The title sort of works, and I’m sticking with it.

Despite having never played a game in the Yakuza series, Yakuza 0 acts as a wonderful starting point for new fans to jump into and is also a wonderful beginning point for the series’ characters for returning fans to witness and love. From the mix of the weird and wonderful quirkiness of the side activities to the chilling mafia story of the main game, Yakuza 0 offers players a control on their own pace of play that can see you taking a deep dive into the sleazy underbelly of Kamurocho or simply surf along an epic tale of organised crime and sweet back tattoos.

It’s the 80s in one of Japan’s red-light districts, Kamurocho, and you are a young Kazuma Kiryu, or Kiryu Kazuma in Japan, who is a recent recruit to the Dojima family branch of the Tojo Clan Yakuza. While out on a simple shakedown job he ends up inadvertently suspected of the murder of his target. Alongside the general mishap of possibly killing a man dead, this particular mishap brings a lot of attention to a chunk of land that had long been forgotten and now with the eyes of the media and other organisations on this plot of land, the Dojima family’s plans of taking over all of Kamurocho go up in smoke! How will Kiryu atone for such a blunder? If you know about as much about criminal syndicates, such as the titular yakuza, as I do it probably involves losing a chunk of your hand, or your life.

Needless to say, Kiryu is mostly innocent when it comes to this murder accusation, and it’s up to you to prove your innocence, except it’s also not that simple because a lot of the mafia want you dead, due to bringing shame upon the family name and disobeying the orders of your higher-ups. Yakuza 0 becomes a game of political intrigue, except the politics are that of criminal organisations that are all trying to stab each other in the back all while still working for the same boss and being part of the same organisation. It’d be like the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary trying to bring each other to the ground, while all still working for the government and publicly getting on with one another, but also both gunning for the top spot with knives behind their backs, except that’s already a thing. Criminal syndicates are weird like that. But in the Yakuza series of games this level of elaborate schemes within schemes is the bread and butter of the stories you’ll witness.

All of this is brought together with the other side of this story, being that of Goro Majima, Majima Goro in Japan, who runs a cabaret in another region of Japan, Sotenbori which is the fictional entertainment district of Osaka. If Kiryu’s story involves getting out of the yakuza in order to pursue his own innocence, Majima’s story is that of trying to get back into the yakuza after having been exiled from the organisation after trying to defy orders with his sworn brother. Majima is free from the yakuza in name only, as despite being the manager of the best cabaret in town, his profits go to the local mafia and their boss keeps a short lead on Majima, often dropping in to give the one eyed manager a surprise visit. In an attempt to get reinstated with the family Majima is given a simple mission. To find a Makoto Makimura and kill them. A simple hit, and yet things get increasingly more complicated from there. Where first these two stories seem to have little to no connection, slowly but surely the threads begin to connect and the connecting of fates of these two famous characters of the series is forged.

Intrigue and criminal mystery is a constant and piping hot vein that leads the player by the nose throughout the entire story of this game. Moments of sudden escalation and dramatic showdowns that boil down to quiet tones of trying to work out who is behind what and keeping a low profile. The story goes through moments of rapid expansion and collapse that it turns into the roller coaster ride of angry shouting Japanese men and an increasing amount of explosions and gun shots. These quieter moments are built upon further as you are given free reign to enjoy your respective areas to your heart’s delight. Kiryu can walk on down to the local bowling alley and enjoy a couple of frames, or Majima goes to the underground casino and loses all of his money on roulette as the ball refuses to land on number 17 or the surrounding spots. This is where the well recorded wackiness of the Yakuza series begins to shine. There’s something undeniably funny about this straight laced Yakuza, such as Kiryu, waltzing into local karaoke bar and belt out his favourite song, or the dangerous looking Majima stepping on to the dance floor to pull some impressive shapes at the local disco.

The number of side activities to do in Yakuza 0 are numerous and all rather silly and enjoyable. Bowling, batting cages, karaoke, disco and a handful of parlour and gambling games and more. Even more bizarre mini-games are at hand to make you really begin to question yourself as you go to the local call center club and engage in lively conversation with young ladies, or the local cat fighting club to gamble on scantily clad women suplexing each other into oblivion. Kind of gross, yes, but these shadier sides highlight the towns themselves. Kamurocho is the red-light district and Yakuza 0 doesn’t shy away from this. You don’t have to go and enjoy erotic videos, but you can and the game even acknowledges the absurdity of this with the presence of tissue boxes and the like.

Alongside all the bars, restaurants and shops you can visit there are hundreds of side stories to engage in and these, much as the tone of the game, vary wildly from the workings of the sleazy underbelly of Japan and breaking faces to reclaim debts, land and grudges, and then also the utterly bizarre tales of hunting down a stolen videogame for a young child or wading waist deep into the world of slot car racing, which is a bit like scalextric, or teaching a shy girl how to be a dominatrix. While the strict twists and turns of the main story keep you on the edge of your seat and continuing down the rabbit hole of crime, it’s the weird side stories that act as these wonderful breaks for the game to revel in the wackiness that’s affiliated with Japanese culture. It’s engaging with these side stories that can change your game from a quick 30 hours of fast yakuza action to well over 70 hours of wild city action.

To some extent the sheer volume of stuff and side activities can be part of Yakuza 0’s downfall as it can almost feel like the game almost grinds to a halt as you’re caught up in yet another side activity when all you wanted to do was save your game, but you’re more than capable to just ignore most of these and continue with your game like nothing ever happened. Each side of the story has a major side activity to them, being either the cutthroat world of real estate or the equally cutthroat world of operating a cabaret club, and its getting lost in these that found my own playthrough being at 60 hours and only a third of the way through the game proper. That said, there did come a point for myself where a lot of these side activities became more bothersome than fun, as characters interrupt your strut to the next chunk of story to talk about something tedious, like an obsession with pornography. It’s less a detriment of the game itself and more reaching ones own limit of grind.

Having gotten this far into a review with only the slight teases of the combat in Yakuza 0 is some kind of crime, but that’s what being in the yakuza is all about. Crime. Yakuza 0’s combat is, in a word, wild. Each character has a variety of styles to chose from and each one is unique across all characters. For the most part though you’ll be bashing together combos against your foes as you beat them within an inch of their lives and then suddenly you’ve picked up a motorcycle and have smashed them over the head with it. The Yakuza series makes use of “Heat Actions” which tend to involve special moves that revolve around either environmental aspects or by picking up the nearest sign, traffic cone or bicycle and using them to introduce your foe’s face to the concrete floor in as creative way as you see fit. There’s probably something to be said how the story of both characters involve killing someone, of which both have neither killed before, and these heat actions involving what would almost definitely be a fatal amount of bludgeoning damage, or even straight up knife insertion, but the actions themselves are so fun and over the top that you find yourself actively seeking out new items to use in different ways just to get the exciting finisher.

For petty street scrapes these over the top finishers add spice and variety to get you through the day, but during the large scale siege moments that this series confronts you with the high octane fights as you smash through corridors and the like feel like something out of the film Old Boy, using anything and everything around you to progress against the hoardes of dudes. Not to mention the large and intense boss fights that can see a simple slip of focus leave you reeling on the floor as a shirtless man stomps on your face. There’s nothing more satisfying than a fight breaking out and you realise you’re in a room filled with tables, chairs and various other paraphernalia to use to smash into the face of your adversary.

For my first Yakuza game, Yakuza 0 was a total riot of a game to play. The characters were both fun and engaging and watching each be pushed to their limits leads to an incredible story that keeps you on the edge of your seat as the whole thing builds to a wonderful crescendo that is both incredibly somber and at the same time gratifyingly exciting. Going in, I expected Yakuza 0 to be a fun and silly game that mostly achieved it’s cult status from the sheer ludicrous nature of it’s extra parts, the over the top scenes of playing pool and darts, the bonkers combat that involves pouring a boiling hot kettle on someone’s face or even just the joys of karaoke. I was pleasantly surprised to find that behind this cover of quirkiness, there lay this raw and over the top mafioso story. With a soundtrack that’s both subtle, but totally pumping, and the night lights of both Kamurocho and Sotenbori giving the genuine air of a bustling city, Yakuza 0 is both a wonderful visual experience and audio delight. The only place the whole thing stumbles and falls is the use of the mini-map that can easily lead to the player seldom looking up at the city itself and remain entirely focused on the lower left of the screen, but that’s more of a player fault than anything.

If anything I’m now incredibly excited to play more of the franchise such as the recently released Yakuza 6 and the recently announced re-releases of Yakuza 3, 4 and 5.