I’ve already completed Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami, am currently about 15 hours into Kiwami 2.
I fell in love with the franchise after playing Yakuza 0 and initially wanted to play each game chronologically at least up until Yakuza 7/ Like a dragon, but I keep seeing new games releases and spinoffs that look very interesting, such as Judgement, Ishin, and most recently Pirates in Hawaii.
With my full-time job and other adult responsibilities I can’t possibly hope to get to play all of them, else I’ll never catch up to the current releases.
Are there any titles you suggest I should skip? Are there any “absolutely must play no matter what” titles?
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I would recommend to play all of the mainline story (Yakuza 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8). The story is a little stupid at times but overall it is good. And if you do all of them in chronological order it is much more impactful when you know the background of characters and their relationship with others.
I have to say that i played a lot more of the Judgement games. I haven’t played the Ishin games and Dead Souls, i’m not that much interested to play them.
In my opinion, you shouldn’t think like that. If you love the franchise, take you time and just have fun playing what you want.
Ishin felt like a stage play with all the characters you know playing different roles. It’s great but not required Y all.
else I’ll never catch up to the current releases.
That’s the patient gamer lifestyle.
The day I catch up to current releases is the day I know I need to take a break from video games. Fortunately, I’m getting further and further behind every year, so that’ll never happen.
Extremely bare bones playthrough would be just doing Yakuza 0 and then 7. Those would give you an overview of the two main gameplay styles the series has to offer.
If you want to play more then you probably want to finish the brawler games first before moving on to 8 since it has spoilers for the whole series.
The Judgement games are also good so you might want to try the first of those to see if you like it. Story is completely isolated from the Yakuza games though so I’d investigate this at your leisure.
I’m on Yakuza 3, and while it’s a heartwarming story so far (I’m about halfway through), I think 0 is the only “absolutely must play no matter what.” I’m probably going to play the rest of the series, but at least from what I’ve read/watched, they’re not anything ground-breaking.
I’ve been playing one about every year or two, so I think I’m slowly catching up. I’m probably going to give it another year or so before I play Yakuza 4 because the gameplay is so similar between games that I want to give it a break so each title feels fresh.
But honestly, you shouldn’t be worrying about “catching up,” just play at your own pace and enjoy yourself. My understanding is that 0-6 are completely separate from the “Like a Dragon” series, so if you want to skip ahead, you probably wouldn’t miss much (and of the 0-3 games I’ve played so far, they do a really good job of covering relevant plot points from prior games).
