Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a remake of the second Yakuza game that was original for the PS2. The game takes place one year after the events of the first Kiwami (aka, the first game). Kiryu, who was intending to retreat from his yakuza days, and wanting to focus on taking care of Haruka, is forced back into its world. For the good of the Tojo clan, he must help them. The game uses the Dragon Engine from Yakuza 6. Therefore, this game was only released for the PS4 generation (the previous games, Zero and Kiwami, had PS3 versions), although it doesn’t really look all that much better, it’s still quite nice.
The combat remains very similar, being a brawler with RPG elements. there is a button for attack, another for a heavy attack, a block and an evade. Kiryu can pick up weapons from his surroundings, including some unorthodox ones like bicycles and pans. For certain weapons, he can store them away for future use. When attacking, this builds up Kiryu’s Heat Meter, which when full allows Kiryu to do a flashy attack that does massive damage. The game adds a lot of flashy effects, including a big finishing move for boxes, and although they’re visually spectacular, they don’t add anything substantial to the gameplay.
There is a large dose of RPG elements. Anything that Kiryu does, he will gain experience points. Naturally, after every battle he will get those points, but he also gains experience from completing sidequests, eating food and using items. While individually, each activity may not give much, it easily adds up. These points can then be used to unlock heaps of things, from additional combat abilities, to quality-of-life stuff like being able to sprint for longer, and other bonuses for some side activities.
If you’ve played Zero and Kiwami, then both available locations are familiar because you’ve visited these locations before, being Kamurocho and Sotenbori. Running around the two areas, what can be annoying are the enemies that roam around and sometimes unable to be avoided. Most of the time, you can run past them if you want. Like in previous games, these enemies just serves to slow you down as the benefits aren’t much since they only offer a pitiful amount of experience points.
The main story has Kiryu sorting out the Tojo clan and then fighting against the enemy clan that is now wanting their territory. There will be plenty of familiar faces, as well as new one. Although given how the game is structured, there are sections where the cutscenes seemingly go on forever, as they’re played one right after another. The cutscenes are particularly amazing or interesting, which is why it feels so obvious. The story’s pacing will stall as it easily gets distracted. It will seemingly move to the next point but instead it has a side plot that it wants to resolve first in the following chapter. However, the ending was great with good execution of all of its battles leading up to the final boss. Its atmosphere was charged up with emotions and you could really feel it with each character.
At first, you might think you’re blasting through the story chapters since the beginning chapters are short. Once the sidequests start appearing, it’ll slow down to a crawl if you want to do them. There are a huge number of sidequests and they seemingly just keep unlocking. While most of them are basic fetch quests or combat quests, the context is what makes them fun. The stories behind those sidequests characters are usually weird, quirky, and funny and it contrasts nicely against the serious main story. There is a common theme of people not recognizing Kiryu for who he is until it’s too late. No matter how many times this is done, it is always satisfying to smash them and show them who’s boss.
In addition to the sidequests, there are a plenty of minigames. The usual stuff is here, as well as the return of several other larger minigames from previous games. Some minigames are more substantial than others. You’ll have simple stuff like darks, to more complicated games like mahjong, to fully fledged stuff like the hostess minigame from Yakuza Zero. It’s quite impressive at how much there are to do in this game, and it includes all the rules to help players unfamiliar with some of the Japanese games to get up to speed, with the bare minimum to understand the flow of the game.
The story takes around twenty hours to complete, depending on how many of the sidequests and activities that you do. Once you’re done with the story, you will have the opportunity to create a New Game Plus, or to return in a sort of free roam to complete anything you didn’t do at your leisure. As mentioned, there are so many things to do in the game that you’ll easily spend another ten hours, if not more, just trying everything out. There is also the bonus story, Majima Saga, which bridges the events from Kiwami to Kiwami 2, showing how Majima got to where he was in this game. It’s only around two hours long, with a lot of restrictions on what you can do in the open world, but given how the character is a fan-favorite, this is a good time.
Overall, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a great game. Despite the new engine, the graphics felt like they are only a marginal improvement over Zero and Kiwami, while the combat has stayed largely the same. The RPG experience system helps keeps things interesting by having new moves and skills constantly being able to be unlocked. The story is solid, although the cutscenes can be too long at times, the pacing can be slow with too many distractions, and some unusual out of place events happening. Where the game also excels at is the sheer amount of optional content, as trying everything, and doing everything, will easily eclipse the time required for the main story.
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