Yakuza 0 review

[Administrator]

Yakuza and the 1980s: it always looked an ideal fit, and so it proves. The series that never does anything by halves enters the decade of excess in a pulverising bombardment of bone-shuddering violence, overwrought melodrama, sentimentality and silliness, where just about everything is dialled up to 11. The bonkers and frequently brilliant result is the best Yakuza to date and one of the finest Sega games in years.
It might take a step back in time, but Yakuza 0 is a stride forward in every other sense. Take the storytelling, for starters. For all its ambition and variety, Yakuza 5's multi-stranded plot sagged in places and felt rushed in others. Zero, unburdened by the need to accommodate the expanded cast of more recent entries, focuses on just two playable characters - stoic series regular Kazuma Kiryu and loose cannon Goro Majima - and two narrative threads, which begin some distance apart before inexorably drawing together and eventually becoming intertwined. This affords the individual strands room to breathe, leaving space for character development without slackening the pace.
Kiryu's tale - set, as ever, in the pleasure district of Kamurocho, rendered here in rich, bustling detail - centres on a tiny plot of land known simply as the Empty Lot, the ownership of which is set to prove crucial to a forthcoming regeneration project. Factions within the ruling Tojo clan find themselves competing against a new player, Tachibana Real Estate, headed up by a mysterious outsider with good reasons for laying claim to the land. Kiryu finds himself dragged into the mess when a debt collecting gig goes bad and he's framed for murder on the same patch, forcing him to operate outside the clan's jurisdiction as he investigates who wants him out of the picture. Majima, meanwhile, is in Sotenbori, Osaka - and in hock to the unbearably smug Omi Alliance chairman Sagawa, whose comeuppance you'll be anticipating from his very first scene. Having been excommunicated from the yakuza, he's trying to work his way back into favour as manager of a cabaret club, until he reluctantly agrees to pull off a hit, the fallout from which sets him on a collision course with some very dangerous people.
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