As a big fan of the series, I really enjoyed Kiwami on my first playthrough back in 2019. Since then, I've played through all but four games in the series (Ishin, Black Panther 1/2, and Fist of the North Star) and even gotten the platinum trophy/100% on seven of the games I've played, so I've got a new view on a lot of the entries with some new context. Because of that, I view Kiwami as easily the worst game in the series on a multitude of levels.

For this replay, I played using the Xbox application on PC which had a significant amount of technical issues. The more I played the game, the worse the load times were to the point where entering a coliseum match took about 10 seconds at one point. The game had consistent framerate issues, which my GTX 1070 shouldn't be experiencing and didn't experience on the Steam version of this game. Lastly, I experienced several crashes in random places, the most infuriating one happening as I selected the save option. I wouldn't recommend this version of the game due to technical issues.

Now onto the complaints about the game itself. Kiwami is a remake of Yakuza 1, but instead of improving the game it either adds in unnecessary bloat or changes that make the game play worse. Every single boss in the series reuses a moveset from a different boss in a different game, which doesn't sound bad until you realize that the gameplay does not suit these bosses. The skill system from 0 returns which isn't bad on its own, but the leveling system requires a metric ton of experience points to get the most useful and needed skills. On top of that, the Majima Everywhere system is extremely obstructive to gameplay since he can just interrupt anything you're doing for a long-winded and tedious fight that you need to do AT LEAST 50 TIMES to max out your Dragon fighting style. The gun cripple mechanic from Yakuza 0 returns in a game filled with enemies that use guns, over half of all enemies moves have super armor that you can only counter with the Tiger Drop ability, which requires you to grind in the coliseum against obnoxious opponents, the vast majority of moves you get from leveling up are insanely situational and you probably won't use unless you're a crazy no-damager, there isn't a single completely unique minigame in this game (Mesuking is just a reskin of the atrocious cat fights from 0), and a lot of substories from the original PS2 release of 1 are ruined by either additions of unnecessary sequel substories or by adding new dialogue that was completely also completely unnecessary. I've got even more gripes to go off with, but I'll stop here.

I wholeheartedly do not recommend Kiwami as a game. Even past being a Yakuza game, it's really frustrating to play to the point where I doubt the game was ever even playtested. As a Yakuza game, it's embarrassing how poorly the asset reuse is done, especially since you have games like 4 and 0 that do a fantastic job reusing old assets. I recommend the PS2 release of Yakuza 1 because despite it's worse graphics, it's got really punchy and fun combat, none of the bloat Kiwami added, some of the best atmosphere the series has ever had, and an absolute banger of a soundtrack. I would also like to recommend the PS2 release of Yakuza 2. While Kiwami 2 isn't as bad of a game, Yakuza 2 has some of the best combat in the series as well as one of the best soundtracks plus the same grungy atmosphere of Yakuza 1. Still holding out for official re-releases of the games, but as of now the best way to play them is through emulation, and if your computer can run Kiwami, you can emulate Yakuza 1 and 2.

The Surge was the very first souls-like I played from beginning to end, and between some specific areas taking me hours to get through (Central Production B mainly) and a few bosses kicking my ass, 2020 me managed to finish it and felt nothing but frustration. Come two and a half years later and I've played all the From-made Souls games as well as The Surge's highly improved and better sequel and I feel confident in my skills in the genre. I decided on a whim to load this game up to see how much better I might be and what could still cause me trouble despite my skill improvement over time.

To start off I just want to talk about my two biggest issues with the game, namely exploration and combat encounters. Central Production B and the Nucleus are some of the most frustratingly designed areas I've gone through in a game. They try to recreate DS1-style interconnectivity within themselves but all it does is leave two frustratingly muddled areas where it's hard to tell where you are since everything looks the same. On top of that, I don't think there's a single enemy, boss, or encounter I found fun to take out. Most of the enemies are plain and boring but a few standouts (hammer and twin-rigged guys in CPB, crystal turret things in Nucleus) made me pissed off more times than I'd like to admit on this playthrough. The vast majority of my deaths came from enemies stunlocking me since it happens a ton. The bosses aren't interesting in the slightest to me, with most of them being waaaay too easy compared to the tedious journey to get to them. It's unfortunate to me that the two things this Souls-like does poor are my two favorite things about the genre.

Now for the good. The limb targeting system is insanely cool, it's a smart mechanic for taking out enemies while also making grinding not completely tedious. I found it most useful when facing robot enemies since it takes out their main way to cause you the most trouble, but getting a unique weapon and new gearsets from enemies by chopping them up is such a satisfying mechanic. It gets even better when you realize that every time you do a finisher and chop off an enemy's limb, the amount of scrap you get is multiplied further and further, with the more finishers done increasing the multiplier. When you have a build set up where your energy is constantly high so you can always do finishers, the combat can be really gratifying.

I think this game is okay. The Walk in the Park DLC is really fun, the park is well designed in terms of interconnectivity and the enemy encounters are mostly fair. I didn't enjoy the The Good, The Bad, and the Augmented DLC but if you end up liking the combat, it could be fun to play in short bursts. Overall I'd just say skip this one and play its sequel. Surge 2 does soooo much better and I remember having way fewer complaints by the end of the game than I did with this one. If you do play this game, one massive recommendation I'd give is to abuse the hell out of the sprint attack, especially with a one-handed weapon. The vast majority of enemies can't do shit to deal with it being spammed but those that can are typically slow enough where you can just time the attack. It's a shame this game isn't better, there's some things to like here, but your time is spent better elsewhere.

Man, this spin-off isn't nearly as good as anyone says. When I played Ishin, the only other game I had left in the series to play was Kurohyou 2 and I had gotten the Platinum trophies for 0, K1/K2, 3-7, Judgment, Lost Judgment, and FotNS: LP so I was quite versed on the series. Playing Ishin was by far the longest slot the series has ever put me through and I didn't even go for the Platinum (yet). The story is boring and uninteresting since it's entirely focused on politics and an uninteresting relationship between Ryoma and his fiance. The combat, while interesting and varied, is heavily unbalanced and some styles just aren't nearly as good as others, plus if you don't grind enough you'll hit a wall since later bosses rely on you being stronger than them. The substories and friendships are the most tedious they've ever been in the series with no substantial rewards for doing any of them. It makes me sad that this is the game people want instead of Kenzan which is a significantly better overall package in every way

UPDATE: 6/28/2022
I've finally finished the Platinum Trophy for the game and I've reverted my score of 2.5/5 stars. The plat process is one of the most frustrating and tedious things I've ever gone through and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. This game sucks and is in the bottom three of all RGG games.

This is one of those games where if I was better at it, my score would definitely be higher. I had a really good time with Bayonetta though, I was terrible when I started and the big difficulty kick around chapter 6 really forced me to get good quick. Once I finally got that feel the game went a lot smoother but the last few chapters still managed to completely kick my ass. The only big gripes I have with the game are the numerous amount of "die if you fail" QTEs or segments and the minigame-style sequences later in the game, both of those got me pretty frustrated or bored since they killed the flow for me. Overall, quite fun even if you aren't good at this kind of game.

Charming art style, great music, very silly writing. The only problem is that a roguelike/roguelite is mostly carried by its gameplay, and Going Under doesn't have those legs to stand on.
The combat never really evolves as you're frantically spamming the attack button every single run while scrounging for whatever has the highest damage. You don't get any invulnerability frames when dodging, nor can you use it to cancel animations so you're mostly committed to your attacks. Later on, combat gets so frantic and hectic that it's hard to tell what's happening and damage more or less becomes unavoidable.
You can pick a skill to start your run with but there's no reason not to choose the one that gives you five whole seconds of invulnerability. There are so many skills that completely dilute the item pool and unlike something like The Binding of Isaac, you don't have multiple pools to separate the skills from. Unfortunately, the skills you unlock earlier on tend to be much more helpful than the ones in the middle of the game, so you're just making it harder on yourself when you buy them.
When you hit the second part of the game, everything gets much harder without warning. All of the dungeons you were running before get enemies that are tankier and have attacks that are much harder to dodge. Thankfully you can hit a lever now to go back to the old dungeons but they don't properly prepare you for the end game.
I think this game is worth a shot on sale, but you shouldn't go in expecting something like Enter the Gungeon or Hades. It's a quick ten or so hour jaunt that's simple but fun.

Played the PSP version back in 2020 and had a great time with it. The story is simple but enjoyable with good payoff, the combat is very well tuned for the encounters, and the levels are fun and challenging. This review of the game is for the normal difficulty. This time around, I played on hard and earned the platinum trophy and it had a negative impact on my enjoyment of the game. Encounters don't feel properly balanced and most of them left me with little health and magic. The game can also be cruel with some levels where you have several encounters in a row with minotaurs, cyclopes, and medusas with no healing or checkpoints in between. This might just be a skill issue on my part but I never remember having issues close to this on normal. I'd definitely recommend this game as long as you don't play on hard though, because the core game is quite fun.