stray thots upon starting yakuza 0
I finished 5 and Binary Domain recently so it felt like time to play the "best game in the series". I've played it for a few chapters and have some thinkings.
- the stylized comic frame cutscenes are really cool, they should use them more
- making all of the progression tied around money is an interesting idea since it has a few knock on effects. Apart from items that cost 10s of millions of ¥¥¥, money kind of doesn't have any real value when shopping. However it also meant that the dev team had to take items for cheating in gambling out since you could powerlevel no problem, making 100% completion more of a pain.
- it's a shame that the game that blew Yakuza up for a western audience is the one that's a prequel released after the 5th game. I always suspected they would spoil plot reveals in earlier games but I didn't know they'd spoil the beginning and ending of Saejima's whole section of 4.
- I think Sotenbori sucks. It's comfy sure but it's small, the taxi locations are useless as far as crossing the map vertically, and the entire southern half has a single restaurant.
- it's really interesting seeing a more punk kid-ish Kiryu. He's not really a paragon of virtue yet. Ditto for Majima not quite being a crazy person yet.