in a chronological play-through of the series this game serves as a little taste of what's to come for those who stick it out all the way to yakuza 6, and goddamn is it a convincing reason to keep at it. dragon engine has its hiccups for sure, but it runs perfectly fine on a ps4 pro or anything nicer, and it makes kamurocho pop in a totally new way to those used to the 0/kiwami engine, which had really run its course by the time most of us in the west got around to playing this series. the vibrancy of each city's neon skyline diffracts in such a lovely way as civilians realistically window shop and grab a bite to eat. kiryu smoothly walks into buildings now sans loading screens, and can even toss enemies through shop windows at will. yakuza games have always relied on the physical space of kamurocho and the other cities as a main source of appeal, and the technical upgrade further infuses life into these areas.

with the above in mind, I'm split between two interpretations of this game: a remake beset with the same issues as the original kiwami in a much better engine, or a legitimately more fleshed out remake in comparison to the original kiwami, just with a shorter tail than I would like for a yakuza game. either way it's quite a good game in its own right, and a revelation compared to the previous engine. however, as I'm writing this review after playing yakuza 6, I can say that game is functionally better in every way than kiwami 2, a bit like how my opinion of kiwami dropped significantly after playing 0. this puts it in about the mid-range of yakuza games for me: it doesn't excel in any particular way, but it has all the hallmarks of the series needed to make it a satisfying experience.

starting with the story, this game's plot attempts to develop new avenues to move kiryu and the tojo clan into with mixed results. the start of the game coyly admits to the series's proclivity for killing off characters en masse, as fifth chairman terada is killed and the organization faces a succession crisis. their solution to this, daigo dojima, really misses the mark... it's hard to see the pragmatic character of his later appearances here. he starts off as a punk and basically has no arc other than getting his ass kicked over and over again and sulking. part of this is because the story veers off track immediately to split its time between the oni alliance coup/ryuji goda's war against the tojo clan and the jingweon mafia subplot. I know goda is a fan favorite but as a main villain he's merely cartoonish, with little depth to his character and virtually nothing propelling him other than his drive to be a legendary yakuza; even at the end of the game when more of his character is revealed he doesn't seem to care at all. this game also attempts to give kiryu a love interest with detective kaoru sayama in a subplot that feels off even at this point in the series. there's a modicum of chemistry, but at the end of the day it makes sense that they immediately put her on a bus at the beginning of yakuza 3. her goal of uncovering organized crime is well-established but her investigation of the jingweon mafia massacre never makes the incident out to be anything more than an Exciting Reveals generator, rather than doing much interrogation into the effect of its events on all involved (basically the entire main cast, even kiryu, who seems entirely unfazed having remembered he was there). on top of all of the above, the plot is littered with filler that drags the game on far longer than it needed to be, though it at least sets up the later idol haruka premise in yakuza 5.

the combat here is derived from yakuza 6 with much of the missing mechanics from pre-dragon engine games restored. this includes ground takedowns and carryable weapons, the latter of which can now be permanently picked up from the ground rather than needing to be purchased or gifted. all the fun of dragon engine combat remains thankfully, and I think the purposefully-ridiculous ragdoll physics have been cranked up just a bit here. however, with the added mechanics, kiryu is unstoppable to the point of removing any remote challenge from the combat. if kiwami is the most difficult yakuza game, kiwami 2 is the easiest, as virtually nothing in the game poses a threat. the action stages are solid, though I can't say writing this a year later I remember any past the castle siege + double tiger fight. yakuza 2 also introduces dorky weapons expert and series mainstay kamiyama, who appears here as a backlot DVD bootlegger. his role would be expanded in later games, but you can still grab a bevy of top-notch weapons from him here, including an infinite pistol that's suprisingly easy to obtain.

kiryu gets two returning sidestories in this entry: clan creator from y6 and cabaret management from y0. clan creator in yk2 is functionally the reverse of its previous iteration, as you now have to defend majima construction from waves of encroaching yakuza. it's a more traditional tower defense structure, and not one I particularly enjoy. moving units around rts-style with a controller interface feels clunky, and the fun of overwhelming the opponent with numbers from the y6 version simply doesn't exist here. cabaret management is definitely better by comparison, but it's the same as its y0 iteration with a handful of minor QoL additions. it's got plenty of cheeky nods back to the y0 version's plot and characters, and one day I'll definitely come back to it, but after playing through all of y0's cabaret management it becomes difficult to retread such worn ground.

substories here suffer from the writers having not quite settled into their formula and normal story beats. there's standouts for sure, but many of the substories are half-baked and brief, and in my opinion the offering lacks the consistency of even the first. the friendship ones in particular lack any hook or fun moments, with the only reward being an extra contextual heat action when fights occur next to the friend. the combat sidestory fares a bit better thankfully: kiryu can receive freelance "bouncer" missions from the bartender at debolah. these are action stages that take place within kamurocho with plenty of inexplicable giant walls to break and portly minibosses to take down. my biggest qualm with it are the completion requirements, as you'll need to complete all 25 missions on three difficulties each to gain all the rewards. this is one of the biggest things that's kept me from returning to this game more often; it's just too boring and I don't feel like doing it!

minigames overall are the high point of the game, with plenty of returning ones from y6 and a couple new ones. virtua fighter 2 makes its reappearance from y5 along with oddball model 2 pick virtual-on, which is a weird-ass game but sort of neat at the same time. one of the most eye-raising additions are piss minigames you can access after raising an internal piss meter by drinking beverages. these "toylets" games apparently exist in real life as well? sort of dope honestly. understanding how to play some of these confused me a little bit, especially the one where you're trying to duel streams with an opponent, but the concept is rife with laughs the first couple times. karaoke makes a return in its superior dragon engine iteration, along with a much-appreciated driving range. coliseum also make a reappearance with giant multi-man battle royales that are a joy to clobber through. your opponents in these fights can be unlocked by encountering them as minibosses in each city as part of the "street boss" system, where unique assailants can be unlocked by clearing out a given group of delinquents in each area. compared to some of the other games in the series, the variety is solid and the fact that they all show up again in the coliseum is a nice touch as well. the final minigames other than these are the batting range and some horny photography thing that I didn't really have much interest in. there's nothing here that matches yakuza 6 levels of quality imo, but it's certainly on-par with or better than any of the other games in the franchise.

I've written this review in fits and spurts over the course of a couple months, and the longer I spend writing it the more I focus on the flaws of the game rather than its relative strengths. I really did enjoy this when I play it, and so I wanted to make sure I highlighted some of the best points of this game:
+sotenbori is an amazing city design, the perfect complement to kamurocho, no question. gotta give props to yakuza 2 for originating the area, and kiwami 2 does an excellent job modernizing it and filling out its nooks and crannies.
+using acupuncture to remind yourself of old moves is so unorthodox and I love it. it also solves the issue of explaining how kiryu forgot so many moves in just a year's time
+the tiger fight is top-notch. really that whole osaka castle action stage is one of the best in the series
+there's a majima scenario that takes place before the events of the game and spotlights some of the top-level clan politics during the terada chairmanship. except actually it's mostly blatant y0 fanservice... and not really that interesting. sorry, not much of a positive but I had to put this somewhere

solid game overall, but I can't help but think that I don't like this game as much as I would otherwise because the blatant grind in the post-game turned me off. I happen to own a copy of the original on ps2, and I'd like to go back and play it at some point to compare notes and see if I prefer that version. it's absolutely a game worth checking out regardless, and in my view certainly a step up over kiwami 1 given the limited budget and dev cycle of each.

I really shouldn’t get Doom II

I really should be bothered, stressed, and highly frustrated by it.

It has some levels that should drive to pure rage, stuff that in any other context I should theoretically complain about.

And yet

I get it

I’ve spoken many times of the importance of Doom both as a space for community and player expression and the pivotal impact it had on the PC scene, and it still feel like I’ve only said understatements. A game that holds up so amazingly well decades later, with some of the most fascinating and fun levels ever put together, and with three episodes that each try to tackle not only different visuals and themes, but also each focuses on a completely different gameplay idea. All this to say that, yeah, I really like the funny killing demon game.

I think suffices to say that Doom II had some mad big shoes to fill, both now for new players like me and especially back then, and I gotta be completely serious here and say: I really didn’t think it could ever do it. Doom was and, in a way, still is an incredibly unique way so tightly designed, so puzzle-like like on its maze-like lay-outs, so calculated with how it decides when to throw curve-balls at you and pull-off novel enemy positioning; Episode 3,Inferno, felt like the final frontier in that regard, the ultimate exploration of the whack-ass and unexpected ideas you could pull off with Doom’s base, at least back then. And if ‘95’s E4 introduced in The Ultimate Doom is anything to go by, perhaps it’s a better idea to leave things as they are to not repeat a formula until it gets stale or expand it to extremes where it just breaks apart.

Thing is, Doom II didn’t even came out in 95, hell, it didn’t release after Ultimate Doom. 1994, more specifically September of 1994, not even a full year after the original’s release, so little time that with the tools at their disposal and without as much as a Q&A department, the team had to test the maps manually, something which they didn’t even could really do properly; so little time that basically the entirety of the original’s base was reused, which led to some funky stuff like only one new weapon being added and one of the newly introduced enemies clearly being a recolored Hell Baron; so little time that the mere idea of wanting to make even more maps that those of the previous release should have spelled absolute disaster. Because, how in the living fuck do you pull it together? How could you expect to produce something that doesn’t feel more that a cobbled together expansion with such a time constraint? How do you make more Doom?

Doom II’s answer to that question is straightforward: you don’t

This not to say the game doesn’t pick up from where it left off, both in that it continues just after the rather disturbing ending of the original, and that everything you can do is lifted straight up from that original adventure; the game’s gonna look at you funny if you play this as your first rodeo, ‘cause it’s not gonna pull any punches, but if you did play the original, the buckle up my friend, hell is loose and it has brought a surprise or two with it.

Things already feel different from the very start, even in the small room of Entryway and the cramped passage-ways of Underhalls, something clearly has changed; you face the same enemies, your arsenal is formed by the same arms you got to meet in your first go around, and yet, the design feels tighter, everything feels faster; you dart around enemies, evading zombies and demons at every turn, they surprise you in unexpected ways, it demands speed of you. The original Doom was never a slower game by any stretch of the imagination, but it was more patience focused, more strategy based, and many of the situations that it created revolved around waiting and taking you’re your best shot or calmly thinking where to go after grabbing a key. In Hell of Earth I can count with the fingers of only one of my hands the moments I let go of the run button, and I say this as the highest form of compliment possible.

And it only keeps going: the super shotgun finally gets introduced, a weapon so good that the only complain I have with it is that it kind of makes the original shotgun obsolete; a fantastic closed range powerhouse that it feels like the developers where whispering ‘’now you gotta go IN’’ as they hand it to you; you also get your arsenal at a much steady and faster pace that in Doom, which is surprising considering that this time the Episode format is completely ditched: the levels go after one another, and unless you die or decide to reset, pistol-starting is now an option rather an obligation, and even then, if you do decide to do it, you can potentially regain most of your weapons even before being half-way done with a level; I myself accidentally pistol-started at Barrels of fun and I’ve never been so glad about a miss click in my life, it was so incredibly fun and exciting and tense even more that it would have been otherwise. Doom II also feels far less stingy with its ammo, in the past you may have switch an arm into another because you just couldn’t use it anymore, now it’s more a matter of ‘’ok, how do I deal with this bunch of fuckers?’’; battles start through ambushes, traps or encounters, and you need to quickly analyze the situation if you want to get through alive in less than a second… and that’s more than enough. Doom II may be cheecky with its enemy placement, but its never unfair, it always gives you enough time to either take cover or to think about what’s the better tool for a certain enemy or group: the rocket launcher may be the best option to geal with that group of Imps, but that Chain-gunner can eat through health in a matter of seconds, why not use the super shot gun on him first and on tap him while you dart around the fire-balls? That’s only a taste of the type of situations of Doom II puts you through, combats that should feel stressful and frustrating, but instead feel exciting and in occasions made me feel an adrenaline like no other; I swear I audibly gasped when I say that amount of enemies at the Suburbs, and I smiled and celebrated as I emerged victorious after dealing with them in a way not even I thought I could.

Levels only get more creative and expansive as they go, The Crusher (aptly named after its main attraction) shows how the rest of the game will play around verticality to create more interesting battles and explorations, as well as introduce unconventional ideas that you might not have expected to see in the previous entry, and that changes your mindset in a way you may not notice at first, but that will certainly will make you be on the look-out. Things that once would have been secrets now are required to be found to progress, it asks of you to be creative, to think outside the box and do what you never would have even conceived of doing. In one of the levels I was trapped, not knowing what to do, but then I noticed a wall with a texture that was extremely different from the rest. I thought that ‘’There’s no fucking way’’. I shoot it. The path opens. Time at time again, places like The Citadelor The Spirit World expect you a level of attention and imagination that the game lends itself to receive, an imagination you have and use to beat even the most seemingly confusing puzzles and mazes; you’ll need to check the map, you’ll need to run, you’ll need to brave, it’s through that that game will reward you, maybe with a Megacharge, maybe with the BFG, maybe with a secret level, who knows! I certainly can’t say for sure ‘cause I feel like I’ve left a ton to even be discovered!

And yeah, I didn’t meant to not use the world ‘’paces’’, more than ever in any of the Doom Episodes, the Hell on Earth maps feel like real parts of a world: expansive and open world urban locations overrun by demons, cultist temples created to stop your advances, old bastions taken and repurposes by the legions of hell to fight against you; even the more ‘’gamey’’ of levels, like Tricks and Traps! or Gotcha!, are excusable because they so fun and even funny that I cannot be mad at them, and as for the rest, they really sell you the idea that you are traversing and meeting your objectives little by little; the narrative has as much presence as the original game, but it has a much greater impact ‘cause not only the stakes are even higher, it also feels like you are progressing through a real story, and that this is a true war against the enemies that face you, new and old.

The game also realized the full potential of its older cast, like how both the Cyberdemon and Spider-Mastermind act much better as level obstacles to evade than actual bosses, and the new faces that arrive are simply incredible; I’ve genuinely never loved and hated an enemy in a videogame equally as I do the Arch-vile, seeing him generated dread in my body, but also made me smile at the opportunity to face such an interesting and unique enemy. The Pain Elementals, Hell Knights an Revenants are all incredible new comer that pile up on the ‘’NEVER STOP MOVING FOR THE LOVE OF GOD’’ mentality, and they are all incredibly memorable, especially the Mancubi, I already loved them in the new games, but hearing them scream their own name as they shoot double projectiles was so fucking memorable. And that final boss.. GOD, finally a Doom boss that requires EVERYTHING you learnt; ammo management, dealing with individual threads, resource usage and even aim, such a fantastic send off that isn’t just a ‘’spam BFG to win fest’’, this is simply outstanding, so fun, so imperfect in the best way imaginable.

If Doom was already a passion project, then Doom II is that even more deranged, more reckless, more… itself. Sandy, Romero and the team knew they could do a true glory fest, and they went even beyond that. Doom II is so experimental, so unique, so unquestionably goofy that I can’t stop gushing about it. It’s more than a blast to beginning to end, it’s a challenge that wants to have as much as fun as you do playing it, and tries out new stuff at each turn, and even those times it doesn’t stick, it keeps being memorable in the best way imaginable.

It's OG Doom at its most savage, at its most free and wild, and its most fun and creative, and I for one have fallen in love with it, and now I can totally see why so many others did too, why so many others keep its memory and spirit alive through .wads and crazy ideas through this one moreso than any other. It’s a game in a way made for itself, but also for everyone that loves Doom, for everyone that loves shooters, for everyone that loves untamed creativeness.

What a fucking magnificent way to start the year, an experience that goes beyond the sum of its parts, and adventure that builds something that evolves and subverts what it once was, the opposite of Hell on Earth.

Rebuilding Earth ought to be a lot more fun than ruining it was

At this point, I feel like I’ve been playing Journey for half of my life. I’ve played through underwater Journey, forest Journey, air Journey, space Journey, cat Journey, and even boring Journey. Yet upon my yearly ascent in the original Journey on New Year’s Day, I find myself just as floored as when I first picked it up years ago, in spite of clone after clone exhausting my goodwill. What exactly then, is present in the original’s realized game design philosophy that every other spiritual successor has found themselves bereft of?

To answer this question, I want you to imagine a world where Journey doesn’t exist. A world where the formula to indie developers meant something more than just mindlessly tilting up on the left joystick to walk towards the next checkpoint while some narrator waxed poetic in the background. Before Journey, before Flower even, the closest ancestor we had was Ico. Fumito Ueda described his game as an execution of “boy meets girl,” and what it boiled down to was a minimalist adventure game with some puzzles cleverly disguised as platforming and timing segments. Occasionally, you also whack a few shadows while protecting and pulling your female companion Yorda through vast and still castle ruins. It wasn’t a perfect game by any means; the combat was frankly tedious, Yorda lacked much of an identity outside of pointing at objects of interest/opening doors/getting kidnapped, and at the end of the day, there really wasn’t much in the way of a balanced and developed relationship when the player was calling all the shots, but it was still the start of something beautiful. It wasn’t mechanically complex or esoteric in any fashion, but it was different. It was different, and it felt dangerous.

This write-up is not intended to be a critique of Ico, nor is it meant to imply that games proceeding Team Ico's philosophy of “design by subtraction” have since been inferior. Rather, I bring up Ico in particular, because there seems to be this general perception that minimalism results in a crippling lack of mechanical depth. That is, many seem to believe that discarding and minimizing a game’s various elements results in a dearth of tangible mechanics or imagery to cling onto, and thus appears to result in an empty and vacuous experience with little to justify further replays or deeper dives. To me though, this line of thought fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of addition by subtraction. It was never about creating mechanically deep systems with limitless possibilities like an immersive sim or a sandbox. Rather, the philosophy aimed to remove excess layers that distracted from the game’s “more realistic feeling of presence”, such as removing optional bosses and landmarks in Shadow of the Colossus or reducing enemy types in Ico to just a single design. In fairness, the goal wasn't just to remove extraneous elements that made something feel overly “gamey,” but also to marry mechanics in a way where the invisible layer of intended design never made itself too apparent (i.e. hiding the user interface in Shadow of the Colossus outside of fights). It was not just addition by subtraction; it was also addition through illusion.

To that end, I firmly believe that Journey is the best Team Ico game that Fumito Ueda never directed. Journey’s design philosophy was not necessarily revolutionary for its time, considering its predecessors in the forms of Flower and Ico, nor was its ultimate goal of reaching a final destination via walking/jumping/flying mechanics particularly exemplary. What was exemplary was its level of care and precision in how it implemented said minimalist design philosophy. Every time I play through Journey, I pick up more subtle details through its fusion of audio-visual presentation and gameplay that seemed so clear and intuitive that I had taken their presence for granted. There are the obvious strengths, like how Journey wordlessly conveys your path forward by keeping the shining peak of the mountain visible at all times while outside, or how it uses consistent visual language through cloth creatures and strips to demarcate safe zones where the player can recharge their scarf. But there’s more beneath the surface; what about the game's sneaky introduction to the sand-sliding mechanic from the introductory dune so it’s no longer unfamiliar during the exhilarating and committal descent, or how there’s a section of the underground that’s filled with these scarf jellyfish tinted in blue allowing you to remain in flight that evokes the feeling of being underwater, foreshadowing the next section as a tower ascension where the player must continually breach the surface to “swim” and escape? Sure, everyone knows about how the bitter cold disempowers the player by slowing their movement and lowering the scarf’s energy gauge, but I usually don’t hear about how strong winds can chip away at the scarf’s capacity itself or how it reduces the volume and area of effect of your shouts, making it far more difficult to restore your energy gauge from the growing frostbite.

There’s also the overlooked audio aspect of Journey. Granted, everyone loves to discuss the soundtrack’s thematics, like how the final chord of Journey’s motif never resolves a single time in any track until the end of Apotheosis or for that matter, how all the instruments are never fully present until that final ascent, when the entire orchestra finally comes together as one only to slowly fall away as the player and the world fade away. Yet, the sound design regarding Journey’s implementation of said soundtrack often goes underappreciated. Again, there are plenty of clear strengths that have been widely discussed, such as the punctuated stillness of the desert dunes providing room for the piddle paddle of the player’s footsteps amongst the vast desert winds and eventually swelling into triumphant bursts of adventure. But again, there are little subtleties that speak to the soundtrack’s interactivity, like how the backing drum during the aforementioned underwater section gives the track the impression of being muted and seamlessly drops this filter once the player breaches the surface, or how the player’s shouts are always in the key of the backing track’s scale, meaning that the introduced notes remain within the game’s tonality. It’s these little things that further round out Journey’s experience; the music is so seamlessly woven in that it takes a discerning ear to pick out every specific detail, in such a way where it feels like the soundtrack is organically supplementing every memorable moment of the game.

Of course, it’s not enough to just handle the basics well, even if there’s a master’s touch present to carefully disguise these additions so silently. As I mentioned before, popular works need compelling hooks to draw in an audience, but they also need an element of danger to keep that audience engaged. In the case of Journey, Thatgamecompany tackles this through their stealth multiplayer. This is where Journey easily outclasses its successors and may in fact, even have one-upped Ico. If Ico’s main limitation was a lack of autonomy for any non-player characters, then Journey circumvents this problem entirely by replacing the AI with real players instead. The loose implementation adds a catch: nothing in the game aside from the final completion screen listing your companion(s)’ name(s) ever hints on this, and not once is the player given instructions or suggestions on how to interact with said players. The only obvious mechanical incentive from cooperating with other players is the ability to recharge one another’s scarves via proximity/shouts, and there’s no consequence to merely abandoning random players or quitting in the middle of a session. It’s what makes this multiplayer so compelling; many times you’ll find other players just wandering about by themselves, despawning, or quickly rushing ahead without care towards your presence. There’s no guarantee that they’ll cooperate… which makes that one instance where they do that much more memorable. In this sense, I think Jenova Chen and his team solved two problems at once: the aforementioned challenge of granting outside elements a degree of realism, and his own personal challenge of creating a minimalist environment where players had no incentives to act in bad faith despite never having any major incentives to cooperate either, resulting in seemingly organic interactions.

Perhaps it is cheating to state that this spontaneous element is what gives Journey a step-up over its peers, but I also can’t deny that this same feature is exactly what lends the game its identity. It’s hard to provide drastically different experiences for focused single player games after all; no matter how much Fumito Ueda may have insisted that he was inspired by emergent gameplay mechanics and player autonomy to allow for more diverse experiences, there remains an upper limit upon how far those experiences can unravel. However, Thatgamecompany’s take upon the “single-player odyssey” alongside the game’s cyclical nature and short runtime means that Journey is a far more replayable experience while remaining every bit as compelling as its competition. Even after multiple trips up the summit, I continue to be amazed by the thoughtfulness shown to me by other players. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen down the temple from being blown away by the wind, only for my companion to jump down with me, or how many trips through the blizzard were spent slowly trudging together mashing my shout, just like strangers on a cold winter’s night huddling together for warmth while shouting cries of encouragement to take one more step forward. In essence, Journey didn't need an intricate or elaborate story told with fanciful cutscenes and voice-acting; it simply needed to provide a backbone with no other contradicting elements, allowing players to form their own stories by experiencing the game on their own terms.

Journey isn’t mechanically rich or wildly innovative in terms of its scope, but it doesn’t have to be. Rather, it’s a deceptively simple yet meticulous and thoughtfully different approach upon a respected design philosophy, which aimed to further refine said formula by whittling down any elements that detracted from the game’s constructed sense of reality. Similarly, it doesn't feel the need to present a grandiose narrative, instead stripping away any specific contextual layers as to allow players to create memorable experiences with no conflicting moments in-between. I should be sick of this formula after tackling so many misguided copycats, and I can't deny that I was afraid to label yet another old favorite as propped up by nostalgia. Thankfully, my fears have been assuaged. I keep waiting for the day where I’ll finally be content putting this down forever… but that day has yet to come. I was not the first adventurer to embark upon this pilgrimage, nor will I be the last. Maybe I just need to get over my cynicism and accept that there was never anything to be cynical of to begin with. I’m sure more developers will continue to lazily carbon copy one of my favorites until the end of time, but that doesn’t mean the good times have to end.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Happy new year, and here’s to another journey around the sun.

This is the second Yakuza game I played after having started into the series with Yakuza 0 earlier, a prequel to the entire series, it was amazing and easily my game of the year. Fast forward a few months and Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of the first game originally released on the PlayStation 2 in 2005 was released, a budget remake made at the same time as 0 as a side project and the perfect follow up to 0 for players new to the series such as myself.

Yakuza Kiwami only has one protagonist this time around, Kiryu Kazama, known as the Dragon of Dojima, a well known Yakuza for the Dojima clan. When events take the turn for the worse Kiryu takes the fall for a murder he didn't commit to protect his friends resulting in him being sent to prison for ten years. Fast forward to his release and many things have changed since his time in prison with his best friend seemingly trying to kill him, another friend having up and vanished and turmoil spreading through the Yakuza all focusing around a seemingly innocent nine year old girl Kiryu has taken under his protection.

The story has it's moments where it really shines but it also doesn't have quite the mystery or intense moments that 0 has. I especially found it difficult to except why Kiryu's best friend Nishki has the personality change he does. I gather many new scenes have been added from the original to make that clearer but it's still pretty jarring how his personality essentially has a massive transplant. I did like the parts of the story revolving around the girl Haruka surprisingly though. All in all I enjoyed the main story a lot even with a few weak parts here and there.

If you haven't played a Yakuza game before they are an odd mixture of brawler and RPG. The game is set in a mini open map part of Tokyo city called Kamurocho where you can travel from point to point for story missions or just generally explore around. While exploring there are three main things to do, shop, play mini games or complete sidequests called submissions. Shopping normally entails healing items, gear increasing your defense or other abilities, or weapons to increase your attack in battle. Mini games vary including various gambling games from traditional poker to Asian dice and card games or Karaoke singing, baseball, darts and pool, there is a huge variety of games to play giving various rewards for beating them. Lastly is the submissions, there are 78 in total, as far as I can tell a mixture of new and original including chatting up hostess girls, finding a successor for the mini car racing game, to more mundane tasks like finding a woman's bag or helping a would be Yakuza as he constantly makes stupid decisions.

Unfortunately the budget nature of the game peaks through here with all the mini games being identical to Yakuza 0 taking some of the impact away from playing them. The assets to the visuals are all reused as well with all the npcs, most of the city and combat styles all reused. It's a little bit disappointing as it takes all the freshness of the game away and feels more like an expansion to 0 but at the launch price of £25 and the amount of content it's still excellent value for the 30-40 hours the game will last, or possibly more if you aim for all the side content.

Combat has Kiryu taking on groups of thugs, Yakuza and goons who attack him as he travels around. Kiryu can use four different combat styles, Rush for quick assaults, Beast for slow hard hitting, thug for the middle ground, and Dragon for his ultimate style. During combat as you hit and beat on enemies Kiryu builds up a heat bar allowing to perform special and often brutal attacks like slamming peoples heads into car doors, smashing pushbikes onto people, or performing suplexs etc. The move will depend on what style he is in, what weapon he is holding or where he is standing, there is a huge variety of them and they are extremely satisfying to pull off. As Kiryu defeats enemies he gains experience points he can use to upgrade his styles getting more health and damage as well as new moves for each style, all except the Dragon style which is a little different.

The Dragon style is upgraded with an entirely new addition to the remake (I gather) called Majima everywhere! The character Goro Majima from Yakuza 0 returns wanting to bring Kiryu back up to strength from where he has gotten weak from his time in prison. His theory is to ambush him everywhere and force him into fights like mini boss battles. Majima does, literally turn up everywhere, sometimes launching attacks from manhole covers, other times in disguises, he will turn up to challenge you to mini game battles, he is everywhere. Some of these moments were genuinely hilarious because Majima is a total nutter. At times he can be annoying when you just want to get from point A to B though so make sure to keep healing items on you at all times, you never know when he'll strike!

Presentation wise Yakuza Kiwami is a cross gen PS3/4 title but it does look great despite that. The main character models look fantastic especially in cutscenes where you can see all their skin pores and details to the fullest. The city also looks great with the neon lights and rain effects and it all runs pretty smoothly at near 60fps with occasional screen tearing here and there. The only real complaint I have is many of the npc models that aren't part of the main story are pretty ugly, even the submission characters are pretty basic and it can be a little jarring but overall it looks good.

The voice acting is excellent, I love Kiryu's deep bass voice and nearly all the cast is voiced fantastically, I even liked Haruka's performance. The whole game isn't voiced, quite often there is just a word of two spoken and the rest text though all of the main story scenes are voiced, there is a good amount of voice acting. It should be noted the game is entirely in Japanese with English subtitles for those not aware, in this instance I much prefer it, the atmosphere is perfect. The music is also great, I especially like the Mesuking card game music and a lot of the Karaoke songs.

Coming off the back of Yakuza 0 this game just isn't as good, it's not as fresh and parts from the original in the subquests and story are a little weak. Having said all that though it's still a great, great game. There is a ton of content, the story has some great moments and characters and some of the clearly newer content like Majima everywhere are real winners. All that content for the price it is is also extremely good value. If you haven't played a Yakuza game yet, start with 0, not this but if you have then this is a great game worth playing and with the news of the second Yakuza game being remade in the Dragon engine designed for PS4 with extra content in I have yet another game to look forward to before I play 6 released next year.

Recommended.

+ A ton of content with mini games and submissions.
+ Great story and characters despite a few weak parts.
+ Majima everywhere system can be hilarious.
+ Great voice acting.

- Feels to similar to 0 for mini games and visuals for those that played it.
- Some weak subquests.

this game thinly layers the plot and side content from the original yakuza on ps2 over top of yakuza 0 and the results are... somewhat mixed to say the least. at the end of the day its still a yakuza game, and there's a lot of fun to be had here, but the content here is so similar to 0 in many ways that it feels like a much lesser entry in comparison, especially if you're playing this one right after y0 as is recommended (though I ended up playing this one first).

rather impressively, the story is nearly one-to-one with the original game, with the cutscenes from the original being recreated frame for frame in the new FMV engine. this is an early yakuza story and it is certainly rough around the edges. the first two yakuza games are structured much more like feature films than the later games much to their detriment, as the length of the game spreads the plot rather thin. as someone who had not played y0, this game spends a lot of time building up a rather large roster of characters with a rather cursory explanation of how they are all related. considering how many deaths there are in the game (a series staple), it feels like many of them were introduced simply to add an emotional moment to a scene, regardless of whether the character was ever properly fleshed out, which most of the characters are not. coupled with a poorly executed twist, this remains one of the weaker stories in the franchise. however, the game has the benefit of crafting many yakuza hallmarks from scratch, including date's role as police liaison, the florist of sai's use as an eternal deus ex machina, and characters fighting in the coliseum in exchange for information. considering that these were created from wholecloth rather than leaned upon as a crutch in later games, I find them much more novel here. it helps that nishikiyama is absolutely one of the better villains in the franchise, especially with the addition of new scenes in kiwami to flesh him out.

other than that... it's just yakuza 0, restrained to kamurocho only. the minigame list has also been axed from yakuza 0, with many of the notable unique minigames being removed with no replacements. other than the now-ancient bowling/batting cages/billiards/darts/gambling/karaoke games, the pocket circuit returns with a new (and less charming) story involving the grown-up children from the original. the terrible catfight betting game from y0 has been nicely reformatted as the sega self-parody mesuking arcade game, with collectible cards and custom builds being added for your fighters and no more mashing. hanging out with hostesses is also back, and the two girls are rather charming, even if that mode is really not my cup of tea. substories here mainly draw from the original, with a couple new ones sprinkled in both to clarify story points as well as provide some spice that the older substories lack. they aren't bad by any means, but they often seem rather brief, with a couple here and there being virtually just a cutscene without anything backing it up. overall the game feels uncomfortably bare, and desperately in need of unique minigames or side content to provide an identity beyond "yakuza 1 using assets from 0."

kiryu also retains his multiple styles from yakuza 0, which I dislike here as I did there. unlike that game, your dragon of dojima style is now on offer throughout the entire game... with the caveat that it must be built from the ground up through komaki's training and majima everywhere. majima everywhere serves as the combat sidestory in this game, and while it's much more unique than victory road or honest living association, it also gets old quickly and is riddled with other issues. majima constantly roams the city much like mr. shakedown in yakuza 0, and defeating him will fill up a gauge to a maximum rank SSS. he will also occasionally confront you at random, sometimes jumping from above or attacking you from open manholes. while he use different styles from y0 depending on the fight, these boss battles get old quickly, and can be rather dangerous before you have enough equipment/moves to deal with him. in between ranks, you will get invitations to play minigames with him or meet him for certain events to advance the gauge. while this is neat in theory, the system can conflict with substories and cause majima to not spawn, or send you multiple emails with different events that can be confusing without realizing that they must be done in a certain order. it wouldn't be much of an issue if getting to max rank did not take a ridiculous number of fights, even with how easy tiger drop renders many of them. fans of majima in y0 may appreciate his costumes taken from that game or the many other references he makes to it, but the fanservice isn't enough to salvage the rather tedious system. it's also worth noting that leveling this up is highly recommended, as this is the most difficult game in the franchise from what I have played. the balancing seems very off compared to previous entries, and getting tiger drop through komaki at the very least before the endgame is the best way to deal with very frustrating boss battles.

in favor of this game, I can't say much other than that it is yakuza, and fans of yakuza games will still get a kick out of this entry no matter what. it pales in comparison to many of the others, but it's such an important stepping stone that fans will need to play it, whether they want to get it over with as quickly as possible or not. people looking to start the series should start with yakuza 0, but kiwami is a decent stepping stone on the way to future games. it's still a good game at its heart, even if the budget and time were very obviously lower than for other entries.

Finished up the main story today, so I think I can safely say that I don't get it, or at least not fully. To me, this feels like two completely unrelated games grafted together, a claim that Yakuza 0 itself likely wouldn't dispute given how intentionally it contrasts its overwhelmingly dramatic narrative with the over-the-top goofiness of... everything else. Though, these two halves clearly don't carry equal mass (the vast majority of content lies in the optional stuff) or weight (you're free to go through the entire campaign without at all engaging in any of the sidequests, minigames, or either business system, but not vice versa). I found myself interested in Kiryu and Majima's story but not in anything else, and it wasn't until I forced myself to try and get the 'full' experience near the end of the game that I felt like I at least understood the appeal. The business management is addicting in the same way something like Cookie Clicker is- spend money to earn money at a higher rate, rinse, repeat- and there's a near infinite amount of stuff to occupy yourself with while you're waiting for cash to roll in. But because of the sheer amount of stuff to do, all of it is incredibly basic, and I think my problem is that I'm only willing to stomach tasks this menial when I'm at least interested in the world that they take place in. Kamurocho and Sotenbori look the part but don't feel it, instead of being populated with sidequests that feel organic and serve to flesh out the setting, they're filled with, in essence, whoopee cushions for Kiryu and Majima to sit on. Wacky, short-winded, painfully predictable punchlines that the protagonists reject their no-nonsense attitudes to indulge in, for some reason. I get that that's the joke, I just don't find it particularly funny- maybe if their overly serious natures were played off of instead of completely overwritten, it would've worked out better, but as it stands, I can only recall two out of the fifty or so that I did that even rose to the level of "entertaining." The combat, at the very least, grew on me over time, cleverly centering itself around manipulating enemies into certain conditions for both monetary bonuses and getting the most out of your heat meter, but it was still repetitive enough that I avoided every encounter I could for most of the game, a mentality that I regret not extending to the sidequests. At the end of it all, the only two aspects of the yakuza life that I can truthfully claim that I enjoyed were the cutscenes and some of the fights leading up to the cutscenes, two small portions of my thirty hours. Part of me is glad that a series this prominent finally managed to break through in the west, but I can't say that I'm particularly interested in checking out the other entries myself. I'd rather sit in the arcade and play some Outrun.