4.5/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Yakuza 0.

I've never played a Yakuza game; this was my first one. I've always wanted to get into the series, mostly due to how much it seems like it would appeal to me, but I was just wasn't quite in the mood until now. I had heard various things about the game over the years, how it can be very silly mostly. I knew it had a more serious story, but I was worried that I might find it boring. So did this game end up living up to the things I heard about it? Yes, yes it did. I really liked this game! The story is SUPER fascinating and engaging, and the gameplay is pretty interesting, having you switch between three different styles of combat (and a secret fourth one) for each character. Also, the whole dual-character structure this game employs is really neat in and of itself; not too many games have you play as multiple, separated protagonists, who never meet throughout the game. It feels very unique in that way. What awed me the most in the game though was how densely packed the "open-world" is (I use quotes there, because it's more like an open-hub level than an open world, but I digress). There are two, unique, full cities structured like this. After coming off of AC Odyssey, something like this feels great. Compared to that game, which was way too fucking huge and filled with tons of copy-pasted content, this game is full of unique side-content. Minigames, unique side quests, restaurants, etc. It really feels like a living breathing couple of blocks. I much prefer this to Odyssey style. The official side-quests in this game (called substories) are also really interesting. They are where most of the wackier sides of the game come out. What's fascinating to me is how the incredibly serious plot and tone of the main story is balanced with the very silly, zany tone of the sidequests. It honestly baffles me how both parts of the game don't feel out of place, and I have no clue how they managed to do it. I did have some issues with the game, however. Firstly, you can tell this game is a prequel. This did make me a little regretful, as maybe I should've played the first game first. There's a lot of stuff that ends up happening in this game that are either hints to stuff that happen in the future, or things that just HAVE to happen in order to line it up with the first game in the series (like *SPOILERS* Majima's turn to wackiness at the end of the game, or Kiryu's return to the Dojima Family). Another issue I had is the combat, at times, can feel a little stiff. I wish that there would be a better counter system, more similar to Arkham, allowing you to counter enemies that attack you from behind. You can dodge, and there are counters when facing a single enemy while locked on, but this isn't an amazing solution. Attacks can come from enemies so quickly that dodging them while attacking another enemy just isn't feasible (especially as there doesn't seem to be any type of animation canceling system), and the counter system they do have in the game, is only good when facing enemies one-on-one. My final little gripe isn't really the game's fault, but you can really tell this was a PS3 game originally. A lot of objects in this game have a lower amount of polygons or the object geometry isn't as high as I would expect from a PS4 game. Also, the anti-aliasing isn't as great as I would like it, some of the FMV sequences have some artifacting problems, some of the animations in this aren't as high quality as one would expect from the super high-quality models and faces they have, etc. It's not a huge issue, but it makes the game feel a little lower quality than one would expect from the last generation of consoles. Overall though, I quite liked this game! It was a fun experience and I am excited to experience more!