Game: Yakuza 0
Time played: ~44 hours

These days, I'm in the fortunate position where I've been playing a rotation of a few excellent PS4 games: Apex Legends, Dark Souls III, and Yakuza 0. Each of them satisfies a different mood, and excellently so—Apex quenches a short-term, twitchy, competitive thirst, Dark Souls nourishes my drive for adventure, and Yakuza comforts something in my heart like a close friend.

Yakuza in particular surprised me: it's one of those games that I expected to be good, but didn't realize would become that good. Like my 2019 game of the year, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, it strikes a masterful balance between the epic and the intimate. At once, I'm glued to the melodramatic main story and its exponentially rising stakes, and the playful, if a little campy back-and-forths lining its numerous substories.

When I bought the game on sale in January for 20 bucks, I knew scarcely anything about it. The main things that stuck in my head were Baka Mitai, its outrageous-looking combat system, and its setting in Kamurocho, a gritty red-light district in Tokyo.

I hemmed and hawed for weeks before finally starting it. I quickly became invested in Kiryu's struggle as he found himself at odds with his superiors in the yakuza. The tension in some of those cutscenes is so dense, I constantly wanted to find out what would happen next.

But outside of the gripping main plot, I don't think I had much reason to pick up the game every day. I had certain expectations coming in, similar to those I had had in Breath of the Wild—I approached the world as an open world. I hoped that exploring and absorbing the atmosphere would be its own reward. The problem is, there's only so much exploring one can do before they wonder "what am I doing here?"

Once I began doing more substories, however, something clicked. I realize now that they scratch the same itch that support conversations did in Three Houses. The main quest presents the protagonists, Kiryu and Majima, with a grand conflict that challenges their sense of meaning in the world, a la the Hero's Journey. Substories, on the other hand, highlight hilarious scenarios where the heroes' level of investment is inversely proportional to the scenarios' broader consequences.

If the main quest is the salt of the story, then the substories are the acid that balances out the flavor. Both work together to characterize the protagonists and build the overall sense of world. And those are just two of the many things that Yakuza uses to create a grand universe in two tiny districts in two cities in the tiny country of Japan.

If the main quest is the salt of the story, then the substories are the acid that balances out the flavor.

Those other things include the wealth of minigames, the ridiculous dialogue, and the deep combat system. I immensely enjoyed how it felt like more and more features slowly became available even when I felt like I was progressing pretty far into the story—I can't think of many other games where new gameplay elements keep unfolding this late into the game.

Overall, very satisfied with how this game is panning out, and despite only being approximately 20% done according to the in-game completion tracker, like a good soup or book, I already don't want it to end.