Yakuza 0

Yakuza is currently my favorite gaming series. Despite it's outlandish action scenes and downright weird characters and situations, no other game series has such in-depth portrayal of contemporary life and culture. The cities are small, but the countless minigames, restaurants, side quests and shops make them feel really densely packed. Just like real life cities. I almost wish that every country besides Japan had their very own culture specific 'Yakuza'-style game.

The previous entry in the series, Yakuza 5 was not great, as it had repetitive gameplay, weak characters and nonsense story. Yakuza 0 fixes all of these problems. The higlights include the three antagonist lieutenants of the Dojima family. These are some of the most intimidating middle-aged gangsters ever put in a game. All the performances are great and the characters look like real humans. The story is an interesting mystery and the main characters go through a lot. Switching between two protagonists between every few chapters makes the game feel always fresh. This is the most polished entry in the series and thankfully contains no awful running sequences. The fighting is same as always, simple and brutal. Personally I never get tired of it, despite playing all the game in the series. Another thing that the game does exceedingly well is the humor. This is the funniest game that I have ever played. The side quests are ridiculous and the jokes are plentiful. For example, you can hire a chicken called 'Nugget' to manage your real estate, you can help a dominatrix to be more dominant and assertive etc. As I don't speak Japanese, I don't know if the translation is accurate. But it feels like both the development team, and the translation team had tons of fun making the game. The cities have been featured in previous games, but that didn't hinder the enjoyment at all. The soundtrack is also fantastic. Even shop themes that you hear only for 15 seconds at a time are great. I recommend going to Youtube and listening to the whole soundtrack as the full versions of the songs can't be always heard in-game.

There are some gripes too. I wish more was done with the antagonists. You get glimpses of their lives and clearly they just don't exist to be evil. Such cool characters deserved more screentime. Also, a lot of the cool characters are quickly killed off as soon as they have served their purpose in the story, which feels like such a waste. While most of the minigames are fun (yes, even mahjongg once you learn it), the real-estate is basically a boring and slow clicker and Catfights are rock paper scissors with an illusion that you can influence the fight. You can't influence the fight though. The catfights are seriously bad and a tarnishing spot of otherwise stellar game. Thankfully, they are mostly optional. Also the 80's setting didn't really play as big of a role as I had hoped.

While I have enjoyed other games' plots (Nier: Automata) and gameplay (Nioh) more this year, I can already say that I won't probably have as much fun with other games in 2017. I played it for 95 hours and save getting a few trophies, I did everything I could.

Yakuza 0 is also a good point for the newcomers to jump in the series as it is a prequel and the story is mostly self-contained. The PS4 also has reduced the load times compared to previous installments, so Yakuza 0 feels really comfortable in that regard. If you like quirky games with plenty of awesome moments, you can not do wrong by choosing this crazy little game also known as Yakuza 0.

This is a first time I try to write an in-depth review, so please be gentle.