Thread 723346567

Which ones are worth playing?

none

>>723346567 (OP)
2 (OG)
Judgment (PS4)
That's about it

>>723346567 (OP)
1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. everything else is shit.

Yakuza 2 (PS2)
Yakuza 0 (everything but the Director's Cut)
Judgment (PS4 version running on a PS5 for the definitive version)

>everyone keeps acting like Kiryu is this wise old mentor figure that knows whats best for the clan
>he's literally just an autistic brute that solves every problem by punching it until it goes away

This series is comedy gold.

>>723346567 (OP)
0 1og 2og 3 4 6 with a very loose 5 for being almost completely incoherent and because Shinada fucks hookers and is cool

>>723347927
That's kind of the fault of 0, prior to it was assumed Kiryu had been in and done some rough shit and seen bad shit and was raised wise by Kazama.
0 has you beat up an innocent guy 1 time, Kiryu looks down at his bloodied hands and says "what have I done" which tells the audience that Kiryu forever is was and will be a boyscout who has never done a single questionable or innoble thing in his life, retroactively making him kinda gay

>>723346567 (OP)
Dead Souls

>>723350141
Not even a joke. It's one the best Halloween games.

>>723346567 (OP)
0-2-4-5

>>723346567 (OP)
0
the kiryu part of 5
the shinada part of 5

that's it
that's it

>>723348010
4 shits the bed so bad I dunno how you get any madder at 5 for being mostly garbage

>>723346567 (OP)
3

>>723350752
4 is a cartoon with a couple silly twists and turns.
5 is a narrative disaster in almost every sense, I always have to point to the rooftop battle to the pseudo death
>saejima is back in town looking for Kiryu because they're tight
>he meets Kiryu and the two other guys on the roof
>there is zero set up for why these guys must fight to the death
>"The mastermind is expecting us to follow his plan and fight to death"
>".......okay!"
>then they fucking do it
This is one of like 10-20 instances of the story making no fucking sense but it's a great indicator of the kind of story 5 is. Is 4 dumb? Yeah, but it has a proper throughline, RUBBER BULLETS LMAO all day but at least it still kind of works

>>723350752
4 was still making real improvements over 3. The new combat styles were refreshing and fun to play with upgrades. Hostess clubs had improved presentation, with the first visit to any club introducing multiple hostesses and customer profiling. The story had shit execution but some good ideas, like playing part of it from police perspective. Kamurocho was utilized more than ever before, with different characters having stakes in different aspects of the town.

5 was a mess in more ways than just story-wise. The split between cities left all of them unfinished, with very little to do outside of the restaurant checklist and designated minigames. The density of combat encounters was overtuned to the point of being a nuisance. Combat was expanded and not in good ways, like giving Akiyama that dumb air juggling mode and introducing so many redundant heat actions that they blocked normal moves unless you played constantly holding L2. Boss fights were not memorable at any point of the game, you went into characters' final chapters expecting to be bored. Even music was generic, unmemorable garbage.

>>723352046
Even though the cities were underbaked, it was probably necessary. Like you can't just repeat Y4 and make the whole thing like 90% take place in Kamurocho again.

>>723352945
There's a middle ground between only Kamuro and 4 extra cities. The same manpower put to work on 2 additional cities could probably deliver them in a much better state.

>>723353161
Well I mean they saved some resources and time by making one of the cities just Sotenbori again. That said, I personally can't help but feel that you could probably tighten up the pacing by removing Saejima.

>>723346567 (OP)
KIWAMI 1
KIWAMI 2
Yakuza 6
Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7)
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Yakuza 8)
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
KIWAMI 3 when it comes out

>>723353320
Saejima and Haruka were mostly unnecessary to the overarching plot, their relevant parts could be covered in cutscenes without making entire city hubs, much like the first game had flashbacks to Yokohama's Chinatown and one mission inside of a chink restaurant without adding a whole Chinatown map.

>>723346567 (OP)
8 is the GOAT. 0 is shit and not worth anybody's time unless you're a chink and you really love that the game revolves around defending poor innocent chinks from the evil nips.

>>723346567 (OP)
I played 0, K1, K2 and 7 and the latter 3 were bad, and I was retarded for not giving up on the series earlier. 0 was pretty good, though.

>>723346567 (OP)
Yakuza 0
You get the full experience package from it and newer or older titles bring nothing worthwhile to the table

>>723346567 (OP)
Play one and you have played all of them.

>>723346567 (OP)
3 and none of the others

>>723347110
fpbp

>>723347927
I love how his big plan to reveal the mastermind in 5 was to punch his allies until the mastermind shows himself.

>>723355539
It worked for him in previous games.
>punch Jingu until Nishiki shows up
>deathmatch with Ryuji until Terada and Takashima show up
>punch Mine and his entire clan until glowniggers show up
>punch Saejima, Akiyama and Tanimura until Akiyama forks out the money to lure out all final villains
>punch zombies then shoot even more zombies until Ryuji shows up and takes him to Haruka

>>723352046
This anon gets it. 4 honestly is their best in OOE but as usual the PC version is screwed. Akiyama is fun to play and 2 things i miss from 4 is fighter maker and the face deformation when you beat the shit out of enemy. Kamurocho is at it's peak design with added verticality and underground area. The story hinder it's brilliance and as usual FUCK SAITO

>>723348130
>prior to it was assumed Kiryu had been in and done some rough shit and seen bad shit and was raised wise by Kazama
Are you stupid? From the first moments of the original game Kiryu is established as a goodie two shoes with a firm punch by covering for Nishiki and later Haruka. The tie-in prequel film released around the same time and later 2 establish that he was a brat until joining the yakuza where he disciplined himself. Not a single game prior to 0 have made him out to be a mysterious man with a shady past and anyone who says this hasn’t paid basic attention to what’s presented

>>723356449
The first game established him as a debt collector who would trash entire buildings and beat debtors to the brink of death. It's also shown that he trained Shinji to be pretty effective at collecting debts and possibly extorting money in other ways, as Shinji was easily able to afford luxury escorts. Plus he didn't mind his girlfriend working as a hostess, a glorified prostitute.
The second game had the bystanders remark on the fact that suddenly "someone" was drowning thugs in the Sotenbori river.
The third game has a substory in which Kiryu brings up his past in the debt collection business. Also when Mine visits him in the Purgatory, Kiryu is the only person in the room to shrug off Kanda's beheading and what Snake Flower had done to Hamazaki's family, implying not only he had seen some shit, he was completely used to it.
I can't remember which games featured them, but some other substories had Kiryu taking the side of loan sharks as long as they weren't charging exorbitant interest or constantly adding more fees.

>>723346567 (OP)
0-4 are pretty great.
try to play 5, and if you enjoyed it: play 6. if you can handle 5 - you can handle 6.
a whole half of 5 undeniably sucks ass, while the other half is divisive. keep in mind that yakuza 5 is a long game. it's way longer than any of the others.
6 is unforgivable, although that's the finale, so if you've already gotten through 5, i think you'd be curious enough to push through to the very end.
also watch the miike movie.

>>723356449
Kiryu is presented as a good two shoes in spite of his past, the penitent thug just trying to get by. 0 rewrites this history and says "it was just the one time and Kiryu felt very bad about it"

>>723359286
0 happens not long after he joined Dojima. There's a 7 year gap in which the only the only thing we were shown was that Kiryu used to be at war with the triads.
His whole sense of morality is completely warped anyway. He's like the guy who casually shoplifts, beats the shit out of his children and vandalizes bus stops, but calls for lynching rapists or animal abusers, "dem real criminals".

>>723359564
>Kiryus morality is warped
I don't disagree but Y0 being about goodboi Kiryu clearing his good name again paints a much different picture than the past life Kiryu alludes to in 1,2 and 3.

I saw Judgment on sale for 10 bucks, might've been Green Man, just check IsThereAnyDeal to see where

>>723346567 (OP)
>played/recommend playing
0, Kiwami 1, Kiwami 2, 4 remastered, 5 remastered, 6 The Song of Life, Like a Dragon, Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, Judgment, Fist of the North Star Lost Paradise
>played/recommend skipping
3 remastered (bad gameplay), Lost Judgment (the worst story in the series), Like a Dragon Ishin (bad gameplay)
>have not played
the rest

I did not care for 6

>>723359985
>Lost Judgment (the worst story in the series)
>when 3, 4, 5, and 6 exist
lmao
RUMAO

>>723360113
lost judgement is objectively the worst story they have ever come up with

>>723360113
LJ gets memed because MUH SAWA-SENSEI is only very slightly exaggerated. It gets annoying but I agree LJ is better than much of the series plotwise

>>723359638
Well, he's trying to clear murder charges and avoid rotting in prison for the next 20 years if not longer. The whole situation was a bit different than taking the fall for Nishiki several years later. Police and courts treat murders of civilians differently than casualties in criminal vs criminal squabbles. Plus he wanted to clear Kazama's name.

>>723360113
Hell I'll dare say that LJ still has a better story than anything that came directly after it too.
there's no universe where someone would enjoy 8's more, let alone something like pirates.

>>723360554
>there's no universe where someone would enjoy 8's more, let alone something like pirates.
Wait for the tripfag. If he fails to show up, there's always reddit too.

>>723360554
I personally enjoy the absurdities. Being too down to earth kinda bores me. The main series does sort of take steps to justify why I have to fight a 1v100 a yakuza army, whereas Yagami does the same thing but the story has to more or less pretend that he didn't because lorewise, Yagami isn't as strong as Kiryu.

>>723360748
bro there's no way any of these narratives, let alone LJ, is remotely down to earth.

>>723360905
Yagami wasn't involved in highway chases with exploding helicopters or rooftop showdowns with exploding skyscrapers.

How much would I be missing if I jumped from 0 to 7? I do want to play most of them but I'm kinda in the mood for an rpg.

>>723360991
0 deaths by the way

>>723361036
Kiryu(dame da ne guy) is a tough guy but he retired(allegedly)
The Yakuza have been disbanded, there ya go, that's all you missed thanks to Y7 being abject shit

>>723361036
despite what autists might say, you can easily catch up on the story through a youtube video if you care that much. 7 and 8 are great though, highly recommended if you want to jump straight into the new turn based format

>>723360991
but a serial murderer that's blackmailing a gang of highschool bullies and has the bodies of his victims in deep freeze for the A plot while the B plot has an astroturfed glowie gang trying to blackmail the Health department into using boomer's retirement money for gambling debts somehow isn't slightly silly?
what's next, the golden castle inside a castle in yakuza 2 doesn't count as le ebin wacky because it was heckin yakuza 2?

>>723361189
Dubya Bush was humiliated as the governor of Texas, right before his presidential campaign, by a big brain homosexual who escaped from prison, then faked credentials to get the cushy job of CFO at the North American Medical Management, where he proceeded to siphon boomers' ass cancer treatment money to support his lavish and extravagant homo lifestyle. From there it was a 2 years long series of more prison escapes, phone scams, gambling sprees and casino bans, impersonations of judges, attorneys and FBI agents, faking death and posing as the doctor who issued the death certificate. Real life is crazier than any fiction.

It's always funny to me that there are people who resent the ludicrous elements of Yakuza plots, as if there was ever a point in the series when shit WASN'T retarded. Kiryu punched out two tigers in the second game.

>>723362608
and that still isn't the definition of down to earth.
Just be honest and admit that you didn't like LJ's story because it fails to portray Japanese bullying in a proper light or provides a real solution for it beyond the status quo, Yagami failing to put up a half decent argument, and for once again using the health industry for the second time in a row but in a far more boring manner and I'll believe you far sooner than I'll believe "nah, not wacky enough for me"

>>723362760
There IS no real solution to it. If there were a solution that could be implemented, it would have been implemented already. It's literally impossible for Yagami to do anything about it. He's just one guy and has no clout or power at all.

>>723362907
Oh yeah I'll admit that, hell if anything the biggest issue with LJ's story is that it tells Yagami's side of it extremely poorly, morally I agree with him because murder is flat out not a good thing, but god damn does he do a lackluster job of getting me on his side.
It's like when you see an anon saying something you agree with, but he's explaining it in a retarded manner so you kinda want to root for the other guy.

>>723363042
And now you see why he's just a small-time detective. He lacks the with or charisma to be able to sufficiently pull off any sort of fancy speech.

>>723363192
Even in Judgment it was Izumida and Hoshino carrying the whole trial in the end. Hell, Kaito is more charismatic than Yagami and his presence carried all the slower parts of the game.

>>723362714
Punching tigers is fun.

"OH MY RUBBER BULLETS" is just plain bad writing.

0 > K1 > K2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 6 > 7 > Garden > 8 > Pirate
Alternatively you can play of 1 and 2 instead of the Kiwamis after 0.
And you can also just play 0 and 7

>>723363510
It's kinda crazy how out of all the silly shit with rubber bullets, Munakata not shooting himself with a rubber bullet at the end of the game wasn't a thing, that would've been really funny and fitting.

>>723363620
Japs actually appreciate that he killed himself instead of trying to redeem himself or going to prison and trying to influence things from behind the bars. Funny how it's always the cops who refuse to change their ways until the end and die unrepentant.

>>723363510
To be fair, 4 has an insane plot, every chapter has at least one plot twist and the rubber bullets has an IRL reason to exist and be abused. At least they never use that plot device ever again.
I still think glowies in 3 is the worst plot device, their whole reason to exist is that they allegladly were smuggling guns and funny enough that game has the worst guns in the series and I think no one besides Daigo's shooter, the guy who kills Rikiya and Daigo himself actually shoot a gun during the cutscenes.

>>723347191
>>723347374
Why PS4 for judgement? Is it for the changed actor or something.v

>>723364726
3 makes more sense if you look at the historical background. US DoD meddling in Japan's affairs was getting too blatant around 2007. They were expanding the US military bases and installing new officer cadre, not only on Okinawa but also around the ports of Kanto. By 2008 japs were on the brink of rioting over amerimutt rape and murder sprees for which ZOGbots barely got a slap on the wrist.
Burakku Mondei weren't interested in small arms, they wanted to embezzle the military tech and they didn't need the yakuza as customers. Also it might not be that crazy compared to real life. Last year Takeshi Ebisawa was charged with selling weapon-grade nuclear material.

>>723346567 (OP)
All of them except the Kiwamis

>>723346567 (OP)
1-2-3-0-Dead
No remakes

>>723360113
>>723360249
>>723360554
The plot being centered around school bullies is fucking retarded. Every other game has either Yakuza or other local gangs to deal with that make better sense as the villains. Yagami feels completely out of place in a school setting as the main story, this is the type of thing that should have been kept to a substory. Also the ending with the game leaving it ambiguous whether the murderer was right or not is dumb, his actions were objectively 100% in the wrong. Someone saying "you're fat lol" does not give you the right to stab them to death.

>>723366082
Yagami isn't strong or influential enough to deal with major yakuza shit. That's why he keeps getting saddled with low-tier shit.

>>723366082
>the ending with the game leaving it ambiguous whether the murderer was right or not is dumb, his actions were objectively 100% in the wrong.
Nagoshi and Furuta had a fight over how to end the game. Neither of them disclosed which one of them got his way in the end, or what were the alternatives. It might have been one of the reasons why Furuta stuck with RGG instead of leaving the company along with Nagoshi.

Instead of giving Kiryu cancer and putting him in Y8, they should have just made Kiryu a full time secret agent indefinitely with a bunch of his own little spin-off games. So like

>Like a Dragon Gaiden 1: The Man Who Erased His Name
>Like a Dragon Gaiden 2: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
>Like a Dragon Gaiden 3: Something Something Akiyama Falls Asleep On the Couch Again
>Like a Dragon Gaiden 4: Return of the Hidden Dragon
>Like a Dragon Gaiden 5: Saejima Ate Some Bad Meat and Got Food Poisoning

>>723366941
Kiryu has tons of games as it is. I don't agree with the cancer stuff, but he could afford to take a break. Majima getting Pirates in Hawaii was fine, and Gaiden 3 is already a thing with Mine.

>>723367078
Having a small game every once in a while isn't bad. Like his agent adventures could have taken to to America, where he'd run into Sayama again.

>>723367368
Dude, Sayama is over 40, eating American food, taking American drug cocktails, aging like Americans.

>>723367495
No one ages in Yakuza except Pocket Circuit Fighter.

>>723347110
/thread

>>723346567 (OP)
All of them.
3 is honestly the only one I'd consider skipping.

Kiwa-MEH demakes of 1-2 (and soon 3) are all utter garbage.

>>723367963
Huh, I never paid attention to the photos of past Ryudo patriarchs. That little outfit is older than I thought.

>>723367963
Surely there's a better actor they could have chosen, someone with a vibe closer to the original character.

>>723368345
They're most likely scrubbing off all the references the series had at the start. That daddy-yakuza was literal 1:1 reference to a certain film.

And that's not even the worst re-design in the Kiw3.

>>723367963
>>723368464
the shit they did to Rikya is the worst. He's now a literal, generic gook.

>>723368535
...and I just know they gonna make Kiwameh 4 with THIS Hamazaki.

>>723368607
They really shouldn't have done this. Hamazaki's supposed to return in Y5 for a small roll, and if they ever make Kiwami 5, they can't guarantee that this guy would return. The ones that are set to die in Y4 are one thing, but they shouldn't have used real models for returning characters.

>>723368783
On November 28 they're hosting another funeral for characters. I'll lose my shit if it will turn out they're only doing this to bury old characters with their new faces. Rikiya had his exhibit at the previous funeral.

>>723346567 (OP)
0, 1, maybe 2. The Judgment series.

>>723366082
>hurr durr objectively wrong
no wonder, you got filtered like the fucking retard midwit you are

>>723361036
It spoils several parts of 6 and the last third of the game is pretty much pointless to you if you haven't played the rest of the series as nothing that happens during it matters to you and barely matters to Ichiban.
>I'm kinda in the mood for an rpg.
7's easier than NES Dragon Quest.

>>723360669
8's story is some of the series' worst and 8G's story is a generic pirate story. I have no idea why you think I wouldn't think they're near the bottom for the series when it comes to the story.

>>723362714
Non retards can differentiate between things being crazy for the sake of entertainment and dumb for the sake of incompetent writers who want there to be a twist, but can't figure out a sensible way of making said twist work.

>>723367963
3's Okinawa is one of the best map in the series, shame that they made the story all about Kamurocho and muh Tojo, again

>>723346567 (OP)
Why the fuck did they make Kiwami 1 such a nothing burger after all the build up in 0? They could have had a nice reboot of the series free from all the badly written bullshit there

>>723372614
Because 0 and K1 were both simply meant to be anniversary titles for old fans to enjoy, they were never intended to be new entry points. K1 in particular was just meant to be a slightly improved take on 1 that added some more scenes to flesh out characters for older fans. People always seem to think that they intentionally made 0 into an entry point when even they didn't realize it until reflecting on the game's success in hindsight, it was always just for the original fans which is why there's references to literally every single game in it.

K2 was a game that was actually intended for newer fans and actively changes the main story flow via Four Shine and Majima Construction along with Majima Saga.

>>723373526
K1 dispelled the Nishiki mystery in the worst possible way, by turning him into a bitch. And unintentionally it also made Kazama look even more incompetent and short-sighted, which was a huge contrast to the mastermind portrayed in 0.

>win 5 million in Blackjack in a game with no cheat items
>you also don't have every win count, only your profits when you leave the table

>>723373797
Welcome to minigame requirements, you should always be savescumming and leave after every single win. Cee-lo for example can bankrupt you and Oicho-kabu takes so many wins to make any of its requirement money.

>>723373664
Ultimately, the reason things in Y1 went so south was because no one really understood Nishiki. They had too much faith in him, but he was ultimately unable to live up to their expectations. Even if you ignore Y0 and K1, this is the ultimate reason why he fell. Neither Kazama nor Kiryu truly understood Nishiki. No one really knew him, his insecurities or his pain. None of them recognized his deep-seated inferiority complex. Kiryu genuinely believed that if he took the fall for Nishiki, Nishiki could deal with things on his own. He was wrong.

Everyone failed him, and he failed them. You can remove his sister from the equation, you can remove all of Y0, but this is the ultimate truth of Y1. No one really knew what Nishiki was truly like. Everyone believed he was stronger than he actually was.

>>723346567 (OP)
Yakuza 0 & Yakuza 4

>>723374225
At the end, his frustrations with Yumi and Kiryu were understandable. Neither of them could get it through their heads what his deal was until he laid it out to them. Both of them only learned about his inferiority complex for the very first time right then and there. They were the two people closest to him in the entire world, and neither of them understood him until the very last second.

>>723373883
I lucked out on Oicho-Kabu and got one of the gimmick hands to take care of a big chunk of my winnings.
God, I wish I was back to playing Koi Koi. I love my funny bird looking at the moon game.

>>723374587
Koi-koi is the goat and it's hilarious how small it is in real life. A relative got me picture related for my birthday a few years back and the cards are barely bigger than a quarter. Really want to pick up the Nintendo set too.
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/hanafuda-cards-mario-red-119579/

>>723374927
Is that so? The art on them is so key that I always assumed they'd be huge and unwieldy to shuffle.

>>723363510
Rubber bullets is acknowledged in the game and in universe as a bad plan, by Munakata, and why he gets involved. It is a bad plan, but at least the writers for 4 acknowledged it and had it work.

>>723375879
It's not even rubber bullets in the Japanese script. They're "highly advanced, experimental non-lethal bullets". Not explicitly rubber, and whatever it is that makes them "advanced" is probably the reason they're able to clearly knock people out.

In my case, I'm used to nonsense like MGS's tranquilizer guns so it didn't phase me too much.

>>723367963
>>723368535
>>723368607
There's almost guaranteed gonna be a mod that fixes these

>>723376370
How the fuck do oji-sans play this shit without magnifying glasses?

>>723376546
The designs are easy enough to recognize from a distance that it's not that hard to pair them, the main issue is shuffling them and also dealing them out. It's really silly how cramped it feels to deal them because they're also like if you stacked five or six cards on top of each other in terms of thickness.