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?

  • @steeznsonEnglish
    4•5 hours ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]English
    11•6 hours ago

    else I’ll never catch up to the current releases.

    That’s the patient gamer lifestyle.

  • MrScottyTayEnglish
    2•4 hours ago

    I’ve only played and finished 0 and 1. The first one I actually played was 5 because it was on ps+ back in the day but I loved it so much I knew I should start from the beginning. Few years later I saw 0 was on ps+ and my gf started playing it, so I decided to play that one as my actual first, then moved onto 1 when I felt the urge to play another Yakuza game. Eventually I’ll get that urge again and I’ll boot up 2, and so on. I’m in no rush to get to the latest.

  • @nargacu83English
    6•6 hours ago

    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.