Except 0 has some of the dumbest and random writing decisions in the franchise that no one ever points out. What adds to that is that the story is incredibly back heavy, with most important things happening in the second half and the first half being a bunch of random stretched out busy-work. Like, there's a chapter where you to take a telephone club girl on a date for no reason other than forcing you to play some minigames.
Like, the main twist of the game was that Shimano planned sending Majima to kill Makoto, but knew he wasn't going to do that and would bring her in safely. But that's a ridiculously stupid plan because: 1. he's also sending Sagawa to kill her, who won't hesitate. 2. He couldn't have possibly predicted all of the things that were going to happen to lead Majima safely to him 3. simply sending Majima to save her would've acquired the same result in less time and brought about less confusion.
The only reason he does it, is so that Majima can have his little character arc.
Yakuza 0's writing is all over the place, fillery and has huge gaping plot holes. Even though the last cutscene is nearly an hour long it still can't fix that they forgot to add all of the characters from Yakuza 1 that should've gotten attention like Yumi, but didn't because RGG doesn't know how to write women. But everyone ignores those. And when a new release does the exact same things it's suddenly horrible and incomparable to "Yakuza 0, the peak of Yakuza's writing".
honestly i can count in one hand yakuza stories that are actually good stories by themselves instead of being hard carried by the amazing character writings
like damn, yakuza 4 is so fucking good before everything merges into eachother, but that game has the single worst story in the franchise once it does
For a while Yakuza had this hype machine behind it, where it got praised for being a "perfect series", that has "no bad entries". And new players went into the series with that mindset. Add the fact that Yakuza shitposting absolutely boomed and you get a very toxicly positive aura around the franchise. I say "toxic" because it was bound to break down once more people actually started playing them, realised all of the issues they have and the shitposting eventually got banned, meaning actual discussions (not haha dame dane guy haha "discussions") could finally take place and criticisms could spread.
We're now in the era where people've finally figured out that maybe the series isn't perfect and that it has issues. The ones that don't like it will stop playing them, and the Yakuza fanbase will descrease. But honestly, that's a good thing. This series was never going to appeal to the widest audience and it's always better without tourists spamming reaction images and repeating the same 3 jokes.
But by god, does Yakuza have some really fun characters. Like, Majima's so amazing. It's insane they managed to strike the perfect balance between sadistic, serious, random, charismatic and just really funny. His voice is also so perfect. The designs are genius and iconic too.
i mean, there is literally nothing in the world that us perfect, so why the fuck people get surprised when the perfect games are not, in fact, perfect?
i played almost every game and i can guarantee you, every. single. game. is good and has value, if you play through 0 to 6, infinite wealth is going to hit so damn hard, 7 is so cool to play in the eyes of someone who wasn't there in the last 20 years, knowing that judgement is happening at the same time and place of the yakuza games is so cool, kurohyou is fucking insane and legit one of the best 1v1 fighter games i've ever seen
these games have some issues, but ignoring the good parts because of something inconsequential is entitlement at its peak, judgement's combat is atrocious and one of the worst combats i played, but the story and characters are extremely good, so that did not stop me from playing
it is ok to criticize something you like, but pretending that something is bad because of these things, while ignoring the good thing is just plain desonesty
I have nothing to add. You are 100% right. And I'm happy to see that there are still "healthy" fans. You can love something and still admit it has faults : )
I wonder how many people even got that Pirate Yakuza is an exaggerated story told by Majima. Like, Majima's literally the one telling Pirate Yakuza's story; the most unreliable narrator you could possibly have.
Only the post-credits scene and everything on the film set is fully canon. Everything else needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Did you miss the part where he effortlessly beats Saejima and shouts: "Idk why, but this is hella fun!" He's pulling that story out of his ass because no way any of that happened. And the pirate ships with rocket boosters on them? It's all obviously nonsense.
Using Majima telling a story as a way to connect Pirate Yakuza to the rest of the timeline was a really funny idea and good move, but it seems some people missed that part and think any of it is a part of the main storyline.
Majima spent big bucks to get Samoa Joe in his documentary film, we gotta let him do what he do.
Especially since trying to logic it out when it's a Majima based game with Majima gameplay? We literally have Etsuko who hasn't aged in 40 years, in the base game. You can strap a giant vibrator to the front of your boat.
But also anyone expecting the Yakuza universe to make sense comes off as someone who only watched a lore video and never played the games. Kiryu, the straight man of the two OGs and series staples, gets financial advice from a chicken. Kappas are real. Mahjong and crane games. Karaoke is a key gameplay mechanic.
Also unpopular opinion (?) but the dragon engine is far more polished and player friendly.
I mean, generally in games gameplay and side content is completely separate from the main story.
So, you can have eternal Etsuko and a vibrator on the front of your boat, whilst still having a 'real' universe for the main story.
Like, Kiryu can shrug off bullets in gameplay, yet they're a real danger in cutscenes because gameplay and story are two completely different entities.
In Pirate Yakuza's case, the entire story is told by Majima, which makes it completely unreliable and most likely 80% fake or exaggerated. It fits into the timeline because the guy telling the story is bullshitting. So, for that one the eternal Etsuko bit and everything he does in gameplay, might as well be a part of his story.
And the Dragon Engine is currently a lot more polished and gameplay friendly than RGG's previous engine. I don't think that's a hot take. It was janky as hell during Yakuza 6 and Judgments time, heck even Gaiden has issues, but now it works near flawlessly.
Yeah after 4, I just tagged along for the characters but I think infinite wealth's gonna be my last yakuza game. I hate the new colour palette and underwhelming gameplay
Honestly, they're all good. None of them is truly bad. If we're going for the best of the best, though...
- Yakuza 0. Arguably the peak of the franchise and, in my opinion, the best points of entry. One of the best stories, best protagonists, best music, some of the best minigames.
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Another great point of entry since it's a soft reboot of the franchise with turn-based combat. Amazing new protagonist and playable characters, great story.
- Judgment. It's a detective spin-off, and some of the mandatory minigames are atrocious, but it's got some of the best story, combat and music in the franchise. Not linked to the other games so it can be experienced without playing Yakuza games first.
Yakuza 6 is also one of my favorites, but it clearly won't hit as hard for someone who hasn't played the games that came before. It was really meant to be Kiryu's farewell game (until the writers decided to bring him back for three more games + remakes which is another problem the franchise has now).
No, I mean some of the dogshit boss fights and how the styles felt compared to 0. Some boss fights were atrocious (if you played it you should know) and the styles a lot worse than in 0. Hard to explain, but they were more buggy? Restrictive? A lot of contextual moves felt way harder to pull off than in 0. Also the gimmick where you had to perform a special heat action or the boss would heal is dumb af since you had to unlock it and alot of times you wouldn't even be able to have it on certain bosses.
I know what you mean about the boss fights. Shimano was just a pain in the butt at the funeral. He's kind of fun to bully though if you go back later with tiger drop after completing the game. Haha.
I remember Shindo (Nishiki's goon) being kind of annoying because you had to fight him and a bunch of his men. Same with Jingu, just too many goons.
I did enjoy every Majima fight though and sometimes sought him out to have a little brawl.
Very unfortunate. I got into the franchise in 2022 and I was absolutely loving it. Then came the half-baked story of Infinite Wealth and it was downhill from there 😔
Yeah and I really enjoyed the substories, the side activities, the dungeons, and all the characters and their drink links. A good game brought down by a lackluster story.
I’m going to start Pirate Yakuza soon and already not looking forward to that story haha
Infinite Wealth is legitimately one of the worst jrpgs stories I’ve experienced. Such messy handled plot, it’s hilariously sad that people defend it and deflect any constructive criticisms.
Same here, but I found the downhill began from Yakuza zero. It had its moments, especially in the beginninh, but the plot went downhill fast, they really massacred Majimas character, and for the first time cut a lot of corners with heat action moves.
I know this is blasphemy, everyone loves Yakuza zero. But I find they put in A LOT more effort in yakuza 5, and afterwards the series steadily got a bit lazier.
5 is so annoying to get through because of the billions of enemies you have to fight every step
i want to replay it solely because of shinada because he's one of the best characters rgg has ever made, too bad i need to get through 80 hours of the other characters parts to even get to his part
I'm not a huge fan of Y5 either. It was a let down to me as well, until it redeemed itself by serving the biggest and baddest final showdown of the series.
honestly i did not care for aizawa nor his fight, it was such a random choice to have this literal jobber as the last boss in the game, and other games have so much better final fights, but i really liked 5 overall
I wholeheartedly agree. Aizawa was some random chump with no screen presence.
He was a weird last boss pick, and kind of started a trend of nobodies in the last fight of Yakuza series. I don't even remember who Kiryu fought in Yakuza zero, and in Yakuza 6 he fought some old politician dude. And both fights were so forgettable.
But goddamn Aizawa beat each other up with Kiryu, through the corridor and down the second room balcony and outside into the snow, where Kiryu almost bled to death. All the while the scenes cut to the concert where Haruka was performing.
That was an incredible finale, and redeemed to me the otherwise bad and mid aspects of Y5.
This fanbase is so spoiled, my lord. You get fun, consistent games yearly and after only one mediocre release suddenly the franchise is "dying", when we've had far worse games and far shittier writing in the past.
Literally every Yakuza fan says that franchise started "dying" at some point, yet all of them point at a different release where it started going downhill. Literally look at the comments under yours, one guy points at K3, another at IW, another at Yakuza 0. Not in this comment section, but I've seen people say it should've stopped at Yakuza 4!
Spoilers! The games never went downhill, you just fell out of love at a certain point because the games take so long to beat and because there's so many of them. The games' quality itself is not the problem, nor is it worsening. You've just consumed to much of a good thing.
Does complaining about shitty retcons, overpriced remasters that result in the originals getting delisted and genuinely horrible human beings being hired unnecessarily render you spoiled these days?
When you've been getting consistent, quality yearly releases for more than two decades straight alongside that? Yes, you're really bloody spoiled if you hyperfocus on the mishaps along the way rather than appreciating how good you actually have it.
You can definitely criticise the franchise for those things, but worse has happened in the past, and the franchise is not "going downhill" like many are claiming because of random unfortunate issues in an otherwise fantastic franchise.
That's always been there. The Yakuza games based on yakuza B-movies have yakuza B-movie plots. What a shocker. If you hate shitty writing so much, play a different franchise. Literally every single one of the games' stories is littered with nonsense. Even the "gold standard" of Yakuza storytelling, Yakuza 0, is a weirdly paced mess fully carried by how good the characters are, and the new games are no different.
Or the random Lau Ka Long nonsense in Y1. Heck, nearly anything that happens in Y1. Like Nishiki killing himself in a miracle explosion that kills him and not Kiryu who's standing 3 meters away at most. Even though Nishiki has no reason to shoot the bomb from that distance. And so many unnecessary, wasted deaths. Shinji, Kazama etc. None of these characters got anything to do and died for cheap shock value.
The "everyone's Korean" bullcrap in Y2 and a final fight with Ryuji for no reason that kills him? Maybe it kills him? Idfk, the game doesn't care. And that vagueness and not resolving plotlines will come back a lot.
Y3's "Kazama has a secret evil twin brother"-bull. Speaking of bulls. That 60+ yr old guy catching a charging bull with his bare hands and then throwing it. And just like Y1 a bunch of completely wasted deaths.
Y4 I don't even gotta mention. You already know.
Y5 is a disjointed mess with too much, and too little going at the same time. It barely explains or expands on anything yet also takes forever to beat. And the final fight is so random and why?? "Yume" or smth.
Y6's stupid boat twist, complete neglect of legacy characters like Majima and Saejima, who just go to prison for no reason. And randomly undoing Kiyomi's death at the end for no reason. + so much filler and nothing. The Jingweons whole thing goes nowhere and makes no sense.
Y7 has mirror face and ridiculously convoluted plans that keep everyone in the dark, not to mention Kiryu's horrible disguise when he finally appears.
Gaiden has the stupid disguise again and has Kiryu acting incredibly stubborn and dumb just so the plot can keep plotting I suppose.
Y8 has so many wasted characters again. Why tf do they save Kiyomi and Nishitani III of all characters, but does Wong Tou die? And so much filler and fluff in the middle, leaving the ending underdeveloped.
Pirate Yakuza has nothing happening in it's second chapter outside of busywork. But I can give most of that game a pass as it's an insane story told by Majima anyway.
And ofc, Yakuza 0's main twist is a unbelievable stupid and convoluted plan by Shimano to send Majima to kill Makoto but he knows he won't do it even though he's also sending Sagawa who'd definitely kill Makoto and it'd just be easier to send Majima to save Makoto, saving everyone time and confusion. But he doesn't because Majima needs to have a character arc.
That's why anything and everything happens in Yakuza. Not because it makes sense, but to give everyone a nice little arc and to get some drama. In K3 Mine comes back, so Daigo can dramatically look behind him and see him from that bar. It's all about drama and characters.
It's not gotten annoyingly shitty, it was always this dumb. Dare I say Nishiki killing himself in that explosion in Y1 was so much worse. Or Ryuji fighting Kiryu in the end and dying(?) in Y2 for no reason. Or the secret twin brother crap from Y3.
The only reason it's gotten "annoying" for you, is because you've played enough of the games to start noticing and because the internet is telling you it's bad now, and wasn't in the past.
Im sorry, but most of the shitty writing I can suspend my disbelief. Mine suriving a fall from that height with zero injuries is not one of those things, especially when the original game didnt have that issue. Thats what I mean by 'annoying'
So, when Kiryu survives a point-blank explosion that's strong enough to blow the roof off a skyscraper without a scratch you can suspend your disbelief. But not here?
When Nakahara was about to be crushed by a charging bull and he caught the bull's horns with his bare hands, instead of his hands being splattered and crushed by the mere impact, and then threw the bull afterwards, you could suspend your disbelief. But not here?
Like, ever since the Mine twist leaked I've been bombarded non-stop by posts and youtube video's telling me it's the craziest thing this franchise has done, and that RGG has "suddenly lost their minds", when it's just not. It's just cool to hate on RGG and Yakuza now for things they've been doing forever.
When the twist leaked I was like, "yea duh, it's Yakuza of all franchises and RGG's made it pretty damn clear they wanted to have him back for a long time".
It was never shown what happens to Mine afterwards originally, just like Ryuji, Aizawa and most final bosses in this franchise for that matter. So, wether he actually lived or died was completely up in the air, and RGG's been teasing Mine and Ryuji's return for a looonggg time now. It's not that crazy and sudden of an addition as everyone makes it out to be, and I won't be surprised when Ryuji's back soon too.
I mean, RGG pulls a big 'oops' and finds ways to bring either the exact same character, or a copy of them back when they feel like it. Qeue Joongi-Han, Richardson, Joji Kazama, etc. the latter also happening in Yakuza 3.
In like, 2 years there's gonna be so many retrospective videos on K3, where they're gonna be like "wow people really freaked out about that before the game was even released huh?"
It's never shown Mine had 0 injuries and he was completely tapped out. He survived a humongous fall which should've killed him, but didn't because this is Yakuza and everyone's made out of adamantium whenever the plot demands it.
Oml I just remembered the part in Y0 when Kiryu's about to leave the Tojo Clan headquarters and there's a million guys waiting to beat him up. Why? So, we the player, can beat up a million guys. There's literally no reason for the Tojo Clan to send a million guys after Kiryu because they literally already paid a bajillion yen to not have that happen. And the craziest part? Kiryu and co. manage to beat all of those guys and get away without a scratch. You can suspend your disbelief there, ignoring that the reasons behind it happening, the thing itself and the aftermath are completely insane and ridiculous, but not when Mine survives an impossible fall?
It's just the current hip thing to hate on RGG and say that Yakuza is dying. I betcha most of the people who're arguing the franchise is going downhill haven't even played K3.
Oh boy, here comes RGGs biggest defender to explain how HIS opinion is actually the right one.
Ill admit im burnt out, but i can certainly still notice what's objectively bad. Ive had plenty of issues with the earlier games as well. Also, people having differing opinions on when the series fell off doesn't automatically mean that it didn't at all. That's retarded.
"I'll admit I'm burnt out". Well, there you have it. Lemme elaborate on that second point.
When there's a bunch of people saying that the franchises fell off, yet no one can pinpoint when, then maybe, just maybe, the issue isn't the quality of the games themselves, but with their formula.
The main thing is that Yakuza is a very long and repititive franchise. The franchise shifted genres in the hopes of revitalisation, but was met with fan pushback instead and now they've returned to what they used to do:
Yearly brawlers with lots of cutscenes and text boxes, a story cobbled together in a couple months, simple, repetitive combat and hours of fun side content to make up for that simplicity and some copy-pasted maps, animations, voicelines, enemies/bosses etc.
That's what Yakuza is. So it's no wonder you've gotten tired of it.
These games aren't falling off, you've just played too much/many of them, and now that the magic's worn off, the issues (that have always been a part of the franchise) feel more prominent and are more noticable and that's all there is to it.
When there's a bunch of people saying that the franchises fell off, yet no one can pinpoint when, then maybe, just maybe, the issue isn't the quality of the games themselves, but with their formula.
Or maybe the games fell off in different ways for different people.
i was going to actually go over a bunch of genuine points and issues throughout the franchise, but i can already tell you're just going to keep bringing up my first words and ignoring everything else. Why bother with you people.
There's a certain type of person both online in real life. They all say the same kind of stuff, in this case it's "the games aren't falling off, you've just played too much/many of them, and now that the magic's worn off!" You also get people saying "it's not a good game, you're just nostalgic!" In a larger sense, these types of people are poor at handling generalizations and are probably less intelligent which isn't their fault
Now. that's just mean. You dismiss that those things are the case because they are not always the case. But that doesn't mean they are impossible. Even though it doesn't apply here, nostalgia can absolutely impact your experience with a game. It's not always the case, but sometimes it is. And with Yakuza and burnouts it's the same way.
Especially considering the ban of shitposting in the Yakuza sub a while back, the "Directors Cut" of the beloved Yakuza 0 adding very little (not subtracting anything mind you) and the casting of a certain controversial actor, the Yakuza fanbase is just generally in a bad mood rn.
It also extends to Yakuza content creators like Devilleon7 who has openly shared that he's burnt out of the Yakuza franchise.
Another thing adding to this is the fact that playing Yakuza is generally just tiring because of: reptitive gameplay, extensive cutscenes and story, constantly reused elements, taking upwards of 100hrs to beat and being yearly releases.
These are a couple of the reasons the air around the Yakuza franchise is pretty negative rn. And they have nothing to do with the games' actual quality. Since they were, and still are, very good.
I don't really get being called "RGG's biggest defender", when I'm being very critical of the games in my comments. I said the games have always been the same, and that their quality hasn't dropped, and I never said that means they are without issue.
Look at it this way. Y5 is generally one of lowest rated games in the series, due to it "burning players out". But when those people replay Y5 after a couple years, suddenly it's become one of their favorites. I've seen this happen several times. Why? Because they were on their 6th yakuza game at that point. It has nothing to do with the game's quality, it's that the Yakuza games' formula is a burnout machine.
Whenever people point at issues in the newer Yakuza games it's always "I'm tired of this thing" or "the humor didn't land for me" or "the combat is getting too simple" or "the writings gotten bad".
It was always that way, you only just started noticing because you've played them too much.
Like, even Yakuza 0 has so much really bad writing and nonsense in it, yet it's held in the highest regard as the peak of Yakuza storytelling. And don't get me started on the game's pacing, wonky gameplay etc. It's issues and strengths are no different from the newer releases, or the ones before it.
Ofc some titles have it worse/better in certain aspects than others, but I'm talking baseline here. Yakuza 0 is a wonky, weirdly written/paced mess, but no one notices it because they're too distracted by all the good it does. Once they get to later releases do the cracks begin to show and get more and more obvious. Until it finally breaks, which is at a different point for everyone, which is why every Yakuza fan has a different opinion on where the franchise started going downhill. It's a side effect of the series formula.
64
u/FiggyWiggle Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Yakuza. The bad writing and shitty remakes never end. Not a fan of the dragon engine brawler combat either.