Yakuza Kiwami 2

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JaySevenZero
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Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Yakuza Kiwami 2 for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Seph
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Re: 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by Seph »

I'm slowly making my way through this series thanks to the gift that is Game Pass, and Kiwami 2 was a much improved progression from the original in every way. The fighting system felt more refined and less cheap, and, importantly, more fun. The later bosses are still annoying with their constant combo breakers and overpowered attacks, but I felt much less frustration than I did with the original.

The story, while not hitting the highs of Zero, is easily much more interesting to follow than Kiwami 1. Even though I was laughing at the whirlwind of reveals at the end (I'm the bad guy, no I'm the real bad guy, no I'M actually the bad guy, NO I was the real genuine bad guy all along), I thought the story had a great developments that made me want to rush to the end. The inclusion of the Majima side game was a nice touch and gave an emotional pay off to part of the Zero story.

I liked how they made you fight Ryuji Goda early in the game, as it was an unexpected boss fight and was a nice little challenge. However, I lost this battle first time as I was expecting a scripted loss because he was clearly going to be the final boss. It would have been a good way to build up the new villain by having him beat you easily first time, so when you finally take him down at the end it feels like you have developed and earned it. Then again, this is Kiryu we're talking about. That walking, non-emoting tank has been taking down entire Yakuza gangs singlehandedly since his teenage years, so one scary-looking beast of a man isn't going to stop him.

The wealth of mini games was also impressive, and while this series acts as a great snapshot of Japanese culture I wish they'd tone down the horniness in some of them. But saying that, am I the only one who find the hostess challenges strangely addictive?
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Alex79
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Re: 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by Alex79 »

I've only played Zero and Kiwami 1 and 2 in the Yakuza series, but this is my favorite one so far. The story was fantastic, and a real step up from the first game (Yakuza 1, I mean). It felt really epic, with so many twists and turns. It was nice to see some arcade games reinstated after being disappointed they were missing from Kiwami 1, also. Some of the side content is questionable, as always, and I don't think saying it's a cultural thing is a good enough excuse for some of the misogyny on display here, and that stuff will never sit quite right with me, but overall as a game I think Kiwami 2 is excellent.

THREE WORD REVIEW: Epic crime drama.
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Re: 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by 2SmokingControllers »

The main thing I took away from Kiwami 2 was the progression of Kiryu's character. I think people sometimes say he doesn't have alot of personality but I don't believe that. After the events of Kiwami 1 you end up with a much more somber Kiryu. That set the tone for the entire game for me. And Majima, well he was just Majima. For better or for worse.
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Re: 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by Superuser »

I have played both the original and the remake. Unlike with Yakuza 1, the original Yakuza 2 still has a reason for existing. There are several areas where the remake is inferior. If you're willing to put up with Old Game Problems, play the original - preferably on an emulator to speed up the endless loading.

This is the snazziest and jazziest Yakuza of all. The original game has a genuine art direction instead of going for a realistic look, with lots of purple and dizzying lights. It has a cool nightlife vibe backed by a jazz soundtrack. Supporting this is the fastest and most arcade combat the series saw for a while.

In both the original and Kiwami 2, you have to work hard to build and retain HEAT, but you can still pull off HEAT moves on a regular basis in K2, whereas they are really special moments when you pop them in the original. I'd say you only manage it once or twice per fight.

The Kiwami 2 combat is a real spectacle and I can't fault it for that, but it is also quite basic. It doesn't evolve much from its initial state, but also doesn't have the instant gratification of say, Assassins Creed, because a lot of the fights are drawn out. At the end I had mixed feelings on it.

The Dragon engine in Kiwami 2 is AMAZING. I spent a lot of it in first person mode, just admiring the scenery. It's the most faithful reproduction of a place I've ever seen in a game. It has fine details GTA doesn't, and I applaud RGG Studio for this. I have been converted to 'digital tourism'.

The story is completely ridiculous and very loveable for it. For people coming from Yakuza 0, this is what I meant when I was surprised at how seriously it took gangsterism. In Yakuza 2 it goes into the fantasy realm. There is literally a castle made of gold under Osaka Castle, and you fight samurai and ninjas to get to the yakuza boss. Of course, you don't kill him because Kiryu never kills. There is another moment where the guy you thought you knew from the last game turns out to have been an impostor and the characters need to sort between them, like an evil twin in a comedy skit. Except it's serious.

The character relationships and hype cutscenes make this, as always. The scene where Kiryu first meets Goda is a particular highlight. Kiryu gets his personality here, much like the series. It stopped being about rough men on the streets of Tokyo and is more about wholesome, handsome guys fighting against a small number of extremely bad guys.

In the remake there was a whole area cut from Osaka, which is directly based on the real Osaka. Sotenbori is mostly faithful to the real place but not entirely, while street actually is. To compensate, they moved many of these missions into a large complex on the centre of Sotenbori with some elsewhere, but it is used sparingly and it was a shame to see that go.

Finally the minigames were mostly recycled from older games, and I didn't play them in the remake. I did like managing Club Adam from the original which was entirely cut from the remake. The remake also has a Majima spinoff story that is really unnecessary to integrate into the plot. However, the Yakuza Zero fanservice portion within made up for it.

Three Word Review: Yakuza Finds Itself
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Re: 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by Jobobonobo »

After the decent but a bit disappointing Yakuza Kiwami, this is a massive step up in quality in nearly every way. You can really see the series get its identity here. The substories are far sillier with you fighting adult baby fetishists, being a voice actor for a sexy video game, helping recent college graduates with a job interview and much more. Majima is much improved from Kiwami with him running his own construction company in a surprisingly compelling little RTS minigame, reuniting with the cabaret crew back in Sotenbori and his absolute bittersweet tearjerker of a reunion with Makoto. Still an absolute madman, but with more humanity to him. And the delicate balance between gritty crime drama and absolute nonsense is maintained ever so well. And the few moments when these two sides of the coin are mixed together such as fighting off two tigers to rescue Haruka, it feels like a natural progression from what came before.

Ryuji Goda is so far one of my favourite antagonists of the series; an absolute hulking tower of a man obsessed with power and proving his strength. Yet he is comparatively one of the villains in the game who has somewhat of a moral code with him being disgusted with Sengoku for kidnapping Haruka and not striking Kiryu when he was seriously injured. Encountering him was always a highlight of the story and made up for the quite convoluted Korean Mafia storyline that got intertwined with it.

As far as overall favourites in the series that I have played so far go, Kiwami 2 is very high up there, nearly equal to Yakuza 0. I do miss the different combat styles and honestly at times felt like I was not playing as Kiryu due to my inability to smash goons face in with a motorcycle. However, the ability to save anywhere and the leveling up system were major improvements for me. So as I said, very close call between this and Zero which one I like more. Regardless, I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who wants a compelling and silly adventure and Kiwami 2 serves as a lovely little capsule of everything that makes Yakuza the wonderful series it is for those who are new to it.

Three Word Review: Majima’s good again
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RichJimMurph
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Re: 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by RichJimMurph »

Yakuza’s draw has always been in its pavements. Kamurocho’s interwoven network of flags, concrete strips, tiling and drip matting show how the city has evolved over the years. How new developments overlap the old with little aesthetic regard, but purely in a utilitarian manner. You can feel the uneven brickwork of Nakamichi Street wobble beneath your feet; hear the squeak your loafers make as you hustle around the polished floor tiles of a Poppo store.

It’s an odd thing to pay too much attention to, this level of detail, and it was only after I got back from a trip to Japan did I even notice it in the game. It was exactly the same. As if one of the devs went out with a camera and catalogued every nuance of it. From traffic lines to manhole covers all the way to those bobbly slabs used for pedestrian crossings. It’s all perfect, even down to the grubby wear and tear and the torn promotional stickers littering the place.

Chances are, the easiest way to make Kamurocho was for the devs to take one-for-one inspiration from the city around them; but being privy to such a sympathetic recreation feels special. It feels unique.

Video games kindled my interest in Japanese culture – as I’m sure it has done with many Western gamers. It was in 2006 with Yakuza, though, where I really felt those two passions properly intersected for the first time. Here was a game that eschewed the tropy trappings of anime and manga and presented something far closer to the authentic Japan I’d been, unknowingly, looking for. It was like I’d found something not really meant for me. Something so caught up in domestic Japanese culture that the publishers must have thought there was little point in sending it Westward.

It’s like setting a game in Newcastle, filling the streets with Greggs and Paddy Powers, throwing in oblique references to Ant and Dec and expecting folk in Tokyo to be interested in it.

But here we are.

The details are moreish. It’s the ping of aluminium as you pass the batting cages. The hawkers the barkers and the hostesses. It’s the cry of Don Quiote and the neon pink glow of Poppo stores. The lace headrests in the taxis and the white gloves the drivers wear. The underbelly that’s not all too seedy and the high rises not all that squeaky clean. Assistants screaming Irasshaimase as you enter a store. Wild Jackson. Video darts. Boss Coffee vending machines. Club Sega, One Cup sake. It’s all there, and it’s all real.

Yakuza always felt cosy. Kiwami 2’s iteration of Kamurocho is inviting, it sounds right, it looks right. I can smell the beef bowls when I pass Akaushimaru – and that’s priceless. I can’t readily get back to Japan, but I can spend time in Kamurocho, whiling away the hours staring at those beautiful pavements.
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Kanlic
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Re: 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by Kanlic »

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a difficult game for me to wrap my arms around. The updated Dragon Engine from Yakuza 6 breathed new life in this remake. Exploring Kamurocho without loading screens halting the moment to moment gameplay was a dream. I spent the first few hours walking through office spaces, amused that I can take the fire escape AND the elevator. That's next gen gaming! The glow up the combat system received was a welcome addition. Punches and kicks realistically tracked to their targeted skulls, and delivered their intended fractures with a satisfying crunch. Each attack smoothly transitioned to the next, an improvement to the stiff set animations from previous entries. A special shout out to the contextualized heat actions. It never got old getting a pair of leeks tossed your way from a local chef mid-combat to slap a thug upside the head, or to have a local pedestrian kick a yakuza in the family jewels for the inconvenience of bumping into them mid-fight.

The cracks start to show in narrative. Kiwami 2 falls under the same trappings as the first Kiwami, in that it's a remake of a game before the franchise found it's voice. There's the self-serious narrative the franchise is known for, but the flow of the narrative is scattershot. Characters exist as vehicles for cutscenes, and are disconnected from the rest of the game. I had lost the plot a number of times because of the leaps in logic that was more at home with a daily telenovela than the hard-nosed crime drama this game was trying to tell. I'm still annoyed of the bomb plot to destroy Kamurocho introduced midway through the game, only to be resolved 5 minutes later. I'm guessing bomb diffusion can't be that difficult if a gang of violent sociopaths with a grade school education can locate and dispose of 22 bombs inside of an hour. Conflict is resolved as soon as it's introduced, leaving no tension in the narrative.

Similarly the series hallmark side quests leave a lot to be desired. I usually walk away from a Yakuza game with a handful of interactions I find enjoyable, but I struggle to identify a standout, with exception to the imposter side quest. In past games, the side quests associated with the core minigames tended to be the strongest, such as the hostess club or property management sim from Yakuza 0. Kiwami 2's comparable efforts are anemic. The Majima Construction narrative is repetitive, nonsensical in context to rest of the game, and fails to add anything to Majima or Kiryu as characters. Kiwami 2’s hostess missions are stogey to get through. The game seems impressed with their voice acting so much that it won't let you click through the text boxes. I found myself in a rare case of hitting skip cutscene any time I had a one-on-one date with a girl just so I could move their narrative along.

A special note to the 3 chapter Majima focused story you can unlock as a side story. While short, it does provide a satisfying follow up to the conclusion of Yakuza 0. It's a must play for anyone who experienced the prequel game, and was worth the short diversion from the main game.

There's a number of other nit-picks I can have with this entry to the Yakuza franchise, such as foregoing a skill tree for a more straightforward list of skills you can buy with arbitrarily earned points, but they all point to the fact this is a remake of a game with old bones. In many ways Kiwami 2 feels hamstrung by its legacy, and I think the developers could have done a better job of either retconning certain narrative beats and add back in the flavor the series really gets into motion with Yakuza 3. Ultimately I would not say Kiwami 2 is a bad game, in fact I had a good time with it, but I can't help but feel the game was patched together, resulting in a frustratingly sloppy product.
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Re: 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by Tolkientaters »

First things first, I haven't finished Yakuza Kiwami 2. I only got to chapter 5. That said I am loving the game and I definitely aim to finish it, just don't have a lot of time right now.

Yakuza 7 was the first Yakuza game I finished followed by 0, I really enjoyed both. I did skip Kiwami 1 because I found the combat really drawn out compared to 0, so Kiwami 2 was a real breath of fresh air, the combat is snappier and faster in a newer engine that really shines. The plot (from what I played so far) moves a breakneck pace that I really enjoy.

Obviously too early to tell, but right know it seems like it'll end up being my favorite Yakuza game ( lout of the 4 I played).
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Re: Our next podcast recording (24.7.21): 479 - Yakuza Kiwami 2

Post by ThirdDrawing »

I'm almost finished Kiwami 2 and it is a massive step up from Kiwami 1. It feels more balanced in the combat and the bosses don't feel as cheap as the last game. Of course, eating at restaurants to boost skill points is pretty broken and an easy way to massively game your skills, but it's better than having to do tedious tasks over and over.

I think the story is good overall, though I think the pacing is hurt a bit by switching back and forth between Tokyo and Osaka. I like that they got out of Tokyo, but I think using Tokyo as a framing device and having Osaka as the main part of the story would have been better. That could be because Osaka is one of my favourite cities and it made me a little "homesick" to see places I've been in real life.

Lastly, I really appreciated Majima not popping up every five minutes to challenge me.
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