Of the games in the franchise that I've played at the time of writing this review (all of 1-4 and some of Kenzan, 5, 0, and Judgment), this one probably has my favorite story. A title that improves upon its predecessor in every possible way, and features a gripping, complex plot that I think can stand toe-to-toe with the obvious hard-boiled Japanese and Chinese crime flicks that clearly influenced it.

I have yet to play Kiwami 2, but I do feel the need to mention that it exists, for those who have not experienced 2 yet and are considering it. It might be better, I dunno.

Ben daha ilk dakikasından bu oyuna mutlu başladım. Çünkü artık Japonya' da geçen bir oyunu Japonca oynayabilecektim. Başlar başlamaz oh be dedirtti. Üstelik oyunun başında ilk oyunu oynamayan insanlar için ilk oyundaki çoğu cutscene i tekrardan izlemenize olanak sağlayan bir kısım koymuşlar. Ben ilk oyunu oynamama rağmen bu cutscene leri tekrardan japonca olarak izlemekten mutluluk duydum. Beni fazlaca mutlu etti bu tarz bir şey koymaları. Grafiklerde ve texture larda çok az da olsa bir gelişme olmuş fakat savaş mekanikleri sadece gelişmemiş uçmuş gibi hissettirdi. Bunun sebebi büyük ihtimalle ilk oyunun bu kısımdaki başarmadığı şeylerin basitliğiydi. Grafiklerin aksine savaş mekanikleri bayağı gelişmiş. Karakterimizin saldırıları çok daha serileşmiş. Sadece bu bile savaşı çok çok daha keyifli kılıyorken yapılan saldırıyı kesip farklı bir yönde aynı komboya devam etmek gibi bir özellik eklenmiş ki tek kelimeyle bu bile oyunu dinamik tutabilecek seviyede önemli bir gelişme olmuş bence. İlk oyunda az yaşamadım yani bosslara saldırı kaçırıp ölmeyi. Bu oyunda bu tarz savaşlara eklenen minik özellikler bile çok çok büyük değişiklikler aslında. İlk oyuna oranla kombo sayısı artmış, çevrede kullanabildiğimiz alan artmış, yapabildiğimiz hareketler artmış derken kısacası savaştaki her şey çok iyi gelişmiş. Hikaye ise bana göre ilkinden çok daha iyiydi. İlk yakuzanın hikayesinin her bir parçası, benzerini onlarca kez gördüğüm hikayelerdi. Etkileyicilikleri inanılmaz düşürüyor tabii ki bu olay. Fakat oyunun etkilendiğim hiçbir kısmı da yok demeyeceğim. Gayet güzel kısımları da vardı. Özellikle final kısmından epey mutlu ayrılmıştım. Yakuza 2 de yaşadıklarımın yakuza dan çok farklı olduğunu söylemek isterdim fakat öyle olmadı. Hâlâ benzeri tonla farklısını gördüğüm bir hikayeydi. Hatta bazı kısımları direkt ilk oyunla aynı gibiydi. Fakat bu oyunda şöyle bir fark vardı. Sanki bu oyunda epikliğe oynamışlar gibi hissettim. İlk oyunda da vardı bu tarz sahneler fakat sanki bunda tüm olay epiklikmiş gibi. Savaşların başlangıcı olsun, savaştığımız alan olsun, olayların gelişmesi olsun tam anlamıyla epikliğe oynuyordu. Oyunun ilk %80 inde bunu düşünsem de tam olarak dile getirtecek kadar hissettirmiyordu. Fakat finale geldiğimde tam olarak emin oldum. Ve buna bayıldım da. Final kısmını o kadar çok sevdim ki favorilerime girdi direkt. İlk oyunda da final etkileyiciydi fakat bunda apayrı bir seviyede. Arka arkaya çıkan plot twistler, olayların inanılmaz bir şekilde birbirine bağlanması, finalin yaşandığı bölge ve oyun boyunca karşılaşmayı beklediğimiz bosslarla olan savaşın sonunda meyvesini veridiği bütünü tamamlayan bir noktaydı tam olarak. Final gibi finaldi kısacası.

My favorite thing in Yakuza 2 -besides the story- is its cutscene direction/cinematography which is in a class of its own, at times I truly felt like I was watching a Takeshi Kitano movie due to the perfect choice of dialogue, camera angles, atmosphere, music and voice acting. This was already good in Yakuza 1 but here it's just on another level.

They managed to get rid of all the problems I had with the previous entry: the combat, the long load times and exploring Kamurocho (and Sotenbori in this entry) doesn't suck this time.

The story was a massive improvement as well -not that Y1's story was bad- but this one retains its over-the-top nature which is signature of the series while developing characters better and just presenting a more intriguing story. If you are just like me and love the 10 stupid plot twists present in each Yakuza game you will feel right at home.

The soundtrack is simply a banger, it works in perfect tandem with the cutscenes and the game's atmosphere to make it feel special.

The only bad things I could think of are the strict QTE timings -which gets annoying in boss battles- (at least they are always the same buttons) and how easy it is to miss side missions (I felt 0 did this way better).

All in all, my favorite Yakuza game to date along with Zero. (still need to play 4-7)

based.

In all seriousness this game refines all the rough edges of the original game to a sleek razors edge. A prime example of "The Perfect Sequel." Comparing this game to its remake, Kiwami 2, only further shows the amazing pacing the first 2 games had that was ruined with the excessive amounts of bloat in their lesser remakes. I don't care what anyone says this game has aged amazingly and anyone who says its unplayable is wrong. Of course its not without its issues like missable substories but its still easily one of the best entries. Ryuji Goda still remains the best foil to Kiryu the series ever had

Bring back Sayama, Nagoshi, you fucker. I miss my wife

A vast improvement from the first installment. Like others have said, this is where the series finds its footing.
The combat is faster, the lock-on better and heat actions are now more than just hitting a guy with a weapon or against a wall, they start to serve as very flashy counters and others follow more specific circumstances. There are also QTEs, which are really fast, initially I disliked this but I ended up liking having to actually pay attention to which button I had to press and the considerable damage you get from failing them. The bad things are how enemies will hit you with specific strong attacks even during your combos, how quick some special ones are to start guarding again even after you break it, and that the Komaki parry from 1 is locked behind fighting everyone in the arena, though I guess the heat counters compensate for that.

Side-missions get a big buff too, whereas most of the ones in 1 were just "hey go beat up these guys for me" with little to no personality and easily missable as they'd be available for just one chapter, now they're above most games' side-missions. You can kinda start to get into this mindset of "oh shit, I've been playing for hours and completely forgot about the main story" at times. You get a few more with full-blown cutscenes with voice acting, some connect with eachother in ways you don't expect, some funny ones (the now legendary baby fight being the craziest this game gets), a series of missions where you fight pretty tough enemies with unique movesets (the Granny White ones) and even one that has unique mechanics of managing a hostess club, it's very lengthy and repetitive and not as complex as it seems, and you can easily not finish it if you let the story progress too much, but the effort is impressive and I'm sad they didn't keep it for Kiwami 2 with maybe improvements from what they learned later in the series. You can also fail some of the missions and never get to try them again, which is both frustrating and rewarding when you manage.

The cutscene direction is outstanding at parts, with some very film noir inspired scenes, there was nothing like it in the first game. The PS2 games in general have this very unique atmosphere to them, with the dim lights, gritty noisy streets, the sheer amount of people walking around and the fixed camera angles that show how huge the buildings are and how small you are, to the point that there's one button just to zoom in on Kiryu. Yakuza 2 further accentuates this making the world feel even bigger, with a lot more unique interiors and details like Kiryu actually sitting down to eat at restaurants, and a whole new city to explore.
The actual story is, fine, but also an improvement. All villains get introduced early and with their role pretty clear for the most part, get enough time to be actual characters. The big ones are way more interesting than their Yakuza 1 counterparts, and I can see why Ryuji is so beloved by many. The romance is decent. There's two parts where threats are introduced and very quickly solved or not being that much of an issue. Could've used more Haruka, honestly, a theme in the game seems to be that Kiryu is too willing to put his life at risk because of his idealism/sense of honor or even thinking that he's only good at fighting? This is a bit odd to me, because I walked out of Yakuza 1 thinking he finally found something more in life with Haruka, and he also finds love again too in this one, so I think it should've been used more to show what sets him apart from Ryuji, maybe the final confrontation would work a bit better for me without having the bomb threat.

Anyway, Man in Black > Ryuji Goda.

On a technical level, this game is an improvement over Yakuza 1 in pretty much every way. It is genuinely incredible that they were able to make such a huge jump in quality in only a year between the two games.

The main plot of the game is kind of a mess all throughout but especially falls apart in the finale. The good bits of the story can be very good and it is compelling all the way through but I dislike the bad parts of it too much to come away from the game feeling positive about the story.

It's interesting seeing this game after having played the remake a year ago. There's an entire minigame (with its own subplot) about working as a host, the hostess management minigame is completely different, and there's even an entire third city (although it's tiny compared to Sotenbori and Kamurocho). Between the differences and how well the game holds up, I think this is genuinely still worth playing.

Imagine having your first game be a mega success and your evil corporate publisher tasks you just a single year to develop a sequel to that said game, with the pretenses that every sequel comes with: A larger scope, refining features to what was established, and justifying a more grandiose narrative to your said first game. Most of the time, sequels with that obscenely unrealistic time crunch that leads to developer nightmares turn out to become disasters, but every now and then, you get that one game that survives that becomes somewhat of a miracle game: Yakuza 2.

Yakuza 2 succeeds in not only being a great sequel to Yakuza 1, but a great game in it's own right. Defining what the Yakuza franchise would become years down the line and is still seen as one of the best games in the series. Everything here has been improved from its open-world to its combat to even it's narrative.

Right to the first tutorial the game throws at me, I felt just how instantaneously better the game felt to play. He still retains some of the stiffness found in the original, but Kiryu's basic move set is much faster and moves locked from the original became standard such as moves that help Kiryu turn around on a dime, while still keeping that same impact felt from every punch like in the original. Not only does the combat feel more flexible, but the game balances the AI to accommodate this new moveset, as enemies are a lot more aggressive this time around and come together more in pairs, leading to faster-paced gameplay but with a refreshing new challenge on top of it. One of my favorite examples of this newfound challenge is the Goro Majima fight early on in the game, taking place in the underground arena which restricts your health items and the only equipped item you can have is an infinite use brass knuckle. You are forced not only to learn his moveset but react to his fast dodges as you try to keep on him building your heat meter, making it so you can land your powerful heat moves once built. This leads to a boss fight that's challenging, kinetic, intense, and easily one of the strongest highlights of the game for me, showcasing every improvement made to the combat to create a surprisingly good boss fight.

Sadly, there are some changes to the core gameplay I'm not exactly fond of and can lead to some frustrating moments. QTE events were added to certain scenarios, and for some reason the timing on them is absurdly strict, leading to the game taking cheap potshots at you if you don't know when they're coming. This can also be applied to enemies grabbing you, as in the original they were fairly easy to mash out of, but not once in this game did I successfully mash out of a grab as they require much faster mashing in this game. Call me slow fingers I suppose, but the mash time out of these grabs were ridiculously tight, and lead to cheap damage much like in the strict QTE segments. Then there are the boss fights that had some weird balancing choices. There was this one mid-game boss that had a grand total of six health bars that not only were hard to dwindle away, but the boss itself made it hard to do so. He had invincible attacks, couldn't be grabbed, and a second phase with long weapon-based attacks that were also invincible of course, leading to a boss fight that dragged on far too long and was a strange difficulty spike for a mid-game challenge. Despite these complaints though, I still stand by Yakuza 2 is a far better playing game than its original counterpart, but it still has some kinks that needed to be ironed out.

Narratively speaking though, whoah boy. Cutscenes are no longer plagued by an atrocious early 2000's dub and are left untouched and sub, letting its native speaking and better-directed voice actors shine. Cutscenes are also simply better directed too, leading to some clever cinematography tricks and music cues to give off a noir style feel to them. The characters here are also vastly well written too, with the developers not only exploring more to the characters already established but even having fun with some new ones. Ryuji Goda, the rival counterpart to Kiryu in this game, just absolutely steals the spotlight every time he's on-screen with his fun dialogue and diabolical delivery. He's a fantastic villain and easily my favorite character. Kaoru Sayama is an awesome new side character that plays off Kiryu's stoic tough-guy attitude well, leading to some genuinely heartfelt moments between the two, whether it be drama or (to my surprise considering this is Kiryu we're dealing with here) romance. The story as a whole is just packed with more suspense that follows up from the first game while telling an interesting new story here. I love the new characters and twists the game establishes chapter by chapter. I'd say the last chapter does go a bit overboard though. Its climax had like 10 plot twists jammed at once with no brevity that did make me roll my eyes a few times, but still, it leads to one of the hypest moments of the game for me. Its story left me intrigued and entertained all the way through, retaining a lot of the qualities I found so compelling when I played Yakuza 0, so I can say for the most part it's a success.

While both its narrative and gameplay may have some downsides to its improvements, one thing that is just flat-out improved is its open-world... or should I say open-worlds. Not only does Yakuza 2 add more new activities to the already established Kamurocho, but adds in a smaller but still densely packed new city, Sotenbori. Both these cities not only have more activities to do on the side of them, but the side stories you can find here are also better too. They feature more steps to them and have comedic writing to make them more memorable, leading to me actively seeking them out more than in the original. They are still timed events that can only be accessed depending on the chapter of the story you are in which is unfortunate but are much more rewarding to seek out, making both cities just as large as Kamurocho felt in the original while giving said Kamurocho a sense of growth in its world-building.

I seriously can't stress enough just how better this game overall just really is. It not only retains what I did like from the original, but it also exceeds all expectations I had for a sequel, which was all the more shocking to me when I read that this game only had a single year of development time. With the scope this game was aiming for, this game could have easily become a mess, and in some ways that messy rushed development time can be seen in the final product. But despite that Yakuza 2 persevered even when the deck was fully stacked against it, and what came out of it can only be described as a miracle, which is why I can say undoubtedly that Yakuza 2 is a miracle game.

There is still the typical issues that arise from an action game being on the PS2. But i don't really care! This comes out just a year after the previous instalment, and somehow improves almost every element there was carried over. Gives us an even more engrossing tale, that expands on the returning cast, and creates new favorites. Lock-on 'almost' works! Substorys are still generally mediocre, with few bangers. (You know the ones!) I sadly feel the soundtrack took a slight dip in quality comparatively to yakuza 1, in its connected-ness, to find a word. Which wouldn't surprise me if the reason behind that being the obviously strict deadline they were forced on by Sega. Well whatever, ramble over. This game is GREAT!

The last time I was in town for a night out I saw a young man, drunk, being removed from a strip club. he made threatening gestures towards the bouncer before falling backwards through a bush into a concrete pot. We all laughed.

There was another night, I saw a woman hunched down to wee against a shop shutter before she lost her balance and fell onto her own waste, piss all over her skirt.

I saw a man in London having a wank on a moped. I was eating hash browns I had gotten from a mcdonald's near King's Cross. I just left him to it.

In Glasgow i saw two girls one night having a kiss. It was quite sweet. Its sad knowing that, that simple gesture of love shared between two people in certain places of the world could be dangerous to express publically, so I just thought it was nice. As I passed them I noticed they werent kissing but were infact digging their nails into each other faces, clawing at each other as if they were zombies, drunk out of their mind.

I was in a CEX and saw a junkie buying Spawn on DVD. I didn't say anything then, either.

A prostutite offered me her services one night as I was going home. I wasn't sure at what point of talking to a prostitute you could get arrested so I just hurried on nervously.

She told me she was cold.

My factory sealed copy of Ghost Trick had a pube inside the box.

The young man who fell over the bush. He uh... he died. He fell back and landed on his head, a bad hit in the wrong place, simple as that. Dead. His last moments on this earth were spent being dragged out of a stripclub and giving abuse and being laughed at. We were still laughing as he lay there before we realized.

Yakuza was released in 2006 for the Playstation 2 and received generally positive reviews