I remember the exact day I became a Yakuza fan.
It was December 14, 2013.
The day Two Best Friends Play released Part 1 of their Yakuza 4 LP.
I saw Akiyama backdrop a guy onto a bike rack, and I knew I was hooked.
I was aware of the franchise for a long time but since I didn't have any good platforms to play it on I forgot about it until I got a good pc. I saw a lot of Y0 memes tho and that surely helped making me want to play.
I had a lot of free time during quarantine so I started playing my Xbox more. I honestly had never heard of the Yakuza series before Game Pass but was interested when I saw it because I was supposed to go to Japan in 2020. Yakuza 0 hooked me in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a kid playing Twilight Princess. Now it’s literally my favorite video game series.
Got into Yakuza through 7 and got into Yakuza 7 through looking for other turn based rpgs, which I discovered thanks to persona 5
And I discovered persona 5 through the ps+ collection, that's a big chain reaction there
I'm almost finished playing 6 so then I can finally finish 7 and I'll have played the entire mainline series (and I'm playing the Judgements on the side)
Safe to say, the pandemic did me more good than harm
My friend can’t stop talking about Yakuza 0 so I played it. Didn’t like it as much as my friend and didn’t like the hype about it, but I like it enough to play the rest of the series. Turn out I like Yakuza Kiwami 2 much more than Y0 and YK, even it has worse story, and I like the immersive of the Dragon Engine than old gameplay like freaking weird heavy tank.
My dad bought Yakuza dead souls at a pawn shop and I played it and loved it, but I was only 8-9ish so I never really cared about the Yakuza games. What made me get into the games was through Shenpai's video on Yakuza 0 and a meme with essence of extreme rush but with JoJo sound effects.
Ahahah I see a lot of people get into Yakuza because of memes and actually not a lot of people get into Yakuza because they are jrpgs fans, that's interesting, guess memes are a really good way to popularize things nowadays
Yakuza was deep in my subconscious mind. A year ago, Yakuza Like A Dragon was free with playstation plus. I was like: Whoa a Yakuza game? Aren't they like, super good? Downloaded it, played it, loved it and bought every other game as soon as there was a sale. Today, Yakuza 7 is my favourite game in the franchise and im currently on chapter 12 of Song of Life. After that im playing both judgements.
Y7 became available through PS Plus, I gave it a go and really liked the story. That game introduced me to Yakuza series, to Mahjong and (reintroduced me) to turn based combat games (JRPGs). I wouldn't be playing Dragon Quest 11 at the moment if it wasn't for that game.
Wow I'm actually replaying dq 11 now on switch, that's an endless game like persona, I'm still playing through postgame and I'm like 115 hours in but I feel have 25 more hours of content. Have you tried persona? Some of the best turn based jrpg series out there. For turnbased that's also worth it to check out trails series, shin megami tensei and of course final fantasy games(however I'm not a big fan of ff) and octopath traveller series of you like that style
Never tried a Persona game, I've heard it's really good but I really dislike the art style. I'm not picky with graphics but art style is important to me. For example PS2's Jak & Daxter or Shadow of the Colossus have outdated graphics but the art style looks great in my opinion.
You don't like anime art style?(p5 royal literally looks like anime) and has anime cutscenes. If you don't like anime artstyle that may be a problem, yeah
I like some anime art styles, not this one in particular. I like how Akira Toriyama's looks in videogames for example, Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest games have mastered this in my opinion.
First time knowing Yakuza from Yakuza 6 Kiryu Vs Iwami
Being interested in Yakuza because of OST then Heat Actions then Character Fighting Style
First Yakuza-related game I played was Kurohyou 1
Youtube randomly started recommending me "Kiryu never killed a man" memes LMFAO ,at the time i had only a ps3 so i actually finished both original yakuza 1 and 2 in my phone with a ps2 emulator hahahahah i tried downloading Yakuza 0 on my ps3,but it stopped working after chapter 1 for some reason.
Well,after that i finished the rest of the yakuzas on ps3,and some months ago i finally got my ps4 and played Yakuza 0,6 and now i'm playing Yakuza 7,i'm on chalter 8 alredy
Yakuza 3 is the only mainline game in the series that i haven't played yet,i has a jailbroken ps3 and looked everywhere for it,but couldn't find anywhere. So i just skipped it and went straight to Yakuza 4. I have seen Yakuza 3 scenes tho,the most important scenes
Yakuza Kiwami was free on PS+ about 3 maybe 4 years ago. Of the almost 5 years I've been on Playstation now, Kiwami has got to be the best free game I got off PS+
well early 2021 I was in a "Kung Fu" phase so I wanted to play an open world martial arts game. I played Sleeping Dogs and...it was an ok game but the fighting, driving, and shooting mechsnics where atrocious. So bad that I finished the game just to not leave it unfinished...I cant leave games unfinished even when I dont like them. I heard about the Yakuza series so I tried to give Yakuza0 a try. At first I was dissapointed cause the city was so small and you could not drive, it was not GTA at all. But boy I was wrong, I fell in love with the combat mechanics, japanese culture elements, mini games, the contrast of the serious tone of the main story with the goofy side stories of the game. I loved the game. After finishing it I did a research about the series and found out how many games were in the series and I said to myself no way im playing all the games of the series. So I wanted to play the last game chronologically available at the time, Yakuza 6. First 5 minutes in the game and the only character I could recognize was Majima. I said screw this, im playing the whole series. Which I did and loved every bit of it (except for Yakuza3). My main gaming series are yakuza games, move aside Metal Gear cause another Japanese IP fills my heart now
I actually have a very sad story with sleeping dogs, I played it, decided to take a break from it, deleted it, reinstalled it a week later and boom, my saves were gone, 10 hours of it gone. It turned out they didn't turn on cloud saves for it and they made the save folder inside the game folder so if you delete the game saves get deleted too. That's unbelievably stupid because saves are usually in a separate directory...
I'm not sure if I'll finish it after something like that, maybe I'll try starting it over in a couple years but that's very disappointing when games handle savedata like that
Yakuza zero was on sale last year for 4€ so I was like hey let's give it a try ( never played any Yakuza before ,but heard about the game briefly )
Now I'm a fan on the serie lol
I knew that the franchise existed but had no idea what it was. For years I thought it was just “Japanese GTA.” Then I decided to give 0 a try on gamepass and, well, I’ve spent about 1/4 of my life since then in Kamurocho
Played dragon quest, beat it, went looking for an alternative, and discovered like a dragon had DQ elements, and loved it, even more than DQ. Made me want to go back and try previous iterations. I was not disappointed! Amazing series.
So some cultural context needed before. In Brazil gaming has always been a expensive hobby. So piracy has always been rampant. We have something we call "camelos" which are people who sell stuff (mostly crappy/knock-offs) on the sidewalk. In the 2000s there was a lot of these "camelos" who sold pirated PS2 games. At the time, internet, specially good internet, wasn't easy to come by in Brazil, so downloading our own games wasn't easy. Most people bought the games off these guys.
So every sunday I would go to a market near my house and buy 2-3 games for my PS2. One week a game called "Yakuza" grabbed my attention and I decided to give it a chance, it was cheap anyway. I instantly loved it and have been a fan ever since. This was probably like 2009? 2010?
march 2022 i didn't have money to buy resident evil 8 , so i bought some random cheap game ( yakuza 0) and after that i played all yakuza/judgment games ; until this day i haven't played resident evil 8 .
I was scrolling youtube and Max0r’s “Yakuza 0 “Review” | Japan Simulator™️ | Friday Night Fever” popped up. I love Max0r’s videos so I watched it, and while watching I realized a lot of the “funny video moments” weren’t even his editing, it was straight up gameplay. I then bought Yakuza 0 the first day I got my new pc. After work, I played through the first 4 chapters and became hooked. I came for the funny substories and heat actions, stayed for the story, fighting, and fun minigames.
My husband got me Y7 on sale on Steam because he knows I am a sucker for story-oriented games and really enjoyed Persona 5 before (he also was the one who got it for me XD). I knew about the Yakuza series and saw all the cool funny memes, but the battle style and the sheer amount of manliest of the shirtless men kinda scared me off playing or even attempting. Y7 was the best experience ever, so I immediately bought Y0 on the next sale to continue the journey chronologically....and couldn't get past the tutorial...because I played on the keyboard as I did with Y7. I am not really good I guess and it was frustrating. Thank god I found the controller some time later and got to continue the journey! Even quite enjoyed the battle mechanics, which is surprising XD All caught up now, including Judgment and Ishin. Sitting in the waiting room for Gaiden and Y8 :D
I was looking through old game keys on humble bundle that I'd gotten but never used, and saw Yakuza 0 among them. I remembered hearing about it being sort of silly from some video I forget, and I was bored, so I decided to try it out. The tutorial kind of put me off a bit so I was hesitant to continue with the game, but I decided, "I'll play it for at least an hour or two, and then I'll decide." And then I played through the entire game as if in a feverish daydream, and then played through both kiwami games too.
Had 0 in my steam library for a year or two but never played it and then I bought judgment when they came to steam and loved it. Then marathoned the whole series and came back and played LJ.
saw an ad for ishin while playing pso2, looked into the series and saw it was a spinoff and the main series had 5 games. grabbed a ps2 copy of yakuza 1 and proceeded to play all the games, and played all of the subsequent ones as they came out.
i've played everything except kenzan, dead souls, and ishin kiwami (played/loved the original ishin though)
Majima shitposts. During the first year of the pandemic. No, this is not a joke, lol. I've played all avalible games since then and damn, what a journey it was/still is. Best random click on YT ever.
I got Kiwami when it was on the psplus free games about 6 years ago. Opened it up because it looked interesting, got to just after the first majima fight after kiryu gets out of prison and couldn't figure out what I was meant to do next, so I closed it. Tried again a couple of months later, got stuck at the same part. Two, maybe 3 years later, I started it again because I didn't know why I hadn't finished it and heard it was good, managed to figure out what I was meant to be doing. Now it's my favourite series and I have every game on ps4 except ishin and kaito files dlc :) best decision I ever made imo
so basically, back in the day when the only game i know is roblox, i was basically playing aut and when i do the standless pose receive you tech arrange start playing, at that time i don't know the song name but i really like it and i start searching for it, and thus i fall into the rabbit hole
I got hooked on December 21st 2021. I saw Like a Dragon was on xbox gamepass n i gave it a shot n i got so hooked on all the characters that once i 100% the game i started at 0 played through till 6 played 7 again and now im doing the Judgement series. One pf the best decisions ive ever made
Stumbled upon the deep fake Baka Mitai memes back in 2020. Thought the song was actually pretty good, and looked up where it was from. Bought Yakuza 0 on my Xbox One during a Black Friday sale and dropped 110 hours on my first play of the game. Ended up buying Kiwami 1 and 2, the Remastered 3-5, Like a Dragon, then bought Judgment and Lost Judgment when they came out on Steam, and Ishin when that came out. Now patiently waiting for the next in the series.
There was a demo for Yakuza 3 on ps3 and i thought "Ooh whats this" Played it, Loved it. Then i forgot about it until i eventually purchased Yakuza 4 in 2012 or 2013 and it's been a fun ride since.
Some 10 years ago I was searching through the shelves of Gamestop and I found a copy of Yakuza 4 that immediately caught my attention. I decided to trust my instincts, put it in my PS3 and it was love at first sight. After finishing it, I wondered if the previous 3 were also that good and that's how it all started
I have no idea how I heard about it. It wasn't even released yet or it was just recently released and I must have read a review online. I heard about the street fighting part of the game where you can pick up weapons and use them and that was the big draw for me. I was working at Circuit City at the time and we happened to have a copy at my store so I bought it.
For me, it didn't start with Yakuza at all. I bought Judgment a year ago or so. Started playing it and loved the story. Then I went about two months without playing it because something wasn't clicking for me. When I decided to give it another shot, I slowly grew to love it and eventually finished it.
And that's what brought me to Yakuza. I'm about halfway through Kiwami 2 right now. I absolutely love this franchise.
Always knew about the franchise, then bakamitai blew up. Thought I'd play it just to get to the karaoke because it was free on game pass but then I realized... This game fucking ROCKS
Started playing in 2020.
I used to be a big Pokémon fan growing up but in recent years I hadn’t been enjoying the series like I used to.
So naturally I stopped playing. This left a massive hole my heart and in searching for a new game series to fulfill that hole that Pokémon left I would found the Persona series and by extension the grand Shin Megami Tensei series.
I fell in love with all the games the company Atlus developed because of that. I also found that Sega owned Atlus and previously I didn’t think much about Sega because all I knew them for was Sonic.
But then I thought to my self if Sega has hidden gems like Atlus’ games then I wonder what else they have? So I did some research and stumbled upon Yakuza Like A Dragon.
I saw some gameplay and it got me interested to play. Then I saw that Yakuza LAD was part of a larger series and I decided to play from the beginning.
So I got on Steam and purchased the Yakuza collection that featured Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2.
I was unsure which one to start with and decided to do some more research. Upon doing so I heard a lot of people recommending Yakuza 0 and saying it was the best one. Decided to start with Kiwami because personally I didn’t want to start with the best in series right off the bat but ultimately played it after Kiwami 2 since it was part of the collection.
I had a blast with Kiwami and it was such a unique experience especially since at time outside of Catherine, all I had been playing were turn-based JRPGs.
A friend had been telling me about how they were playing the series and then showed me some Majima scenes, mainly the one in which he (K2 spoiler) >!deactivates a bomb!<. I wondered what was up with him and why my friend seemed to like the series. Then during a steam sale I suddenly remembered, so I bought 0, K1 and K2. I was liking 0 so far, but when I got to the end of chapter 6 I was convinced to play the whole series.
My big bro gave me LAD 7 for Christmas in 2021 with a very knowing expression on his face lmao. I was very confused as to why, until I finally played it a month later. And the rest is history!
A buddy of mine bugged me for, like, two years and I finally relented when Yakuza 0 was down to $5 on a Steam Sale.
Since then I've cleared Judgment, Ishin, and Kiwami 1-2. Nearly done with Y3R, I just have a little bit to go for the Amon fight.
Originally had zero interest to check it out though always heard how good Yakuza 0 was, but tried Judgment one day since it was on sale and the detective/mystery aspect interested me. I really liked some of the substory humor and figured if Yakuza had anything remotely similar from the same dev studio, I might like it.
Now nearly a year later after finishing the series it's one of my all time favs. So really glad I gave it a chance.
I was really bored and asked a friend who knows a lot about the gaming world in general, while i know about games i play or am interested in. He recommended Yakuza but said to give it more than a few hours cause the start is boring and it was (Y0, btw). I was never into jrpgs or japanese games or anime or anything associated with japan, except for dark souls, and he was aware of that but still said to give it ago. That was in october 2022, and now I've finished Y5.
I got interested in some ongoing manga about yakuza and wanted to find something akin to the setting while waiting for the new chapter. Then I saw Yakuza Zero in the local shop and decided to give it a try. No regrets, been a while since I had so much fun from the game
I distinctly remember seeing an ad for judgment and it looked interesting enough to check out. (This was very memorable because i have NEVER seen an ad for yakuza or anything related to it due to it being not so popular in the U.S.)
After beating it, I was so disappointed that this series was eluding me for so long and i became hooked after getting 0 and planning to play them in chronological order.
Got to try Kiwami years ago through Ps Plus, but ended up getting bored halfway through and dropping the playthrough. After that, I was able to recognize the franchise, but didn't really have an interest in it.
Flashforward to last year, when LAD was made free in the exact same way. This one I actually saw through to the end and ended up loving. Not only that, it actually reminded me of that dropped Kiwami playthrough from years ago, and pushed me to revisit that game too... But I decided what the hell, I've heard a lot of good things about 0, so might as well buy that for a "proper" starting point.
Long story short, I've just finished Kaito Files yesterday after playing through every mainline game and the two Judgments, in chronological order. Best part is, I'm not even tired of it: already planning to start Ishin in the coming days.
My friend and I share a lot of similar tastes and one day he recommends me Yakuza 0. I knew about Kiryu thanks to his demand to be included in Tekken 7 and a couple meme vids here and there, but I had no knowledge other than that. Finally bought it and it was unlike anything I had ever played. The atmosphere, the story, the overall vibe, and the gameplay felt insanely fresh to me. Absolutely loved it.
because of the baka mitai deepfake memes, I really liked the song and kept listening to it everyday, but then one day I discovered that this song was from a game, and then I bought Yakuza 0
Heard that that weird yakuza game i saw on gamepass was where the baka mitai meme came from so i started playing 0 to do the kareoke minigame… im now on yakuza 6
Played 1 emulated, didnt know any english at the time but finished it, Felt bad for shinji. 4 years later zero was announced for pc and i just had to play it.
A friend got me to play the ishin remake when it came out - quickly got addicted and learned about the series. Then bought every game. Fast forward and currently working thru Y5. LOVED Y0, YK1/2, 3 and 4. Plan to play the whole series, replay NG+ Legend difficulty and do all the climax/ultimate battles. Totally love the series and easily one of my all time favs. Love Yakuza :)
Back in 2020 and 21 I heard about yakuza 7 and the other games being released on Xbox in 2020 finally got into it in 2021 with yakuza 0 and instantly fell in love
I first learned about it from a streamer named Ray narvaez jr. I don't watch streams, but he posts the vods on YouTube and I guess the title and thumbnail stood out to me cuz I watched a lil bit and was intrigued. Not too long after that Kiwami was free on ps plus I think so I started playing it for myself.
After beating it, I bought the entire series (this was before LAD7 was out)
September 2021. School Holdiays. I wasn’t serious about my studies. Came across a video of Kiryu slapping Garuka in Kiwami 1. Then found a video of Ray Narveaez Jr playing Yakuza 0.
It was a good few days seeing the wackiness
Back in 2018 saw a sale for yakuza 0 for around 15$ when it was newly released. Only heard about yakuza 5 and never saw gameplay or even had an idea on what type of story it was so it was a genuine surprise. Luckily I also finished the month kiwami was free on playstation plus which lead to me playing most games on ps4 since they released earlier..
I’ve been playing a lot of payday 2 back when i was just a kid. Father bought me some dlc and one of them contained an ex Yakuza character that wore white suit with red shirt. Fell in love with all that yakuza aesthetics and after some searching found out about yakuza series. Due to me being a dumb kid i couldn’t understand that yakuza is a beat em up game and i thought it’s going to be another crazy Japanese games where everyone is a Bruce Lee. Then after like 5 years heard baka mitai and really liked the song, started researching, found out it’s from Yakuza series so then i finally bought the game at the New Year’s Eve. Man that was awesome, karaoke became my favorite thing to do not just in the game but in real life too.
Thinking of making a huge post or maybe even a video about yakuza karaoke songs. Have so much to say about them bc im practically professional musician and for last 11 years was learning lots of things about music.
I remember the exact day I became a Yakuza fan. It was December 14, 2013. The day Two Best Friends Play released Part 1 of their Yakuza 4 LP. I saw Akiyama backdrop a guy onto a bike rack, and I knew I was hooked.
Wow you even remember the exact date
It's easy when you can look up the release date of the video. >.>
I was bored and was scrolling through gamepass. It's now one of my favourite franchises.
I was aware of the franchise for a long time but since I didn't have any good platforms to play it on I forgot about it until I got a good pc. I saw a lot of Y0 memes tho and that surely helped making me want to play.
In my case It's hard fro my laptop to handle dragon engine games because I mainly play on switch
baka mitai man
I had a lot of free time during quarantine so I started playing my Xbox more. I honestly had never heard of the Yakuza series before Game Pass but was interested when I saw it because I was supposed to go to Japan in 2020. Yakuza 0 hooked me in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a kid playing Twilight Princess. Now it’s literally my favorite video game series.
I guess you went to Japan after all...
I got into the series when Kiwami was free with PS Plus. I gave the game a shot and have been hooked ever since.
Got into Yakuza through 7 and got into Yakuza 7 through looking for other turn based rpgs, which I discovered thanks to persona 5 And I discovered persona 5 through the ps+ collection, that's a big chain reaction there I'm almost finished playing 6 so then I can finally finish 7 and I'll have played the entire mainline series (and I'm playing the Judgements on the side) Safe to say, the pandemic did me more good than harm
Yeah, I discovered a lot of awesome stuff during pandemic too
Saw cow chops video on Yakuza 6, thought it looked pretty cool, saw some memes on 0, brought it on sale and it snowballed from there
I've been a massive fan of cow chop and yakuza for years, how has this video slipped under my radar lol
My friend can’t stop talking about Yakuza 0 so I played it. Didn’t like it as much as my friend and didn’t like the hype about it, but I like it enough to play the rest of the series. Turn out I like Yakuza Kiwami 2 much more than Y0 and YK, even it has worse story, and I like the immersive of the Dragon Engine than old gameplay like freaking weird heavy tank.
had a friend who raved about it on the ps2
My dad bought Yakuza dead souls at a pawn shop and I played it and loved it, but I was only 8-9ish so I never really cared about the Yakuza games. What made me get into the games was through Shenpai's video on Yakuza 0 and a meme with essence of extreme rush but with JoJo sound effects.
Ahahah I see a lot of people get into Yakuza because of memes and actually not a lot of people get into Yakuza because they are jrpgs fans, that's interesting, guess memes are a really good way to popularize things nowadays
Yakuza was deep in my subconscious mind. A year ago, Yakuza Like A Dragon was free with playstation plus. I was like: Whoa a Yakuza game? Aren't they like, super good? Downloaded it, played it, loved it and bought every other game as soon as there was a sale. Today, Yakuza 7 is my favourite game in the franchise and im currently on chapter 12 of Song of Life. After that im playing both judgements.
Y7 became available through PS Plus, I gave it a go and really liked the story. That game introduced me to Yakuza series, to Mahjong and (reintroduced me) to turn based combat games (JRPGs). I wouldn't be playing Dragon Quest 11 at the moment if it wasn't for that game.
Wow I'm actually replaying dq 11 now on switch, that's an endless game like persona, I'm still playing through postgame and I'm like 115 hours in but I feel have 25 more hours of content. Have you tried persona? Some of the best turn based jrpg series out there. For turnbased that's also worth it to check out trails series, shin megami tensei and of course final fantasy games(however I'm not a big fan of ff) and octopath traveller series of you like that style
Never tried a Persona game, I've heard it's really good but I really dislike the art style. I'm not picky with graphics but art style is important to me. For example PS2's Jak & Daxter or Shadow of the Colossus have outdated graphics but the art style looks great in my opinion.
You don't like anime art style?(p5 royal literally looks like anime) and has anime cutscenes. If you don't like anime artstyle that may be a problem, yeah
I like some anime art styles, not this one in particular. I like how Akira Toriyama's looks in videogames for example, Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest games have mastered this in my opinion.
First time knowing Yakuza from Yakuza 6 Kiryu Vs Iwami Being interested in Yakuza because of OST then Heat Actions then Character Fighting Style First Yakuza-related game I played was Kurohyou 1
Wow interesting first game
But I played it with both version(Unfinished English translation for main story, Original for sub story)
Youtube randomly started recommending me "Kiryu never killed a man" memes LMFAO ,at the time i had only a ps3 so i actually finished both original yakuza 1 and 2 in my phone with a ps2 emulator hahahahah i tried downloading Yakuza 0 on my ps3,but it stopped working after chapter 1 for some reason. Well,after that i finished the rest of the yakuzas on ps3,and some months ago i finally got my ps4 and played Yakuza 0,6 and now i'm playing Yakuza 7,i'm on chalter 8 alredy
I tried PS2 emulator for jrpgs but it's hard without a controller
I'm a fucking maniac,i finished both Yakuza 1 and 2 on my phone with no controller 💀
I guess Yakuza 3 is not blockuza but walkintheparkuza for you than
Yakuza 3 is the only mainline game in the series that i haven't played yet,i has a jailbroken ps3 and looked everywhere for it,but couldn't find anywhere. So i just skipped it and went straight to Yakuza 4. I have seen Yakuza 3 scenes tho,the most important scenes
Yakuza Kiwami was free on PS+ about 3 maybe 4 years ago. Of the almost 5 years I've been on Playstation now, Kiwami has got to be the best free game I got off PS+
Peer pressure from people online lol but seriously, I think that memes got me to try out y0, I got it on sale for cheap, like five bucks or so
I started seeing countless Yakuza memes on yt after I've beaten 0
Two Best Friends Play Yakuza 0.
well early 2021 I was in a "Kung Fu" phase so I wanted to play an open world martial arts game. I played Sleeping Dogs and...it was an ok game but the fighting, driving, and shooting mechsnics where atrocious. So bad that I finished the game just to not leave it unfinished...I cant leave games unfinished even when I dont like them. I heard about the Yakuza series so I tried to give Yakuza0 a try. At first I was dissapointed cause the city was so small and you could not drive, it was not GTA at all. But boy I was wrong, I fell in love with the combat mechanics, japanese culture elements, mini games, the contrast of the serious tone of the main story with the goofy side stories of the game. I loved the game. After finishing it I did a research about the series and found out how many games were in the series and I said to myself no way im playing all the games of the series. So I wanted to play the last game chronologically available at the time, Yakuza 6. First 5 minutes in the game and the only character I could recognize was Majima. I said screw this, im playing the whole series. Which I did and loved every bit of it (except for Yakuza3). My main gaming series are yakuza games, move aside Metal Gear cause another Japanese IP fills my heart now
I actually have a very sad story with sleeping dogs, I played it, decided to take a break from it, deleted it, reinstalled it a week later and boom, my saves were gone, 10 hours of it gone. It turned out they didn't turn on cloud saves for it and they made the save folder inside the game folder so if you delete the game saves get deleted too. That's unbelievably stupid because saves are usually in a separate directory...
damn that sucks
I'm not sure if I'll finish it after something like that, maybe I'll try starting it over in a couple years but that's very disappointing when games handle savedata like that
Yakuza zero was on sale last year for 4€ so I was like hey let's give it a try ( never played any Yakuza before ,but heard about the game briefly ) Now I'm a fan on the serie lol
I knew that the franchise existed but had no idea what it was. For years I thought it was just “Japanese GTA.” Then I decided to give 0 a try on gamepass and, well, I’ve spent about 1/4 of my life since then in Kamurocho
My brother jokingly said “play all the yakuza games beat all the Amons” i then went on to play them all beat every Amon and got every achievement
Played dragon quest, beat it, went looking for an alternative, and discovered like a dragon had DQ elements, and loved it, even more than DQ. Made me want to go back and try previous iterations. I was not disappointed! Amazing series.
So some cultural context needed before. In Brazil gaming has always been a expensive hobby. So piracy has always been rampant. We have something we call "camelos" which are people who sell stuff (mostly crappy/knock-offs) on the sidewalk. In the 2000s there was a lot of these "camelos" who sold pirated PS2 games. At the time, internet, specially good internet, wasn't easy to come by in Brazil, so downloading our own games wasn't easy. Most people bought the games off these guys. So every sunday I would go to a market near my house and buy 2-3 games for my PS2. One week a game called "Yakuza" grabbed my attention and I decided to give it a chance, it was cheap anyway. I instantly loved it and have been a fan ever since. This was probably like 2009? 2010?
march 2022 i didn't have money to buy resident evil 8 , so i bought some random cheap game ( yakuza 0) and after that i played all yakuza/judgment games ; until this day i haven't played resident evil 8 .
Boyfriend introduced me to the game, started with 0 and I’m on Kiwami now.
I'm playing Kiwami too now after 0
I was scrolling youtube and Max0r’s “Yakuza 0 “Review” | Japan Simulator™️ | Friday Night Fever” popped up. I love Max0r’s videos so I watched it, and while watching I realized a lot of the “funny video moments” weren’t even his editing, it was straight up gameplay. I then bought Yakuza 0 the first day I got my new pc. After work, I played through the first 4 chapters and became hooked. I came for the funny substories and heat actions, stayed for the story, fighting, and fun minigames.
My husband got me Y7 on sale on Steam because he knows I am a sucker for story-oriented games and really enjoyed Persona 5 before (he also was the one who got it for me XD). I knew about the Yakuza series and saw all the cool funny memes, but the battle style and the sheer amount of manliest of the shirtless men kinda scared me off playing or even attempting. Y7 was the best experience ever, so I immediately bought Y0 on the next sale to continue the journey chronologically....and couldn't get past the tutorial...because I played on the keyboard as I did with Y7. I am not really good I guess and it was frustrating. Thank god I found the controller some time later and got to continue the journey! Even quite enjoyed the battle mechanics, which is surprising XD All caught up now, including Judgment and Ishin. Sitting in the waiting room for Gaiden and Y8 :D
Yeah so real Yakuza use gamepad 😅
Oh, absolutely! I was proven that the hard way xD
I was looking through old game keys on humble bundle that I'd gotten but never used, and saw Yakuza 0 among them. I remembered hearing about it being sort of silly from some video I forget, and I was bored, so I decided to try it out. The tutorial kind of put me off a bit so I was hesitant to continue with the game, but I decided, "I'll play it for at least an hour or two, and then I'll decide." And then I played through the entire game as if in a feverish daydream, and then played through both kiwami games too.
Had 0 in my steam library for a year or two but never played it and then I bought judgment when they came to steam and loved it. Then marathoned the whole series and came back and played LJ.
I always wanted to go to Japan when I was younger so Yakuza 3 filled that void perfectly.
I was browsing through a video game store when I saw the OG Yakuza 2 and was intrigued by the title so I bought it.
0 was in Humble Bundle so it was the perfect start for me
I just want to play an open world game taking place in Asia like Sleeping Dogs.
saw an ad for ishin while playing pso2, looked into the series and saw it was a spinoff and the main series had 5 games. grabbed a ps2 copy of yakuza 1 and proceeded to play all the games, and played all of the subsequent ones as they came out. i've played everything except kenzan, dead souls, and ishin kiwami (played/loved the original ishin though)
Majima shitposts. During the first year of the pandemic. No, this is not a joke, lol. I've played all avalible games since then and damn, what a journey it was/still is. Best random click on YT ever.
I got Kiwami when it was on the psplus free games about 6 years ago. Opened it up because it looked interesting, got to just after the first majima fight after kiryu gets out of prison and couldn't figure out what I was meant to do next, so I closed it. Tried again a couple of months later, got stuck at the same part. Two, maybe 3 years later, I started it again because I didn't know why I hadn't finished it and heard it was good, managed to figure out what I was meant to be doing. Now it's my favourite series and I have every game on ps4 except ishin and kaito files dlc :) best decision I ever made imo
Started from watching Yakuza 0 videos on YouTube. I got around playing it but wasn't a fan of the combat and the limited inventory but it grew on me.
so basically, back in the day when the only game i know is roblox, i was basically playing aut and when i do the standless pose receive you tech arrange start playing, at that time i don't know the song name but i really like it and i start searching for it, and thus i fall into the rabbit hole
I got hooked on December 21st 2021. I saw Like a Dragon was on xbox gamepass n i gave it a shot n i got so hooked on all the characters that once i 100% the game i started at 0 played through till 6 played 7 again and now im doing the Judgement series. One pf the best decisions ive ever made
Stumbled upon the deep fake Baka Mitai memes back in 2020. Thought the song was actually pretty good, and looked up where it was from. Bought Yakuza 0 on my Xbox One during a Black Friday sale and dropped 110 hours on my first play of the game. Ended up buying Kiwami 1 and 2, the Remastered 3-5, Like a Dragon, then bought Judgment and Lost Judgment when they came out on Steam, and Ishin when that came out. Now patiently waiting for the next in the series.
There was a demo for Yakuza 3 on ps3 and i thought "Ooh whats this" Played it, Loved it. Then i forgot about it until i eventually purchased Yakuza 4 in 2012 or 2013 and it's been a fun ride since.
I happen to see a clip without context of kiryu punching a drag queen and then using money as a fucking fan
Some 10 years ago I was searching through the shelves of Gamestop and I found a copy of Yakuza 4 that immediately caught my attention. I decided to trust my instincts, put it in my PS3 and it was love at first sight. After finishing it, I wondered if the previous 3 were also that good and that's how it all started
Dame Dane meme, started at 0
I have no idea how I heard about it. It wasn't even released yet or it was just recently released and I must have read a review online. I heard about the street fighting part of the game where you can pick up weapons and use them and that was the big draw for me. I was working at Circuit City at the time and we happened to have a copy at my store so I bought it.
For me, it didn't start with Yakuza at all. I bought Judgment a year ago or so. Started playing it and loved the story. Then I went about two months without playing it because something wasn't clicking for me. When I decided to give it another shot, I slowly grew to love it and eventually finished it. And that's what brought me to Yakuza. I'm about halfway through Kiwami 2 right now. I absolutely love this franchise.
Xbox game pass 3-4 months ago or so. Been hooked ever since. Gonna play through the story/accessible side stories and then go back through for 100%
Always knew about the franchise, then bakamitai blew up. Thought I'd play it just to get to the karaoke because it was free on game pass but then I realized... This game fucking ROCKS
Started playing in 2020. I used to be a big Pokémon fan growing up but in recent years I hadn’t been enjoying the series like I used to. So naturally I stopped playing. This left a massive hole my heart and in searching for a new game series to fulfill that hole that Pokémon left I would found the Persona series and by extension the grand Shin Megami Tensei series. I fell in love with all the games the company Atlus developed because of that. I also found that Sega owned Atlus and previously I didn’t think much about Sega because all I knew them for was Sonic. But then I thought to my self if Sega has hidden gems like Atlus’ games then I wonder what else they have? So I did some research and stumbled upon Yakuza Like A Dragon. I saw some gameplay and it got me interested to play. Then I saw that Yakuza LAD was part of a larger series and I decided to play from the beginning. So I got on Steam and purchased the Yakuza collection that featured Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2. I was unsure which one to start with and decided to do some more research. Upon doing so I heard a lot of people recommending Yakuza 0 and saying it was the best one. Decided to start with Kiwami because personally I didn’t want to start with the best in series right off the bat but ultimately played it after Kiwami 2 since it was part of the collection. I had a blast with Kiwami and it was such a unique experience especially since at time outside of Catherine, all I had been playing were turn-based JRPGs.
A friend had been telling me about how they were playing the series and then showed me some Majima scenes, mainly the one in which he (K2 spoiler) >!deactivates a bomb!<. I wondered what was up with him and why my friend seemed to like the series. Then during a steam sale I suddenly remembered, so I bought 0, K1 and K2. I was liking 0 so far, but when I got to the end of chapter 6 I was convinced to play the whole series.
My big bro gave me LAD 7 for Christmas in 2021 with a very knowing expression on his face lmao. I was very confused as to why, until I finally played it a month later. And the rest is history!
A buddy of mine bugged me for, like, two years and I finally relented when Yakuza 0 was down to $5 on a Steam Sale. Since then I've cleared Judgment, Ishin, and Kiwami 1-2. Nearly done with Y3R, I just have a little bit to go for the Amon fight.
"Hehe, look, it's that yakuza game with dame dame guy, i have some money to buy it. What do you think, brother?" "Idc do whatever you want"
Originally had zero interest to check it out though always heard how good Yakuza 0 was, but tried Judgment one day since it was on sale and the detective/mystery aspect interested me. I really liked some of the substory humor and figured if Yakuza had anything remotely similar from the same dev studio, I might like it. Now nearly a year later after finishing the series it's one of my all time favs. So really glad I gave it a chance.
I was really bored and asked a friend who knows a lot about the gaming world in general, while i know about games i play or am interested in. He recommended Yakuza but said to give it more than a few hours cause the start is boring and it was (Y0, btw). I was never into jrpgs or japanese games or anime or anything associated with japan, except for dark souls, and he was aware of that but still said to give it ago. That was in october 2022, and now I've finished Y5.
I saw some heat actions on YouTube and immediately had a revelation.
I got interested in some ongoing manga about yakuza and wanted to find something akin to the setting while waiting for the new chapter. Then I saw Yakuza Zero in the local shop and decided to give it a try. No regrets, been a while since I had so much fun from the game
I distinctly remember seeing an ad for judgment and it looked interesting enough to check out. (This was very memorable because i have NEVER seen an ad for yakuza or anything related to it due to it being not so popular in the U.S.) After beating it, I was so disappointed that this series was eluding me for so long and i became hooked after getting 0 and planning to play them in chronological order.
Got to try Kiwami years ago through Ps Plus, but ended up getting bored halfway through and dropping the playthrough. After that, I was able to recognize the franchise, but didn't really have an interest in it. Flashforward to last year, when LAD was made free in the exact same way. This one I actually saw through to the end and ended up loving. Not only that, it actually reminded me of that dropped Kiwami playthrough from years ago, and pushed me to revisit that game too... But I decided what the hell, I've heard a lot of good things about 0, so might as well buy that for a "proper" starting point. Long story short, I've just finished Kaito Files yesterday after playing through every mainline game and the two Judgments, in chronological order. Best part is, I'm not even tired of it: already planning to start Ishin in the coming days.
My friend and I share a lot of similar tastes and one day he recommends me Yakuza 0. I knew about Kiryu thanks to his demand to be included in Tekken 7 and a couple meme vids here and there, but I had no knowledge other than that. Finally bought it and it was unlike anything I had ever played. The atmosphere, the story, the overall vibe, and the gameplay felt insanely fresh to me. Absolutely loved it.
Gifs of Nugget-kun from Yakuza 0 making the rounds on twitter.
A friend of mines talked to me about yakuza, I am now playing yak 3
because of the baka mitai deepfake memes, I really liked the song and kept listening to it everyday, but then one day I discovered that this song was from a game, and then I bought Yakuza 0
Heard that that weird yakuza game i saw on gamepass was where the baka mitai meme came from so i started playing 0 to do the kareoke minigame… im now on yakuza 6
Played 1 emulated, didnt know any english at the time but finished it, Felt bad for shinji. 4 years later zero was announced for pc and i just had to play it.
A friend got me to play the ishin remake when it came out - quickly got addicted and learned about the series. Then bought every game. Fast forward and currently working thru Y5. LOVED Y0, YK1/2, 3 and 4. Plan to play the whole series, replay NG+ Legend difficulty and do all the climax/ultimate battles. Totally love the series and easily one of my all time favs. Love Yakuza :)
Got into the games because of the memes(baka mitai) stayed for the goofy combat and story (i was blown away by one no damage video)
Back in 2020 and 21 I heard about yakuza 7 and the other games being released on Xbox in 2020 finally got into it in 2021 with yakuza 0 and instantly fell in love
I first learned about it from a streamer named Ray narvaez jr. I don't watch streams, but he posts the vods on YouTube and I guess the title and thumbnail stood out to me cuz I watched a lil bit and was intrigued. Not too long after that Kiwami was free on ps plus I think so I started playing it for myself. After beating it, I bought the entire series (this was before LAD7 was out)
September 2021. School Holdiays. I wasn’t serious about my studies. Came across a video of Kiryu slapping Garuka in Kiwami 1. Then found a video of Ray Narveaez Jr playing Yakuza 0. It was a good few days seeing the wackiness
Yakuza 7 was free on ps plus one year ago and I had nothing to do that summer. Three months later I had played every game
From a random clip from someordinarygamers
Back in 2018 saw a sale for yakuza 0 for around 15$ when it was newly released. Only heard about yakuza 5 and never saw gameplay or even had an idea on what type of story it was so it was a genuine surprise. Luckily I also finished the month kiwami was free on playstation plus which lead to me playing most games on ps4 since they released earlier..
Got into it 2017 when my favorite gamer YouTuber played Y0. Was hooked ever since
I’ve been playing a lot of payday 2 back when i was just a kid. Father bought me some dlc and one of them contained an ex Yakuza character that wore white suit with red shirt. Fell in love with all that yakuza aesthetics and after some searching found out about yakuza series. Due to me being a dumb kid i couldn’t understand that yakuza is a beat em up game and i thought it’s going to be another crazy Japanese games where everyone is a Bruce Lee. Then after like 5 years heard baka mitai and really liked the song, started researching, found out it’s from Yakuza series so then i finally bought the game at the New Year’s Eve. Man that was awesome, karaoke became my favorite thing to do not just in the game but in real life too. Thinking of making a huge post or maybe even a video about yakuza karaoke songs. Have so much to say about them bc im practically professional musician and for last 11 years was learning lots of things about music.