KIRYU-CHAN!

Yakuza Kiwami is the remake of the first game of the series. Because of that, i am trying hard to not compare with 0, but (KIRYU-CHAN!) considering it uses the same engine and combat (we will get there in a sec), i am trying, i swear...

Let's start with story. Very good, the character develoment is getting new heights, specially Nishiki. I can understand every little piece of emotion (KIRYU-CHAN!) from his pains, thanks to the amazing voice acting. Kiryu, as always, i love him (KIRYU-CHAN) and i want to punch the whole world with him. There is one thing i miss, and is presence. Yakuza 0, sorry i need to, every time some lieutenant appears, you feel the tension in the presence of them. Every character had some strong presence to be remembered, i miss it in Kiwami, few strong ones and most of them look like random street NPCs.

Can we please talk about Goro (KIRYU-CHAN!) Majima? How can i stop loving every piece of this combat sexual maniac? The game is literally carried HARD by Majima Everywhere. I laughed and punched him more times than i can remember.

I am talking a lot of good things, so why 3.5? Early in this review i said that the combat is basically the same from 0, but bad. If one pixel of Kiryu hit box takes a hit, you fall. If an enemy breaths, you fall. Every enemy has arms of a tank, because they just don't stop guarding and counter attacking to break your combo and leaving no way to evade. Ok, i played on hard difficulty so i got what i deserved, instead i feel like is not hard, but unfair? Some boss fights are completely stupid (if you played, you probably remember, especially the helipad boss(es)). I turned Easy on last part of the game to evade my wrath, and sadly the last boss lost the impact because of this, since you can't change difficulty in a fight.

Yakuza Kiwami is what a second game should be, even if it was the first, so you must play Yakuza 0 before, the game is made around it a lot of times. Unfortunately, the combat hurts it, so take care of that. And now, after a little break, i will continue my adventure with Kiryu and his punchs in Kiwami 2.

KIRYU-CHAN!

It's a testament to the quality and timelessness of "Ikaruga" that I remember reading a review of it for the GameCube at my grandmother's place roughly twenty years ago. Even then it was a port from a generation prior. While now mulitple generations in the future and it's still being released. It was like a swansong for a then dead genre. Shmup's were a juggernaut in the arcade days, but as arcades began dying in the west as the new millennium came around, it took a few genres with them. There are still some released from time to time, but their heyday have long since passed. "Ikaruga" is just facinating to me. One I keep coming back to over the years, because I feel the history for the genre in it. It's also the type of game I gravitate towards, with razor tight mechanics and gameplay that it takes all your being to be able to overcome. The core game is only a few stages long, but the brutality of the developers and the artistry by how they craft the game and implement the polarity system is almost otherworldly. It could take someone a lifetime to master. I also find the bizarrely convoluted narrative placement between stages so strangely appealing. The game is really a marvel to behold. Like a dinosaur fossil, it'll never be lost entirely to history and will live on thru the ages.

i rated this 2.5 initially because i was like "yeah that sure showed me the deck's controls alright," but ive decided to lower it another half star a few days later after realising this is the one portal related thing that didnt make me laugh or smile once. i was expecting a fun little thing that happened to demonstrate that my deck didnt need RMAing, since i was going to swap out the ssd and didnt want to open it up before that. i couldve just opened a calibration menu instead and saved myself 30 minutes really, i had more fun imagining all the games i wanted to play while i went on blueballing myself through this. just do that instead lol