Ok let me join in with the saga, i want to play on pc.
So... yakuza 1 and 2 are play only, BUT they made remakes called kiwami 1 and 2, released around yakuza 6 and 0 in 2016-17, are those actual "new" games or some upscale?
0 and Kiwami 1 are made in a new engine, a step ahead of the previous 3, 4 and 5. 0 and kiwami 1 are almost the same game visually. Same maps, same assets, same effects and same combat (main characters have 4 different fighting styles), which are the most well developed for the whole series. Kiwami 1, being a full remake, but very faithful to PS2, is shorter. Yakuza 0 is a much longer game, because of having 2 protagonists.
Yakuza kiwami 2 I'll mention further down.
3-4-5 are 2010 oldass play3 games, got a pc remaster, how good of are those remasters?
They're the oldest of the bunch, excluding the original PS2. I'm still on the middle of Yakuza kiwami 2, but I today I played a little bit of 3 and combat animations are less fluid. I've seen one video of an youtuber saying yakuza 3 is eligible for a remake because combat is basic compared to new entries (after all they're an evolution of PS2 era games), but from what I played it is just fine. I guess 4 and 5 adds variety with the many playable characters other than kiryu, but they all have one fighting style.
Yakuza 0, a prequel from 2015.
Yakuza 6 and 7 are the most recent ones with kiwami.
Kiwami 2, 6 and 7 are newer games, all running in the dragon engine, the most up to date tech for yakuza. It adds more phisics but combat in kiryu games are more fluid than ever. 7 is a fresh start and combat is turn based. Kiwami 2 is newer than 6, also.
So... everything working well on pc? Do i start with zero > remakes > 3-4-5 remasters > 6-7? Or zero is supposed to be played in the middle for some reason?
Yes, but with some small caveats:
- all of them are best played with a gamepad, especially for minigames. But totally possible with Kb+m;
- They all have some censored music in intros, and low resolution font, also there's mod sthat restores and fixes these;
- Y0 and kiwami 1: There's a depth of field effect that is annoying, you can use a mod to fix it;
- Y6 and Kiwami 2 are very heavy with max settings. Antialiasing is annoying since it's SMAA or FXAA and I get FPS drops with maximum SMAA(x2), on an RTX 3070. Y7, on the very same engine, runs fine and has TAA;
- kiwami 2 has some frame issues in minigames, but there's a fix mod.
All of these mods can be found in Pcgamingwiki pages for each game. The good thing is that all of these are only annoyances and the games are very good PC ports overall.
About the order, start with 0, and play in chronological order. Kiwami 1 and kiwami 2 were released after 0, and had their plot adapted to some of 0 events (dialogue lines, substories). It doesn't spoil anything starting from 0. The gameplay differences are something very easy to get used 2. After all, you're just playing a different game. A PS3 game already have the "modern gameplay" present in the series.
The thing with yakuza games is that there's a lot of side content, and a lot of tasks, but you are free to progress through the main story if it's your preference.
I'm a completionist, and I'm now in kiwami 2. But I still have some minigames to finish in 0, and most of side content of kiwami 1. If you're going for 100%, get ready for grinding. Specially 0.
As a matter of curiosity, I tried Yakuza 1 for PS2, and it's kind of dated with it's fixed camera angles. The remakes are incredibly beatiful.
I played a little bit of all of them to compare the different versions of Kamurocho, and man, It's one of the most vivid gameworlds. In any version.
