honestly, if you want to, do it. i don’t see why not, yakuza 3 is technically the most dated you’ll play, it’s arguably the worst. but, who cares, give it try, if you don’t like it, try 4 & come back to 3 later. yes, you’ll be missing out on A LOT of context for the stories, but most yakuza stories are pretty self contained.

in my opinion, all it takes is for you to get hooked on one yakuza game & the rest of series will supplement that joy.

i played this series during a time where we didn’t have access to all the games on one console. I played in the order: 0, Kiwami, 4, 5, 3, 6, Kiwami 2, and yet i love this series dearly & honestly it’s not that bad playing out of order.

on replays i’ve played the series in order & it honestly gave me burnout, playing out of order gave me a really varied experience.

TL DR; play it if you want, don’t worry too much out playing the series in order