Yakuza 0 Retrospective - The Definition of a Perfect Prequel

Hello my fellow enjoyers of video games and video game accessories. I come to you today to speak about a game that many of you have probably heard of. The Yakuza series, or I guess as it's known nowadays, the Like a Dragon series probably needs no introduction. Toshihiro Nagoshi and the Ryu Ga Gotoku studio's games have been on a lot of people's radar for a long time. But that hasn't always been the case. It wasn't too long ago when this series looked pretty much dead and buried.

So what happened? How did Yakuza fall? Why did it come back? What makes Yakuza 0 the people's favourite despite being over 6 years old at this point? Why is Ryo Hazuki from Shenmue suspiciously sitting in the corner over there? Don't worry, we'll get to all that in this deep dive.

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0:00 - Intro
1:18 - The Fall & Rise of Yakuza
8:01 - Premise & Storytelling Style
16:56 - The World of Yakuza
23:35 - The Shenmue Connection
26:31 - Gameplay
34:55 - All About the Money
39:54 - Substories
42:26 - Visuals & Music
51:35 - Characters & Motivation
56:13 - Story Spoilers
1:08:27 - CONCLUSION

#yakuza0 #likeadragon #ryugagotokustudio #yakuza0review #yakuza0gameplay #shenmue #shinjuku

[borombab]

Having Majima in it was probably the smartest decision they ever made for the series popularity. Absolutely nailing his fighting techniques was just the icing on the cake.

[ravenshrike]

The "never killed anyone thing" was a mistranslation. And only really applies to Kiryu. It was never killed anyone outside of self defense. As for Majima, there's a difference between taking a job as an assassin and killing someone you're in a fight with.

[Hilversumborn]

Yakuza 0 is one of the greatest comeback/breakthrough stories ever.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Nagoshi for sticking with his vision and with Lost Judgment being the last game he produced, I can only say: ‘Thank you for everything’

[oceanman_]

I really love how when Majima meets Kiryu they both just recognize each or without knowing any physical traits. They just knew it had to be each other based on the looks

[MrGarde]

Yakuza 0 was my introduction to the series at the lowest point of my life. Super depressed and one meal a day or sometimes no meals a day broke. But something about coming home after work and doing all the story, karaoke, disco and fighting was such a big deal to me. This game means so much to me that it’s one of the two games I’ve ever gone out of my way to get all the achievements in, the other being dmc5. Both of those adventures can be equally hellish, but I’m glad I did it. And It’s a little cheesy, but I’m proud of myself for committing to this thing simply because it was fun and it made me happy. When I didn’t have any money or friends, I had yakuza 0. This game could very well be solely responsible for me being here today, knowing that I was going to have a great couple hours at the end of the day kept me going. And yes my life is way better now and I still come back and start a fresh save every now and then

[eden]

Nishiki is the reason I am so happy I started with 0 and avoided all potential spoilers like the plague. Heck I even save all future yakuza content to 'watch later'.

[LinkinMark]

Kiryu’s not a member of the Kazama family. They specifically point this out with Nishiki asking why they joined the Dojima family and not the Kazama family. He’s called the Dragon of Dojima for a reason

[synthiandrakon]

I think what makes Yakuza 0 really special for me is the time period. There is something really kind of satisfying and analogue about everything, communicating through pagers and payphones felt novel. In a game set in current day when the family wants to call kiriyu in they'd probably send a text message but there is something more satisfying about getting a code on the pager, not knowing the clan wants him but not instantly why. The conversation carries on and at the end he physically walks to a payphone and calls the clan. There is something within the context of a video game that I like about that mechanically as opposed to navigating the menu of a virtual smartphone.

[BenkaiDebussy]

The part where you mention the localization of Majima's kansai dialect is interesting; I hadn't really thought about it, but it's actually a remarkably good localization of the general "feel" of kansai dialect.

[blueblazer]

I wish all of you a happy Ishin Day tomorrow

[TunezCottage]

You're probably right about the bubble economy and the developers enjoying it. There's a substory in Kiwami where this young actress asks Kiryu what it was like during that era and he reminisces about it to her while she gushes about it to him. It's a great little story that feels deeply personal.

[sekkuar]

I read an article where the devs of Yakuza 0 say they believe the biggest reason for the western success was due to them finally learning their lesson on localization.

Yakuza 1 has an English version, which is pretty bad since it's a full dub with sketchy translation. Devs said leaving the dialogue in Japanese and localizing only the text made it much easier to make the game accessible while not losing context or sounding out of place.

Later they used the same recipe for Kiwami and it worked great as well.

I do believe if they released kiwami in the west before 0, it would have a similar success story for the series as 0 had.

[Rosamune]

The word of mouth and amount of streamers who gave this game a chance really spread around how good this series is

[bigtacotime]

the yakuza series asks the bold question of "what if shenmue was good?"

[snakey]

Really underselling the combat here. The gear system, four styles, wall bounds, counters and heat actions coupled together does not just provide plenty of variety but a lot of depth as well.

[HatKidPeck]

The tachibana part at the end of the game will always make me cry.

Makoto’s reaction dude god damn.

[Rihcterwilker]

Seeing Kamurocho change in every new game while still being familiar is so good. It adds a sense of time and place that i haven't seen (on the same level) in any other game.

Ps: black panther 1/2 both have english patches
(1 - only story & 2 - everything besides hostess)

[RihenSc]

First NieR and now Yakuza, two of my favourite game series! Keep up with the amazing work Brando!

[novollllll]

“the combat system isn’t that deep” *proceeds to explain the depth of the combat system*

[SeleezSE]

ex-dev here. Yakuza games of that era generally had prerendered cutscenes (the ones without the text boxes and press "x"/"a" to skip). The "cutscenes" or rather dialogue scenes are real-time in-engine with the RGG:K/3 engine. That engine wasn't able to handle the amount of facial blendshapes with the models used in the CGI cutscenes, i believe the cutscene character models had a range of a few hundred thousand polys (depending on the importance of character). RGG6 had a good mix of high quality cutscenes but that number was more or less 50% of real-time and 50% prerendered. The real issue for the initial version of the dragon engine was the perf/unstable frame rates (at least on the targeted platform at the time) as well as the rather not so impressive aliasing. It is rather hard to tell whether the cutscenes were real-time or not as they were made in the same engine as the game. But if you really look, you can see some compression artifacts (most noticeable the color gradient banding in the skybox, and obvious baked lighting on character models in the real-time rendering of the gameplay and the textbox cutscenes). The dragon engine got much needed improvements by Kiwami 2 and the first Judgement, and but then a large portion of the in-game cutscenes were done in-engine, and aside from more powerful hardware and better optimized engine, using in-game cutscenes saved a ton of space. With modern rendering techniques used in games and the improved frame buffers on modern GPUs, the assets/textures themselves are more complex and taking more space both on the frame buffer and the storage media (Disc or HDD installation) than the PS2/3 era. Making the cutscenes in real-time where ever possible with existing streamable assets with vector coordinate data of deformer bones beat out in space allocation compared to trying to store rendered cutscenes as videos in good quality compressed videos (1440p/4K) on a optical disc or as a digital download.