Yakuza Kiwami 2 review

    YAKUZA KIWAMI 2 is the sequel to the original YAKUZA game, updated like its predecessor with new graphics and a combat system to reflect changing times. The original story was my favorite game of 2019, having a shockingly good story and a lot of interesting twists as well as turns. There were perhaps too many cutscenes and the gameplay has always been somewhat serviceable but it was immensely fun. So, I decided to pick up the sequel and see if it was every bit as good (if not better).

    The answer is, unfortunately, no. It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination or I wouldn't have put in the thirty-four or so hours necessary to complete its campaign as well as the side missions. Unfortunately, the story lags in many places because of an excessive number of twists alongside an inconsistent amount of characterization. The original game had a complicated but not unbelievable plot centered around two old friends, a stolen pile of loot, a corrupt government official, and the relationships between them.

Some of the new characters are quite good.

    Yakuza Kiwami 2 goes past the original game and instead reaches soap opera levels with a war between two Yakuza gangs, the revenge of a Korean gang, children separated at birth, false identities, doppelgangers, faked deaths, and a cop who doesn't play by the rules to go along with the other cop who doesn't play by the rules from the previous game as well as the love interest cop who doesn't play by the rules (who is helped by a computer hacker who is NOW ALSO a cop who doesn't play by the rules).

    Oh and there's an underground castle that rises from the ground that is somehow less weird than the fact someone can be replaced for six months by an imposter with none of the man's friends the wiser. This is a story that has a solid core but goes off the rails pretty quickly. It lasts a couple of chapters too many and could have benefited from significant tightening up as well as focus on the main villain.

Gotta collect all the hostesses.

    The premise is that Kazuma Kiryu a.k.a The Dragon of Dojima is requested to return to the Tojo clan after war becomes inevitable with their greatest rivals in the Omi Alliance. Kiryu attempts to get the son of a previous Patriarch to come back into the fold as well as make peace. Unfortunately, this is undermined by Ryuji Goda the Dragon of Kansai. There's also the Jingweon Mafia that was wiped out 25 years ago by the Toja clan but apparently not completely.

    There's some interesting subgames to the main game that I enjoyed. For example, there's an entire plot about Kiryu becoming manager of a hostess club that's not entirely fun to play but still ridiculously entertaining. I also enjoyed the substory of playing as fan-favorite Majima as he attempts to navigate a plot against the Tojo clan.  As always, this game has many subgames spread throughout that range from enjoyable time-wasters to frustratingly weird (Damn you, claw machine! DAMN YOU!).

Goda is a decent but underused villain.

    There's two provinces this time in the game and many more gangs to beat the crap out of. Kiryu remains the nicest mobster who ever lived and helps out hundreds of old ladies, young couples, and dozens of other poor bystanders on the road to stopping a gang war. He also has his adorable daughter Haruka to let us know he's not at all a bad guy. While the first game also did this, we still had moments that reminded us that Kiryu was a ruthless killer. On the other hand, you get in a fist fight with tigers at one point.

     I feel like the game increased the role health items a great deal more as I found myself utterly boned when I first fought Ryuji Goda without many of them. I proceeded to focus myself on gathering experience and always being loaded up on health items from then on. Unfortunately, item management and grinding had a reverse effect as the game became ridiculously easy roughly halfway through. A healthy balance is necessary in a brawler game like this and it didn't quite manage it as I was able to utterly own opponents that were supposed to be tough even at the very end. In fact, I would have creamed the final level if not for the fact there's quick-time events where you automatically lose if you fail them.

Daigo, your father was a scumbag. Don't be like him.

    The game's values and morality system is a bit oft-kilter as well. The game bends over backwards to make sure we know Kiryu is a nice guy who is no longer a member of the Yakuza. However, it also has us try to talk up Daigo Dojima in order to make him the new leader of the clan. You know, the guy whose father tried to rape Kiryu's girlfriend. I feel like that plot element is never addressed and just hangs over Kiryu/Daigo's relationship throughout the game. The racism with the "Scary Koreans" is also something that is an undertone throughout--except 15% of the real life Yakuza are ethnically Korean. It's kind of weird because the real-life Yakuza are rather famously far right politically but one of the more accepting groups of ethnic minorities in Japan.

    On the other hand, while the game didn't keep me entertained for 37 hours, it did keep me entertained for about twenty-eight of them. I was fully invested in the story for about 2/3rds or even 3/4ths and that's not a bad thing. I gradually started to wish I could skip through cutscenes but was afraid of missing something important. There's a lot of really good bits here and fun melodrama but the game just didn't know where to trim the fat.

    In conclusion, this is a game that was enjoyable for much of my time with it but gradually wore out its welcome. I like the majority of the characters, including Kiryu's love interest, plus the graphics are gorgeous. A few of the villains are also quite effective, just not all of them. I'm not unrecommending it but Yakuza Kiwami is definitely the better game by far.

7/10