PC Gamer, got Yakuza 0 for $13 on sale today, what to expect as a newbie to the franchise?

A good video game.

Oh boy, you're in for a treat.

The combat, for me, feels dated, but it has a lot of depth and styles to play with, so it never gets too bad. In my opinion. though, it's not the best part of the game, and there's a lot of combat.

What you should expect is an absurd, complex storyline with hundreds of characters that are named kinda similar to each other, and one of the most detailed open-world in videogames. Explore everything, the game will keep throwing you new mechanics at you until the last chapters.

Expect an absurdly good time. As for how it runs? The 1070 runs it like a dream at 4k for me. You're in for a treat.

A heckuva lot of game for just $13.

I really need to get deeper into this fucking game already. It's really good my guy.

Why doesn't this damn game launch correctly in big picture mode on my steam link

Closer to Sleeping Dogs combat but with multiple fighting styles and really fun and intense boss battles. Atmosphere and music 10/10. A lot of fun minigames in a small, more intimate open world than most games nowadays. Cast and story are the best in the series for me (played most of them to completion). Some of the best side quests this gen. It's also one of the funniest games I've played in years. It's the best game this gen for me.

Insanity

The story is really cool ($13 USD is a great price for the game), also the port is good, there are some things that you might noticed like a hologram type thing when you are over puddles (but that's also in the PS4 version, not sure if it was like that in the PS3 version as well).

Also when is Yakuza Kiwami coming out? In December? Since SEGA has not really said much

A fun videogame that's really really great.

As a Yakuza newbie too (I finished 0 only), the game is packed with stuff to do. You have 100 side quests between both Kiryu and Majima. It is not GTA where you can go crazy and combat is a beat em' up mixed with action. Performance wise, port is fantastic. I had locked 60 FPS on High settings on my 2015 laptop that has an i5 5200u and GT 840M at 768p (native resolution). You can easily go for 1080p Max settings or even 4K and still get 60FPS. Overall, the game and the story is fantastic. Best 12$ I spent this summer.

My first Yakuza game and it was really fun

A damn good game.

Expect one of the best games in the series.
More seriously, I think those paragraphs from the PCgamer review is pretty good for your expectations:

This clash of realism, drama and comedy might sound like a disparate grab bag of styles, but Substories are a key part of why Yakuza 0 works so well. They help humanise Kiryu and Majima, letting their personalities shine through. Both are warm-hearted, naive and a little bit goofy. Even when Kiryu's sampling the more risque entertainment of Tokyo's red-light district, he does so with such childlike innocence that it seldom feels sleazy. These are likeable characters, which makes you care more when things do get serious. The localisation also does a great job of teasing out the personalities of these characters. I can't speak to the accuracy of the translation—I have no idea what the voice actors are actually saying—but, other than some anachronistic phrases clearly out of place in the setting, each character comes across as distinct.

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It's arcadey, snappy and a little bit stiff, but I've played over a hundred hours of Yakuza 0, and I still enjoy wailing on whichever unfortunate trio of punks have stepped to me. And it allows the game to revel in the ridiculous. Because this is the '80s, money flies out of enemies when you knock them down, which is handy because the cost of upgrading combat skills quickly gets into the millions of yen.

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and this:

The greasy old yakuza boss chuckles half-heartedly before standing up. "You think just because you beat fifty of my best knife-wielding and gun-toting men, single-handedly, without so much as a scratch on you, that you can beat me, the fourth understudy to the assistant of the patriarch of the fifth-ranked family affiliate of the Tojo Clan? You must be out of your mind."

In a single flawless motion, he tears off his jacket, undershirt, and tie, revealing that the 45 year old at best man who chain smokes and whose face appears to be constantly melting off has the physique of Bruce Lee. His pompadour and glasses remain immaculate as you grab him by the head and drag his face across every available surface within a ten foot radius.

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Easiest parallel to make is that of a jRPG in a closed off section of Tokyo. Random battles occur(but can be avoided) and shifts to a pretty good brawler with lots of different stances and special moves to use in combat. Lots of punching, kicking, and slamming. It's quite enjoyable.

-Beyond that, you have a solid narrative throughline with lots of tension, drama, and sap. It's very entertaining despite the occasional cheese.
-Sidequests are everywhere. They are mostly silly and very memorable given how ridiculous and humorous they often are.
-Activities dot the map to do as you wish. All of them feed into your character development in some manner, so getting a high score on Space Harrier, or hitting well at the batting cages, winning slot car tournaments, buying up real estate to take down the billionaire's club, etc... They all are completely at your discretion, but will benefit your character progression in some fashion if you choose to do some. (You can totally just ignore them and follow the story too, nothing is really missable outside of a very small set of trophies).

It's a wonderful game.

Craziness. Goodness. It is undescribable.

I can't wait for you to go hostess poaching.

I went into the yakuza series as a skeptic, with yakuza 5 via ps+, and it didn't amaze me really. But, once last gen limitators were off...boi! While I prefer 6, due to time constraints, it's an amazing, surprising game which one moment gives you a soap opera starring the world's kindest gangsta (even tho in 0 he ain't THAT nice yet), just to take into a glam metal karaoke the next.
It's just a rollercoaster of fun!

Did they ever fix the discolored skin bug in the PC port? (It only affects certain cutscenes)

Bishop89 said:

Insanity

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Oh shit, I love fortnite

Did they finally fix the random freezing in the PC version? Made me stop playing as it happened really often.

Buttzerker said:

-Is the combat good? Is it like, say, Sleeping Dogs, or closer to a full action game, or?

Also, anything specific I should expect?

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Combat is fine, but it's the weakest link in an otherwise amazing game. But it's fine. I ended up just plowing through combat by staying in Beast and Breaker stances as much as possible

Side stories are fun and they're where most of the humor comes from. Dive into those freely.

The story is layered and really well-told, give it some time to unfold.

The structure of the yakuza clans can be confusing at first, but stick with it. Basically the clans themselves are broken up into "families", and each family has their own recruits and sub-families (family does not strictly mean "by blood"). When you see "3rd Patriarch of the So-and-so Family" it means he's the third person to serve as patriarch -- the current head of the family; there have been two prior.

Take your time and get to know the cities -- if you continue playing the series, you'll be coming back to these cities and it feels so good to go home to them. You'll get to the point where they're so familiar that someone can tell you to go to a place by name and you can navigate yourself there

The only item you really need to carry are Staminan Royales. They're expensive but every other item is practically a waste of space in comparison. Plus, money becomes a complete non-issue as the game goes on

Also, carry a mandarin orange around with you for giggles once in a while

Buttzerker said:

Hmm sounds fun though my main interest in games is usually combat so I hope it isn't too bad . I don't really like exploring or etc.

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Yakuza 0's combat is pretty good, especially thanks to style switching, but it's not the real meat of the game; that is getting involved in scenarios that Kiryu solves by ripping off his shirt and beating the hell out of everyone around him.

Buttzerker said:

Hmm sounds fun though my main interest in games is usually combat so I hope it isn't too bad . I don't really like exploring or etc.

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There's loads of combat, you should equip the charismatic autobiography as soon as you find it if that's what you want from it.

EXPECT A CHICKEN

A decent port of a great game, which Sega unfortunately abandoned pretty quickly, leaving a lot of bugs unfixed (such as bugged cutscene lighting).

PS4

PC

Where is it on sale?

Literally the only complaints I have with it are that the game's volume resets when you play arcade games and that you can't full clear it without learning the rules to mahjong and a bunch of obscure Japanese gambling games.

Dick Justice said:

A decent port of a great game, which Sega unfortunately abandoned pretty quickly, leaving a lot of bugs unfixed (such as bugged cutscene lighting).

PS4

PC

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Yikes, yeah, this really irks me alot, the port also seems to suffer from missing shadows in certain areas that were present in PS4 and a couple days ago i discovered a texture on the PC version was using the low res PS3 asset instead of the PS4. Really bizarre.
Still hoping for that 3rd patch. Not a good look at all to abandon this with Kiwami on the way.

deltaplus said:

Where is it on sale?

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You can check it out here for PC

I got the game for £9(about 10€) with the 10% discount code on 2game.com(they are approved by SEGA). Now I checked again and now there's a 13% off code, too.

Direct link for EU

Direct link for US and ROW

Buttzerker said:

I've never played or even seen much about Yakuza, but $13 is cheap and I've heard good things so I decided to take the plunge. All I really know is that it's sort of a Yakuza simulator, with a lot of goofy moments and a pretty likeable character.

A couple questions:

-Is the combat good? Is it like, say, Sleeping Dogs, or closer to a full action game, or?

-Anyone who has it on PC know how well it runs? My PC is decently high-end [GTX 1080, i7 6700k] but some ports just suck regardless.


Also, anything specific I should expect?

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The combat is great. It plays kind of like an old-school brawler. Punches feel very crunchy and you can pick up loads of environmental objects to wail on foes with.

Anyways, enjoy the game. It was my goty of 2017 and likely the best Yakuza title.

One of the best stories I've ever experienced in a game.

It's in my personal top 5 on PS4 for the gen.

Side Missions are like the best part of the game. The main story is pretty much the cherry on top.
Don't sleep on the cabaret clubs and disco dances!

Buttzerker said:

A couple questions:

-Is the combat good? Is it like, say, Sleeping Dogs, or closer to a full action game, or?

-Anyone who has it on PC know how well it runs? My PC is decently high-end [GTX 1080, i7 6700k] but some ports just suck regardless.


Also, anything specific I should expect?

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1. Combat is simplistic and repetitive. The game switches between free-roam and combat modes when you encounter enemies.

2. It'll run fine on your machine. Holds a constant 1080p/60FPS on my significantly less powerful one.

3. Bloat beyond bloat.

Buttzerker said:

-Is the combat good? Is it like, say, Sleeping Dogs, or closer to a full action game, or?

-Anyone who has it on PC know how well it runs? My PC is decently high-end [GTX 1080, i7 6700k] but some ports just suck regardless.

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It's massively better than Sleeping Dogs in terms of combat.

I had issues at launch but I don't know if they were fixed. I had to put the priority of the process in task manager to high in order to have no stuttering, other than that it was smooth as heck.

You NEED to save at payphones. There is NO autosave, and it doesn't save BETWEEN CHAPTERS. I don't know why the in-between chapter save isn't there.

Do not equip the autobiography, it will make the game harder because it pushes enemies to be more agressive. Always read the description of an equipment instead of just looking at the stats, it can bring unwanted side effects.

You can sprint in this game.

You gain CP for doing various things like sidequests or punching a guy 20 times, use them at the shrine, it gives very useful tools that will aid you.

Do not sleep on the main activities of each protagonist (you know what they will be), they bring a shit-ton of money.

Sidequests are the highlight of the game, take your time to do them, but don't be scared about missing them out. If you just want to check out the story, you can do so. Do everything at the pace you want, there is no rush whatsoever.

Enjoy the best Yakuza I've had the pleasure to play, and be sure to check back when you see the beginning of Majima's chapter.

its charming as fuck. but the combat is kinda just garbage tbh, but that's not really what i'm playing for.

Buttzerker said:

10 hours in:

-Playing on hard
-Surprisingly ugly game. Looks like a 360 remaster or something. Doesn't bug me, just surprised. Guessing this is a midbudget series.
-The minigames don't appeal much, baseball etc
-Combat is fun but stiff. The lockon and camera are a bit ass, but the movesets seem deep.
-Rush style seems kinda ass. The dodge feels VERY flaky
Brawler just plain feels better. Its how I trashed Kezu, Rush got me torn up
-Beast is funny but a little stiff and slow. Brawler being the only style to notget hitstunned just feels hard to beat. Still, beast is good for shredding crowds
-Mr. Shakedown can eat me
-The side quests are a riot

Solid 8/10 so far. Whether that goes up and down will depend on story and how the combat styles develop for me

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Regarding your second point, it's originally a PS3 game. The styles all get better as you play, there are a few moves you kinda need for most of the styles to be good, like dodging for Rush getting way better.

The Mr. Shakedown fights are probably the hardest things in the main game that can show up. Just run away until you feel like you can beat them.

I'm the same as OP. PC gamer, first Yakuza game. I've somewhat enjoyed it, though the pacing is really bad. I don't need to watch 5-10 minute cutscenes of people talking. There's also very little gameplay variety or depth. You run around and talk to people or beat them up. The oddball characters and silly high jinks you get caught up in are the high point, the gameplay is the low point. If Yakuza 0 is considered the best in the series, I probably won't pick up the others until they go on deep sale.

I have every single Yakuza game (aside from the ones that were never released here). What should I start with?

Buttzerker said:

10 hours in:

-Playing on hard
-Surprisingly ugly game. Looks like a 360 remaster or something. Doesn't bug me, just surprised. Guessing this is a midbudget series.

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The series is pretty low budget with lots of asset reuse but one thing to keep in mind is that this is actually a cross-gen game, in Japan this still came out on PS3, so yeah, it pretty much is a glorified remaster.

Rush is great actually, you gotta make sure your heat bar is always filled up for that style because then you're much faster and the dodge becomes way more effective that way. Also, the dodge and weave thing you do with that style instead of blocking is good to escape after getting caught in an enemy combo.

Buttzerker said:

People keep giving me random objects I don't know the purpose of, like plates and belts and coats

What's the deal there

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You can equip them for different perks.

Or sell them for cold, hard cash. It's the '80s, you pauper, make some damn money.