Though the Yakuza series has been around since 2006, when Yakuza eventually came to the West, it had it’s share of problems. Overrun with horrible dubbing and poor marketing strategies meant that the series never received the fair chance it deserved.
Fortunately for fans of this franchise, the Yakuza series in it’s entirety was a mega success in Japan, so Sega continued to produce more games in their mainline series for the next eleven years. With this expanse of time the game finally found it’s stride, growing in quality, perfecting the storytelling and character development, and really making a name for itself in the open world genre.
While the Yakuza series takes a lot of inspirations from beat ’em ups like River City Ransom, it carves out its own identity in this 3D, open world, story focused action game. Yakuza 0 is the culmination of everything Sega has gotten right with the series, and the best part is, you don’t have to play any of the other games to appreciate this one.
Yakuza series star- Kazuma Kiryu
In the timeline of the series, Yakuza 0 takes place at the very start of the whole Japanese crime focused epic, subsequently becoming it’s own origin story. The series always stars the gruff but easy to cheer for Kazuma Kiryu. Throughout the series, we know this character as becoming a force in his Dojima Family clan of the Yakuza. Here we find our favorite beat ’em up badass is much younger, much brasher, and not quite the Yakuza we have come to know and love yet.
Yakuza 0 takes you on a ride with Kiryu as he is set up and accused of murder on a cash collection job gone bad. The rest of the game sees Kiryu attempting to clear his name as his once colleagues turn into enemies.
In a new deviation, the player will share the gameplay time with another main character, a series favorite named Goro Majima. Throughout the arc of the series, the player never learns too much about Majima – other than he has impeccable style, he takes care of business, and it’s always incredibly exciting whenever he shows up. Now the player gets to embody the man at the start of his crime career with the Yakuza.
When we meet Majima in this origin story, he is running the hottest Cabaret in town as part of his exile from his Yakuza family due to a botched job. Though in exile, Majima is given a chance to redeem himself and with a job handed to him by a Yakuza elite, but the job is a hit, and murder just might not be Majima’s game.
Everyone’s Favorite Yakuza- Goro Majima
The narrative in this series has always been the star of the show, filled with amazing characters and well written melodrama. It plays out in a lot of moments like a Japanese soap opera about crime. Every other chapter has the player switching between the two main characters. With 17 chapters in all and every chapter as long as you want it to be thanks to all the side missions, Yakuza 0 can easily take you over 40 hours to complete.
Yakuza 0‘s plot revolves around a piece of land called the “Vacant Lot.” This piece of land is important to the rival Yakuza families as whoever ends up owning the lot will get a big break in the overarching Yakuza family. This begins a series of back stabs, betrayals, and switcheroos, that will keep you constantly guessing as to who is friend and who is foe. It is a long time before you even realize that Kiryu’s and Majima’s stories will even intersect. They seem so vastly separated that you would never guess that they would meld together so seamlessly by the game’s end.
The Streets of the Open world of Yakuza 0
While the player can take control of both Kiryu and Majima, the two characters play completely differently, both with their own styles of fighting. Kiryu and Majima each have three distinct styles that they can switch to on the fly, and all six of them are important to use at certain times depending on the type of enemies you face. These battle quickly become a dance of calculated stance swaps as you bring the pain to all that approach you.
The difficulty, while never hard, is always fun; especially as you are able to interact with items in the environment to use as weapons. You see a parking cone? Pick it up and slap somebody. Want to go a little bigger? Try picking up an entire Vespa and slamming it into your foes.
The moment to moment action is always present as “random encounter” populates the screen. You’ll notice gang member, delinquents, and men in black all over the streets waiting for you to interact with them, or sometimes they will run up to you and pick a fight. Maybe you actually want to brandish a blade or bat by taking them off incoming baddies or accumulating them through stores and the black market weapons trade.
Play Arcade games!
When you are not fighting, you are exploring the 1988’s versions of fictionalized recreations of Tokyo’s Kabukicho Shinjuku Golden Gai areas, and Osaka’s Dotonbori areas. Kiryu is in the Tokyo area, while Majima is in the Osaka area. Each town feels different and has their own assortment of side missions that are called “Sub-Stories.” These stories have you interacting with a collection of interesting characters, ranging from perverts in their underwear, to arguing couples in need of third party advice. Yakuza 0 is filled with over 100 of these Sub-Stories, and each of them range everywhere from hilarious to heartwarming.
You can also participate in a series of mini games, such as karaoke, dancing in a club, buying and selling real-estate, running a cabaret club, going to a video girl club (as creepy as it sounds), among so many other little activities to lose your time in. None of these things are required to progress the story, but they all offer a nice respite away from all the drama of crime lords.
This Yakuza Isn’t Having a Good Time
Sega has a very strong franchise on their hands, and it seems with each passing entry it gets a stronger reception in the west. This is no Grand Theft Auto clone, this is a game series that has made its own mark, and deserves all of its accolades. If you have never played the series, there is no better time than now, as Yakuza 0 is the first event to happen in the timeline. Later this year will see the release Yakuza Kiwami, a completely remade version of the first game.
Yakuza 0 is a fantastic beat em up game, with a bevy of RPG elements that help differentiate it from other open world games. So if you need a strong crime drama story, with excellent action mechanics, then look no further to the Yakuza series, and make sure you start it here with Yakuza 0.
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Dragon Ball Z games have launched in various degrees of quality. It is always good to practice skepticism with these games because for every great game like Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimensions on the Super Nintendo, we get three horrific entries like Dragon Ball Z Raging Blast. It is never fun being burned by a bad game adopted from a pre-existing franchise with personal and nostalgic ties. Thankfully the new Xenoverse series has acted as a new age for incredibly fun Dragon ball Z games when the first entry came out back in 2015. The sequel, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, moves the franchise forward with minimal changes but carries the torch of the original by bringing quality, fandom, kinetic controls, and an incredible roster to longtime fans of the anime.
Created character (in the middle)
The adventure continues to be yours in this entry and you again create your own character to participate in some of the most memorable fights in the Dragon Ball Z lore. Expect all the fast action, hard punches, enormous energy beams, and evasive teleportation maneuvers that made the TV show iconic.
There are plenty of customization options to choose from as you appoint you look to the five races of, Sayian, Namekian, Human, Buu, and Frieza race. Each race has their own ability to transform. Sayians go Super, Frieza goes perfect, Buu goes Kid, humans have hidden potential, and the Namekian’s grow large like Lord Slug. Nobody is left out of the transformation game this time around which levels the playing field in a big way. The other races lacked a true transformation which found those character under powered when fighting against transformed Super Sayians. This addition was more than welcomed.
Once you cook up your fantasy character, you are dropped right into the world of the Time Patrollers where you’ll help keep time’s flow safe from the dastardly villain duo of Towa and Mira. These characters return from the first game and use their energies to increase the power of other villains across time. These time manipulators team up with Turles and Lord Slug and tackle every major moments in the Dragon Ball Z history. These super powered versions of classic villains are determined to change the timeline for the worse. Your job as a Time Patroller is to ensure that the events go according to how they originally transpired. For whatever reason your original character’s presence does not affect time like the presence of new villains, so in that aspect the narrative makes little to no sense. Leave logic at the door for this story folks. The time traveling rules are basically nonexistent and offered up in convenient and illogical ways.
The mechanics are not much different from Xenoverse 1, however, they are refined and honed. Everything just feels faster in all the right ways, which for a Dragon Ball Z game is majorly important. You want to feel like Vegeta when reeling back for a final flash and you want to harness the speed of Gohan when you are zipping around the large areas looking for the next bout. This game delivers on that fantasy of embodying a Z Fighter, and any fan of the series would be hard pressed to feel differently.
6 Player Raid Boss Fight Against Vegeta in Ape Form
There are plenty of customization options as you progress in the game. Once you start collecting costume pieces and buying new articles of clothing with your awarded currency. You can look like some of your favorite characters or go for a completely unique look as you pan through your item drops to see which clothing has the best stats and look. If you don’t like the stats but love the look of your clothes, there is a remedy for that! QQ Bangs can be mixed up by combining clothing and power items. This negates the effects of the clothing stats which, in turn, uses the QQ Bang stats, which gives you the choice to look how you want but have the stats that fit your play style.
HUB World Conton city
There are other things to do in the HUB world as well. This world acts as your lobby, a place your character engages in as you queue up missions and quests.This open area known as Conton City, is much bigger than Xenoverse 1’s HUB world of Toki Toki City. Your created characters. It is so awesome to see all their creations as you run around the world communicating through emotes. Bonus: No load times for this HUB area with up to 250 other player-controlled combatants, all with their owns hinder this areas as you fly from end to end and do small quests and missions in that world.
There are plenty of activities to occupy your time in Conton City. Time rifts are quests that has you going to famous locations like Guru’s house, Frieza’s ship, Capsule Corp Building, and Master Roshi’s Island. Here you will find your character participating in missions that are specific to these locations. Guru’s house will have you fighting off Frieza forces and collecting Namekian Dragon Balls. While over at Frieza’s ship you will find yourself aligning with different Lieutenants as they usurp one another all in the name of becoming Frieza’s right had man. Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 does not lack content, but it does lack diversity. In any of these quests, the main thing you are doing at any time will always be fighting. The only things that do change are the enemies, the win and lose stipulations, and the arenas you fight in. It sounds like a negative point but it is no more repetitive than any other fighting game.
The gamplay loop is very exposed early on, but that comes with the territory of these mission based/grind heavy/loot collecting games. You will spend your time doing all the various types of missions I have talk about, which are ultimately the same mechanically. You will load up a story mission, fight some bad guys, and then at the end of the match get some credits, items drops and possibly even new moves. You will then utilize item drops, sell them off, or mix them into new items. Doing story missions unlocks patrol missions which are just variations of the story quests. In between these mission you can do all the time rift events which, again, is just more fighting. The game is repetitive, there is no denying that. I think this shortcoming is overshadows by all the other working parts of this game though.
Even Movie Content Make’s its Way In
The story and mission progression have not changed much from Xenoverse 1. The story itself is all about fixing the timeline of the original series, while the Patroller Missions, which can be played up to 3 players co-op online, takes more creative chances as yr avatar teaming up with the bad guys in alternative-history-like scenarios. Playing online with 2 other friends is a blast and has quickly become one of my favorite co-op experiences of this year. There are also 6-player raid missions where you’ll participate in fighting big bosses for big payouts and loot. These fights get incredibly large scale in terms of the open spaces you occupy and the amount of movement and activity going on at any given time. The intensity levels of these battles really ramp up as the screen becomes a cornucopia of colors as you blast energy waves together in an attempt to take down the damage sponges in the form of long time villains.
Out of all the games this year that I have played, the only game me and my gamer group could agree on to play co-op this year was Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. My squad and I loved the first game and played hundreds of hours of co-op, so it was obvious that we would return to this series. Also an important personal note if you’re debating to purchase this for group gaming: out of the four people I play this game with, only 2 of us are major Dragon Ball Z fans, one is a passive fan, and the other hates the entire series. He plays the game because it offers fun co-op, jaw dropping graphics, and a great fighting game/action RPG hybrid.
Graphics Looking as Close to the Anime as Can Be
There is nothing else like the Dragon Ball Xenoverse series. The creative team, Dimps, has taken everything they did right about earlier fighting game entries, and shaped it up into an Action/Adventure RPG hybrid. Much like what Gearbox did with marrying the first person shooter genre to the Role Playing Game genre with Borderlands, Xenoverse series successfully merges two completely different game types to make something that feels fresh. I think that anybody, fan or not, that is willing to give it a try, can find something to enjoy about this game. Buy it now if you’re a longtime fan, try and check it out if you have a passing interest…but this is one of those gems of this year that will be sorely under-appreciated by most of the gaming community.
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