Which is the best game to start with, never having played one of the series:

Yakuza 0 (Remake of first)
Yakuza 6 (Last of series story)
Yakuza Kiwami 2 (???)

Thanks for your input.

The way GOG has it stated on the bundle sale is how you should do it in chronological order.

Yakuza 0
Yakuza Kiwami
Yakuza Kiwami 2
Yakuza 3 Remastered
Yakuza 4 Remastered
Yakuza 5 Remastered
Yakuza 6: The Song Of Life
Yakuza: Like A Dragon
Like A Dragon: Ishin! - Should be played first or last?

The other 2 have not come here yet but I'm sure we will get them soon or maybe in a years time.

Yakuza:Like A Dragon is a turn based RPG take on the series with a new protagonist and continues the story after 6 with a fresh take. and the last one Like A Dragon: Ishin! Which is an edo period take of the series so maybe it takes place before 0 since it uses the main character from 0 and onwards.

While some would argue you'll poison your perception of the rest of the series, I'd definitely say start with 0. It's just one of those games that, even if nothing else ends up comparing when you play the rest, you'll look back fondly on all the more. It's best to experience it first so you don't know what ends up happening with the characters further down the line as well.

Ok, that explains it story wise. Thank you.

However, what's with the gameplay and features? Should I *really* play through all or just have a good experience with the latest?

Example: I read that in 6 the fighting system was without stances which slowed it down previously (subjectively of course) and the movement was way better.

The series timeline, release chronology, port chronology, and fact that there have been multiple rereleases of some of the games, all coalesce to make things pretty confusing. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe games 1-5 first released on PS2; then they all had remakes on PS3; then after all the remakes Yakuza 0 was made as a prequel to the first game; then Kiwami 1 and 2 were made as re-remakes of the first two games and are among the highest-end in terms of graphics, system requirements, and mechanical fidelity out of what's on GOG; then they got ported to PC in chronological order starting with 0; then 6 was made on the Kiwami engine but because it's not a remake it doesn't bear the same title. That's not even the most confusing part of the naming conventions they chose for localization, but let's not get into that.

No matter which game you start with I feel like you're going to be a bit short-changed on some aspect of the intended experience, and that's assuming you can even push yourself to get through more than one of them. I love Yakuza 0 to death, but these games are extremely meaty experiences that take a while to push through, and all play similarly (to varying degrees), up until Like a Dragon suddenly turned it into a JRPG series. It took me 40 hours to get through 0 and that was while barely touching the extended minigames (slot cars, club management, etc), then caught up on a cutscene compilation of 1 to update myself, tried to play Kiwami 2 and already had serious series fatigue, kind of preferred the combat of 0 despite how much more fluid it is in the Kiwami games, and never finished K2 or tried any of the others.

General consensus seems to be that 0 and Kiwami 2 are the highlights of what's on GOG so far, although Kiwami 1 is intended to be your introduction to the main characters and 0 is specifically built to subvert your expectations by exploring how those characters came to be who they are, but if you're going to only ever play one game in the series (an entirely feasible scenario for most people) it should be 0.

At a suggestion, you could try watching a cutscene summary of the first game and then play 0, or alternatively just go into it knowing these two things:
- Goro Majima is an iconic, very high-energy psychopath of the series who speaks in a weirdly squeaky tone when he gets overly excited and beats someone to within an inch of his life with an umbrella in his very first scene in the first game. Seems to live for unhinged violence, while being bizarrely goofy.
- The first boss is arguably the hardest in the game, just because you don't yet have the arsenal of combat techniques that you do later. Stock up on healing items.

Oh, and also be forewarned that 0 comes embedded with bizarre phantom performance issues that may or may not manifest on your specific rig and make the game borderline unplayable by arbitrarily spiking GPU usage to 100%, making the game hang temporarily. There are about a dozen potential methods to try and fix this that I've seen posted, none of which ever worked for me or anyone I know. I'd give it about 1 in 10 odds that this manifests for you, and if it does you're probably SOL.

One and two were the only entries to have PS2 releases. They're also the only entries to have a Wii U release.

Kenzan was the first PS3 release and this was followed by Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, Dead Souls Yakuza 5, Ishin (the first PS4 release -- was a launch title). Yakuza 3, 4, 5 all eventually got PS4 "remastered" versions -- which I assume the PC releases are based on.

Yakuza Zero was the next main entry after Yakuza 5. Then came Yakuza 6, with Kiwami 1 releasing before 6 and Kiwami 2 after it.

There was also Kurohyou 1 and 2 on PSP which released before and after Dead Souls.

So, basically, storywise, you'd want to play from 0. Then follow the numbers chronologically. If you want to stick close to release order (but also maintain story continuity), you start with Kiwami 1 and insert 0 after 5 and before 6.

If you only care to play one, my personal recommendation is Zero, just for Majima's story alone, and it really gives a good sense of what the bubble era was like. It's an unrelated spinoff based on people from Japan's history. It has no true relation to the Yakuza story other than using character likenesses. So it doesn't matter when you play it.

Start with Yakuza Kiwami 1. Get introduced with the characters, mechanics, power-ups, side-mission, etc.
Then you may proceed with Yakuza Kiwami 2 (direct sequel) OR Yakuza 0 (for a prequel, understand how the 2 heroes, Kiryu and Majima, met and knew each other).

Afterwards, follow through 3-4-5-6. You will get the best fluidity of Yakuza stories.

The game engine on the series are also different (been improved over the time) and affects the gameplay a little.
- Yakuza 3-4-5 are built for PS3 graphics, oldest engine, uses loading screen every time you enter a house/store
- Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 0 are built on the newer old engine, still uses loading screen every time you enter a house/store
- Yakuza Kiwami 2 and 6 are built on Dragon engine (latest engine), which is more fluid, floaty and dynamic, as the whole part of the city is 1 big area, therefore you can fight in the store, etc, no more loading screen (unless when switching cities)

Typically, I'd recommend the PS2 versions of 1 and 2 first. But playing Kiwami 1 and 2 first is an okay alternative.

I highly recommend playing in release order, not chronological order, in this case: Kiwami 1, Kiwami 2, 3, 4, 5, 0, and then finally 6. People say you should start with 0, but I disagree. 0 has reference to things that happen in other entries. 0 is one of the stronger titles in the franchise, and while it is okay for newcomers, your experience with 0 will be much more elevated if you've played 1-5 first.

Now, it's clear that a lot of people just want to play 0 because that's the one that's super big and super cool, and it's really one of the best titles in the series, so there's no real point in preventing people from just playing the game they want to play. Their experience with the other games in the franchise will still be fulfilling if they play 0 first. Not to mention Kiwami 1 is also made for people who played 0, so it's not like it's totally sacrilegious to start with 0. I just don't recommend playing any other game out of release order.

Tbh i don't recommend start with RGG0 and go for the PS2 entries is asking too much, i recommend start from Kiwami because is the weakest, you got a silly story, subpar gameplay and some questionable choices in gameplay aspect. Thing start to get good with Kiwami 2 only because Yakuza 2 was a superior game. When you finally end with Y5, you can go straight to 0. But seriously try the original PS2 games, they have more soul and details and the atmosphere was top notch back in the day.

0 is the only right answer here and everyone who actually played the series will tell you so as well.
it was developed as the perfect entry point for newcomers and it really shows. while kiwami and kiwami 2 are remakes of the original yakuza 1 and 2, they added a lot of minor and major references to and story continuations from yakuza 0. they are effectively sequels to 0 now and they expect you to have played 0 first. 0 elevates kiwami to an insane degree, giving backstories to characters youre supposed to care about in kiwami but who never had any sort of development in the latter.

while going in release order is usually recommended for any series, be it movies, games, books, etc, yakuza is the one exception to the rule, numerical order it is here.

Play 0 first, it is arguably the best game in the series - and that's not saying the other games aren't good, every single one of them is well worth its money on the sheer amount of things to do alone - that way you'll at least have seen the best the series can do if you decide not to pursue the others. 0 is the canonical start to Kiryu's (and Majima's) story, which is developed further with every following game (Kiwami, Kiwami 2, Y3, Y4, Y5, Y6).

I knew nothing at all about these Yakuza games before they came to GOG. I started with 0, and so far I've played up to the start of Chapter 3 in that game.

And that already took me 45 hours in-game, but I spent a lot of time doing mini games and sub-stories and grinding out random fights in the street to level up my abilities, and also grinding out completion points by eating all the meals in many restaurants, etc.

Based on my experience so far, this seems to be an essential key point: If you intend to do a completionist-style run of these games, then Yakuza 0 will take you a very heavy investment in terms of the amount of literal real-life time that you will have to invest into it, and I assume some or all of the other games may also follow suit.

So with that in mind, you have to think about how much time are you actually, for real (not just in theory), going to be able to invest into these games.

And if you want to do everything, or most things available to do in the games, then maybe you won't have enough time to invest in order to play, much less complete, all of them, or maybe not even more than one of them.

So maybe some players shouldn't even assume that they are going to get to all of the games, as I would imagine that for many people, that simply won't be possible due to the sheer amount of time it would require (especially if they intend to complete all the content of every game).