Is the Yakuza series secretly trash?

Just finished Yakuza 0. While the combat was serviceable and I appreciated how accurately they recreated Kabukicho (Kamurocho)—I visited the real place two years ago—pretty much everything else was mediocre. For a game that leans so heavily on its story, the writing felt like it came straight out of a mid-tier anime: shallow dialogue, melodrama cranked up to eleven, and more plot holes than I could count. Kiryu calling himself a pacifist while literally killing people during a car chase? Other characters getting shot point blank and magically coming back some time later? That’s just bad writing. I haven’t played the other games yet, but if Yakuza 0 is considered the pinnacle of the series, I honestly dread to see how poorly written the rest are. Am I missing something, or is this just how the series is?

There is no good Yakuza game.

You have to be younger and less depressed from being a wage slave to enjoy it

Yakuza is a soap opera about middle aged men.

secretly

Yakuza 1 (on the PS2) is the only good game in the series. The dub only.

but if Yakuza 0 is considered the pinnacle of the series

It's too late for you, your mind has been comprehensively poisoned.

secretly

secretly

If I remember correctly, Kiryu saying he's a pacifist or doesn't kill is a mistranslation or something like that, instead meaning that he doesn't murder in cold blood. Don't quote me on that though, I've only played up to Yakuza 4

if Yakuza 0 is considered the pinnacle of the series, I honestly dread to see how poorly written the rest are

5 is the real pinnacle of the series. 0 is just a good entry point.

Kiryu calling himself a pacifist while literally killing people during a car chase?

Kiryu has never killed anyone.

the money haruka wasted on that sonic shirt could've gone to feeding haruto

secretly

See

I want that sweater

How old are you?

He specifically says 殺. It can mean both "Kill" and "Murder" interchangeably.

Uncle Kaz bought it for her. He knows Sega will always be hip with the kids.

20

The yakuza series is explicitly trash while having a few good games (namely 1,2 and 3 for most of its runtime)
After 2 the series went on to become a little too focused on the wacky randumb scenarios

but le hobo underground city was wacky too

And it was played completely straight, Yakuza 1 was a yakuza drama from the very beginning to its end.

Yakuza games are about doing the goofy substories and playing vidya in the arcade. Nobody actually gives a shit about the story anon

The vibe is "monster soap opera." Hope this helps. Sorry this happened.

*mobster

yakuza is not secretly trash, its explicitly trash

but fans like it because theres nothing quite like it.

same reason the people that like shenmue will also tell you shenmue is trash.

Memes aside, which Yakuza game has the best story?

Vanilla 1

i've only plated 0 to 4, but for me:

best story: majimas side in 0
best antagonist: ryuji goda
most handsome antagonist: yakuza 3 boss whose name i can't remember who was ripped for no reason

choker

Judgment
Lost Judgment (Sawa argument notwithstanding)

If you're forcing me into just the mainline then I guess 2, 4, 0, or 7 but 2, 4, and 0 all have issues with their twists.

2 for the everyone is a Korean.

4 for pretty much all the reveals and twists in the final chapter.

0 for the entire nonsense with Makoto across the board from Shimano not wanting her dead yet sending everyone to kill her, her just up and going to go and try to barter with Dojima when she's far smarter than that and doesn't consider he'd just kill her, and then the fact that she exists as a character at all as if the devs just outright forgot Park existed meaning Majima's entire relationship with Makoto falls extremely flat because we already know in less than three years he's going to fall madly in love with Park and marry her.

Every Yakuza game feels like I am just forcing myself to get through it so that I can I did.

so that I can I did.

huh

7 with jap VA
0 and 1 are good, 5 is too big for its own good but it's the most varied

how can it be trash if it has soul?

Judgement

Fuck Kim always calling you about the Keihin Gang

Why are the Koreans always portrayed so negatively? It's comically forced and absurd

Is this Ijincho's arcade? I don't remember it looking this depressing, God damn.
Pre-DE arcades looked so much more lively with their fixed camera angles and miscellaneous NPCs

1

Good story.

Doesn't even develop Nishiki in any way and only has him in the entire game for five cutscenes, one of which he doesn't speak and one which he has like two lines.

Chapter 5 is a filler chapter to very slightly flesh out the Florist.

Chapter 9 is a filler chapter just to force you to fight Lao and doesn't develop Fuma-oyaboon outside of what he's already told you about his past.

Yep, it's that small one in the center of the map.

that sort of changed with joongi 2 and seonhee

It's the smaller non-Club Sega/Gigo one in an alley

i started 0 in early march and i'm currently playing the kaito files dlc of lost judgment. at least you got filtered from the first game op, you don't deserve to play such great games

secretly

Korean media does the same thing. Japanese are usually portrayed as comically sinister and evil, although there's plenty of historical justification for that. There's still a lot of bad blood between both nations on an emotional level.

have you never seen a lies of p thread? that's exactly how Anon Babble is too

1

Good story

well I wouldn't put 2 3 and 4 above it, and 6 is such a contrived mess it feels like kojima was involved
I didn't play anything past judgment so idk much about 6.5, 8, LJ and pirates

5 is the funniest game in the series
everyone gets shot, nobody dies and nothing makes sense the moment you try to think about what happened for longer than 10 seconds

pre yakuza 0 writing was frustrating just ignore that majima marries park because majima doesn't even react to park and yasuko deaths

Imagine if the middle east was populated by white people and Americans had to live every moment in terror at the thought their friends and neighbors could secretly be Arab sleeper agents.

I don't want to pretend intergame writing conflicts mean shit or that anyone at sega has ever cared

For all their faults 2-6 at least have a better thought out story. 1 jumps around far more than 3 does and doesn't develop the main antagonist at all and instead decides to develop a guy brought in at the eleventh hour more than the main villain. It meanders for two separate chapters, and then Shimano or Majima just randomly appear to be a threat for that chapter.

When I first played 1 the story was by far the weakest part for me and laughed when I got to the Nishiki fight because he straight up got stunlocked and either never hit me or hit me once for the entire fight. It was a joke.
K1 at least helped with the story by actually developing Nishiki, and since you're expected to have played 0 that helps with characterizing Nishiki, Shimano, and Kazama much more than 1 ever did on top of all the new cutscenes.

Yakuza 4 is the only good Yakuza

nishiki is canonically a bitch, it makes sense that he never hit kiryu once

Wait until you see what they did to my boy Saejima, holy shit.

Have played and replayed almost all of the mainline and side games multiple times both with ENG subs and JP subs

I personally like Ishin's story the most however the gameplay itself is admittedly pretty cheeks and the friend system or whatever it's called is probably the worst integration of substories I've seen. Aside from that? 0, 1 TMWEHN and both Judgements are pretty good, 2, 6 and 7 are serviceable, 4 and 5 are knocked down a peg because of Sa*jima, didn't really care for 8 or Pirates. No opinion on 3 atm because they removed it off of gamepass before I could replay it.

Your first mistake was thinking Japanese take characters and writing seriously, they don't. All that matters is if it looks cool, and don't violate some stupid unspoken rule about teaching kids to be an asshole, because god forbid someone eat and walk at the same time.
Once you realize that, you start to see how most Japanese media really is made for children. Nope, if you're an adult living in Japan, the most fun you'll ever get to have is getting drunk at the pachinko parlor.

how is there no Anon Babble thread for yakuza/rgg?

was thinking Japanese take characters and writing seriously, they don't

japan is such a shit hole

Yakuza is good in short bursts, like if you play one game a year or something. I also tried marathoning them all and got burned out. I like that they're one of the only legitimate ways of playing a bunch of older SEGA arcade games for free though.

Short answer: yes, and if your binging them like people fly through megaman/zelda games you're gonna have a bad time.
Long answer is, there schlock, schlock can be fun. You dont watch Tarantino films for arthouse critique of the human condition, you watch to see a #relatable gigachad fuck people up and say cool one liners while doing it. Take the same approach to the Yakuza games, dont rush through them, take in the setting, do the minigames and laugh at the inane japanese memery. If atleast 2 of the above dont appeal to you, then its not the series for you
And for god sakes space out your play throughs, because if plan on playing the whole series(dont) you gonna spend allot of time in the same set of streets.

you have to have an enormous, girthy, veiny cock to marathon this series

if your binging them like people fly through megaman/zelda games you're gonna have a bad time.

incorrect
only one i haven't played is pirate, it's there because i just installed it

I personally like Ishin's story the most

Why? It spends the first third of the game introducing the Shinsengumi only to kill off half the members before finding out what you were doing was mostly a waste of time, then you spend the second third of the game figuring out how to meet up with Kondo, and then you have the actual magical lightning act with Takechi, an entire chapter dedicated to a real life event that has only been ever mentioned as happening in passerby discussions and doesn't even matter to the overall story, and then you get to the ending where everyone lives happily ever after because the shadow puppetmaster Jingu was behind it all.

It's a serviceable story but I was never a fan of it. It's better than FotNS's OC story, Dead Souls, and 1's story but I can't really say it's better than that.

Because the threads here are already very sporadic when they pop up each day, only get 30-50 posts on average, only ever get traction when a new game releases or a Summit happens, and even with its increase in popularity it's still a niche series. Pair this with the site having way less traffic compared to before the hack and the threads are having even less people in them.
We tried doing a general when 0 PC released (So, the ideal time for discussions) and it was mostly just people bumping it from 404 with no discussions and it died at around 300 posts after two or three weeks of people bumping it from 404.

Why there's so little Haruka's porn?

i'm not expecting much at all but is pirate yakuza fun?

Cause she's a fucking child?

she's 26 years old you sick fuck

Main story is a typical pirate story. If you have ever watched a pirate movie or read a book about pirates it is basically that. Since it's 8G it heavily spoils 8 and a lot of the story explains the aftermath of what happened in 8 and a few things related to 8.
Substories are some of the series' best outside of the word-for-word minigame introductions of minigames from 8.
Minigames are a mix of things from 8 but with a bit more content and new arcade games.
The ship is interesting at first but very quickly wears out its welcome and heavily wears out its welcome when you start going after the Zeus side story because the ship battles in the overworld take forever, give you almost no EXP, and are a waste of time. A lot of the weapons are also so weak or have no real purpose.
Combat is highly unbalanced unlike 7G. If you are going to play it then play on Professional and never upgrade Attack at all. Even just the basic attack upgrades was enough to make everything melt including Amon. If you are on PC get the mod that removes Attack from rings, then you can upgrade Attack itself.
Combat in general feels like they focused all their time on Sea Dog and Mad Dog is an afterthought in every respect.

thanks for coming in clutch every time i have a question throughout my entire marathon, i'm really sad that it's almost over
also i'm not above getting this mod if the ship becomes annoying

I played the first game years ago on PS2 and even then found it barely mediocre.
I was surprised several years later when I found out how popular of a franchise it is.

I also tried marathoning them all and got burned out

I did 0-7 100% in 3 months of pure autism
thank god for denuvo stopping the streak

also i'm not above getting this mod if the ship becomes annoying

I don't know how fast the mod makes it but the fastest speed of the ship non-boosted is the equivalent of being the lowest speed in any Assassin's Creed game with a ship. Boost rings (Which are everywhere) or using the boost are about medium speed in AC games. The mod might make the ship battles a joke though and the ones in the coliseum are fun so make your choice.

The games are just a decent quality, give you lots of content, and they come out with enough regularity that people don't forget the franchise and get to go back to it every few years to punch some dudes in familiar locations with a few new features each time.

Saejima is about to make bail and go back to Kamurocho

coerce the authorities to deny bail

fill prison with thugs to keep him in jail

install spy prisonmate to help him break out of jail

trick him into dragging prominent Hokkaido yakuza to remote location

have spy shoot yakuza with a sniper rifle

immediately rush to yakuza's aid and give him miraculous medical care saving his life

take Saejima to Kamurocho bc that was the plan all along

what are you talking about makes serfect pense

It depends on the kinda gamer you are. Im mildly obsessive, so I when I get sucked into something I really get into it. I put 100+ hours into Kiwami and Zero respectively. By the time I got a 1/4 into kiwami 2 I was burnt to fuck out with the setting and the plot didnt interest me, even with the slightly better graphics and combat engine.

Protip for newfags

start with kiwami 1 then backtrack to 0

Kiwami is bit of a downgrade to 0 so youll feel a little out of place

Plot points in 0 actually hit allot harder when you have hindsight on whats gonna happen to characters later in their lives.

this is a fully grown adult woman with a child

My penis

K1 is intended to be a sequel to 0, you're not supposed to play it as if it's 1. It has a bunch of sequel substories, has several substories that are just quizzes on what happened in 0, iterations on the styles from 0, references to 0, and in general just wants you to have played 0 before you play it. You either start with 1 or start with 0, K1 is not meant to be played like it's 1 as an intro game.

Going back to 0 from it would feel even worse because you're regressing in mechanics and style mechanics like no quick changing styles mid-attack or DoD actually being good.

Plot points in 0 actually hit allot harder when you have hindsight on whats gonna happen to characters later in their lives.

Because 0 was made after 1. You were supposed to play 0 knowing what happened in 1 because 0 is an anniversary game that celebrates 1-5 and the side games. Happenstance made it so that it worked as a starting game. This doesn't mean it's good to start with K1 at all because, again, K1 was made after 0 and expects you to have played 0. It's not 1, it's K1.

Im sorry Moose but LJ story goes to shit by chapter 10 and nose dives hard

yume

yeah if i played them like that i probably would've got burnt out too, i'm not a completionistfag i just do most of the sidestories and substories and say fuck the collectathons and stuff like that
i played 0 -> k1 though and i'm glad i did it that way for reasons moose mentioned. also i would've thought majima everywhere was fucking retarded if i played k1 first but instead i thought it was kino
with this series you just have to get used to mechanical regression sometimes unless you start with the PS2 games. also k2 combat is way worse than 0 and k1 even if it's a newer engine

because 0 was made after 1

b-but K1 is a terrible place to start, play the game that expects you to know everything already first

Your logic doesnt logic. No one under 30 is gonna have played some shit ps2 game nor should they.
Play K1 then 0
Faggot.

Play K1 then 0

Anon thats like playing 7 after 8. Thats retarded on so many levels

boring cabaret club minigame

stopped reading there, I don't respect the opinion of gay faggots

I'm sorry I don't care that much for mashing buttons like a retard while looking at poorly scanned JAV hags. It was just a time sink.