Few games have left me as conflicted as Yakuza 0. While largely succeeding with entertaining writing of wildly various tones across its story and scenarios, the "game" of this game is a collection of mostly shallow toys pasted together with a large amount of care. Combat, when not trying to be challenging, can be entertaining from its spectacle, but becomes annoying and frustrating as hyper armor, unblockable attacks, enemy gangbangs, and offscreen, high-damage projectile attacks become more prevalent as the game progresses. Minigames can range from being great to shallow, time consuming trash. You might have seen any number of videos showcasing some odd, entertaining moment in the games. The story is solid and the sidequest scenarios are almost consistently charming, funny, and heartwarming to various proportions and can make trudging through some of the less enjoyable content significantly more doable.

My recommendation is tenuous, but a recommendation nonetheless. If you're fine with putting up with an often weak gameplay experience, but jive with the humor you might have seen, it's worth playing.

Few games have left me as conflicted as Yakuza 0. While largely succeeding with entertaining writing of wildly various tones across its story and scenarios, the "game" of this game is a collection of mostly shallow toys pasted together with a large amount of care. Combat, when not trying to be challenging, can be entertaining from its spectacle, but becomes annoying and frustrating as hyper armor, unblockable attacks, enemy gangbangs, and offscreen, high-damage projectile attacks become more prevalent as the game progresses. Minigames can range from being great to shallow, time consuming trash. You might have seen any number of videos showcasing some odd, entertaining moment in the games. The story is solid and the sidequest scenarios are almost consistently charming, funny, and heartwarming to various proportions and can make trudging through some of the less enjoyable content significantly more doable. My recommendation is tenuous, but a recommendation nonetheless. If you're fine with putting up with an often weak gameplay experience, but jive with the humor you might have seen, it's worth playing.