also repeatedly writing down people’s names helps me remember them in video games and real life.

Yakuza 0 puts the player in the role of Kazuma Kiryu, a Yakuza member of the Dojima family. You finish up a job collecting money and meet up with Nishikiyama, your adoptive brother, for a night on the town. After beating some ass with hooligans and drunks you get to take part in one of the game’s rolling meme mini-games. The karaoke. Yes I sang the Dame Da Ne song. The Japanese love their karaoke.

I can appreciate a game that merges the ridiculous with the serious, as Yakuza 0 is clearly setting up to do. You get silly moments with characters chatting it up, the absolutely nonsensical fight sequences, and then stare down incredibly intimidating high ranking Yakuza mugs. The fact that the game’s money is intrinsically tied to the combat is great, I can literally beat millions of yen out of these hapless shmucks. The combat is nothing to write home about, a beat-em-up that probably gives much more space for nuance than I’m giving it mashing buttons like an idiot.

I’d like to note at this part in the story that Kiryu is a moron, having removed himself from the Kazama family despite multiple warnings that Kazama himself would still have to answer for his screw-up, only for Dojima to remind him at the end that yes, Kazama will have to answer for it. But then again it did throw me through a loop when Kiryu gets his ass whooped and plays the weakling just long enough for Kuze to officially throw him out of the family, after which he lays down a massive ass whooping on a whole building worth of dudes.

Maybe he’s smarter than I give him credit for. It’s fair to say that Kuze, Hiroki Awano, and Keiji Shibusawa are going to be the three major antagonists of the game with Dojima himself being the final boss battle. I know absolutely nothing about the rest of the games in the series having only played a couple chapters of Yakuza 0 back when the game came out in 2015 and then a few chapters of Like A Dragon back when that came out. Also avoided spoilers outside of knowing that Kiryu is a major character in the series.

So the question remains going into chapter 2; who is the mysterious man at the end of Chapter 1? Who actually caused the killing of that dude in the plot? My guess is one of the three Dojima lieutenants. Who is responsible for Kazama going to jail? My answer is the same. Will I become the top karaoke star? You betcha. I just realized the PS5 puts a little Sega copyright on screenshots for this game.

16 more chapters to go!