Ninety percent.

100 hours.

Yakuza 0 should be in some sense a completionist’s worst nightmare. Piles and piles of boxes to check off, repetitive tasks to attempt, and bountiful minigames that in some instances require hours worth of learning to even come close to ticking off the completion point in question. Yet for ninety-five percent of my one-hundred hours, I have been having an absolute blast – despite how frustrating some of the experiences can be.

In this post, I thought I’d talk about my experience with some of the minigames, battles, and collectibles scattered around the place, and offer up some relatively varied thoughts – each accompanied by a relevant track from the game’s stellar soundtrack. We’ll start with a simple assessment of the game’s combat (I might do an extra, longer one later).

Battle Completion Points

La Di Da
Completion Points:
Defeat 200 Enemies per style (eight styles in total)
Defeat 500 enemies on the street
Help 30 attack victims
Defeat 10 nouveau riche enemies
Defeat Mr. Shakedown 10 times as Majima
Defeat Mr. Shakedown 10 times as Kiryu
(Many other things… all of this is so much fun)

Trophy: Master of Style (total of ¥81,495,430,000 for all upgrades)

I have but two completion points left in this category, and both are technically not related to battle, funnily enough. I still have to collect a few more weapons and a few more gear items, but this will come easily when I come around to attempting to get all of the craftable weapons and gear items for the game’s trophy, Eye of the Dragon and Tiger.

The completion points in this category mostly center around beating the stuffing out of a certain number of guys in a variety of styles. I didn’t have to go out of my way at all to achieve these completion points, because the combat remained (and remains) hugely fun and satisfying throughout the whole experience.

It’s actually hard to settle on what combat style I like most. Each style was refreshingly different and offered a variety of different opportunities. Kiryu’s Brawler style remains awesome throughout the entire game, and is accompanied by some particularly gruelling heat actions. Stand by a wall and hit the triangle button and watch as the enemy misses Kiryu, instead kicking the wall. Kiryu then braces their leg with one hand and shatters it with his elbow, then roundhouse kicks them into the concrete. Endlessly satisfying.

But then Rush is also appealing – particularly against Mr. Shakedown, a series of enormous, money-hungry men who are too tough to go toe-to-toe with at the start of the game. So the better you get at the game, the more satisfying it becomes to weave in and out of the enemy’s reach, landing solid strikes before moving far out of their reach again. Beast is the game’s equivalent of a free fight if you’re in a room full of furniture (or an alley full of bicycles) as Kiryu mercilessly shrugs off the feeble blows of those surrounding you.

The Legend style feels like the perfect way to fuse Kiryu’s disparate styles into a single, ruthless style. The heat actions here – the sumo slap, the Essence of Throwing, and one of my favourites, the one where Kiryu slams his knuckles on the side of someone’s head and then basically impales their face on his knee is always remarkably fun.

This is to say nothing of how appealing it is to play as another character – Majima – entirely, and let loose with Breaker style, which annihilates about 80% of his combat encounters with a dazzling array of spins and kicks. It is endlessly entertaining to watch, let alone to actually get Majima to pull things off. Catching a sword with your teeth has never been so easy.

Thug style actually might appeal to me the most as an amateur fighting game player. I felt like there are ways I can stretch and prod this style in particular. The style also has the best training missions, fights which actually push your appreciation for the style rather than just force you to practice the same moves over and over.

Slugger style is fantastic too, of course. Sadly, Majima’s final style, Mad Dog of Shimano, unlocked at the end of his business subquest line, is dull in comparison to the countless combat options offered by the other three styles. I guess I’ve just been spoiled by all the other fantastic fighting styles, but merely one new heat move (as awesome as it is) and the fact that the main combo that eats up heat like crazy is pretty boring and unfun to pull off, is just a bit of a letdown after all the work required to get there.

Throughout the entire process, of defeating 200 enemies with every style (which ends up with 1600 enemies throughout the entire game), I was practically never once bored. Mad Dog was disappointing, so I was glad to be done with that one, but all the other ones were a joy. Combat is the reason I’ve stuck with it so long, and besides the story, is why I am looking forward to more Yakuza games in future.

But the combat contained one thing in particular that wasn’t all bone-crushing, heart-pounding excitement. Sadly, I should probably talk about that.

The Bed of Styx

51 at the 1st Bottom
Completion Points:
Defeat 25 opponents and win 50 tournaments

Trophy: Defeat 30 Opponents in Endless Rout

Mostly dull despite every effort to appear exciting, The Bed of the Styx is one of the most crushingly repetitive arenas I’ve ever experienced in a game.

A large appeal of Yakuza 0’s combat is the fact you’re dueling on the streets, or in office buildings, or on yachts. In other words, I like the fact that the fights are staged in credible, detail-rich environments that encourage players to think tactically. How about we toss all that out the window in favour of creating a giant criminal death-match coliseum beneath the streets of Sotenbori, which is accessed via a Bond-villain-esque underwater elevator that is accessed via a boat that sails conspicuously down the river and waits while the elevator pulls the boat’s fake floor into the underground colosseum. This is all supposedly founded by a crooked cop, for some reason. The flimsy justification for how he got his money was never really enough for me, and the whole conceit does not really work for me. And yes, I am aware I am playing Yakuza 0, a game where you fight a man who brings a motorcycle into the sewers, and where you fight a room full of men dressed as geisha. But something about it just doesn’t work for me.

The biggest redeeming factor is by far the wonderful announcer, whose voice I recognized from the recent Tekken 8 trailers (a game which I am extremely excited for) – Lenne Hardt, who must surely have one of the finest, most impressive voices in the world. Her talents in the Yakuza 0 coliseum helped drive me through the repetitive fights.

You fight against killer clowns, Arabian assassins, old Chinese martial arts masters, and bicycle thieves. Those are probably also the highlights – the absurdity of each enemy that you come up against. You even fight a demon bear at one point – it’s all very Tekken. But that’s where the fun ends. The repetitive nature of these fights in particular, in a circular arena over and over again which never changes shape and only during certain challenges is given environmental changes, wore me down. It loses much of what makes Yakuza combat dynamic and fun, and there’s often little room to experiment.

The thirty opponents in Endless Rout is easy and perhaps the most fun bit of the lot, as the fights are randomized and restrict you to certain styles randomly, making it feel like an honest challenge as you get into later stages (post 30, ironically).

Fifty tournaments equals one hundred and fifty opponents, as each tournament has you square off against three opponents to win the tournament. You also have to beat twenty-five unique opponents, which also means you have to advance to later tournaments to access that many opponents. Worse, you need to rise to a “B” rank, which requires a lot of high-rank tournament wins. Your coliseum ranking is tied to how much money you’ve earned, and to earn more money, you have to beat tougher tournaments, which include tougher opponents. While these tougher opponents are fun to fight in sets of five tournaments perhaps, it becomes fatiguing to do it in a row. Though it should be said, this was the first thing I ticked off after finishing the game’s story, so maybe my single-minded approach to just “getting it done” impacted my enjoyment of this mode. I might return one day to beat the last few tournaments and the hardest characters, but not soon.

Western Gambling Games

Money Makes Money
Completion Points:
Earn ten million in winnings in Baccarat
Earn ten million in winnings in Poker
Earn five million in winnings in Blackjack
Earn ten million in winnings in Roulette

You’ll notice that this is kind of a running theme actually, but a lot of minigames in Yakuza 0 boil down to luck (to at least a degree). Nowhere is this more obvious than in the gambling games, which are themselves of course just straight simulations of the randomness you experience sitting at a table at a casino.

Baccarat was by far the easiest of the four requirements. I bet the maximum amount – as it is the game you can bet the most on, and also always have 50-50 odds – and won in two games. I barely had time to grasp the rules before I was moving on. If you need an easy win to tick off your completion list, save outside before you bet big and then win big. If you lose, just reload to regain your money and try again.
Part of the issue I have with these other games is the fact you have to back out of the games in order to save your “winnings”. It also only counts as winnings if you end up with more money than when you started. That might sound obvious, but it becomes particularly frustrating in Blackjack where you can only start to bet big after a number of successive wins. As such, you can either grind painfully slowly and conservatively by backing out after every win, or you can risk it all and sometimes come up frustrated.

Blackjack definitely took the longest. It’s both the “least safe” game (despite its simple rules) and allows for comparatively small bets considering you are supposed to earn five million yen. It was a brutal process for me, requiring so many exits to glean even half the amount before I started to play more riskily – which also wasted a lot of time. It was the gambling game I enjoyed the least (despite it being the one I enjoy the most playing with friends in real life).

Roulette… not much to say about this one beyond don’t bet on 0 or 00. Instead, bet on one of the thirds. The pay out might not be so high, but the chance is 1 in 3 which is much better than aiming for a single number. I got this one relatively quickly with this method.

Poker was also not too bad – playing Pineapple Hold’Em and betting big often forces other players to fold. It also helps to understand what a good hand is – something I can’t quite get into in this blog, I don’t think. But it pays to wait til three cards are out before you can truly see whether you should leave early or not. Just tough it out and bluff like hell – you’ll get it before you know it.

Overall, the western gambling games weren’t as bad as I was thinking they might be – besides blackjack, which was like pulling teeth by the end. I recommend getting these out of the way sooner rather than later, as they aren’t too tricky and yet can be frustrating if you let them linger for too long. Which brings me onto…

Pocket Circuit Racer

Beyond the Speed
Completion Points:
Win all the races
Complete all substories
Befriend Pocket Circuit Fighter
Collect a hell of a lot of components

One of the last things I attempted for my completion list, Pocket Circuit Racer was both enjoyable and extremely repetitive. There are a lot of completion points and substories attached to Pocket Circuit Racer, which constituted actually a large part of what I had left to do. On completing it the other day, I was heartened by actually how sweet the substory as a whole was. Pocket Circuit Fighter was adorably dorky (just as Kiryu was throughout this minigame series) and actually stands out as one of the very best substory characters in the entire game, for both characters. The substories are a huge highlight and are one hundred percent worth you engaging with the minigame. Frequently funny – they induced quite a few chuckles from me – and very earnest, I loved all the characters on offer here.

Sadly the gameplay is not quite as good as the story. Simply build the right car, and victory is yours. But it’s not always obvious what exactly each component does, and sometimes a lot of experimentation is needed to get your car working right on all the different tracks. You can buy new parts (for absurd prices – isn’t this meant to be a kid’s game? Why is a single little car motor 10 million yen?) from the parts shop in the building, or from a few different places around town. The game then is basically just one of experimentation, furiously mashing a button when your car threatens to go off the track, pushing the stick to fast-forward the game to its inevitable completion when you build the best, and waiting for Kiryu to pose hilariously dramatically, whether you win or lose. The game basically plays itself once you’ve built your cute little car, but it’s still strangely entertaining.

Overall I found this one of the better distractions in Yakuza 0 – I was actually pretty sad I’d left it til basically last, since it felt like I should have been interacting with it more naturally throughout the game. I suspected it might suck, but I was quite happy to be proven wrong (for the most part).

Disco

Friday Night
Koi No Disco Queen
QUEEN OF THE PASSION (love all three of these disco songs in particular – but Queen of the Passion gets me so energized)

Completion Points
Score Disco King on every song on Easy
Score Disco King on every song on Normal
Score Disco King on every song on Hard

I love disco, guys.

The other night I drove around fairly late listening to the Yakuza 0 disco soundtrack on the way home. It’s just that good. These are hits that sound authentically 80s (mainly because there’s an obvious song or at least artist you can point to as inspiration) but aren’t actual hits. They’re completely original Yakuza 0 songs, which I think helps the game’s case immeasurably.

But boy, the minigame itself is fabulously addictive. People seem to frequently rank this as a most hated minigame, but I can’t see why. The fact you have to incorporate movement and timing together is marvelous. You control a little ghost version of your character who moves around on a 2D dance-floor, who must fit as many steps as possible (a maximum of nine) around hitting a specific button to the beat.

It is just the right level of difficult. Easy is, well, easy, normal is a nice challenge, and hard actually tests your mastery of the minigame. I spent I think an hour trying to beat “Queen of passion” on hard, but it was worth it just for the little “ping” of a song completed. Beating Ogita, Kiryu’s final disco rival, is the best way to end a minigame. It is so, so hard, and you almost want to punch Ogita’s smug face as he beats you again and again. But on beating him, on seeing a man who loves disco just as much as you do (though I suppose I’m really only speaking for myself, apparently), the option to console him is there. And it’s easy to take it. Not just because Kiryu is such a nice guy, but because disco is just so infectiously fun. The challenge melts away into the satisfaction of victory, of beating a difficult challenge. Unlike blackjack, which is entirely luck-based, disco is entirely skill-based. That’s what makes it one of my all-time favourite minigames in any game. I’m very sad to learn that disco, or any dancing minigame like this, for that matter, does not reappear in any future Yakuza minigame. The developers struck gold here, in my opinion.

I know Friday Night is meant to be something of a meme song in the community, something that seems so absurd in a game about hardened criminals murdering each other in gritty backstreets, but there’s something so genuinely happy about it that it can bring tears to my eyes. I’ve been pretty exhausted, see, and right now I’m going through an almighty amount of stress. As silly as it sounds, Yakuza 0’s disco has been a way out of that for me. That extended Friday Night version I linked has been a great comfort through this stress. I am a fabulously terrible (if earnest) dancer in real life in a club setting, and it’s nice to be able to see Kiryu and Majima dance just as earnestly (if more stylishly).

Can’t stop dancing all night long

Jumpin’ up! Shake it up!

Move your body

Don’t stop the music all night long

Keep it on! It’s your friday night

Keep it on, everyone. It’s your night.

You all rock.

See you all soon. 

Up next in the completionist report: Phone calls, Real Estate, Mr. Shakedown, Fishing, and more!