After completing this it surprises me how the other Yakuza games I have played (0 and 3) are very derivative from this one so that's something worth respecting, it did so many things right from the beginning.

I know Yakuza 3 was the one to introduce karaoke (one of my favorite things in the series having spent countless hours playing karaoke) and perhaps the first one to give us a look into the more-relatable side of Kiryu but I have yet to play 2 to say if my latter statement will hold true.

My only criticisms are that the combat sucks, exploring Kamurocho is frustrating due to how easy is for enemies to approach you and the long load times but it also was the first title in the series so I won't get too focused on these issues.

As long as you don't take the story too seriously -which you shouldn't if you are a fan of Yakuza movies- you will have a great time due to its characters and ridiculous amount of twists.

Something worth mentioning is the neo-noir atmosphere was very comfy -especially when it was raining or snowing- and that I had a good laugh with the dub and listening to Kiryu throw swear words left and right, not that the voice acting is bad but the script itself made a lot of these moments sound very funny.

I also feel the need to mention I stuck to the PS2 version instead of Kiwami because I wanted to see how everything truly started; I would've thought a lot of things I saw in this game were implemented from Yakuza 0 so I'm glad I went to the original PS2 release.

Now onto Yakuza 2!