if im new to yakuza, can i play DS first?

[Lan_Di]

Hi all, as you can tell I'm new not only to the forum but to the yakuza series as well. I've recently become quite interested in yakuza and plan on buying 3,4 and dead souls. My question is, can I play dead souls first without spoiling the events of yakuza 3 and 4? I want to play dead souls first because I'm a fanatic about zombie games. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks in advance

[supersnazzi]

Playing DS first wouldn't spoil anything from 3 or 4 but you might not really be able to follow who everyone is and their backgrounds. If I were you and you had money available I'd buy them all and start from the very beginning.

The full series is truly worth experiencing yourself. I found the cutscenes in 3 and 4 featuring the stories from the first two did not do them justice enough.

[DarkGizmo]

Playing DS first wouldn't spoil anything from 3 or 4 but you might not really be able to follow who everyone is and their backgrounds. If I were you and you had money available I'd buy them all and start from the very beginning.

The full series is truly worth experiencing yourself. I found the cutscenes in 3 and 4 featuring the stories from the first two did not do them justice enough.

I agree 100% with this. Althouhg they do have a 'reminisce' feature in 3 & 4 that let you go back to previous games via cutscenes basically spelling out the story in key parts it still doesn't do the games justice. I would do as said above and get all games. If you have a PS2 lying around you can pick up Yakuza and Yakuza 2 for a decent price on Amazon or Ebay. Both are worth the play through before jumping into 3 & 4. As for DS, i would play through the rest of the series first, you won't be able to fully appreciate Majima's craziness until you do.

[suketodara]

After playing Yakuza 4 I've recommended many players to skip to the 4th game, because it's the most awesome one, and playing all of them now would feel repetitive for a new player. The 4th game is the first one to have 4 different characters to play with, and it's the game with the most content. And every game in this series has a movie recap of the previous games, if you want to know what happened in them.

Dead Souls, though, is a different experience, I think spinoff games like this one need a background first, so you can catch the parts that are parody in the story. Kenzan would have been a simple game with samurai if it was not for the fact that the Yakuza characters were in it.

[xxelitethugxx]

there is a collection for all of yakuza series in amazon for 190 dollars.

[Lan_Di]

So I've played those 3 now and I'm glad I didn't start with dead souls either lol, I think it would have ruined the series for me. The control layout and camera in dead souls is god awful, there is just no way around it, I wish you could have used the right analog stick to look when ADS but w/e, I still like dead souls and I can't put down y3 and y4 lol.