You can jump into the Yakuza series at any point and enjoy the game for what it is, even if you have no prior knowledge. However, as alluded, there are returning characters, and events of past games often influence the events of others.
Why You Should Play Yakuza 0 First. For the most part, mainline Yakuza games are released in chronological order. Yakuza takes place before Yakuza 2, and so on. Remakes aside, Yakuza 0 is the only game that breaks from that tradition, much to the benefit of newcomers.
A Great game but not for kids!
The game is set in 80s Japan during the bubble economy - which means that the backdrop is a time of sex, booze and gangsters.
Yakuza 0 is the easiest game to date when it comes to combat, too many OP gimmicky styles. Going from 0 to Kiwami and everyone complains about the difficulty spike, anyone who had played the games before Y0 already knew what to expect when it came to fights with multiple strong enemies or battles involving guns.
Start with Yakuza 0, then work your way through them (mostly) chronologically like so: Yakuza 0. Yakuza Kiwami. Yakuza Kiwami 2.
First off, if you want to explore the mainline games — that is, Yakuza 0 through 6 for Kiryu's story — then Yakuza 0 is a great place to start. Not only is it one of the best, most beloved titles in the franchise, it's also the first mainline game chronologically.
The best option is Yakuza Kiwami. The combat system is a continuation of the one from Yakuza 0, which is the best in the series. There are also a lot of great added details to the story. While there are a few callbacks to Yakuza 0, it's not going to distract you much from your experience.
Difficulty is a game setting present in all Like a Dragon titles from Yakuza 2 onward. It changes enemy attack patterns, general behavior, and how much damage they deal and take. In Yakuza Kiwami 2, Judgment, and Lost Judgment, bosses have the same health and defense across all difficulties.
When focusing on the main objectives, Yakuza is about 14 Hours in length. If you're a gamer that strives to see all aspects of the game, you are likely to spend around 30½ Hours to obtain 100% completion.
Yakuza 5 is easily the longest game in the series, but it's also one of the most ambitious.
Yakuza Kiwami contains a lot of language but it is always spoken in Japanese . Yakuza Kiwami contains some sexual content but is not as bad as future titles. There are some references to sex but no sex scenes or nudity is shown.
Parents Need to Know
There's plenty of violence as a result, complete with lots of brutality and blood. The game also features a substantial amount of other mature content, including frequent use of strong profanity and lots of sexual content.
Parents: According to the ESRB this game is rated M and contains Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, and Use of Alcohol. No kids, please. This is violent even by Yakuza standards.
The game contains some sexual content: men groping women's breasts in a night club; a man guiding a woman's hand over his crotch. Players can also opt to visit parlors where they can flirt with women over the phone: close-up images of a bikini-clad woman are shown in the background.
The combat of Yakuza 0 is fast-paced and brutal. Given its intensity, players can't really be faulted for forgetting to take a breath and block some of the more damaging attacks in the game. However, a big part of mastering the combat of Yakuza 0 is blocking at the right times.
You can play the game without further knowledge of the series and have fun. From there, playing 0, Kiwami, and the rest of the games at your leisure is excellent. No matter how much experience you have in the Yakuza series, these two games are ideal starting points.
Yakuza is a third-person open world action-adventure game where the player controls Kazuma Kiryu in the city of Kamurocho. The game also incorporates role-playing elements.
“Yakuza 0 is one of the most eccentric, idiosyncratic and downright charming games around… There's simply nothing else quite like it, and it's well worth your time.”
1. Kazuma Kiryu. Kazuma Kiryu, nicknamed the Dragon of Dojima, is the single most legendary and accomplished character in the Yakuza universe. He is 6'0″ and weighs 80kg (176 lbs) and utilizes a variety of martial arts like wrestling, street fighting, and weapon skill.
You don't have to grind. You do however have to do all the side stuff lol (but that doesn't include the part-time hero checklist stuff). So there's a lot of talk about a difficulty spike later in the game that a lot of people have had to go grind for.
Yakuza 0 is a port of a 2017 console game, so its minimum requirements aren't very demanding. Your PC needs at least an AMD FX-6300 or Intel Core i5-3470 CPU, an AMD Radeon HD 6870 or a Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 GPU, 4GB of RAM, and the 64-bit Windows 7 operating system.
Ideal starting point is Yakuza 0 or Yakuza Kiwami. Zero is the prequel to Kiwami. You could start from Yakuza 3 but I feel you will miss out on a lot of references and character histories. Also Yakuza 3 will feel much more dated compared to Zero, Kiwami and Kiwami 2.
As the above intro image states, this game is certainly best experienced on a controller.
Kiwami improves the resolution, framerate, textures and loading times compared to the original game, and additional content was added to resolve some of the more confusing plot points, as well as tie the story more closely to the events of the prequel title Yakuza 0.