This review contains spoilers
Playing through the Yakuza series these past few months has been a treat because despite the main stories for each game all being essentially crime drama movies you'll never know what you might get. Whether its an inter-clan battle over the position of one of the family captains while tying into a much bigger conspiracy, or its a story of trying to find a missing friend while you protect her daughter, deal with your former clan, and try to get through to your brother who has fallen from grace you can generally expect a pretty interesting story front and center while the rest of the game is filled with wacky and interesting side stories and minigames. Yakuza Kiwami 2 mostly continues this trend. This review is going to heavily go into spoilers for the main story of Yakuza Kiwami 2, just as a heads up. Before we talk about those aspects of the game though I do want to touch on the general gameplay of the game first.
Due to engine changes Kiwami 2 has a different combat style from Yakuza Zero and Kiwami 1, and honestly while it took me a bit to adjust to not having styles I did grow to like it by the end. The actual acts of attacking, dodging, blocking, and using heat actions all remain relatively the same but the way the game's new engine makes them feel more fluid on top of how all of them have been reworked slightly just make them all feel better and more impactful than the combat in Zero or Kiwami 1 did. Kiwami 2 also removes the worst mechanic from Kiwami 1, the essence of Kiwami actions that you have to use when a boss charges up otherwise they regain a ton of health, and replaces it with a much better system of finishing heat actions that you can activate towards the end of boss battles for a big cinematic finish to the fight. These changes come together to make a fun and fluid combat system that I think is probably the best in the series for me as of me writing this.
Building on top of the base combat system weapons and picking up items off the street has also been revamped, and I both like and dislike these changes personally. The way they have items bound to the dpad instead of styles made me want to use weapons more since I could have multiple equipt to switch through at a time, and generally most of the weapons and their heat actions were really fun to use, but I do feel like they gutted pick up weapon objects in doing this. For those that don't know in Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami there was a combat form for Kiryu, Beast style, that allowed you to pick up items from the area of the overworld map you were in such as signs or bikes and just start swinging them around like crazy to do massive damage to groups. This is still in kiwami 2 too a degree but it's severely cut back in terms of how many uses of the picked up objects you have, how many objects can be picked up, and if they have unique heat actions like in Kiwami 1 and Zero. I do get why this system was cut back, since it's not needed and it allowed them to refine Kiryu's hand to hand combat a lot more so this isn't the biggest of complaints, but it is a part of the two games before this that I particularly enjoyed that got cut down so I wanted to talk about it a bit.
While we're on the topic of the overworld I do want to say that I really love how Kiwami 2 expands and adds more functionality to the two cities, Kamurocho and Sotenbori, that we go back and forth between. You can just walk into buildings now instead of needing to load into every small building you may want to visit for a side activity and while this is again a minor thing it's a really cool change that I greatly appreciated coming off of Zero and Kiwami. This functionality of including small buildings and shops on the main world map mixed with the increased graphical quality and crowd sizes of Kiwami 2 makes the world feel a lot more lively and bustling than in previous games. It's cool how small touches like this can make a game feel a lot more alive and I think it's a very notable thing about Kiwami 2 that could easily get looked over.
I think an aspect of why the dev team decided that it was important to make the restaurants and stores part of the overworld is that it also is more important to visit some of these places this time around, mainly in regard to restaurants. Instead of just healing you when you eat like in Zero and Kiwami when you eat in Kiwami 2 you get various amounts of the five different kinds of exp points that are available in the game. Each different kind of point corresponds to a different stat and is used to upgrade different aspects of Kiryu and unlock moves. Restaurants are where you'll be visiting most often to get these points since eating will supply you with way more points than combat usually will. I'm not the biggest fan of this style of leveling up because it feels a tad frustrating to try and manage all five different kinds in order to consistently upgrade your stats on top of also unlocking new abilities since some stat upgrades and most abilities require upgrade points from multiple different exp pools. It's easy enough to get points if you eat consistently throughout the game, but it still feels like a step down from Kiwami 1's level system to me personally.
I'm not a completionist so while I didn't do all the side stories in the game, the ones I did do were really enjoyable and pretty par for the course for the franchise. Whether it's being a VA for a Gay dating sim, being a shirtless model, stopping a dude from killing his girlfriend with a knife on a rooftop, finding a puppy for an orphanage, or beating a millionare at Virtua Fighter 2, there's plenty of fun and unique side stories that can be found throughout this game's world. Something I noticed about this game's handling of substories is that instead of just instantly forcing you to chose if you want to do them right as you run into them like in Zero and Kiwami they sort of structured them as to where you would get introduced to the story character, and then be free to approach it whenever you want later now that you know of its existence. Like a few other things I've mentioned it's not the biggest design change, but it was noticeably different in how the NPC's giving the sub stories interacted with you; which in turn made the world feel a bit more alive during my playthrough.
Finally getting into talking about the story for this game, it's mostly alright with the ending completely destroying any good will I had for it. The main plot of the game follows Kiryu getting dragged back into the Tojo Clan's shenanigans when the person he left in charge of the clan at the last game, Terada, is killed and in his dying breath he begs Kiryu to bring an alliance between the two big Yakuza clans on their side of Japan, the Tojo and the Omi. This alliance is stopped and delayed due to interference from the son of the the Omi alliance chairman, Ryuji Goda, who wants to completely wipe out the Tojo and take out over their territory. This battle against Ryuji and the Omi is intertwined with a revenge plot from the few members of the Korean Jingweon mafia that Kiryu's father figure Kazama spared when he and other Tojo clan members were ordered to eliminate them all Twenty-six years ago. Kiryu is joined on this quest by his new love interest, the Yakuza Huntress Sayama, as the two of them try to unravel the plots and mysteries of these two plot lines. Honestly I do think the game handles both of these plot lines well enough and they kept me engaged and trying to figure out where they were going with them, right up until the ending of the game where it completely managed to unravel the entire story and make everything feel stupid in a fifteen minute timespan.
Remember Kiryu's pal Terada who died within the first twenty minutes of the game? Surprise, he's alive. He also is the one who has been planning the events of this game for the past twenty-six years because he was apparently also a member of the Jingweon mafia that was spared by Kazama, who then decided to get revenge on the Tojo clan by moving up the ranks of the Omi Alliance, defecting to the Tojo clan after Kazama dies and has his son make him the new chairman of the Tojo clan, only to fake his death to cause a war with the Omi Alliance and have both of them take each other out. This part of the ending just doesn't work and feels really out of nowhere. There was no foreshadowing or build up to this reveal, and then they show us that they just left off part of the flashback to the original raid on the Jingweon, that they showed six times before this without any indication of this being a thing that happened that night, in order to throw it in here and make this make sense at the last second. However it doesn't make sense and just feels horribly convoluted. I wish I could say that's as bad as it got, but unfortunately that's not the case.
Immediately after this Terada is betrayed by his benefactor and biggest supporter in the Omi, a family captain named Takashima, and killed. But not before he activates the giant bomb that he brought to the roof, giving everyone 10 minutes to escape. Takashima is then killed by Ryuji, who despite everything you put him through in the boss fight right before this plus being shot multiple times is still able to get up and kill a man. Then instead of trying to escape the bomb Kiryu and Ryuji decide they need to have a final fight right then and there, despite both of them resolving their fight earlier and probably not needing to do this right next to a bomb. Kiryu wins again, Ryuji dies, Sayama comes back up the tower after being sent down to escape the bomb, and instead of trying to escape both of them accept death and start making out as the bomb ticks down to zero… but then doesn't go off in the post credits because Terada had disarmed the bomb before setting it to blow. For some unknown reason.
This ending is bizarre and really dumb in my opinion, and not dumb in the "oh my god this is hilariously weird I love it" kind of dumb like earlier in the game when a golden castle was hidden under Osaka Castle or when Kiryu fought tigers, it just felt needlessly convoluted and poorly written. I feel like if you just removed the Terada reveal and the bomb and instead had Takashima show up at the last second after you fight Ryuji, have that conflict play out, and then fight Ryuji again with him still dying at the top of the tower it would have felt infinitely better narratively and writing wise. I'm not kidding when I say this whole ending sequence significantly lowered my opinion of the game overall, which is unfortunate because I did enjoy the narrative up to this point despite its weird pacing at times.
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a prime example of a game that has a good run throughout but doesn't manage to stick the landing at all and ends up stumbling and falling on its face right at the end. That being said it was a good run up to the ending in my opinion, a bit poorly paced at times as I mentioned but still having some really solid moments and decent-good writing. It has the best combat you'll find of the Kiwamis + Zero, some really solid sub stories, and looks absolutely stunning while opening up the world a bit more. It's really unfortunate that the ending played out the way that it did, because if it wasn't for that I probably would have liked this almost as much as I like Zero. But, unfortunately while it is a great game I can't really say I prefer it to the other two games in the franchise that I've played at this point. Still definitely a game worth checking out in my opinion, but keep your expectations in check going into the finale.
8/10
Due to engine changes Kiwami 2 has a different combat style from Yakuza Zero and Kiwami 1, and honestly while it took me a bit to adjust to not having styles I did grow to like it by the end. The actual acts of attacking, dodging, blocking, and using heat actions all remain relatively the same but the way the game's new engine makes them feel more fluid on top of how all of them have been reworked slightly just make them all feel better and more impactful than the combat in Zero or Kiwami 1 did. Kiwami 2 also removes the worst mechanic from Kiwami 1, the essence of Kiwami actions that you have to use when a boss charges up otherwise they regain a ton of health, and replaces it with a much better system of finishing heat actions that you can activate towards the end of boss battles for a big cinematic finish to the fight. These changes come together to make a fun and fluid combat system that I think is probably the best in the series for me as of me writing this.
Building on top of the base combat system weapons and picking up items off the street has also been revamped, and I both like and dislike these changes personally. The way they have items bound to the dpad instead of styles made me want to use weapons more since I could have multiple equipt to switch through at a time, and generally most of the weapons and their heat actions were really fun to use, but I do feel like they gutted pick up weapon objects in doing this. For those that don't know in Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami there was a combat form for Kiryu, Beast style, that allowed you to pick up items from the area of the overworld map you were in such as signs or bikes and just start swinging them around like crazy to do massive damage to groups. This is still in kiwami 2 too a degree but it's severely cut back in terms of how many uses of the picked up objects you have, how many objects can be picked up, and if they have unique heat actions like in Kiwami 1 and Zero. I do get why this system was cut back, since it's not needed and it allowed them to refine Kiryu's hand to hand combat a lot more so this isn't the biggest of complaints, but it is a part of the two games before this that I particularly enjoyed that got cut down so I wanted to talk about it a bit.
While we're on the topic of the overworld I do want to say that I really love how Kiwami 2 expands and adds more functionality to the two cities, Kamurocho and Sotenbori, that we go back and forth between. You can just walk into buildings now instead of needing to load into every small building you may want to visit for a side activity and while this is again a minor thing it's a really cool change that I greatly appreciated coming off of Zero and Kiwami. This functionality of including small buildings and shops on the main world map mixed with the increased graphical quality and crowd sizes of Kiwami 2 makes the world feel a lot more lively and bustling than in previous games. It's cool how small touches like this can make a game feel a lot more alive and I think it's a very notable thing about Kiwami 2 that could easily get looked over.
I think an aspect of why the dev team decided that it was important to make the restaurants and stores part of the overworld is that it also is more important to visit some of these places this time around, mainly in regard to restaurants. Instead of just healing you when you eat like in Zero and Kiwami when you eat in Kiwami 2 you get various amounts of the five different kinds of exp points that are available in the game. Each different kind of point corresponds to a different stat and is used to upgrade different aspects of Kiryu and unlock moves. Restaurants are where you'll be visiting most often to get these points since eating will supply you with way more points than combat usually will. I'm not the biggest fan of this style of leveling up because it feels a tad frustrating to try and manage all five different kinds in order to consistently upgrade your stats on top of also unlocking new abilities since some stat upgrades and most abilities require upgrade points from multiple different exp pools. It's easy enough to get points if you eat consistently throughout the game, but it still feels like a step down from Kiwami 1's level system to me personally.
I'm not a completionist so while I didn't do all the side stories in the game, the ones I did do were really enjoyable and pretty par for the course for the franchise. Whether it's being a VA for a Gay dating sim, being a shirtless model, stopping a dude from killing his girlfriend with a knife on a rooftop, finding a puppy for an orphanage, or beating a millionare at Virtua Fighter 2, there's plenty of fun and unique side stories that can be found throughout this game's world. Something I noticed about this game's handling of substories is that instead of just instantly forcing you to chose if you want to do them right as you run into them like in Zero and Kiwami they sort of structured them as to where you would get introduced to the story character, and then be free to approach it whenever you want later now that you know of its existence. Like a few other things I've mentioned it's not the biggest design change, but it was noticeably different in how the NPC's giving the sub stories interacted with you; which in turn made the world feel a bit more alive during my playthrough.
Finally getting into talking about the story for this game, it's mostly alright with the ending completely destroying any good will I had for it. The main plot of the game follows Kiryu getting dragged back into the Tojo Clan's shenanigans when the person he left in charge of the clan at the last game, Terada, is killed and in his dying breath he begs Kiryu to bring an alliance between the two big Yakuza clans on their side of Japan, the Tojo and the Omi. This alliance is stopped and delayed due to interference from the son of the the Omi alliance chairman, Ryuji Goda, who wants to completely wipe out the Tojo and take out over their territory. This battle against Ryuji and the Omi is intertwined with a revenge plot from the few members of the Korean Jingweon mafia that Kiryu's father figure Kazama spared when he and other Tojo clan members were ordered to eliminate them all Twenty-six years ago. Kiryu is joined on this quest by his new love interest, the Yakuza Huntress Sayama, as the two of them try to unravel the plots and mysteries of these two plot lines. Honestly I do think the game handles both of these plot lines well enough and they kept me engaged and trying to figure out where they were going with them, right up until the ending of the game where it completely managed to unravel the entire story and make everything feel stupid in a fifteen minute timespan.
Remember Kiryu's pal Terada who died within the first twenty minutes of the game? Surprise, he's alive. He also is the one who has been planning the events of this game for the past twenty-six years because he was apparently also a member of the Jingweon mafia that was spared by Kazama, who then decided to get revenge on the Tojo clan by moving up the ranks of the Omi Alliance, defecting to the Tojo clan after Kazama dies and has his son make him the new chairman of the Tojo clan, only to fake his death to cause a war with the Omi Alliance and have both of them take each other out. This part of the ending just doesn't work and feels really out of nowhere. There was no foreshadowing or build up to this reveal, and then they show us that they just left off part of the flashback to the original raid on the Jingweon, that they showed six times before this without any indication of this being a thing that happened that night, in order to throw it in here and make this make sense at the last second. However it doesn't make sense and just feels horribly convoluted. I wish I could say that's as bad as it got, but unfortunately that's not the case.
Immediately after this Terada is betrayed by his benefactor and biggest supporter in the Omi, a family captain named Takashima, and killed. But not before he activates the giant bomb that he brought to the roof, giving everyone 10 minutes to escape. Takashima is then killed by Ryuji, who despite everything you put him through in the boss fight right before this plus being shot multiple times is still able to get up and kill a man. Then instead of trying to escape the bomb Kiryu and Ryuji decide they need to have a final fight right then and there, despite both of them resolving their fight earlier and probably not needing to do this right next to a bomb. Kiryu wins again, Ryuji dies, Sayama comes back up the tower after being sent down to escape the bomb, and instead of trying to escape both of them accept death and start making out as the bomb ticks down to zero… but then doesn't go off in the post credits because Terada had disarmed the bomb before setting it to blow. For some unknown reason.
This ending is bizarre and really dumb in my opinion, and not dumb in the "oh my god this is hilariously weird I love it" kind of dumb like earlier in the game when a golden castle was hidden under Osaka Castle or when Kiryu fought tigers, it just felt needlessly convoluted and poorly written. I feel like if you just removed the Terada reveal and the bomb and instead had Takashima show up at the last second after you fight Ryuji, have that conflict play out, and then fight Ryuji again with him still dying at the top of the tower it would have felt infinitely better narratively and writing wise. I'm not kidding when I say this whole ending sequence significantly lowered my opinion of the game overall, which is unfortunate because I did enjoy the narrative up to this point despite its weird pacing at times.
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a prime example of a game that has a good run throughout but doesn't manage to stick the landing at all and ends up stumbling and falling on its face right at the end. That being said it was a good run up to the ending in my opinion, a bit poorly paced at times as I mentioned but still having some really solid moments and decent-good writing. It has the best combat you'll find of the Kiwamis + Zero, some really solid sub stories, and looks absolutely stunning while opening up the world a bit more. It's really unfortunate that the ending played out the way that it did, because if it wasn't for that I probably would have liked this almost as much as I like Zero. But, unfortunately while it is a great game I can't really say I prefer it to the other two games in the franchise that I've played at this point. Still definitely a game worth checking out in my opinion, but keep your expectations in check going into the finale.
8/10