YAKUZA REMASTERED COLLECTION RELEASED ( STEAM)

thanks

yakuza Zero>kiwami> Kiwami 2> 3>4>5>6

If you want a story wise playthrough, 0 because its made as the prequel to the start of the franchise then the numbering down to 6 which ends the series for the main char. If you just want to have some Yakuza fun and want to dip into the wackiness of yakuza you can go straight to Like a Dragon. Although there are referencing to the older games. :D
Enjoy~

Yakuza 0. It's the prequel

Gonna copy in a comment I made elsewhere regarding this.

Yakuza 0 both is and isn't a prequel simultaneously. Before I go ahead I'm going to explain what a prequel is as the term is commonly misused. A prequel is a work that chronologically predates other work in a series but was published after it. For example A New Hope isn't a prequel to The Empire Strikes Back even though the latter is a sequel to the former. The Phantom Menace however is a prequel to both. Although it's not always the case a prequel usually presumes at least some degree of knowledge about a given setting. Whilst you can watch the Star Wars films in chronological order if you do you don't know what a Jedi is or what the significance of Anakin is when you first encounter him for example. Watching the original trilogy first gives you context that is missing when watching chronologically. This context may be small in some cases but its rare for a prequel to not have it all and only be related to preceding works in the most technical sense.

So back to Yakuza. Yakuza 0 was originally released between Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 6. This makes Yakuza 0 a prequel to the original games and the series overall. However Yakuza Kiwami (and in turn Yakuza Kiwami 2) which is a full remake (as opposed to just a remaster) of the first game was not only developed and released after Yakuza 0 but it was also written to reflect new characters and events that occurred in Yakuza 0. This means that Yakuza 0 isn't actually a prequel to Yakuza Kiwami or Yakuza Kiwami 2.

After Kiwami 2 though it starts to get even more convoluted as Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5 follow on from the original games but never received remakes, only remasters. Had the entire series been remade then none of this would have been an issue but what we have is effectively a mixture of different continuities and that's what makes Yakuza 0 both a prequel and not a prequel simultaneously. This isn't helped by the fact that Yakuza 0 does make callbacks to events from Yakuza and Yakuza 2 that haven't actually happened yet in the Kiwami/remake continuity.

TL;DR - Playing order should be 0, Kiwami, Kiwami 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6 and Like a Dragon.

One other thing to note is that there are some discrepancies between 0/K/K2 and 3/4/5 as 3/4/5 were made earlier and so can't account for new elements in 0/K/K2.

Me too

It's reduced on fanatical atm - the whole collection (3, 4, & 5) is 33% off on Steam, and fanatical knocks a further 18% off of that https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/the-yakuza-remastered-collection

yeah no..
not in my country... damn it

Is that a new game?

Me too... At least 50% discount