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I don't see any bloat in 5. If anything, it needs more stuff. The biggest problem is the save system, which negatively impacts certain longer sections at times. The hunting sequences with Saejima could get a bit annoying, but it's obvious that was a deliberate design choice. I did it all, even the fights against the stupid god of the mountain.
A good way to know if you can get into 6 comes from how you felt about Kiwami 2, if you played that one, same engine, combat system, way of getting EXP and even some minigames like the bland "RTS" one, only without Majima dancing while workers sing at the end and thus infinitely worse.
Overall, Kiwami 2 is better but i just prefer the story there, also, again, one big kinda minigame in 6 lacks this:
Finally got around to wrapping up Kiwami 2. Playing this (well, re-experiencing the story of Y2 I guess) reminded me that I was always kinda miffed that Kaoru just vanishes from the series after a bit part in Y3, even after she was being set up as a love interest throughout Y2. Hell, in a roundabout fashion, Majima got better closure with Makoto in this game than Kiryu ever gets...
Aa a big fan of the original Yakuza 2 on PS2, I was disappointed that not everything made the cut over to the remake. Kiryu's Club ADAM section as a host was very humorous, and I recall liking the original (vastly different) hostess club management a bit. I think a VERY brief location (a city, very small playable area though) was cut from the remake too. I think it kinda gets back to the whole "HD Towns are hard" comment from SquareEnix, and the developers couldn't be bothered to recreate that area for such a small amount of gametime. But then most Yakuza iterations employ asset reuse for the major locations quite heavily, so it was still disappointing to see this area missing from the game. It seems that visiting hostess clubs as a guest is also missing in this game (which is weird, given you can clearly see the two clubs from Yakuza 1 are still very much there in Kamurocho). These seem to have been replaced with/hybridised into talking to the girls in the Cabaret you manage instead, which isn't bad, but it's a different dynamic, so essentially visiting any hostess club as a guest has been removed from Kiwami 2 it seems. Unfortunately, there's quite a few "reimagined"/fudged together hybrisations of old content in Kiwami 2 and I can see why I've seen people comment that it was made on the cheap. My memory of Y2 isn't so great as to call out any more "missing" content offhand, but even 15+ years after I first played it, I could tell some of it wasn't there in this remake.
Majima Y0/Y2 spoilers:
That said, Kiwami 2 has brought some really nice additions to the table; a lot of it being in the form of wholesome Majima content payoff, building off of Y0. Majima's eventual meeting with Makoto was nicely done, I felt, and helped cap off & add closure to his downer of an ending from Yakuza 0. I felt it drew a line under that chapter/arc quite nicely (whilst also writing out/shipping off a potential love interest for a (kinda)protagonist yet again, though it's better handled here than with Kaoru I think).
Secondly I liked how the playable Majima side arc teased his reunion with the Club Sunshine/Four Shine crew (where he's *almost* spotted outside Four Shine by Yuki) but didn't follow through with it until later in Kiryu's story, provided you go through with the Four Shine story. Really nice payoff there when Majima shows up and sees Yuki/Youda again. And again, I really liked the cabaret management minigame here as in 0.
Onto the bad aspects; aside from the missing content from Y2, there were a couple of technical issues - plenty of wonky physics moments when you defeat the last enemy in a group and you transition back to regular gameplay - the transition is often a catalyst for the defeated guy to fly through a bunch of bicycles, ricochet into a nearby wall then bounce off halfway down the road. Just exaggerated physics abound in this game really, and even when Kiryu is knocked down he'll often ragdoll into some truly comical manoeuvres.
Likewise, as I mentioned in a prior post, they really didn't have a handle on disabling their crowds and keeping them out of bounds of a cutscene in Kiwami 2. SOOOOoo many times, you'll start a substory and you'll have crowds of people in the way/not where they should be. There's a very obvious invisible boundary system implemented most of the time, which in itself becomes kinda distracting as you witness 20 different people walking along, phone in hand, suddenly turn on a dime and walk back the way they came just to avoid two people talking on a bench. It can be distracting just in terms of how ridiculous it looks having all this random shit going off in the background. I even had Haruka fly in from offscreen & drop into the canal in Sotenbori when that merchant appeared on his boat.
On combat, playing on hard at least, plenty of Jingweon dudes liked to step your first hit then whack you before you could recover. This was a common tactic throughout the game tbh and Kiryu definitely felt a bit sluggish in his responsiveness in the Dragon Engine compared to prior games. A lot of enemies felt very damage spongey till the last few chapters, by which time my Heat moves were dealing so much damage the most efficient way of winning was to simply wait for an enemy to approach and press the Heat command whenever it appeared. Having a weapon in hand and/or making judicious use of parries merely accelerated this process further. Ryuji went down way too fast in both encounters as Heat moves just obliterated his HP bar.
The original Y2 was my favourite entry in the franchise for a long time, at least prior to playing 0. After playing 0 (I walked away deeply impressed) I decided to wait until I finished Kiwami 2 before deciding which I liked better (a comparison which K2 unfortunately messed up by being an imperfect remake). Ultimately, 0 does so many things right though, and with its themes, story, characters, 80s setting and metric tonne of fun minigames that I just found Kiwami 2 coming up short. Yakuza 2 (Kiwami 2) just isn't as good as I remembered Yakuza 2 being. I still think Yakuza 2/Kiwami 2 is one of the better entries, but aspects like the positive ending with Kaoru have been diminished now due to how Y3 carried it forward, the numerous bits of missing/changed content also further muddy the waters... It's just tricky, there are some good additions here, the best additions debatably benefit Majima, rather than strengthening Kiryu's story.
While still fun, 0's plethora of fun minigames has really just outstripped 2 in this department, which is lacking the 80s vibe and much of the fun shit like the disco, bowling, etc. I was dreading the "Haruka's request" section when she'd want me to ace Crazy Golf or the bloody 3D mech game in the Sega Arcade. Didn't really find many fun returning classic minigames this time around - no Boxcelios sadly and Virtua Fighter 2 wasn't really doing it for me. Toylets was just bad, don't think i ever managed to do it successfully even once.
I found Majima Construction minigame to be a bit too much, the Cabaret club is already a big enough timesink by itself as it is, and having yet another seemingly sizeable minigame wasn't too appealing tbh. For whatever reason i just couldn't really be bothered with this one, I blasted through 6/7 of the missions right at the end, but I'll have to go back and do the rest in Premium Adventure somewhere down the line. Having your "Dream Team" combination of your favourite friends and enemies all on one team was really fun though.
So I don't know where Kiwami 2 sits versus 0 for me now, on the face of my above list, you've think 0 would be the winner, but there's still something about Yakuza 2 that I really like. Ryuji was/is a cool villain, and I'll always have positive memories of exploring Sotenbori for the first time back in Y2. I think one of the reasons I've come away disappointed with Kiwami 2 is that Yakuza 2 was such a great step up from Y1 back at the tail end of the PS2 era. Hell, I still remember hoping that we'd get it at all, as Sega really weren't playing ball with Yakuza fans around the time of 2 & 3. I think the fact that 2 came over at all might have elevated the experience somewhat for me back in the day. Now, both with Kiwami 2's missteps and 3 (onwards) ditching of Kaoru, it kinda lessens the second game's story in Kiryu's arc somewhat. Kiwami 2 is still a good game, and I've had fun with it, but I can say it wasn't everything I hoped a remake of Yakuza 2 would be.
Will be moving onto Yakuza 3 remastered next, I played the original back in the day so this'll be my first time through the game with all that cut content finally restored (except the tranny side story). I'll be interested to see if my opinion on it has changed over time and with the additional content now restored.
So far I'm absolutely loving it. I immediately feel the much improved pacing compared to the mess/hodgepodge that was Yakuza 4. I'm having a blast with Kiryu following his day-to-day life in a town. It's this down-to-earth POV that's really working for me.
So far I'm absolutely loving it. I immediately feel the much improved pacing compared to the mess/hodgepodge that was Yakuza 4. I'm having a blast with Kiryu following his day-to-day life in a town. It's this down-to-earth POV that's really working for me.
Initially I watched lots of Japanese men talking in cut scenes whilst occasionally pressing a button, normally this would lead to immediate uninstall, but probably for the first time ever.. I found it all interesting and cool.
Later I had several fights leading to one with a man in glasses and tattoos.
After which a strange man invited me back to his house for a shower...Initially I panicked and then remembered this isn't a bioware game.
I met an old man who keeps trying to get me beaten to a pulp
Several adventures followed including helping schoolgirls who like to sell their lingerie to perverts.
More fights
I spend far to long playing mini-games, because for once I actually like some of them
A young woman with mental issues wants to be my girlfriend, and later her father wants me as well
I meet a man called "walking erection"
I collect cards of women and watch them in underwear videos, next to me is a box of tissues...errr..in the game, not real life.
I'm just about to possibly murder an innocent blind girl
Conclusion
This is the one of the funniest and most enjoyable games I've played in some time
Story is nice, loving the city.
Loving the karaoke but the gimped mahjong is garbage.
I'm mixed about combat, dodge is very random, parry is slow af fuck.
Guys, I keep forgetting to ask this: does Yakuza 3-5 suffer from pretty bad screen tearing across the board. It's there, but I usually get used to it and forget about it. I thought it'd be fixed by Y5 b/c it's a newer engine, but it's still there and pretty noticeable when I look for it. FPS is fine, it's just the horizontal screen tearing. Maybe I'm alone in this and it's just my pc...Thanks!
edit: gonna try this "Turn off V-Sync in-game and turn on Fast Sync in NVIDIA Panel if you experience screen tearing"
Yes, tearing is pretty bad in the series and you need V-sync enabled (which works, I don't know why it doesn't for you). I don't think the high seas releases have any related problems with that either.
Initially I watched lots of Japanese men talking in cut scenes whilst occasionally pressing a button, normally this would lead to immediate uninstall, but probably for the first time ever.. I found it all interesting and cool.
Initially I watched lots of Japanese men talking in cut scenes whilst occasionally pressing a button, normally this would lead to immediate uninstall, but probably for the first time ever.. I found it all interesting and cool.
Yakuza is a series about serious men experiencing serious situations, then taking their shirts off to show their back tattoos before getting into dramatic fistfights, with everything punctuated by interactive shitposts.
So basically a crime drama co-directed by Martin Scorcese and Gareth Evans, with the script written by 4chan.
Yakuza is a series about serious men experiencing serious situations, then taking their shirts off to show their back tattoos before getting into dramatic fistfights, with everything punctuated by interactive shitposts.
So basically a crime drama co-directed by Martin Scorcese and Gareth Evans, with the script written by 4chan.
Slot cars are only a minigame in just 0 and Kiwami, I regret to inform you.
They have a pretty brisk rotation of minigames, even some regulars like karaoke don't appear in every game (Judgment lacks karaoke). Hunting is only in Yakuza 5, and speargun fishing is only in Yakuza 6 for example (both are really nice too, I really liked the Hunting minigame in Yakuza 5 a lot and really prefer its more simple and straightforward approach to Red Dead Redemption's way too overcomplicated take).
Pocket Fighter does return in 6 and Like A Dragon tho.
Yakuza 4, 5, and 0 have multiple playable characters (4, 5, and 2 respectively), and Like A Dragon has a party of adventurers on a quest to find an employment agency.
Yakuza 4, 5, and 0 have multiple playable characters (4, 5, and 2 respectively), and Like A Dragon has a party of adventurers on a quest to find an employment agency.
