Pretty much all the stuff I don't like about Yakuza/Like a Dragon is at its worst here--the cartoonish chauvinism, the deeply weird attitudes about Chinese and/or Korean people. Ryuji Goda's a decent villain but the story--at least as it's told here, can't speak for the original Yakuza 2--is a complete dud, culminating in easily the stupidest climax of the series so far. The Dragon engine looks nice but just sucks to play in. I could ignore the way it makes controlling the player character feel like steering a drunk elephant in Y7 because the combat there is turn-based so it's not that big of a deal. Not the case here. I've never liked Yakuza's brawler combat much to begin with but it's actively bad in Kiwami 2. And in general the world feels emptier--most of my favorite minigames are gone, replaced with...not a whole lot. Nice to see the cabaret club minigame again but Majima Construction is a complete nonstarter. I dunno. Still speaks to how high the floor is for this series that I still had a half-decent time running around Kamurocho and Sotenbori again anyway.