Zero Expectations

We are who we are because of the events and people that come across in our lives. It's never one singular event or person that shapes someone, more like the snowball effect.

That's why it's hard to make a good prequel story. We all want to know how our favourite character came to be so prequel stories are always popular. The problem is prequel stories only have a window of a small time frame so everything gets distilled into one dramatic event. Often time, it's disappointing to fans as it cannot live up to their expectations.

Snake eater was a great prequel but did Snake truly learnt everything from one lady called the Boss? Let's not even begin with the Darth Vader origins.

Yakuza 0 is a great prequel because it isn't hamstring by the burden of telling how Kiryu and Majima became who they are. Kiryu isn't the dragon of Dojima yet and Majima isn't the mad dog we come to love. No one died in dramatic fashion that caused Majima to go bananas (which frankly would be pretty bad taste). It's just a story set in a time where Kiryu and Majima were young and totally unlike their current self.

The modern day Kiryu simply won't bust out moves at the dance floor or get date raped in old fashion telephone hook-ups. He also didn't have a pal like Nishiki at his side anymore, someone he considers his brother and equal.

The ending where they revert to their trademark outfit was the only bad point of the story. It felt forced and out of the blue. It didn't skipped ahead in time and I was just getting used to how charming Majima looks in a suit and ponytail. Prequel story like this are rare where the creators simply ignore the obvious route and focus on creating a good compelling a story.

Last Hurrah for Chivalry

Yakuza Zero is really impressive, I can't remember any recent prequel game that is this good. I think Studio RGG is simply incapable of making a bad Yakuza game.

Each time a major female character is introduced in these games, something magical happens for the series.
These stories usually revolves around honour and loyalty but having a female character brings some good old chivalry and romance plot into the mixture. It's no coincidence that Yakuza 2 and 4 are the best games in the series.

I was very happy that Kiryu is back as the main lead character when studio RGG decided to cut back on the number of playable characters.I was a little skeptic about having Majima drive the story of the game because his character is used quite sparingly in the older games. Overexposing him in this game could potentially diminishes the greatness of the Majima character. Thankfully I was wrong and I could definitely see Majima heading future Yakuza games all by himself.

There is a real sense of threat and urgency in this game, the story is a lot darker than the recent games. Studio RGG has a habit of saving lame characters from dying so they could use them again in future games. Maybe because of the prequel nature, a lot of characters die in this game and these are very good characters.

Finally we get to switch the fighting styles of the characters which I have been longing for since the PSP spin-off games. Changing the fighting styles on the fly makes the whole gameplay feels fresh again. Some say the series is suffering from fatigue but I feel it's been re-invigorated by this game.

Thanks to Salty Yen for his video translations. It's nice to play the games alongside with him and I don't think I could enjoy the game this much without him.

Like A Boss

I love the video montage at the beginning of each Yakuza games. No matter how many times I have seen it, I rarely ever press to skip especially if I like the theme music too. It reminds of those Hong Kong TVB series where you also have a video montage before each episode.

When you first play the game, those video montage offers a glimpse of the story that lies ahead. As you progress through the game, the montage turns into a mixture of scenes you have seen and those you have not. These montages are carefully mixed so there are no big spoilers but just enough teasers to entice you to play on and on. I loved picking out the scenes to come and predicting how the story will unfold based on those scenes.

It really does feel like a TV serial and in a lot of ways, the Yakuza series is actually more like a TV serial than a summer blockbuster. The cutscenes are usually grounded on human drama with most of the action occurring during the game play. That's probably one of the reason why the series have difficulty breaking out of Japan in terms of mainstream success. For all its criminal undertones, it's more about the characters themselves rather than the shady stuff that yakuzas do.

Casual observers often compared the Yakuza games with Grand Theft Auto which is such a poor comparisons. You hardly ever do any criminal activity in the Yakuza games, just regular badass stuff that makes you feel like the boss.

Badass stuff like this following video montage

Double Dragon

Importing the Yakuza games has been a sound decision so far. I started with a late purchase of Kenzan and never looked back. At first I had doubts as I didn't want to double dip but looking at the trend, I might never had to. I finished Kenzan and RGG5 this way and was planning to start Ishin soon. Now maybe I will play Zero first.

There is one thing I didn't count on that is the online guides won't be online forever. It daunted on me when some translators took their RGG5 guides down after the English version was announced. It's a strange feeling. It's almost like owning a digital copy of the game but not having it on your HD and not knowing how long it would remain on the servers. Ishin and RGG5 aren't so bad because I still have the chinese scriptbooks but not Zero and Kenzan. It's impossible to archive the entire guide as different translators have their own way of expressing them with most using subtitled videos.I don't have the greatest memory either so it's not like I can remember every dialogue after finishing it once.

Maybe I do have the buy these games twice after all but the real question is, are there more localisation on the way?

Blackout in Kamurocho

I managed to track down a used copy of the first Ryu Ga Gotoku to add to my collection, having never played the first game in Japanese voice-overs since Sega wisely decided to dub the game for Western audience. Even then I didn't have much complaints about the English voice-overs, as a matter of fact I remember most of the main characters were really well done but Sega did used one too many celebrities for this one.

Before she was WET, she was Kiryu's first love interest

I missed having Kiryu at the center of the story, these days in the newer games he tends to just show up at the end of the story to beat the main bad guy because he's after all, the face of the series. I also missed gritty feel of the yakuza society, these guys are not nice people and the original writer set the tone in these first 2 games which team RGG have since failed to keep up and do justice to his characters. 

The loading time is not as bad as I remember and the graphics still look pretty good for PS2 games, I like how every cutscene looked consistent because there is only one engine to render all cutscenes (save for the FMV videos which SEGA used very sparingly). In the PS3 games, the story sometimes unfolds using the video cutscene and game engine cutscene but there is always an awkward fade-out black screen when switching over and it can get annoying when there are numerous switch overs. SEGA needs to create a more seamless transition between these or just stick with one form of cut-scene because it looks very outdated for a modern game like Yakuza.