For Your Consideration: Yakuza 0
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Over the last couple years or so I’ve been seeing more and more sentiments from gamers my age that “it’s just not fun anymore…” in which they lament the current culture of battle passes, service games, and other devious tricks to get players to spend ludicrous amounts of money on in game items. I myself just had to experience that in the form of Ever Crisis: Final Fantasy VII.
When you first start the game you’re thrown into a tutorial in the form of a boss fight with one of the original game’s villains. After the fight you start FFVII’s legendary intro. I paused the game shortly before entering the first area and noticed a “skip tutorial” button below the game’s volume controls. I opted in. The game then took me to the main menu, in which I was shown a separate tutorial on how to spend real money in the game. Like most mobile games they give you a bunch of free gems to spend on a few rolls of the game’s gachapon machine. I played into the mechanic for a few free rounds and found myself full of shiny new weapons and armor.
I immediately uninstalled.
I know the trick. I played Granblue Fantasy. I played Dragalia Lost. Get the player over-leveled and slowly trickle in more and more opportunities to spend cash. I understand that they need to make money to stay in service, but it all seems…disingenuous. Thankfully my two examples are some of the least egregious in terms of their offerings.
…and because of that, Dragalia Lost is no longer in service.
Was it because they were too generous, or was it because their player-base didn’t show up? Both are made by the same studio, and Granblue is ostensibly a pillar of Japan’s economy at this point.
Instead of spending the next thousand or so words complaining about free to play mobile games, let’s get into a new series I like to call:
“For Your Consideration”
A curated list of titles for the games enthusiast who considers their hobby to be stale and tapped out. Here’s a few examples of the criteria I’ll be working with.
Criteria #1: Released within the last 10 years
If I recommended Final Fantasy X to someone who is jaded about the current state of gaming, then one could argue that suggesting a 20 year old game isn’t exactly picking from the tree of new releases…like at all. It just makes sense. Why ten years? Why not five? After some thought I came to the conclusion that games honestly haven't changed much in the last ten years. In lieu of Season Passes you had Online Passes or just DLC every which way.
…and with that said, criteria #2 is
Minimal DLC
I’m talking cosmetics only, and even then I want to keep it as tight as possible. I want to sell you on a complete game, not a game that has a whole year’s worth of extra content- even if the content is good. Free DLC might get a pass, but It’s likely not in the cards.
Criteria #3: Single Player
No servers to worry about, no friends to beg to play with, just you and the game. An entry in this collection may have or have had multiplayer at some point, but I don’t want it to be the main focus. I won’t recommend a military shooter like Call of Duty or Battlefield, but I may talk about 2016’s DOOM.
One soft criteria is that I want these games to be as accessible as possible in terms of acquisition. I’m not completely omitting console exclusives, but they certainly won’t be high up in my mind when thinking of games to recommend.
So let’s begin with Game #1 in the “For Your Consideration” Collection…
According to Howlongtobeat.com Yakuza 0's main story takes a modest 32 hours to finish. That’s three seasons of your favorite prestige drama. That’s 14 Scorsese films. That’s a three day weekend of a good time.
You’re gonna play Yakuza 0 for 100 hours.
In between the main story, you may find a woman who needs someone to act as her boyfriend to impress her father. You’re gonna see a famous Hollywood director film his newest blockbuster. You’re gonna belt your heart out at the karaoke bar. You’re gonna dance the night away at the disco. You’re gonna dedicate at least ten of those hundred hours playing Outrun. You are going to enjoy nearly every minute of it. It’s all for you.
I won’t dwell too deep into the game’s plot, but just know that you are about to experience probably one of the best stories in modern gaming. There’s a high chance it’ll make you a fan for life. Soon you’ll be playing Kiwami and Kiwami 2: Sega’s remakes of the first two games in the series. You’ll play Yakuza 3–6, and then you’ll just *know* that Yakuza 7 in the west is called Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After LaD you’ll gain the knowledge that in Japan Yakuza is called:
龍が如く or “Ryu Ga Gotoku”
You’ll learn that starting with Sega’s remake of their 2014 Japanese exclusive “Ryu Ga Gotoku: Ishin!” The series going forward will be known in the west as Like a Dragon- Ryu Ga Gotoku’s literal English translation. You definitely won’t be confused for a week.
You’ll start looking into the spin off game Judgement otherwise known in Japan as “Judge Eyes”- in which you play as a private investigator solving various cases around the franchise’s fictional Kamurocho district.
You’ll consider Kamurocho home.
Yakuza 0 will make you a fan for life. It gives about as much as you give it.
On top of Yakuza 0 I would like to recommend… a TV show.
2009’s “Midnight Diner” might not be about Japanese gangsters, karaoke bars, and cabaret clubs, but it’s got the same soul as Sega’s bespoke J-Drama simulator. It’s got heart. The titular diner is a character in itself, with it’s patrons coming in and out asking the proprietor to make them…whatever the proprietor can make. There’s one dish on the menu, but if the customer brings the ingredients he will make what you want. That’s Yakuza 0. If you want a 30 hour story you got it. If you want to play arcade games all day then it’s there for you. If you want to do the various sub stories then Yakuza 0 has got you covered.
Yakuza 0 is an endless buffet of a good time, and you’ll be coming back for seconds, thirds, and tenths with each following entry in the series.
-PA
If you like what you’ve read feel free to buy me a coffee or check out my patreon. If you’re from discord or insert credit follow me on Twitter if you want to keep in touch with what I’m doing in between essays.
