Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined today by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, we’re joined by our third special guest, Phil. Hello, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, I am Phil Savage. I’m the UK Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer. And I’m here on an episode that isn’t about PC games. Hey, these are technically on PC now. They are now. So yes, people who have downloaded the episode will know that this episode is called The Best Yakuza Games. So in this episode, we’re going to talk about the Yakuza series. This is because Judgment is releasing on PS5 and Xbox Series X, a spin-off game in the series. And generally speaking, Yakuza is having a big moment, really. It’s all now available on Game Pass on PC and Xbox. And it’s pretty easy to play the entire series. And obviously, late last year as well, they released Like a Dragon in the West, which is a new sort of substrand of the series. So there’s a lot going on with Yakuza all the time at the moment. And yeah, it seems like a good moment to talk about it, right? Yeah, I’d say so. I mean, this is probably now the first time where we don’t know what the next Yakuza thing is going to be. It feels like for the last four years, they’ve been releasing them so consistently. But now seems like a good time to sort of take stock of where the series is. And it seems, it feels like a series that has come up in probably about 50% of the episodes we’ve done. So it’s nice to kind of get on top of it and nail down our thoughts. Yeah. And Phil, you are like the Yakuza expert of all the people I know. Like it’s something we used to regularly discuss in the office. I for many years enjoyed it through the medium of memes because it’s possible to do that with Yakuza. But what’s your sort of background with the series? So I didn’t actually play any game in the series until 2017 when Yakuza 0 was released, which I think was like an onboarding point for a lot of people. I think that’s where the series… It had some success like on PS3, but I think it really came to life with Yakuza 0 on PS4 back in 2017. And then I basically thought, okay, what if I then spent the rest of the year playing only these games? So it was before the remasters had been released. So I dug out my PS3 from storage and went and played Yakuza 4 and 5. And then Kiwami was released and just kept going from there really. So me and Phil worked together for many years. And I remember that this year, I think it was in the Game of the Year discussions on PC Gamer. You did basically say to me, look, all I’ve done is play Yakuza games all year. And I’m struggling to have like many more takes on other games beside that, because this was basically my year. And maybe I’m remembering it wrong, but I think that’s correct. No, that seems about right. I mean, the previous year, I’ve managed to get a Dishonored 2 to be our Game of the Year. So I thought, oh, this year, I’ll just take a backseat. I’ve done my work. I’ll let someone else run the Game of the Year. So I’ve been trying to have a Yakuza year this year. And so far I’ve made it through Kiwami 1. And I got to the end of it and was like, I just need a break. Like I can’t do more of this right now. So the idea of like, that I’ve got, you know, a good six entries ahead of me is terrifying. Finding where to start and finding sort of how to catch up because they are all 50 hours minimum. If you wanna, I mean, there are a lot of ways to judge your completion of the Yakuza game. And I try to at least do the main story and probably all of the sub stories because they’re often the most delightful part. And yeah, that is usually, it’s a big time investment. Yeah, it’s great to have you on for this one then, Phil. So we’re gonna, what we’re gonna do in this episode is we’re going to talk a bit about the history of the series. We’re gonna talk a bit about judgment. We’ll talk about how the series managed to kind of take off in the West after being sort of like not dormant for a long time, but certainly it had a smaller co-audience than it does now. And then Phil is also going to talk us through his five favorite Yakuza games as the expert on the podcast. So it should be a good one. Hopefully, if you’re listening to this, if you’re a fan of the series, you’ll get something out of it because of Phil’s expertise. And if you’re new to the series, you might get more excited about it by listening to us talk about it. Obviously, we’ve only just started recording the episode, so I have no idea if either of those things will be true. We make no promises. No, indeed. So Phil, why don’t you tell us a bit about your background in media? Obviously, we worked together for a bunch of years. Do you wanna talk about how you sort of got involved in games media? Yeah, I don’t wanna say it was an accident, but it definitely happened without my active participation, I feel like. Yeah, sounds like an accident. So back in early 2020s, I sort of got back into PC gaming after a period of not really being able to afford any computer. I just had a terrible laptop that could only run very, very old games. So I did that and then I just ended up picking up the magazine that a friend had a whole bunch of in their flat. So decided, oh, this must be the magazine people buy to know about this thing. And that was PC Gamer. And I ended up following a couple of the writers on emerging social media platform Twitter and happened to get a follow back from Tom Francis. At the same time, I’ve been doing a bit of blogging, mostly about game stuff. And so one day, sort of mid 2011, he emailed me and said, oh, would you be interested in doing some writing for us? And obviously I said yes. So I spent about a year doing little freelance bits, stuff for the extra life section, which is the sort of back third of the magazine, which is all about games that are already out and our relationship with them. And also doing a few half page reviews for terrible Wii winter sports ports. And then about a year of that, somewhere in 2012, I was sort of making enough from doing magazine bits that I ended up leaving my job, which if I try and work out the economics of it now, doesn’t make any real sense. I was living in quite a rough part of Manchester at the time. So I guess I wasn’t paying much for rent. And then one morning I got a email from Graham Smith, the editor at the time, who said, our website news cover has canceled last minute. Are you free to do a news shift? And I was like, yeah, I guess. Not really knowing how that would go. But yeah, I did a day’s news and then kept getting more offers for cover. And then this happened to sort of come inside with them ramping up their website plans a little bit. So it ended up being brought on as a kind of full-time freelancer, moving down to Bath and writing news for a good few years. Yeah, so that happened. I remember that’s where our story is going to intersect, isn’t it? I joined as editor at this point and then was kind of getting used to coming in at the top there, which was quite daunting. But yeah, I remember you just sort of plugging away. And all these years later, I now understand what a viable resource, having a good freelance news writer is. Like, good lord, they’re a precious type. So yeah, what about from there, Phil? Like, how did you sort of get involved full time and become editor-in-chief? So at that point, once you’re in the door, you just kind of have to hang around and be available as people leave and be up for trying pretty much. That’s how this career works. If you can do that and you’re sort of up for trying basically anything, you’ll do all right. So when Chris Thurston, the Deputy Editor at the time, moved over to PC Gamer Pro, a sort of attempt at an eSports channel for the website, that left a spot open for Deputy Editor. I mean, Sam, you’ll probably know better why I got picked for it, but I like to think it’s because I would take part in the stupid Back Page photoshoot and other writers were less keen on that as their brand. It wasn’t to do with that quite so much. It was, I mean, certainly that was a valuable part of your contribution to PC Gamer, but I thought that there was very much, something I learned being on PC Gamer is there was a culture that’s kind of instilled in you of like what PC Gamer values are and what the kind of like quality bar of PC Gamer is. And it’s quite a precious thing. And like, it sort of, it feels like something that’s been passed down through the different generations of writers and editors. And I felt like you just really got it. Like you really understood what that was. And obviously I knew you were a very good writer. Plus you’d been through the wringer. Like you were writing so many reviews of like NAF MMOs. That seemed to be- Yeah, that was how I kept my sort of, kept my foot in the door for freelance before I got full-time position was just be the guy who’ll do the MMO review. Just say yes to everything. And it is hard work, but also some of my early submissions were a bit NAF and got the dreaded Tony Ellis email. So it was like, I need to do everything to make sure that I keep going with this. And obviously in the end, so Tony Ellis was our old production editor and probably just one of the best people in future at the time. Like I learned so much from those emails from him, even if as you’re reading them, it sort of cuts you down to your core as you take in, like, oh, everything I wrote was garbage for these reasons. But then you learn from that and it really makes you work a lot stronger as a result. Tony was the first person to explain what the passive voice was to me, a concept I don’t think I’d even thought about while I was working at Imagine. And then it was like, suddenly, you can’t ever do this again. And it’s like, okay, thank you, Tony. Very viable to go through that process, I think. I kind of, weirdly, for all my time at Future, I’m pretty sure, unless I’ve really forgotten something, PC Gamer was the only games magazine I never wrote for. Yeah, so I have never been, I never went through the Tony process. My whole career may be a total sham, maybe I am shit. I just haven’t been told by someone who knows better. Well, there’s only one way to find out, Matthew, and that’s if you review, like, you know, an MMO for PC Gamer. Were it possible to do such a thing in 2021? There are no MMOs now, but yeah. Yeah, so Phil, from there, then, you become editor of the magazine, right? And I move over to the website. What was that like? That was something of a culture shock, I think. So one of the things about working with Samuel is he takes a lot of work on for himself and holds a lot of it in his head at a time. So then transitioning to being editor and finding out what the job actually meant and how much of it was kept from me, it was like, oh, being Depphead was a complete lark. This is real now. At the same time, it is genuinely fulfilling to sort of craft that process and be sort of in charge of what each issue is. And I made some issues that I’m so proud of to this day. So that was really valuable. I like the idea of taking over something and there’s sort of like, here are all the kind of, the spreadsheets we use to manage various things. And here’s the key to my mind palace when most of the magazine exists and you now have to go in and survive in this place. There were some parts I was like fairly well organized with like the flat plan and that was fine. Everything else was more of a punt. The information did exist, but yeah, like, I was very much dependent on my like late twenties brain. And now I’ve got like mid, like almost mid thirties brain and I can’t do that anymore. And I do need to like write things down. So yeah, you kind of got the aftershock of that. I think your run on PC Gamer though, Phil, was like a bit better than mine overall because I don’t think you were as like worried about like the commercial side of it as I was in terms of the types of stuff you’re putting in like cover lines and things like that. And I think that meant you did some more interesting features overall and different types of issues. I don’t know, maybe you feel differently, but that’s kind of how I see it. That’s possibly true. I think we’ve always been quite lucky, or I felt quite lucky doing it because for starters, you were moving into a new role as like UK Editor-in-Chief. So it felt like I wasn’t at the top of the chain still. Like it felt like I still had a bit more room to move and there was somebody above me who was like looking out for me. At the same time, a lot of cover discussions we had, it felt like we were trusted. Like the people didn’t necessarily know what the PC games landscape was. So people expected us to make good decisions about what to put on the cover. And I think just to have knowledge working in the space leads to, you try some things out. I remember that, Thatchi, from Nintendo Mags, this idea of like, we can play the, oh, this is a Nintendo like Heartland thing and you just don’t understand it card every once in a while. But I think that’s how you get your Phoenix Wright versus Professor Layton cover through. You’re like, these are iconic characters and people have demanded to see them together for years. They hadn’t. And so, at that point, you’re just like, screw it. That’s very much like one for me, one for you, I think. Yeah, I can say it now because I’m not in charge of, I don’t get involved in picking those covers as much anymore. So I can just say, actually, I played that card maybe too much and I’m very lucky it worked out like more often than not. I think we got a lot of leeway when I put a big lion face on the cover for Planet Zoo. And I did it, I would almost say I did it mostly as a dad, but it made me happy to have a big lion on the cover. And I was like, I will fight for this. I will do anything for this. And I had no idea if it would sell. And it actually sold really well, so vindicated. And from that point on, it was man with a gun or lion that became the rule. Nothing in between. But hey, the lion had really good eye contact, so. Imagine if the lion had a gun. That would have been amazing. That was a great looking issue though. Planet Zoo, right, that one? That was, yeah. Yeah, that was cool. Also, I thought that one of the coolest issues you did, Phil, I think you did this like a month after I took over, was your Half-Life 2 anniversary cover. Oh yeah. Yeah, where you did like a whole bunch of themed features around Half-Life 2. And it was so cool. You just used a logo on the cover with like an orange fluoro effect, I think, that I immediately just thought, ah, fuck, I should have done that sort of thing, instead of worrying about like, is there a total war or like relic RTS I can put on the cover this month? If not, we’re fucked. That was like my kind of overall vibe. Yeah, but even that introduced me to the panic of putting an orange fluoro on a cover and then worrying up until the point you get it to the printers that there’ll have been an error and that it’ll have come out as a horrible kind of salmon pink that it appears in the PDFs. Yeah, which can happen. Which did happen to me in a different issue. It’s so good, though, that moment of when they send you the box of issues and you open it up and there is this brief second of like, have we absolutely fucked it this month? And then it’s like, oh, good, we will get to carry on working. This will look amazing or so bad. So yeah, from there, Phil, then, you became UK Editor-in-Chief when I left PC Gamer in 2019, was it? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. How was that running the website side of things? Different. It’s kind of exhausting in its own way, because I think you made the point as well, like the magazine is kind of a slow build to panic each month as you get everything in place and then realize it’s deadline day and you haven’t caught the back page written yet. Whereas there are fewer peaks and troughs on the website. It’s just sort of a background radiation of kind of pressure. But like, we’ve been really lucky these last few years, we’ve bought in a whole bunch of new writers, like the team feels probably bigger and more dynamic than it has in a long time. So it’s a real different vibe from sort of our previous era, which was a lot of fun in its own way, in the sort of scrappy kind of all pulling together kind of way. But right now, yeah, it just feels, I don’t know, quite satisfying. You’ve got the right amount of people for the work that needs doing basically. Yeah, it does feel like that. I mean, there’s still stuff that comes in, various events, and the top 100 for the magazine each year still kind of stretches us to breaking point, even with extra people. It’s amazing that we ever made one on like half the staff. Yeah, I have good memories of making those now though. And also just a sort of self-loathing that would kind of accumulate over the years for like years where it kind of went wrong. Like, oh, 2014, that was kind of a disaster. I think we all felt that way about the 2014 top 100. Yeah, which is my first one. And then like it sort of slowly got better over the years. And then like now I imagine it’s pretty, a lot slicker at least and more straightforward to put together. Yes and no, we don’t do votes anymore. Like we decided democracy was bad. Nice. Yeah, so instead we just have a long conversation over multiple days where we talk through every game line by line and it takes forever. And it’s kind of fun and high energy. And I’d kind of love to record one of those conversations one day. Yeah, that’d be awesome. But also for legal reasons probably can’t. So it gets a bit spicy sometimes. Classic. Yeah, good stuff then. Well, in which case then Phil, thank you for introducing yourself and we’ll take a brief break there and then we’ll come back and talk about Yakuza some more. Thanks for! Welcome back to the podcast. I’m joined by Matthew and Phil to talk about Yakuza some more. So first of all, a brief discussion of Yakuza’s history. So the series was began in 2005, the first entry and the series in general was produced by Toshihiro Nogoshi, someone I’ve mentioned on this podcast before. So the original PS2 game didn’t seem like something that Sega really wanted, but Nogoshi sort of forced it into life. And Sega had very low sales expectations for it. It was a game purely made for Japanese adult men is my understanding. And it basically sold in increments and the low kind of original sort of shipping run for the game, sort of ballooned over time and then it eventually became this sort of like slow burning hit. And from there, there was this Western release of the first game in 2006, that is considered quite duff. Do either of you have much of a kind of history with that version? I’ve played like four or five hours of it. I never finished it, but I bought it new. Because it had Lex Luthor from Smallville in it. What about you, Phil? I did not buy it, but I may have found a way to emulate it and try it out for a few hours, which when I was like, yes, no, I won’t be going back this far into the serious history. Then it was considered a little bit of a flop, the Western release and basically a belated Yakuza 2 port would follow on, sorry, not port, but localization would follow from Sega in 2008. At which point, obviously, the PS2 was an extremely old console, it was almost 10 years old. So that didn’t sell particularly well. It was actually kind of surprising that Sega kept going with it and ported like Yakuza 3 and 4 and 5, though it seemed to be like fraught, more and more fraught each time in terms of whether they would actually come to the West or not. Some got, I think it’s five that got a digital only release, right, Phil? That’s right, yeah. That showed that it wasn’t doing particularly well. But they persisted with it, Yakuza Dead Souls, the zombie spinoff that wasn’t particularly well received. But I imagine they probably thought, well, this acts as more of a standalone game than this long running sort of arc. And so maybe it would do well. It’s got zombies in it, it’ll sell. That’s what publishers think, I assume. Especially around that sort of time. I think it was probably off the back of Red Dead’s Undead Nightmare doing well and thinking, oh, well, people quite like these horror themed spinoffs of different series. But it seemed to take until Yakuza 0 for the series to have this sort of breakthrough moment. Would you say that’s the case, Phil? What do you think made this entry take off in a way that the other ones didn’t? I think there’s a few things. For one thing, I think something that really helped is that the PS4 was the first of Sony’s consoles that had a really easy way for you to take screenshots and just share them on social media. And the Yakuza games, completely by accident, I guess, because of how old the series is, but they lend themselves so well to capturing instant sort of memeable moments. It’s got an almost visual novel style a lot of the time. Most of the time, you were looking at a character doing a weird pose and then a brief couple of sentences of text saying something funny. And throughout the game, there are just, if you’re looking for stuff to post silly things supposed on social media, it’s just like, you’ll get so many from any of the games in the series. 95% of all the screenshots or whatever I’ve taken on Xbox have been purely from Kiwami 1, I think. Cause they’ve just, yeah, like you say, you’re just constantly like, that’s a tweet. That’s a tweet. That’s a tweet. You know, it’s the character names that get me. Cause they’re so like vague a lot of the time. You know, it’s just like Mr. Big Head or Man with Giant Face is the name of the character. And you’re like, well, that’s funny. Yeah, or you go, it’s a matter of what you say. You’re going into a fight and it just comes up in large text with suspicious men. And you’re like, well, okay, I will punch these people. Yes. I’ve tried to avoid tweeting too much about me playing through Yakuza 0 because I feel like I’m so late the meme economy on that one. It’s like, it’s like discovering Bitcoin now. It’s like, well, good fucking luck. You know what I mean? Like, I honestly think it’s okay. Cause I think people have such affection for it that they’re like, oh yeah, that’s great. I love that when they see it. And people who don’t know about it just, you know, get on board. It feels like reheated a pattern to me, but maybe that’s just a bit harsh. Oh God, I feel so damned now. Sorry. That wasn’t my intention, Matthew. So yeah, this one seemed to sell quite well then, Phil. And you think that the social media sort of following helps the game find more fans. I think that helped to an extent. Also, so it released early 2017. And I think that was sort of a weird point in that era of those consoles where it didn’t feel like there was much that people were kind of… Late 2016 didn’t seem to have loads of huge hits that people would have been still playing. I mean, that was dishonored late 2016, which didn’t even sell that well. And like most of the sort of big game of the year games came out early 2016. It was like Uncharted and Doom were both May, I think. Yeah, that’s right. So there may be a sense that it came out January. People had space for a new game. Also, I mean, this may be a bit of a stretch, but like there was a lot of hype at the time for Persona 5, which was coming out in a few months, I think like early 2017, March or something. So I don’t know, maybe people were excited about the prospect of living in recreations of Tokyo. Yeah, I sort of wonder if the evolving relationship with sort of Japanese media and how accessible it is now has sort of led to, I guess I’m talking mostly here about like how anime is consumed and how easy it is to watch anime. I wonder if like Yakuza being adjacent to that sort of side of things has made it a bit easier to find an audience here. Am I onto something there or is that kind of nonsense, what do you reckon? No, I can see that, yeah. I feel like the anime corner of the internet has, yeah, benefited from like Crunchyroll and Funimation and all these services that just stream a constant stream of nonsense into your face. Yeah, yeah, it feels like a sort of new wave of it compared to back when you had to buy DVDs of every three episodes of an anime series. And being an anime fan was a significant investment. There’s definitely some of that. There might also be something in like, I don’t know, Japanese stuff seemed really cool back in the PS2 era where there was lots of really interesting games coming out from Japanese developers, whereas the PS3 seemed like a bit of a duff note in terms of truly original stuff coming from Japan. It really felt like the Western developers took charge a bit more during that era. Well, that was when you had all the… There was this constant, endless flow of news stories about all the death of Japanese games and here’s old Keiji Inafune saying, like, no, we all have to make games like Gears of War now and that’s all anyone wants. And I think that the death of the Japanese games industry was greatly exaggerated. Or if anything, it’s definitely in rude health now, it feels. I feel like that part of this was the fact that a lot of Japanese developers didn’t seem to have the same resources as Western developers when it came to developing for the HD era. I think that’s largely considered one of the reasons why. But it definitely seems to come from the publishers, too, who when you see Silent Hill being farmed out to Western developers only to make five to seven out of 10 entries in those series, you do wonder how much of this has naturally occurred versus how much of this is being forced by publishers who somehow think that people are afraid of playing Japanese games now. Then this Yakuza seemed like it was counter-programming to that. It was like, here’s a game that is not afraid to indulge in being a Japanese game and to have Japanese cultural influences. That was how I saw it. The fans were there and they really wanted it. There was a big drama when Yakuza 3, I don’t know if it was a big drama, there was disappointment when Yakuza 3 was released that it was missing so many features that had been cut out of the Western release, stuff like the Mahjong minigame and a bunch of other ones that I guess were seen as too culturally Japanese. When obviously, if you’re really deep into that series, you absolutely want to see the stuff that is too culturally Japanese, that is part of the appeal of it. Do you think with Zero as well, the fact that it is a prequel factored into it? Oh yeah, absolutely. I think if they’d skip Zero and gone straight to Yakuza 6, the series’ fortunes would be very different because that is not a good jumping on point. It basically requires you to play at least three of the previous games to really understand what’s happening. Whereas, yeah, Zero has a lot of kind of winks to the other games in the series, but just being first in the timeline means that it is absolutely a great place to just hop on board. Yeah, so that then, Phil, that’s like the definitive modern starting point, you think, for people getting into the series? I’d say probably still, yeah. Yakuza Like a Dragon, because it switches to a different protagonist, like even though it happens after everything in the timeline, not much of it makes a huge effect on the story. So I think if you wanted to go straight into like the newest version of the game’s engine, the Dragon engine, and play one of those games, like that is a really good one to just jump into. Yakuza 0, like even when it was released, it’s great, but like it doesn’t look like a modern game in any way really. It’s all big chunky buildings and incredibly stiff movement, whereas… Good faces though. Yeah, they… When did Yakuza get good faces? Because I was trying to place this in a time… I was trying to build a timeline in my head of like, at what point did I go, wow, actually, I really love how Yakuza looks. Um, so Zero definitely had some good work there. It’s kind of funny playing one of them because the main characters, like if the character is important, you’ll be able to see the pores on his skin. And that’s how you know, keep an eye on this guy, he’s going to be around for a while. Whereas there’s a definite drop in quality for more minor characters. Um, I feel like, yeah, the Yakuza 0 engine, which, Yakuza 5 was the first game to be made in that. So that was probably where they stopped being just kind of more angular, straight, smooth faces. And you really push the details. Yakuza 6, though, the Dragon Engine is ridiculous for it. Like, I was reviewing that recently because it just released on PC for the first time and it was like, just playing that again and remembering, oh my god, this looks amazing in places. Yeah. I was playing a bit of… I’ve started Kiwami 2 and I’ve played other games in the Dragon Engine but this is the first one I think I played on PC. And actually, it looks genuinely stunning. Like, the texture of it, that world, is just incredible. Like, the fabrics on their clothes and stuff and the furnishings and the little details which is so, like, integral to that game. You’re looking at it thinking, this in a way looks kind of as good as anything, weirdly. Just, it, like, it’s just chosen to focus on other things. Yeah, like, um, like Yakuza 0, Kiwami 2 has got a Sotenbori, the Osaka area. And, like, the main street of that at night when you’ve got all the lights coming off the restaurant and the restaurants have, like, just huge crabs and things and, like, moving animatronics, and you get rain puddles on the street and you’re just like, this is so good. Like, so atmospheric, even if, like, you couldn’t run up to a bin bag and the texture’s bad. And you’re like, well, fine, you know, work on what you need to to make the effect happen. Yeah, do they both run at 60 frames as well, the Dragon Engine games on PC, Phil? Oh, they do. They do, except for, you know, I think it’s locked to 30 certain cutscenes or something. But for the most part, yeah, they run really well, actually. I mean, my PC is decent, but the graphics card’s getting on a bit. And yeah, even now you can sort of turn on all the nice effects and it runs nicely and it looks great. Oh, that’s good. Especially because buying a new graphics card is impossible at the moment. So, and probably will be for the next year or so. So yeah, glad to hear it kind of runs well. I also heard that Yakuza 6 has a few performance problems on PS4, like it doesn’t run that consistently at 30 frames per second. But I don’t know, maybe I’m being too granular there. What do you reckon? Yeah, it was, I mean, it was definitely 30. I don’t know. It’s not a series where the fluidity matters a lot of the time. I mean, I guess the combat for Yakuza 6 has some issues anyway. Like I think they struggled a bit kind of transposing Kiryu’s moveset over into the Dragon Engine. It doesn’t lend itself as well to sort of his kind of very snappy arcade-like movements. I don’t know, performance never bothered me playing it through on PS4. Although I guess now with trying it on the PS5, it might be a lot nicer. I will say for the PC ports, like I love how A, instantly like, you know, the performance boost is amazing. You don’t really need a mega rig to get it. And they also, and at least, definitely Zero in the Kiwamis, they released like super cheap on PC. They were like 20 quid or something new. 15 to 20 pound. Which is mad considering like, they’re like, definitely Zero is easily like a 100 hour game if you get into everything. And the others are probably coming up on that. Yeah, I think all of them except maybe like, Kiwami 1, which is definitely the smallest of them all. Well, it depends if you decide to collect all the sexy ladybird cards. Yeah, we’ll do all of the Magima Everywhere stuff, which… Oh, Jesus. He really does get everywhere, doesn’t he? He just won’t stop. So, Phil, I wanted to ask a bit about when you were playing through the Yakuza games and they weren’t all like, readily available, I always enjoyed hearing you talk in the office about the sort of challenges of doing that. So after you got into Yakuza 0, like, what were your sort of next steps to trying to follow the story of what were the kind of challenges in doing that? Oh yeah, following the story was next to impossible. Like, I was just working with what I had available. So I say, I plugged in the PS3 and unlike you Samuel, I don’t tend to order a lot of pre-owned games off eBay. I try and keep my collection small because I move house quite a bit at the time. And you don’t want to end up in Games Court. And I don’t want to end up in Games Court. It sounded harrowing. So yeah, I just went on to the PS3 store and was like, okay, well, I think 4 was on some sort of deal, some PS Plus thing maybe. So I grabbed that and went into it and was like, what the hell is any of this? If you go straight from 0 to any game other than 1, it’s basically like, oh, Kiryu has a daughter now, sort of. And also has been the head of the Tojo Clan. Bet you didn’t see that coming. Although, saying that, it’s interesting that they’ve chosen Yakuza as the name for this series in the West, because having played them all, no character spends any amount of time as a Yakuza. No protagonist. Kiryu’s in it for maybe 5 minutes in playable sections and then gets kicked out inevitably or just leaves and then is dragged back in for one more job. It’s like, this is just a man you won’t leave alone. He doesn’t want this life. Yeah, it’s like, I know it’s in Yakuza 0 actually. It’s basically a whole game of people in Yakuza being pissed off at you while you work for a real estate man who’s lost his hand. And it’s like, OK, right, I mean, I guess you can call it Yakuza and that’s fine, but yeah. I should have called it the one-handed real estate menu. And his chicken. Takibana Bros, some of that. Phil, didn’t you learn to play Mahjong or some kind of mini game required you to do a lot of mad bullshit in order to just to play it? Am I remembering that right? I wasn’t required to, Samuel. I did it for my own enjoyment. There was no reason for this. So actually, Mahjong has, if you’ve not played the series, their version of Mahjong isn’t like what we tend to think of it, where you’ve got just a big mess of tiles and you’re matching pairs to clear a board. Like it’s a competitive game with four people’s trying to create sets and pairs and stuff like that. Weirdly, though, it’s similar to a game that I used to play with my girlfriend’s family. I can’t really remember what the game is. It’s like some Hasbro licensed card game that uses a lot of the same imagery and ideas while being slightly different. I started playing it and it was like, oh, this is kind of familiar. And then it got weirdly… Oh, this is Mr. Potato Head Uno, right? That’s what this is. I get this. I don’t know, it got weirdly into it. It’s kind of funny because if you look at the Yakuza subreddit, the number one most hated thing there is Mahjong. All the collectionists who inevitably have to play a bunch of it to get the Platinum Trophy and to get all completion, and they despise it so much. It’s like, it’s fine. It’s good. It’s enjoyable. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Is there a lot of Shoji in it as well? Now, Shoji is the one that does my head in, because I’m already bad at chess, and Shoji is like, what if chess had more rules? I was too dumb for the vanilla version. Yeah. I have had that feeling where I thought, this is the Yakuza, I get everything in, and then you look through the kind of the challenges menu, and there’s like, you know, win 100 games of Shoji or something, you’re like, yeah, they know. It’s where they put an item that basically plays Shoji for you, if you have it. It’s like the Shoji manual. And if you do, if you enable it, it just kind of suggests moves. And but maybe as a balancing mechanic, each time you let it suggest a move, it takes longer to think of the next move until like, there’s 10 minutes between. And you’re like, no, I just need you to play this for me. I can’t do it myself. Like, don’t leave it to me. I am not capable. I’m here for punching and I’m here for matching some tiles in mahjong. That’s it. I think it’s such a change of pace from like the other activities in the game. Yes. You know, it’s like this is a game where you hit men with traffic cones or you play an incredibly complicated game of chess. The other thing, I have no idea. I have no frame of reference for how good a simulation it is of these things. Like, how well are the other players playing? I don’t know. I’ve got no frame of reference there. It could be that we’re all just making bad decisions and nobody is doing well playing this game. But it’s the risk you take. I’m curious, Phil, what’s… I suppose like one thing I didn’t ask here is like, what was it about the series that resonated with you that made you want to like go to the trouble of digging out your PS3, which I know is like a whole irritating thing in itself? That is a good question. I think part of the reason I wanted to investigate the series further was just like a new camera show, which is the sort of main Tokyo district that the games are set in, was in the other games. So I kind of just wanted to see like, oh, well, what’s it like when it’s not the 80s? And actually, there’s a really cool moment based on, if you’ve only played Yakuza 0 or you played that first, there’s a really cool moment where you sort of are exploring and you see what the thing that you’re basically fighting over, what this plot of land that is central to the entire story of Yakuza 0 actually becomes, which I think if you played them in the order that they were released, obviously, you’d know that area was important because it’s like one of the main buildings in the series, whereas I didn’t have that. So, yeah, it was really interesting to see how important that became to the story of the series as a whole. Generally, though, it feels like a very easy way to spend time. The stories, 0 especially, the stories are variable, but the 0 story is probably one of the best in the series. But just the atmosphere, I love the quieter moments in the games, where you get an objective that is just, go and buy some of this for this guy, and you sort of pop between different convenience stores, seeing if they’re selling a specific type of bento that some guy wants. Just those excuses for kind of downtime and exploration, and for seeing how the humor, I would have expected its sense of absurdity and humor would have grown old after, I’ve played seven games now, maybe eight if you count Judgment as well, nine if you count, yeah, nine. But no, it’s still capable of making me laugh constantly. It’s still just very funny and silly, and then when it needs to be, it can just switch on a dime and be a genuinely engrossing story. I really like how it kind of doesn’t follow the rules of kind of what makes other AAA games successful. Like the fact that, you know, people, you know, I think this is one of the best written funniest games, and so much of it like isn’t voice acted, you know, it’s just static text boxes. You know, it’s the kind of the kind of the natural sort of sort of cinematic nature and the kind of polish that, you know, if you compare this to like, you know, a Naughty Dog game or whatever, and yet it just works so well, like using quite old technique, it’s quite an old feeling games in a lot of ways, but it’s still like, there’s not a lot that can kind of compete with it, I’d say on like the grounds of character and definitely humor. I think that’s another thing, like in an era where it feels like a lot of publishers have a very distinct style now, and I don’t want to say that everything’s homogenized because that’s such a cynical thing to say, and is sort of bullshit if you think about it for a few minutes, but like for the Yakuza series to be so distinct and quirky and of its own, like it really felt like, oh, this is something far apart from what I’ve been used to, so it is worth like just chasing down the rabbit hole. It’s, yeah, it’s, when you play Zero, I think even within the first couple of hours, like it has three distinct cutscene styles that you’re forced to kind of sit through while it explains what the story is before you do anything. And then the first thing you do is a very silly karaoke song, which ends with the character imagining he’s part of a rock band with his best mate. It’s like, okay, okay, this is what this is about. Yeah, it’s really funny because one of those cutscene styles you’re referring to, the one where they move slightly, but otherwise they’re static images, they show you, that’s so prominent in the intro. You think, oh, I guess all of the story will be like this. And you see it maybe, I don’t know, about 10 times max in a kind of 40-hour game. Yeah, I just found that quite funny that they tease that. And then everything’s either just character models stood there while text boxes come up, or like these very soap opera-style well-produced cutscenes. It’s a trip, I must say. Yeah, they’ve got a real eye for cinematography for the motion cutscenes as well. Like I say, I was playing Yakuza 6 recently, and just the framing of various things, as you’re returning to Tojo Clan’s headquarters, which is full of these young, idealistic, new Yakuza who reject a lot of your thinking and the way it shows that through camera angles and the framing and stuff, it’s like they’ve got a real cinematographer’s eye for that stuff, and you’re conditioned to think cutscenes are bad. We should be telling things dynamically through the games, but I quite appreciate just a really well-directed cutscene until it’s like an hour long, and you’re like, okay, that’s enough. I like that they’ve cast all these aging Japanese actors as well, so it really taps into that cinema, because sometimes it’s literally people you recognize from films, and you’re like, oh, that’s cool. It makes you think of your beat to cash type stuff. But at the same time, it’s just so rare to have a game where the majority of the characters are ancient, at least middle-aged men and up, I’d say. And then the youngsters are always just total punks who just get thrashed. That’s their whole role in it. Maybe that’s playing in my mind more because Like A Dragon really leans into middle-aged hero squad, which I really liked. But generally, I love there’s always wrinkly faces in all the cutscenes. It’s badass. It feels adult in a way that a lot of games don’t, because they’re all so fresh-faced. I’d say it’s got a cracking face. It’s Kuze in Yakuza 0. That is like a great old man face in a video game. Sorry, Phil, I cut you off there. I was just going to make the point that it did hurt a bit to realize that in Yakuza Kiwami 1, people are still calling Kiryu old and washed up like the punchy meat on the street. It’s like, he’s probably just in his 30s. I’m in my 30s and I couldn’t punch a bunch of 20-year-olds who started on me. Where’s my life going? On the subject of Like A Dragon then, so this is a series’ latest release, do you think this turn-based RPG style is what the future of this series is likely to be, Phil? I… It’s difficult. I’d say yes if they continue having Ichiban as the protagonist of them. I think they’ve tied it so much to his personality, like the reason that it is… They spend a lot of time in Yakuza Like A Dragon basically saying, hey, Dragon Quest, that’s fun. But his personality also just does lend itself to having a bunch of people who don’t necessarily have their shit together just following him because he is this one optimistic puppy dog that they can feel good about. It feels so intrinsic to the character at this point, having played a whole bunch of Like A Dragon, that I’d be surprised if they ever had a game that he was the lead of and it was just back to standard punching people. That would feel weird. I think they’ve said in interviews that that combat system did emerge from that protagonist. It made sense to them to go that route, which isn’t to say that every… I think they’ve got a lot of options for what to do next with the series. And it could be like a Dragon sequel, but also I think they’ve mentioned that they quite like to do a Yakuza 0 sequel that’s maybe set in the early 90s or something before Yakuza 1 takes place, which would probably be back with Kiryu and maybe Majima and would go back to those combat styles. And Judgment has… For a spinoff, Judgment’s got quite a traditional combat system as well for the series. So if that ever gets a sequel or followed on in any way, then I think… I was surprised how good the JRPG stuff was. I was going to say, like, the series often tries different styles. Like, Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2 both have an RTS minigame, but in the nicest way possible, it’s there and it kind of… It’s passable. There’s a bullet point for the back of the box. Yeah, this exists. It’s the nicest thing you can say about it. You can play it and you won’t have the worst time in the world. So then… That was the thing that worried me when they announced it would be… I was quite excited to move away from the traditional combat, but at the same time, it was like, every time you’ve done a different genre style, it’s been very ropely introduced into the engine, and it’s kind of a fun, like, Yakuza 5’s whole racing and driving stuff, it works, kind of, in the sense that it doesn’t… It’s not technically broken, but it’s good that it’s just a side part of the game and not the main focus, whereas this is just… It’s really well-implemented, like, the… It’s funny consistently. The combat feels satisfying in the way that a JRPG should. Question for both of you. I should say, do you like, or do you really like, the brawling in Yakuza, or is it only fine? Should I go first? Tear it down, Sam. I personally… I don’t think it’s bad. I think there are, like, limitations to how satisfying it can feel, but I say this having played Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 1 and 2 on PS2, I understand the combat doesn’t change that much. 0 does have, like, obviously the different styles, which makes it a big upgrade on the basic-ass PS2 combat, but, I don’t know, there’s probably, like, another level they could tap into to make it more hardcore or customizable, or, I don’t know, a bit less. It definitely feels like it’s got its roots in, like, the PS2 era of that kind of brawling. Yeah, that’s my take. What about you, Phil? I don’t really disagree with that. It’s kind of strange, like, I think the combat system that persists the most, like, Kiryu’s main combat system that is throughout the series is fine for… It’s really good when you’re doing, like, a one-on-one boss battle because you have a lot of options for more high-level moves that you unlock. So you can have some really satisfying fights like that. Their love of just throwing a bunch of guys at you is kind of when it breaks down a bit because a lot of the time you are just… I’m gonna press square four times, but then I’ll press triangle, and that’s when you’re in trouble, mate. So, yeah, I did find… The more I played the series, the more I relied upon items that reduced the number of enemy encounters because just those standard ones you come across in the street, like, they’re fun enough, but there’s little challenge there, so it does get a bit much. See, I don’t know if I’m just very bad at it, but every Yakuza game, I find myself… I just have to fill my inventory with health drinks, and I basically win by drinking more health drinks than the other guy, until the other guy… Like, I whittle him down. Like, I don’t ever feel like I’ve truly mastered them, and then I’m like, what am I… Like, what am I missing here? You know, like, they’re quite… You either tear… Like, I find that you either tear through people really easily, and then that’s quite satisfying. And then you obviously get the big kind of comic payoffs of the kind of the heat moves. That’s great. But then the general kind of like, the simple kind of blocking game, it’s… I don’t know, it’s not… I don’t know if it’s like missing some sort of technicality, or like, I just like a good parry or something. I don’t know, there’s something… Yeah, there are some parries and… It’s difficult because like, certain trainers have moves, or certain things let you get moves that are buried away, but consistently you’ve got things like the Kamaki Drop, where you can basically do a reversal that does massive damage, and if you can sort of get the timing of that, and there’s usually a couple of upgrades that let you extend the timing window and stuff, you can do a lot to actually feel like you’re in control of those fights. Right. The problem is that stuff’s never really that well seeded. It’s a combat system where it never feels necessary until it is absolutely necessary, and you’re like, well, why didn’t you prepare me for this being necessary? Yeah. There are some real difficulty spikes occasionally with odd bosses. You just absolutely whomp you, and you’ve basically drunk 30 energy drinks by the end of it, and you’re like, this isn’t right. Matthew, what do you think having played the series more recently? Do you think that the RPG style combat has maybe a bit more mileage in it at this point? Purely because those are my thoughts on the brawling. For me, I felt like this is a game where I can fully engage with everything because it works on a turn-based pattern. It still has a few arcadey touches, but you can do timed button presses to do an extra bit of damage or block moves. So there’s a little bit of arcadey-ness in it, but I genuinely don’t know what the read is for hardcore series fans, whether they see the RPG as a cute one-off, and you stomach it for a game or two. I liked it just because I haven’t fully mastered the brawling, I think is my take. Interesting discussion there about the series, but obviously like Judgment is now coming out on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Phil, have you played much of Judgment before we get into this one? I have finished Judgment, yeah. Okay, cool. So as excited as I am that it’s coming to PS5, I think I share both of your feelings that just having upgrades of the previous generation of stuff is nice and fun. I don’t love the fact that it doesn’t transfer the save data to the PS5 version, so it’s a real like, God, do I want to start it all over again? This will be a nice treat for people who haven’t played it yet, but I don’t know if I can go back to the beginning. Yeah, and the funny thing is that I feel like all the people who wanted to play it have probably already played it, but nonetheless, I guess it kind of future-proofs it for like Game Pass and stuff like that and probably a PC release eventually. So yeah, I suppose then, Phil, talk me through what you think of Judgment and how you think this sort of detective-flavoured spin-off fits into this little tapestry of the series. So I think my other main thing is, we can talk a bit about how well the detective stuff comes across. It’s very basic. There’s not much to it. But I just really like the framing of it. As I mentioned, one of the things that drew me to the series was the repetition of this same city and seeing it in different contexts over different eras and seeing it through Yagami’s eyes as this kind of detective, albeit a detective who has strong ties to the underworld and is regularly fighting Yakuza. It still gives it a bit of a different spin. A lot of the way he interacts with the world feels fresher. It’s also another really good showcase of how good the Dragon Engine looks. I think this is probably the best-looking version of Kamurocho. Like Dragon, it might have some of that, but Kamurocho doesn’t feature much in that game. What about you, Matthew? How do you feel about Judgment? On paper, I was incredibly excited about this because as listeners to this podcast will know and people who just genuinely follow me on Twitter, I’m a huge nut for Japanese crime fiction. I’ve read an abnormal amount, I would say. I was really up for something that was going to come from that kind of tradition and tap into some of those vibes. It kind of relates back to what you were saying earlier about why is this series called Yakuza when you spend so much time not in the crime organisation. I would actually say because you’re a detective with ties to the underworld, you basically are the same character. You’re just coming from the other direction. If one of them is a Yakuza who’s been kicked out, you’re a non-Yakuza who’s enough of a Yakuza. You basically occupy the same space, which was a bit of a disappointment, I’ll say when I was playing it. I was like, oh, it’s not that different. It’s how they frame the job is obviously different. People are coming to you. You’ve got more of a logical reason to be doing all the side stories because they’re cases that people are coming to you with. I like that framing, but the actual content of them, they’re not things that Kiryu wouldn’t have done himself, really. I mean, aside from a few, like I say a few, aside from a million trailing missions, which is like, that’s the big flaw in this game, is it’s got like a couple of detective activities, which are like the big new addition, like trailing and taking photographs of people. It’s a bit like sort of illicit relationship Pokemon Snap. You have to kind of like take pictures of people as they’re coming out of love hotels and things. But none of them are very deep, and they repeat again and again, particularly the trailing, which is just so tedious. Like the actual kind of the building blocks they have just feel a lot more tired in this one. Yeah, so I’d like there to be a bit more kind of detective-y stuff. I think the thing that does work and what helps kind of refresh Kamurocho in this particular. One is because you are above board and you’re not a criminal, there’s a better sense of kind of working with the community. You kind of befriend people and help areas and those people will then kind of come and tag into battles and do like, there are special moves where, like if you’ve helped a shop in a side mission, that shopkeeper might throw you weapons or things in the middle of a fight. And there’s this sense that you’re kind of on the community side as opposed to a kind of disruptive criminal force. So if they kind of return to this world, and I think there are rumours that they are going to make more, I hope they like lean into that a bit more and kind of play up the differences because if it’s too similar, you know, after seven games have won, it’s too obvious that it’s kind of cut from the same cloth. What do you think, Phil? Do you think that’s fair critique? Absolutely, yeah, I’d love to see them really double down on elements of being a detective that aren’t just a couple of mini games because, yeah, the trading does suck. I mean, there’s a few bits where it has almost like an ace attorney presenting evidence, but it happens in like the first case and then like not a lot after that. And so that feels odd. Like it feels like they started off with this intention to make something a bit more distinct. And it’s not like, you know, that stuff isn’t too different from the kind of talkie dialogue driven side quests in the early Yakuza games. It’s not like you should be scared of doing that stuff. Like your fans have an appetite for like bullshit. So it’s fine. Just do more bullshit. Yeah, there was a real sense, like as you’re doing either the main cases or any of the side missions that you’re hired for, but like you have case files and it fills in with like pictures of characters and all the evidence that you’ve collected and stuff. And yeah, it felt like it was missing the end point of that system where you really tied it together, which would be good. Yeah, it has got some killer sidequests. Like, while I don’t think it’s necessarily the strongest game overall, it’s got some of the best sidequests. There’s this like league of perverts who you’re kind of hunting who are called the Twisted Trio. And each one of them is like an even worse pervert than before. That really made me laugh. Like I was genuinely like howling with laughter at like some of their names and the dialogue they’ve got. There’s a guy who sort of steals sort of women’s underwear from their washing lines. I think he’s called like Ass Catchem or something. And it’s like a Pokemon riff. It’s really dumb. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, having played Yakuza 0, that sounds a lot like most of the side content in that game. There’s a pervert, someone accumulating panties for whatever reason. Yeah, but they’re really exceptional perverts in this one. Sam, you don’t understand how exceptional these perverts are. Okay, cool. Well, before we kind of move on to your top five then, Phil, I sort of wanted to cover off the whole series in some respects. And so I wondered how much curiosity you had about some of the games that… Well, first of all, Dead Souls, if you had any curiosity about that, but also some of the ones that didn’t actually make it to the West or haven’t yet. So there were two games on the PSP called Black Panther, I think. They’re sort of spin-off games about a different character. And then obviously there were these two period set games as well, Kenzan and Isshin, I believe. Do you think they’ll ever head West? And do you think that people are missing out for not having them? What’s your sort of vibe on those? So I saw some speculation recently that the success of Ghosts of Shishima might prompt Sega to think, oh, there’s some interest there in that time period. Which, I don’t know, it seems strange that they would think there wouldn’t be. But I’m definitely interested to try those two. I’m sure they will have much of the same sort of flavor. And like any addict, I’m just happy for anything they throw my way at this point. I remember with Kenzan when I was on Play Magazine and no PS3 games were coming out. It was like, there is a HD Yakuza game in this period setting that is out in Japan. Someone could just localize it and then the PS3 would have another game to play. I guess it was the wrong moment for it, but it just seemed like such a missed opportunity not to. I think there are a lot of challenges that come from localizing any of the Yakuza games. I think it’s worth calling out how good Sega’s localization team is. We interviewed them for the MAG a few years back for a special report thing. It was really interesting reading just how much effort they’ve put into things like the way Magima talks and how they basically said that there’s one guy who knows how to write Magima in English and if he leaves, we’re in trouble. Which is how I like to operate the magazine with features like The Spy. That has got big magazine energy. There’s only one person who knows how the capture device for the Wii works, so let’s hope they don’t leave. Oh, The Spy. That is a good point, actually, Phil. Are you still doing The Spy? Sam, you’re breaking the… Oh, right, yeah, sorry. But yes, I can exclusively reveal nobody else knows how to do The Spy, so it’s still my burden. I never understood how to do The Spy. I did it fewer than ten times in my entire run on PC Gamer. At first, Chris Thurston, he understood it, and then when he left, it had to be you. And yeah, if you ever leave, then you’ll just be like, I don’t know, some kind of martial arts master who passes on his killing move to one person for them to carry on for fifty years. That or I’ll leave and the editor will finally feel safe to get rid of a rumours page from a magazine. Do you have any more stray thoughts on either Judgment or the Yakuza series, either of you, before we move on to the top five? Just that, I’ll tell you what I really like. I really like Yakuza fans. The few people I follow on Twitter who are super into it, they’ve just got really good vibes, and the game gives them good vibes. And I feel like I’ve enjoyed a lot of them vicariously through them. It’s just, I don’t know, good people like Yakuza, I think. That’s actually, yeah. That is something worth mentioning. It was a massive surprise to me that this crime game about a Tokyo red light district would be as wholesome as it was. I think it could so easily have gone the other way and been very edgy and quite seedy. But in the end, I think they really got a good sense of humor with Kiryu as this kind of naive, almost childlike figure at times. That means he sort of understands what’s going on, but so much stuff goes over his head in a way that means he can interact with situations without ever feeling like he’s never salacious or threatening in that way. I don’t know. There’s something deeply wholesome about how he interacts with the world that I think really lets them explore kind of the nightlife of these zones without it coming across as grotty. Well, tell that to Catherine when she walks in on me watching a video clip of a woman in a bubble bath. Oh, yeah. There are so many moments in Yakuza 0 where he’s basically confronted by a pervert and he’s completely non-judgmental about it. He’s just like an onlooker. It’s like, oh, I’ve just entered the orbit of your life, but I don’t wish to know details about why you’re doing these disgusting things or why you’re covering yourself in grease and talking about your libido, but god damn it, I will help you resolve whatever issue it is you’re dealing with. I don’t think there’s a single music cue in video games that works harder than the sub-story, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, which is the, this person seemed awful, but actually they’re very sweet. And it’s like that’s, you know, they’re a total thug, but they were doing it for their sick child or whatever. That always makes me chuckle. I love that they’ve, the sub-stories have like one of three musical cues at the end, which is like the, well, that was funny, da-da, da-da, da, or it’s got the, or it’s got the, wasn’t this emotional, stink. If there’s a problematic element of the Yakuza Games, it’s that it really does teach people that 90% of bad people in the world could be punched so hard that they reevaluate their life choices. Well, that seems like a good note to leave this section on. So yeah, we’ll take another brief break and then we’ll come back with Phil’s Top 5 Yakuza Games. Welcome back to the final section. So, Phil, you’re gonna give us your countdown of the five best Yakuza games, according to you, a series expert. So, you’ve played all of them, you have thoughts on all of them. Is there any kind of like preamble you want to give before we get into the list? I think we can dive into it. I guess… Is it a heart or a head list? Oh, it is a heart list. So I’m sorry about what’s number one. I like a heart list. Yeah. Yeah, I sort of looked at a bunch of criteria. I mean, a lot of it is sort of setting and sub stories and just how good is the story? For instance, Yakuza 4 will not be appearing in this list because its story is nonsense and it hits a point sort of two thirds of the way through where every chapter is another twist to a conspiracy that by the end, like, I don’t know if you could even draw out what any character was actually trying to achieve. It’s very, I don’t know if you’ve seen the community episode where the Dean is just doing conspiracies because he wants to be included, but it’s really got that vibe to it. It’s also probably the most serious Yakuza game. Like, all the sub stories are very dour and hard boiled and it’s quite relentless after a while. Kiwami 1 is also not appearing because of the aforementioned Majima Everywhere combat system. And also the weird fact that, like, Majima’s appearance in that game makes zero sense if you also play the story. Like, he’s popping up out of traffic cones and sewers and everywhere and doing incredibly elaborate pranks to have battles with Kiryu as part of this weird side combat system. And then you get to the story and he’s like the old Majima from before they made him a quirky, fun character where he’s just beating the shit out of his own employees because he’s a psychopath. It’s like, wow, these two things do not fit in the same game together at all. I got to the point in that where every once in a while there’s like a big Majima event and it’s like, go here for like the next stage. And if you don’t go there, he just stops appearing. So I just stopped going to them. I was like, well, I know if I ever go down that alley it will basically awaken Majima again. So I just avoid that alley completely. I was scared to even go near it, just in case I triggered it. That is very wise, because I made the mistake of trigger them all and it reaches a point where he stops doing big events. And so there’s no off switch. It’s just like, okay, my time with this game has to be done now because- He’s forever waiting for me in an alley, dressed up as a zombie or something. By the end, he’s got like eight health bars that you need to chip away at. And it’s like, this is just too much. In which case, Phil, there are any other ones that didn’t make the list that you wanted to highlight here? Or do you think we’re- I think those are the main two. Yakuza 3 didn’t because it’s old and it’s a bit, it’s in the old engine. And it’s thing is it’s fine. It’s good. It’s nice exploring Okinawa and this kind of island paradise. That’s nice, but there’s nothing more to it really. It’s just a fine entry that’s dated a bit. Fair enough. Well, hit us with your number five then. So number five is Judgment, as we’ve already talked about. So even though it definitely has like some issues and is probably hems a bit too close to being a Yakuza game, I think a lot of, I really like the main story quest for Judgment. I really like it when the series kind of tackles actual social issues that Japan is facing at the time. And Judgment eventually sort of starts looking at the health system and it’s increasing the aging population and it gives like a real grounding to an otherwise silly game full of perverts. I also think the combat system is probably like, for the brawler based games, Judgment’s combat really feels like it was built for the Dragon Engine in a way that Kiryu doesn’t. He switches between these two kung fu styles, the crane style is meant for when you’re being swarmed by multiple enemies and tiger style is more for one on one fights. But kung fu is already a very fluid combat system and that really suits the Dragon Engines kind of, that way it does animations. I imagine they did like a lot more satisfying. It’s very flashy. There’s a lot of like acrobatic jumping off walls. Which is always a good thing. Far more of a grappler and that means a lot of the heat moves feel… I mean, partly they just feel different, which is a breath of fresh air. Even while being essentially just a series of ways to hurt a person. And a shopkeeper throwing you hot sauce which you then pour into a man’s eyes is always going to be fun. That is good. Kiwami 2 has actually got a lot of that as well. There’s a system where Kiryu befriends a bunch of people around town and they will help him out. I need to plow on with that. In which case then, Phil, are you ready to move on to your number 4? I think we can because we’ve already talked about Judgment quite a bit. So my number 4 is Yakuza Kiwami 2. As I mentioned, I had problems with Kiwami 1. I thought, I mean, it was a good version of the first Yakuza game, but the first Yakuza game probably isn’t the best showcase of that series. A lot of things were still in their infancy, whereas I think Yakuza 2 is just a much better basis to work off of. You can see it in the sub stories, like, I did wonder, there is one where you fight a Yakuza boss who likes to dress and act as a baby, and obviously it’s incredibly, it is one of the things that will have been shared a lot on social media, because Kiryu is stood in front of a bunch of people who are dressed as babies, and he’s the face of a man who is like, okay, I’ve got to deal with this, these people need to be punched, this is my life now. It’s very funny. And I assumed that was something that was sort of inserted into Kiwami 2, along with a handful of other stuff like as a kind of modern twist, but no, that was just in the original Yakuza 2, because it is, I think it’s the game that finally figured out what the series should be. So it’s just this really strong basis. It’s also got probably one of the best stories of the series, like a really clear memorable protagonist who’s basically like a guy in Asaka who also has a dragon tattoo and so therefore cannot stomach Kiryu living because there can only be one. And it’s like, okay, well, I know where we’re at with this. I know there’s no need for a, I mean, there is also a deep conspiracy involving the Korean Mafia, but it never gets, because of how long these games are, usually you hit sort of chapter 12 or 13 and you’re like, okay, I’m waiting for this thing to go balls to the wall with twists and conspiracies and dramatic revelations. Whereas I feel like too, like there are some twists, but they all feel like they enhance the Bane conflict. That said, as much as that is a bit more grounded, there is also a bit where you visit Osaka Castle, which is a real and relatively famous landmark, but it then splits in two so that a different but golden castle can emerge from the ground. So you can enter it and beat up a lot of people and then fight two tigers. That sounds like persona. It does a bit, to be honest. It might be one of the most bizarre things that, like, in terms of, for the main story, like, often the main story is, like, this is where people are serious and they stare at each other and they have, like, actual drama. And then that happens sometimes as well. So it’s like, okay, well, that’s this game. Handily, just because I started playing it, it also, if you want to, you can start with, like, a half-hour breakdown of Kiwami 1, so it just gets you through the story, gets you into Kiwami 2 faster. Yeah, that might just be worth doing. Because not loads happens in Kiwami 1, other than Kiryu adopts Child. Yeah, it feels like, when I played Zero, actually, I thought, does the story of One still make sense when this exists? Because he’s just kind of like, it starts with a kind of status quo, and then obviously he goes to prison and stuff, and there’s no mention at that time that, like, the Yakuza were all, like, after you when you were, like, 18 or whatever, and you were sort of throwing cash around the streets and stuff like that. And, like, it felt very somber in tone compared to Zero because I don’t think it, like you say, I don’t think it was big on sub stories. What? I don’t even remember the sub stories in one. It did have a bunch, but none of them really stand out as, like, having the same absurdity to them. Yeah. Oh, fair enough. But, yeah, Kiwami 2, that’s another game that looks very nice. It looks great. It’s huge. Like, it doesn’t feel slight in the way that Kiwami 1 did, like, because it’s got the two cities. It’s got so many new mini games and extra bits that you can do. It also follows on from Yakuza 0 in some key ways. Like, the hostess management game is reprised, but this time Kiryu is ahead of it. But a lot of the plot lines follow on from doing it as Majima and Yakuza 0, and also there are some extra stories where you play as Majima. They’re the things you select from the menu, so they’re not part of the open world. They’re special chapters that you can go in, and that follows on from some of his story beats with some of the characters from 0 as well. That really does feel like the successor to Yakuza 0 in a lot of ways. You almost can skip Kiwami 1 and just go straight to that and guarantee to have a good time with it. That’s cool. Quick side question, Phil. Do you think they should do any more Kiwami games, or would you prefer to just focus on making new stuff? I don’t see it happening now because they’ve done the remastered releases of 3, 4, and 5. Now they’ve done that, I don’t know if there’s any real need to go back and do a remake of 3. It feels like there is an easy way to play it, and it’s not the most interesting of the series anyway. So yeah, I do think they’re probably better served just going off in new directions. That said, if they want to do a Kiwami of Isshin or Kenzen as a way to bring them to the West, then yeah, go for it. Just make games I’ve not played before, that’s what I’m saying. So here’s your number 3, Phil. My number 3 is Yakuza Like A Dragon. So as I said, this makes a surprisingly good entry point to the series just because it’s got its new protagonist. The RPG stuff is just really good and I like how funny the combat is consistently. Like some of the enemy types they come up with, like there is a guy who just has an inflatable raft type thing with him and he is all wet for some reason and sort of slides at you and sometimes falls over instead of attacking. And it’s like, all right, that’s a man I’ve encountered in this city for some reason. It’s just full of weirdos and then the weirdos are attached to a system called, I think, Sujimon. I can’t remember what that’s meant to stand for but there is an incredibly strange professor who basically wants you to punch all of these people as a Pokemon riff so that you can catalogue all of the perverts and weirdos in the city. It’s just like, yeah, you sure know what you’re about, don’t you, Yakuza? The enemy designs are so good. There’s like an influencer who’s like filming the fights with his mobile phone the whole time. Yeah, it’s like Twitch streamers who try and hack your data and release it as a way to give you a status debuff. And there’s also the summons that you can do, which is part of a menu that is unfortunately called Pound Mates, where you can just buy like the services of a crab, not a crab, a crawfish who will fall from the sky and poison everybody in the party, or just the woman who runs the soup kitchen, who gives you a nice broth that will heal you. It’s powerful stuff. It’s consistently funny. And the return of the man babies as well. And the return of the man babies, they brought them back because… They have a big tantrum, they kind of kick it, they sort of lie on the floor and keep crying until everyone’s, I don’t know, deafened or something. Again, really nice story to it. I should caveat this by saying I have not finished Like A Dragon yet, so it could all go to nonsense at the end quite easily. The Yakuza series as a whole has this thing where you spend a lot of time getting to know the homeless of Kamurocho in particular. There’s a real kind of humanity and empathy for the homeless populations, and that is sort of really doubled down on at the start of Like A Dragon, where you basically wash up in this new serious city, Yokohama, and you are saved by one of the homeless camps there, by a doctor at one of the homeless camps. He eventually becomes a member of your party, and you recruit a bunch of other weirdos as you kind of… As you are saved by essentially the kind of grey semi-legal areas of that city, and then one of your primary antagonists is like this youth movement that wants to stamp out the grey zones of the city called Bleach Japan, who are just like an insufferable pack of idealistic youths that… You know, like, well, we are going to beat all these people up. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s got a nuanced world view, but there is some depth to its exploration of themes for sure. And I think the party structure, like the fact that you get to spend a lot more time with your core kind of allies than you do in the other games, you know, there’s even like a bar you can hang out in, which has got like a bit of a sort of Normandy and Mass Effect vibe, as you go in there and you can basically talk to each member of the party and you like learn their backstory in little chunks. There are… I don’t know if… I can’t remember if there’s… It’s not like specific loyalty missions per se, but you kind of… No, at the end, when you’ve sort of leveled up their bond enough, the last conversation you have usually ends in a fight some way, because you’re sort of resolving that issue that they’ve been talking about throughout. I really like Ichiban as a protagonist as well. Like, totally different vibe to Kiryu. Still likable and sympathetic, but like where Kiryu is all stoic and serious, Ichiban is just kind of a dipshit who will always say what he thinks, like, every emotion is on his… He’s the polar opposite in that sense, like, he has no filter. And it just leads to some really charming moments. It’s also like the only one that’s on next-gen consoles. And it probably looks really nice as well on next-gen. Did you play on new Xbox, Matthew? Yeah, I did, yeah. Yeah, no, it’s nice. You can kind of switch it between a kind of, you know, 60 frames at a lower resolution or kind of 4K thing, but I don’t know, the art style of it just looks so solid and nice that I played it in the 60 frames thing. It’s just like, yeah, really gorgeous game. Do you have any thoughts on Like A Dragon before you move on, Matthew? No, kind of with Phil on this one. I think I might rate it a bit higher just because I, you know, like I say, the combat clicked for me. The visual humor of the enemies and the special attacks is so good. I mean, if you played and liked kind of other kind of slightly comic RPGs, maybe like the sort of, you know, the Paper Mario games, there’s almost a bit of that energy, particularly with the kind of like the timed button presses in the combat to kind of spice things up. But the different job classes and the kind of special attacks that come out of them are, you know, just absolutely brilliantly realized. And humor is a really good reward for like grinding through a skill tree because you want to see what mad thing they’re going to do next. Yes, it’s really strong this game. I loved it. Do you want to hit us with your number two then, Phil? So my number two is Yakuza 0, the original one I played, which I was always going to have a soft spot for, but also I think stands up still as one of the best out there. Like going back to the 80s, that stuff isn’t just an aesthetic choice. Like everything about that game builds into the theme, the way you punch a man and knock him down and money pours out of him. Like it’s silly, but I also think behind the absurdity, there’s quite a biting satire, I think, about the 80s and the idea of this bubble economy where everybody is just spending too much. Like one of the things I love about Yakuza 0, there is a sub story for Majima, who is probably the least reliable character in the series to be taking advice from, where he inspires a politician to enact a bunch of legislative measures that are basically the sort of tax measures that caused the 80s bubble economy to burst and led to an entire decade of economic stagnation in Japan. And it’s like, oh, okay, I see where you’re coming up this from. Like everyone who lived in the 90s went through a pretty hard time there. So there’s probably quite a lot of resentfulness as well, while also being a celebration of the excess. Yeah, there’s a lot of depth to it in that sense. I say, as I also remember, that it is a game where a character called Mr. Libido dances around in his pants and asks you to collect cards with pictures of women on them. Yeah, so this is one I’ve been playing recently. I’ve played about 40 hours of it now and I’m on chapter 14, some pretty near the end, I think, but you never know with these games. And it does feel like slightly older now, I must say. This one released on PS3 as well as PS4, right? Yes. Yeah, I think you can tell that it’s a little bit older, but it is a really, really good crash course in a lot of different characters who I’ve met. I was looking up and seeing that, oh, in these future games, this kind of like son of a Yakuza boss is actually very important and that sort of stuff, which I really liked. And you point out to me, Phil, when we were talking about Yakuza 0 on Slack, is that the way they introduce Majima in this game is amazing. Like the particular kind of like story of him working in that cabaret club, but then when you realize why there are these, like he keeps seeing the same people outside where he lives every day. And then the chapter is called The Gilded Cage. Like that’s a really, really good bit of like individual storytelling. And the slow build up to where this ludicrous bit patch of land and Camarocho that has triggered this like big gang war. But it’s like a, it’s a really kind of like weird hook for a game, but like does have quite a good mystery attached to it and a bit of sort of misdirection. The way that the stories kind of converge towards the end is, it has been satisfying. Maybe it goes off the deep end from here, I’m not sure. But yeah. It doesn’t really Yakuza 0, like it hangs together better than most of the stories. I think because they had such like a strong idea of where they wanted to go with it. It is maybe a bit, as you pointed out earlier, like nobody really learned anything from what happens in Yakuza 0, because they can’t, because it was inserted like towards the end of the story that they’ve told over the series. So they go through all this kind of trials and stuff only to kind of go back to a status quo. And it’s like, we’ve done what we need and now we will become the characters we will be for the rest of the series. Thank you and goodbye. Which it’s, if you haven’t, like if you’re playing Yakuza 0 first, I think that is a bit kind of abrupt. And it’s like, oh, why did you make those choices? Which is fair, but I don’t know. It hangs together very well for what it is. Like if you were only gonna play one game in the series, I think this would be a strong contender because it really perfects so many of the elements that make it great. Yeah, it’s really, really good. Yeah, the kind of dual settings is quite cool as well, having played Yakuza 1 and it just being camera-h. So Sotenbori’s got a distinctive vibe to it. I like that when you fight people on the bridge in Sotenbori, you can just like throw them off into the river as like a kind of one of your heat moves. Yeah, a really good vibe about it. And yeah, some really good sub-stories as well. I’m particularly fond of the Magima one where there’s the guy with the portable telephone and it keeps like not working because it takes up so much battery power. But I love how into it Magima is. He’s like, oh, fuck, like this, it’s a chance to be some part of this revolutionary new technology. And then like that dude with the phone is just like a living save point for the rest of the game after you finish that side quest. That’s a really nice touch. I really like the stuff where, is it Miracle Jackson? Miracle Johnson, which is like, that’s great in itself. But then there’s the obvious Steven Spielberg who’s directing his music video. And it looks like a fat Steven Spielberg. And he’s got a name which is like, it’s sort of similar to Spielberg. But that really made me laugh as well. I’ve not reached that one yet. Or I must have just missed it along the way. I’ll have to make sure I check it off before. Yeah, that’s a Kiryu one. It’s just funny. It’s really daft. It’s like just one step removed from reality that you don’t get sued. But it’s close enough that it’s so obvious what they’re doing. Any more thoughts on Zero, Phil? No, I think we can move on. A quick shout out for the Mini. I really like the two management games in Zero. I dedicated an unholy amount of time to both running the Hostess Bar and building my real estate business. Yeah, I like the… So far I’ve been enjoying the real estate business because it’s been a chance to do that side quest where Kiryu sends letters into that radio station about telling his stories. And that’s like one of the best side quests in the game in terms of like telling you a bit about his character, like his optimism and like naivety, like you say, Phil. The Hostess Bar stuff was definitely where my girlfriend worked in and I had to be like, no, you don’t understand that there’s a story arc. It’s people are learning, people are growing. There’s development here. It’s not what it looks like. Yeah, did you say there are story elements attached to the Hostess Bar stuff? Because I’ve not actually delved into that deeply, but you say that it gets picked up again in Kiwami 2. Yeah, so those characters, like they would, as you, I can’t remember what it’s tied to, but eventually as you play it, I think as as you sort of complete the tournaments or the other businesses as you target them, there will be some stories attached to each of the characters. And some of those characters reappear in Kiwami 2 as Kiryu takes on a hostess club in Sotombori. And you actually, your main target is the place that Majima is running in Zero, because after he left, maybe some unsavory characters came in and took hold. But some of the characters return there. Yeah, it’s kind of weird that it’s been quite a throwaway thing, but it having like, people clearly had enough fondness for it. They were like, oh yeah, we can return here and we can bring some of those characters back and we can make it like, it’s not just, it’s not just a thing that is there to make extra money. Like there are story hooks to it and there are characters that will become important again in different games. Yeah, well that’s, because in Kowami 1, they added stuff which is like the payoff to setups in Zero. You go back to like the slot car racers and like all the kids you were racing with in Zero are now like old, you know, they’re middle-aged kind of losers who never left the slot car place and you have to kind of deal with all their traumas, which is quite fun. It’s weird how some of that pays off in Yakuza 6 as well. Like you find Pocket Circuit Racer in Hiroshima, in Onomichi with, and his life has taken a turn. And it’s like, okay, well, Kiryu’s here now. It’ll all be okay. Cool. In which case then, Phil, I’m ready if you’re controversial number one. Full Heart Choice, as mentioned, it is Yakuza 5, the game made before Yakuza 0. It’s in Yakuza 0’s engine, so it doesn’t feel too old. But what it is, is the most Yakuza game. It goes too hard, too much, too wild. It is so ambitious. It’s absurd. It has five main characters set across five cities. Each character has their own sort of career mode mini game, a bit like the Hostess stuff. So Kiryu, who is in Fukuoka, is a taxi driver. And so you just get to drive the streets, like, because they put an entire driving system in for that side mode, basically. Just fulfilling requests for the citizens and having chats. And that’s just a really fun way to introduce sort of characters and situations to him. A different character has a full sort of survival-based hunting mini-game thing, where he’s going after some legendary mountain bear. And then one of the characters is Haruka, Kiryu’s daughter, who, instead of fighting throughout Sotenbori, she’s an idol in it, and so does dance battles with people she meets on the street. Oh my god. And like, her whole side career is like rhythm mini-games, but also doing handshake events with fans on the street and like, attending Japanese TV shows. There’s actually a, one of her sub-stories is she becomes the sort of straight man in this comedy double act. And as part of it, there is what, in the original Yakuza 5 Western release is probably one of the hardest mini-games in the entire series, because you have to pick responses, the responses to this double act story, which means trying to get the timing right, because you were judged on both what you say and when you say it, while you’re trying to get cues from somebody speaking in Japanese as subtitles scroll on a different timeline. It’s just like, oh, this is genuinely impossible. Luckily, they fixed it in the remastered version. So there is now like a timing bar that comes up that shows you when you should select your response. So that’s one thing they fixed. That was doing it at the time. It was like, this is actually impossible. And to be fair, Japanese double act comedy is not my cup of tea anyway. But yeah, it’s… The sheer ambition of it to go as hard as Yakuza 5 does, I can understand why people… Generally, if you look at people’s list of Yakuza 5, will come either near the top or very close to the bottom. Because taken as… It’s far too long. And taken as a story, I couldn’t even tell you how the fifth character, who is just some guy who used to play baseball and is a journalist now, how he really fits into the story. It’s been a few years since I played it. It’s like, surely he was not important. And yet, he is there and has a different baseball minigame system to every other character’s baseball minigame, because he is good at baseball, and so gets one that is a little easier to use, so you can be better at it. It’s full of weird little details like that. I haven’t played it and it sounds amazing. It should not be anybody’s first Yakuza game. It’s too tied to the story that emerges around 4. Some of the characters that you play are introduced as playable characters in 4, which is just set in Kamerot Show. So you either need to look at a lot of story recaps or play some of the previous games to really understand what’s going on, but holy shit, there’s just so much going on here. The arcade has Taiko no Tatsujin, the drumming arcade game, as just one of its playable things in the Sega Club, which is just great. For once, it’s not just Virtua Fighter again or Outrun. As much as I love Outrun, it’s always Outrun. Yeah, fucking Space Harrier as well. I mean, I already played Outrun in Space Harrier in Shenmue. I didn’t need it in Yakuza as well. Yeah, Yakuza 5 is the one where I always see, the meme I always see from it is the guy fighting the bear in the snow. How fundamental to the story is all that stuff, Phil? Not really. He encounters a bear and he fights it. Sometimes that’s all it needs to be. That was quite early on. It’s a tough fight because it’s a bear. Every character has a different combat system as well. Saejima’s is a lot more grappling based, which puts you very close to the bear. A lot of the time. There are some absolutely absurd sub stories as well. Saejima’s whole thing is set in Sapporo, I think. I may have got that wrong. But wherever it is, it’s very icy. There is one sub story where you have to deliver a bowl of ramen because the delivery guy sprains his ankle. But as you do, businessmen are sort of slipping on their… like turtles turned over just with their back, have their hands sprawled in the air as they slide down the street because of how icy it is. You’re just walking slowly across the street, dodging, flailing businessmen. It’s just like, this is everything I want. Like, it probably goes too hard on the Yakuza as a comedy game thing, but I came to this one after 4, which was a bit dour, a bit serious. It was like, no, I’m just gonna bathe myself in this warm bath of laughs. I like that this is a world where that stuff’s happening, but there are also people chopping their fingers off because they’ve been dishonorable. Amazing. Yeah, that does sound pretty extra. It’s not a game I knew much about, to be honest. It’s nice to hear that you quite like it. Yeah, if you’re not bothered about the story too much or following it, or if you’re never gonna play them in order, just track down Yakuza 5 and try it out because it is wild. It’s the series that just… There is no restraint. It’s too much. It should never exist. They’ll never do it again, I’m sure, because there’s just no reason to. Well, then, that wraps up the top five. Thank you so much, Phil, for imparting your expertise on Yakuza. It’s really nice to hear you put all this stuff on record. I feel like it’s all existed in dribs and drabs of PC Gamer reviews over the years. I’ve played these things for hundreds of hours. It was about time somebody got some use out of that. I’m pleased we could audit that time investment for content. Thank you very much. Where can people follow you on Twitter, Phil? I am at Octader on Twitter. That’s O-C-T-A-E-D-E-R. They can also read your stuff on PC Gamer when you’re not frantically managing about 40 different staff. That’s true. At some point, I will post something about Destiny on pcgamer.com. That’s what I’m called in for. How about you, Matthew? Where can people follow you on Twitter? You can follow me at MrBuzzle underscore Pesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on Twitter. We’ll be back next week with another episode. If you’d like to email the podcast, it’s backpagegames.gmail.com. We’ll get to a bunch of letters next week. We’ve had a few come through, so thank you very much for that. We’ll make sure we get through the backlog in case you have to do another Mailbag episode. You can also follow the podcast The Back Page Pod on Twitter. Thank you very much for listening. We’ll be back next week. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye! Ready for some hot Yakuza chat. I’ve just read, the English pronunciation is meant to be Yakuza, right? But I just realized I can never rewire my brain to do that. Yeah, I was gonna, like, I listened to previous episodes, and I heard you call it Yakuza, so I was like, oh good, it’s in the style guide now. I can just go on as normal. I hope that doesn’t become, like, culturally insensitive in years to come. And then, like, someone digs up the audio and go, look at these pricks. All canceled. I’m sure it’s fine. But yeah, that’s good. Well, I’ll put this at the end of the episode so people will know that we’re owning it and therefore it’s probably okay. But yeah. Cool. That’s how it works. Thanks.