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I'm going to preface this review by saying I have only played Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth prior to playing Yakuza 0. I tried the original Yakuza 0 years ago and couldn't really get into it. I decided to give it another go with the Director's Cut after now having a better understanding of the way Yakuza games work.

Comparatively to the Like a Dragon games, the combat is completely different. I personally thought the combat was one of the weaker sides of the game. I don't normally prefer either turn based combat or beat em up like this but I just found the combat in Yakuza 0 to be a bit lacking. From what I recall trying the original years ago, the combat here feels rather similar. It just didn't feel that deep to me and I found myself mostly using the same combo between whatever style seemed to work best for the enemy I was currently fighting. It was just fine but it started to show how lacking it felt when you got into some dungeons where it was fight after fight after fight.

The substories in Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth were incredible and I also found them lacking here. I tried a handful and none of them were as memorable as many of them were in the newer Yakuza titles. I found after a handful, I just focused on the story, which is fine because the story was incredible!

The story is already where I've found the Yakuza titles shine. It starts off slow, the first 10 hours actually had some moments where I was struggling to continue. I've already noticed that Yakuza titles love to split all sorts of tutorials for stuff over the first 10 hours of their games and it can drag here too. However, once you get into the meat of the story, it's incredible. I couldn't put it down. The last 20 hours had me hooked while I had to keep going to see what happens next. The characters are all incredibly well written. I already really liked Kiryu and Majima from the newer titles but this puts a whole new respect to them for me.

I looked up some of the differences between the original and the Director's Cut and here are my thoughts. The big thing is the English voice acting. Some people say they think it's sacrilege to hear Kiryu speaking English, I don't care, I've only heard him speak English anyway. Regarding some of the story differences:

I saw they retconned two characters' deaths - Lee and Billiken. First, Lee isn't even seen again after they reveal he's still alive. I don't get why people would care so much other than being upset about any change. Billiken seemed like such a minor character anyway that it doesn't really matter to me. He only took one bullet so it's way more believable that he survives than some of the other twists I've seen in the Yakuza titles... Also, I saw the scene with Makoto's watch being repaired is new, I actually really loved that scene. Between that and when Majima saves Makoto but won't speak because he knows she'd recognize his voice, I thought it was a really touching moment to end their time together in the story.

I absolutely love this game. I'm kind of bummed I got to the Yakuza series so late but excited to give the rest of the games a go. Like a Dragon is still my favorite of the series from what I've played but they're all so great, RGG doesn't seem to miss.

Too good not to play.