(There are five main Yakuza titles to date, with a sixth due out in English next year.) It’s essentially the perfect place to get started - though it might take a bit for you to acclimate to its decidedly old-school style of play.ĭespite the fact that it’s being released on the PlayStation 4 in 2017, Yakuza 0 often feels - and occasionally looks - like a game from more than a decade ago. You’d be surprised how touching it can be to help a living statue go to the bathroom.Īnd because Yakuza 0 is a prequel, you can enjoy the story without having to worry about having played any of the other games. No matter what you’re doing, though, these optional stories all follow a similar tack, starting out incredibly goofy before revealing themselves to be much more. One particularly memorable quest involves teaching a dominatrix to stop being so nice. A simple night out for sushi could turn into a mission to help a chef regain his confidence. This will have you doing everything from helping a punk band act like real punks, to pretending to be someone’s boyfriend and meeting their dad. It seems like just about everyone you bump into is in need of a favor, and naturally they’re always asking Kiryu or Majima for help. In the midst of this sprawling yakuza epic are a copious number of side stories that add a much more lighthearted vibe to the experience.
Kiryu, in particular, is a fantastic character, a hard-headed but big-hearted mobster who can beat up dozens of baddies by himself, yet won’t hesitate to sacrifice everything he has for those close to him.
And it’s gripping: toward the end of the game I found myself ignoring most of the side activities because I needed to find out what happened next.
#Yakuza vs sleeping dogs full#
The core narrative is a crime epic full of all the prerequisite twists and turns like shocking betrayals and copious deaths. What makes this story work is how it manages to be both incredibly silly and incredibly sincere. He’s eventually tasked with pulling off a hit on a mysterious individual, and like Kiryu, this pulls him unwittingly into a much bigger conspiracy. Meanwhile, in the tourist-filled Dotonbori area of Osaka, a former yakuza named Majima finds himself as a club owner biding time and hoarding money in an attempt to rejoin the crime syndicate. Kiryu’s setup is just one piece of a much larger plan. Amidst the frenzy of Japan’s real estate boom, multiple criminal elements are fighting for a tiny slice of land, the only unclaimed spot in the seedy Tokyo district Kabukicho. At the outset you’ll control Kiryu, a low-ranking yakuza in Tokyo, who early on finds himself framed for a murder he didn’t commit. Yakuza 0 takes place in 1988, and is spread out across two locations and characters. It’s more of a reminder: they don’t make games like this anymore. At times it feels like a game from another era, with lengthy cutscenes and lots of text dialogue. It’s a weird and wild place, but also one with a lot of character and heart. When you walk down the streets you’ll fight with thugs like you’re in a PS2-era brawler, while going out for karaoke will pull you into a Guitar Hero -style mini-game. Yakuza 0’s rendition of 1980s Japan is like an arcade disguised as a city. Whereas GTA and its ilk offer stunningly dynamic locations to explore, ones that feel shockingly close to their real-world counterparts, Yakuza’s hyper-detailed world is more static. But despite their thematic similarities, the two aren’t much alike at all.
#Yakuza vs sleeping dogs series#
After all, like GTA, Sega’s Yakuza is an open-world action game series with a focus on crime. If you haven’t played a Yakuza game before, you might be picturing something along the lines of Grand Theft Auto, only set in modern-day Japan.
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