Yakuza Kiwami 2

2024-01-27
This one went a lot faster than Kiwami 1. Likely because the story is a bit more engaging than 1 and you don't have to babysit a little girl. The combat is a bit better but ultimately I turned it down to easy. The problem is once you've played Yakuza 0 which I believe has the best combat out of all the Yakuza games everything is a step back. I enjoyed the fact that experience is gained mostly by eating food. Which you can only gain experience from by becoming hungry by getting in fights. A hilarious loop of beating the shit out of randos on the street, heading into a steak place, coming out stronger, and beating on more dudes.

The story is more melodrama but more interesting than 1. More twists and turns. Really you're here for more Kiryu being the paragon of goodness and also the paragon of fighting shit. You have Ryuji Goda a pretty awesome antagonist. A bit insane and rule-breaking but at the end of the day has a good moral compass. You have some overarching subplot about a Korean mafia going HAM and trying to blow up the city because of something the Dojima clan did back in the day.

It does drag on a bit at times same as the previous ones. It feels like they need do edit these down like 40% to cut out a lot of scenes that are just boring conversations with Kiryu lecturing someone about his philosophy.

There are your same side stories and minigames. Most of both I skipped but they do have a meaty cabaret club game (seems like the original version of the one from 0) as well as a weird little almost RTS game (that might have originated in 6). Insane.

I will say the highlights are when the story goes completely batshit. There's a scene where Kiryu has to storm a castle that comes out of the ground of another castle. The whole thing is filled with samurai, ninjas, and traps and after fighting up multiple floors full of these enemies Kiryu has to face off against two TIGERS. After he inevitably beats them, finishing the last one with a punch to the face, the baddie who summoned the beasts flees "What you are? A monster?" A legitimately normal reaction to what he just witnessed. That and at the end Ryuji Goda shoots the sneaky end-baddy Takahashi (or whatever) and they both shoot each other like 6 times repeatedly. And then of course Kiryu faces off against him in a fight, both of them dripping blood from bullet wounds.

It's just another batshit game and I'm here for it.