I’ve already completed Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami, am currently about 15 hours into Kiwami 2.
I fell in love with the franchise after playing Yakuza 0 and initially wanted to play each game chronologically at least up until Yakuza 7/ Like a dragon, but I keep seeing new games releases and spinoffs that look very interesting, such as Judgement, Ishin, and most recently Pirates in Hawaii.
With my full-time job and other adult responsibilities I can’t possibly hope to get to play all of them, else I’ll never catch up to the current releases.
Are there any titles you suggest I should skip? Are there any “absolutely must play no matter what” titles?
I would recommend to play all of the mainline story (Yakuza 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8). The story is a little stupid at times but overall it is good. And if you do all of them in chronological order it is much more impactful when you know the background of characters and their relationship with others.
I have to say that i played a lot more of the Judgement games. I haven’t played the Ishin games and Dead Souls, i’m not that much interested to play them.
In my opinion, you shouldn’t think like that. If you love the franchise, take you time and just have fun playing what you want.