La même formule que le premier épisode mais en mieux sur quasiment tous les aspects du jeu.

Graphiquement, c'est un peu plus fin même si c'est pas là que le bond se fait le plus ressentir. Ce second épisode offre quelques options qui rendent le plus plus agréable à parcourir comme la possiblité de sauvegarder à n'importe quel moment, d'accélérer les cinématiques sans que ça soit rébarbatif. Surtout, le jeu profite d'un système de combat un peu plus affiné, des styles de combat encore plus variés (mais pas tous intéressant) et plus d'interactions avec le décor. L'histoire est toujours sympa, même si on ressent moins la progression de Ukyo Tatsuya contrairement au premier épisode, et la bande-son est cette fois très sympa avec quelques thèmes qui restent en tête. Encore plus de contenu annexe, des minis-jeux qui ont été repensé, même si ça reste parfois inintéressant. L'ajout de la ville de Sotenbori reste très agréable et permet de varier un peu les plaisirs.

Un très bon épisode qui aurait mérité plus de reconnaissance si Sega avait daigné le traduire chez nous...

Kurohyou 2 is very much more of the same as the original, with some extensive quality of life improvements: save anywhere, no more storage limitations and taxis to get around town above all else. It adds a second city, Sotenbori, and also builds on the stub that was the gang recruitment mechanic, actually adding partners to help you out in combat, instead of confining it to a long dead multiplayer mode. On top of that it features a reworked leveling system that is much more flexible in creating your own (overpowered) build and fighting style.

It's not all sunshine and rainbows though: while having a second city is great, the gang war side questline has you going back and forth on a constant basis, which can be very tedious, especially sinc eit's not a particularly involving plot to begin with, unlike the main story, which is a lot of fun. The new characters are great, and while you are bound to miss some who do not return, there is a lot to like here on the narrative front.

In a baffling decision, the game chooses to limit when you can engage with the fight club minigame, only allowing to accept matches from the dedicated NPC during specific time windows that pop up seemingly at random. The result is that you receive a text message telling you a match is available and are expected to drop whatever you are doing and run to the NPC to accept it before the time window closes and the fight is cancelled until the next SMS. It's seriously bad, and likely to discourage you to engage with the fight club at all, especially since progression is much slower and the rewards unlisted, which doesn't do much to entice you to out up with the stupidity of the whole system. It's optional anyway.

If you liked Kurohyou, this is bigger and better, with just a few caveats to speak of.

The story in this game feels more centered around Tatsuya's new friends at the new Dragon Heat, reborn after Tatsuya was absent from Kamurocho for a year. Whenever I get a long cutscene centered around some of the new guys, I recieve a harsh reminder of how much I don't care about them. There's five of them, and they all feel underdeveloped and shoehorned into the plot. To compare it to something like Yakuza 4, that game juggles four characters by dedicating entire chapters to them and only them, building up to the point where all their plots cross over and make a stronger whole. The first game was all about Tatsuya's struggles as he discovers his reason to fight. Now main character Tatsuya's presence somehow feels like an afterthought here. Our conflict this time is that a powerful gang called Ashura is threatening to take over Dragon Heat, and Tatsuya (plus his new friends) step up to defend it, via a new series of eight matches. It kinda feels like a waste to follow the exact same format of the previous game, but not to worry! Every single chapter is filled to the brim with unrelated shenanigans up until it's time for the fight. It all feels so disconnected from itself.

With a new adventure comes more stuff, and as Yakuza 1 is to Yakuza 2, we now have Sotenbori available to explore alongside Kamurocho. That means more substories, more minigames, and a lot more ground to cover on foot. This game managed to implement the taxi system from the console Yakuza titles, and it can still feel like a slog getting to certain points on each map. The gang war substory was cute in the first game, but more than overstays its welcome here. You've got one war in Kamurocho, another in Sotenbori, and several conflicts that arise between the two areas, which means traveling between these areas several times. The quality of most side activities has been increased across the board, at least. Existing minigames all got upgrades; karaoke is actually a rhythm game now, the massage minigame is more akin to the console games' quality, and there's even a cute "Castle of the Dead" arcade shooter.

Combat has received a few overhauls since Kurohyou 1. Grabbing is no longer such a dominant strategy, you really gotta find an opening to grab someone, otherwise they almost instantly shake you off. They introduced a lot more contextual actions you can do in the arenas. You can "shove" enemies when grabbing them, which can result in a variety of effects, depending on what you shove them towards. Random passerby now come to spectate these street fights, just like the console Yakuza titles. Unlike those games, the audience is a rowdy bunch, occasionally throwing items into the ring, and even grabbing people who get too close. This sequel has an emphasis on tag-team fights, you can call up literal "friends with benefits" on your cell phone. They provide certain effects on the overworld, and join you during most scuffles. The fights have friendly fire, which makes logical sense, but can be annoying when you just wanna hit your target. Sometimes you'll get beaten over the head by your partner, sometimes you'll unintentionally beat them down. Most fights become trivial with a friend. Strength in numbers and all that shit.

Levelling up your styles in this game brings a new benefit to the table in the form of skills. Every style has a few slots available for them. You can use them to cover a style's weaknesses, or empower its strengths. Levelling up has been reworked in general; each level gives you points that you can invest into specific stats, as opposed to literally investing money into your stats in Kurohyou 1. The one change I can't stand is how you need to buy new combos at a dojo as you level up a style. Just give me the new move as a reward for continued style usage! Don't make me trek to the center of the map every time I want to add one extra punch to my moveset!

This game has worse performance than Kurohyou 1. It's most noticeable during battles, as the framerate can be anywhere between 60 and 20 FPS. While not all of it, a large portion of this slowdown is caused by Team K4L's translation patch. Sometimes my entire screen even went black for a few seconds before coming back as if nothing ever happened. I know this probably isn't my PSP dying because this doesn't happen in any other games I play, but it sure makes me afraid of continuing to play this one! Listen, not all translation projects are perfect, and it's no easy task for a handful of fans working on a passion project. I just don't want to condone the actions of Team K4L. The least they could do is add a list of what's not translated to their professional website, instead of acting like this is a finished project. Heck, they claim they're working on translating all the hostess text, but they went ahead and did a translation for Kurohyou 1 instead? Maybe this game runs better in an emulator, but I've been on an official hardware kick lately, and I don't believe that emulation should be a requirement for a translation patch (unless absolutely necessary).

Man, I wish I liked Kurohyou 2 more than I did. It's entirely possible that I wasn't in a good mood when playing this game, or maybe it was because I just came off of Kurohyou 1. I feel like my experience wouldn't be very different if I played the game untranslated. I'd still be mashing through the uninteresting text regardless, at least it would probably run better. Wouldn't change the fact that this game tried to follow its predecessor's story formula to a fault. As a game, it's fine, but in Kurohyou 1's case, maybe less was more all along.

Kinda mid and does nothing that different from Kurohyou 1 but easily the best soundtrack in the series and that's saying a lot given the competition.

When the singer said
硬き拳にぎり 夢のリング上がりに
血と汗が物語るぜ 下手な口の変わりに
叩き込むぜ 明日を変える闘志燃える我が身
腹を決めた先に見える光 俺を高みに
何があろうが負けない この言葉曲げない
不完全じゃ止めない 決してサジは投げない
我武者羅な馬鹿野郎が無我夢中で掴むチャンスを
鼻で笑うボケ 今に見とけ I really felt that

BORN TO BE WILD!

Poucas coisas mudaram a ponto de se ter o que falar em relação ao primeiro
O maior destaque com certeza é a história, que ao meu ver não só é maior/complexa, como também mais profunda, e a narrativa mais eficiente (apesar de tu sim despender de uma boa parte de tempo tentando ser pai kkkkkkkkkk). Amei de paixão os personagens introduzidos aqui, aliados e inimigos. Senti um pouco de falta de alguns do jogo anterior, mas faz parte

As mudanças do combate não me agradaram tanto... agora, parece que tu mais escolhe o estilo de luta baseado no que vai te fazer perder menos atributos, do que num que vai te beneficiar mais. Isso no final não acaba afetando tanto a experiencia assim, mas deixo registrado que prefiro o sistema passado

Toda a estrutura da narrativa e loop de gameplay ficou mais dinâmica, menos previsível, e no geral, mais agradável de se experienciar... O jogo anterior ser engessado não me importou em nada, mas é legal ver que melhoraram nisso

Estou dando a mesma nota do passado, pois embora a história tenha sim ficado melhor (e isso é uma das coisas que eu mais me importo num jogo), o resto sinceramente foi soma zero. Não tava esperando nada do primeiro e recebi TUDO, uma pérola realmente... quando fui jogar esse aqui, já esperava algo bom, que por mais que tenha sido entregue, não foi uma surpresa como o outro...

"...Você pode sempre mudar o seu destino... mas eu me esqueci disso."

Well, as sequence, comparations are inevitable, but my experience playing this one on NORMAL level (the first game was on HARD), is that it is a good game in general.

Content-wise, keep the standard of having a lot of things to do, but, I can't say anything about it because I only did the story mode.

The main point of the pratical part of the game, gameplay and it's system: exploring is just okay, nothing to say about it, regarding fighting and the system of it, it's well composed, gave me the will to grind an upgrade the style, so another would be unlocked and cycle repeats.

The boss fights, in general, looked easier (the level has influence on it as well). Regarding duration, is very better (doesn't gave me the feeling of taking too much time), and a fair hit box and reach, aspects that just expanded with the two final bosses (for me, fair, the last ones) something that a this level (NORMAL), I've experienced at every boss fight in the first game.

Here, my main struggle was the space that was, for the most part, enough, but, when fights are made in wider spaces, they look a ton easier, so for the most part, the scenarios are a bit "claustrophobics".

Well, that sums it, good soundtrack, story, balanced gameplay (at least on NORMAL level) and pretty recomendable, as a sequence, obvously, after all, the first game has a big part of this "magic".

for a game that was supposed to be all about defying fate...this sequel ended up being rather predictable, the new additions and changes to the combat don't do enough to spice up the formula and actually make it worse in some aspects, most of the new characters feel a lot shallower than almost any boss from the first game and even if I didn't always like the direction some k1 characters took at least there was a clear attempt at depth with the majority of them, while here most of the arena fights are just with dudes who exist only for Tatsuya to beat them up and maybe be mildly funny with their heat moves, which are just kind of huge time-wasters now
Tatsuya's trajectory as a character does make sense in this game, however most of the time the plot wants to focus on the really boring kid characters instead which just makes the story a huge slog to get through and sadly the villains aren't good enough to make up for it, and by the end I got really tired of fighting them too, mashing x to get up was already a problem of the original but the sequel gives you even more states that require mashing and by the end I just couldn't be bothered anymore
of course there's still some moments of excitement both in gameplay and story but I feel like for a game that ends on Born to be Wild it's kind of sinful for it to just end up being "okayish" overall

Quite possibly the most obscure game in the franchise, Kurohyo 2 is a surprisingly solid game that has a lot going for it.

Set over one year after the events of Kurohyo 1 and around half a year before Yakuza 5, Tatsuya is once again dragged back into the ring of Dragon Heat but this time, he's fighting in Sotenbori to take down a group of eight fighters working under a gang named Ashura.

This game maintains Tatsuya's development from the first and instead of going through change himself, he's grouped with some other Dragon Heat participants and bear witness to how he imposes change onto them, a good display of his growth over the series. Each member of the supporting cast gets some time in the spotlight with a personal obstacle to overcome, including manipulation, self-esteem and daddy issues and they're all very likable and interesting.

In particular, I really enjoy the game's main antagonist. Without spoiling anything, he maintains a large presence throughout the story and is genuinely one of the most engaging villains in the franchise, with a banger as hell theme to accompany his final battle.

Gameplay wise, it's more of what the first game offered. Not something I want to see return but fun nonetheless. Though, the bosses were noticeably easier this time around than in the first where they felt like they lasted forever.

Kurohyo 2 is a really good follow-up to its predecessor and has a really great story and cast of characters that most RGG fans will likely never get to experience.