the erasure of an era. whereas the original title thrives off of the glory of its 2000s commercialized suburbia, here we get…. yakuza 0’s kamurocho copied and pasted. even the gameplay is unfortunately a victim to this flagrant plagiarism. to give credit where credit is due, it’s still fun to play with the additions to 0’s combat, but sadly i can’t praise kiwami any more than that. bosses that were once quick and somewhat painless are now quadruple-health-bared damage tanks, with annoying health regeneration to boot. i would be more lenient if the special heat actions you can perform on the bosses were unique to each one, but nope. it’s the same moves every time. even more 0 pandering forces its way in with majima everywhere and the soundtrack. majima everywhere is a huge tonal disconnect from majima’s character narratively, because apparently we needed to cater to… actually i’m not even sure who would claim majima’s only defining characteristic to be his silliness. who is majima everywhere for exactly? also quite honestly him showing up at random times frequently ruined my pace, and it doesn’t help that you fight the same majima styles over and over. to add insult to injury i was flabbergasted that they locked an entire style behind this randomized time waster. last but not least is the soundtrack, which decided to inherit the techno-dubstep overlays of 0. the remixed tracks aren’t bad per se but they lack any distinctive personality that the original tracks had so much of.
what a strange game. kiwami is stuck between the crossroads of whether it wants to be its own thing, a sequel to 0, or retain the integrity of the original game. i don’t think there’s any malicious intent here, but what makes it worse is that this suppression of the original title was essentially done by accident. the laziness is rampant in how much is stolen from 0. i wouldn’t call it a bad game, however i would most certainly define it as a poor remake.

Replayed on PC with the Legend Remix K1 mod this time around, alongside some other small mods to enhance the experience (original ost, green filter disabled etc). Let me just say that the combat thanks to this fantastic mod was GREAT, and being able to unlock Dragon Style through EXP made the combat a million times more fun.
The increased EXP drop from enemies also makes the early game upgrades feel much less bloated leading to a better balance overall. By endgame I had every single ability unlocked except the Komaki moves, which might be a bit overkill but I think it made the game very fun. Every moveset has also been a bit tweaked making this possibly THE most robust combat system in the entire franchise, and this is all just a fan's work!
Bosses also are a bit more tolerable as they lack heal states, now having super attacks that are VERY dangerous and you should exercise caution when they are being used. I still think the boss design is significantly weaker than the original, but I'd definitely take this over vanilla unmodded Kiwami.
Somehow to even further prove my point that Majima Everywhere is a bad mechanic is that I was absolutely BOMBARDED with Majima fights during this playthrough, ending the playthrough with an S RANK (I ended with D Rank on PS4), which is enough proof that the system being RNG is complete bullshit. I did enjoy the new encounters I viewed this time but it overall felt redundant because I could just unlock these upgrades with normal EXP.
I wouldn't really recommend playing Kiwami like this for your first experience, I'd still just say play the original, BUT this is a great option if you were a bit disappointed with K1's combat flaws and want to see a more polished battle system made by fans. Sometimes a mod can change many things....

Esse é meu primeiro contato com a franquia YAKUZA, e não posso dizer que deixou uma impressão ruim. Kiwami é um jogo com muito charme. A forma como os diálogos acontecem, em momentos absolutamente inoportunos (como Haruka perguntando sobre "brinquedos" adultos), as missões que beiram o absurdo (Date, o florista e Kiryu fazendo uma entrevista para descobrir quem é o mais bad-boy) e os personagens ridículos (a mulher lésbica que trabalha como acompanhante só pra ficar vendo mulher gata o dia inteiro). Tudo isso, quando misturado, coloca yakuza em um lugar único entre os jogos que eu já joguei, daqueles que por bem ou por mal, sempre vão martelar na minha cabeça, seja com suas cenas mais dramáticas (como as envolvendo o nishiki) ou com os momentos bizarros e absurdos.

É e com certeza continuará sendo uma boa experiência, apesar dos problemas que tive com esse primeiro jogo, principalmente envolvendo a reta final. Todo o personagem de Nishiki é impressionante, apenas para no fim ser subutilizado, dando lugar a Jingu.

Ao melhor estilo Oda, ele é apresentado aos 45 do segundo tempo como a grande reviravolta da história. Eu entendo seu papel como um paralelo do personagem de Nishiki, ele alcançou tudo que o outro antagonista não conseguiu (incluindo Yumi) e no fim nada disso importava para ele. Mas só a ideia de um personagem não o torna bom. Não há tempo para executar esse "nishiki realizado" o que torna esse final frustrante, e eu ficaria bem mais receoso com o jogo se a luta final não fosse absolutamente espetacular. A luta entre dois melhores amigos acontecendo enquanto ao fundo, é possível ver a foto de Yumi, A mulher da vida de ambos.

A música, o equilíbrio (coisa que a luta com Jingu não tem) e a ultima cena salvam os dois últimos capítulos que caminhavam para um gosto amargo. Triste notar que a morte de nishiki é ofuscada pela morte de yumi. Entendo que a mulher era o amor da vida de Kiryu, mas o homem que se sacrificou era seu melhor amigo.

Mas o jogo termina como começa, com a diferença de que no fim, nishiki se responsabiliza pela bala disparada. Jogo foda

I've been productive to society in 30 different ways. The characters in this game speak japanese yet Kiryu chooses to speak facts. She took the kid despite the kid not being Kiryu's in the first place nor having a "she" in "his" life, unless you picked up one of two problematic cabaret staff.

But the PS2 era quirks are apparent once you notice the core of the story boils down to :

Kiryupilled sigma: where's the restroom
Average soyboy Yakufail: watch yo tone mf!!
Kiryupilled sigma: prepare to get da dame da whooping

10 years in the joint made you a fucking pu- gets blown up by the marlin cannon (https://imgur.com/a/A5sDlOx). I like to think of this game as Yakuza 0 Part 2. Quite honestly they could have squeezed this into DLC for 0 but I'm glad they decided to spend more time and make this a faithful remake of the original. Story started off with a bang with Kiryu getting expelled from the Tojo clan and then coming back after 10 years to crash the party. I will admit however that it did slow down for a good majority of the mid game and only picked up in the last 2 chapters. Really liked the ending, it was solid. Gameplay is more or less a new flavor of Kiryu's combat from 0. Dragon style is fun to relearn however and adds a new depth to the combat, especially with the new Kiwami Art Heat Actions. Seeing Kiryu turn into Kenshiro and doing the Hokuto Senjukai Ken on Majima is a sight to behold. The soundtrack is really really good, I liked all of the remixed tracks from the original. The general combat theme never got old, Majima's battle theme is great and the final boss theme adds to the atmosphere of the fight. I think I like this game just as equally as 0 and I'm looking forward to Kiwami 2 with the new Dragon Engine.

For me, this game exemplifies "better than the sum of its parts". While Yakuza 0 had some flaws, I enjoyed my time with it and was curious about the next entry in the series. I'm afraid to say that this game really feels like a watered down version of 0, mostly due to its locales and set pieces. That's not necessarily this game's fault, as it's a remake of the original Yakuza, but it's about on par with Kiryu's part of Yakuza 0, meaning this is only half of that game. Aside from Kiryu looking older, and some city businesses having changed, I'm not sure I could tell screenshots from these two games apart. I don't think I liked the plot as much as the previous title either. It never really felt like the stakes were as high, which works well towards Kiryu's relationships, but not as well in the finale when all the big players suddenly turn up. I quite like Kiryu as a character, but the game shows him having a heart of gold while telling you he is an inspirational star in his organization, which is filled exclusively with pieces of shit. This dichotomy never really works out, and I think it's why the games always seem to show Kiryu not actually apart of any syndicate. It wouldn't work well with the image the game is trying to portray. His ten year stint in jail also seems to have had no affect at all on him, despite the rest of the world changing while he was gone. The one exception might be Majima, who I really liked in 0, but really don't like this portrayal. His character shift at the very end of 0 felt jarring, but unavoidable given this is a remake. I don't know why they decided to put this character here originally though. He isn't given any backstory or explanation, and is berating enough that by the end I just avoided him. Finally, the combat is alright, but I never grew to love it. You're either fighting wave after wave of the same tired enemies, or facing off against some really awful bosses. I think the boss fights were the lowest part of the game for me, as they have way too much health, dodge excessively, and can heal. Those fights were mainly wars of attrition between their health bar and my healing item supply. However, I said this game is more than the sum of its parts. Despite not really liking any individual aspect of the game, I found myself quite enjoying it overall. Given how similar it is, I do think Yakuza 0 is superior, as it does everything but better. However if you enjoyed that game, I think you would easily enjoy this one. I have heard this series is a bit same-y, but I do hope that the subsequent games change things up a little. I don't think I'd be as interested in a third entry repeating the same steps as these two.

As a big fan of the series, I really enjoyed Kiwami on my first playthrough back in 2019. Since then, I've played through all but four games in the series (Ishin, Black Panther 1/2, and Fist of the North Star) and even gotten the platinum trophy/100% on seven of the games I've played, so I've got a new view on a lot of the entries with some new context. Because of that, I view Kiwami as easily the worst game in the series on a multitude of levels.

For this replay, I played using the Xbox application on PC which had a significant amount of technical issues. The more I played the game, the worse the load times were to the point where entering a coliseum match took about 10 seconds at one point. The game had consistent framerate issues, which my GTX 1070 shouldn't be experiencing and didn't experience on the Steam version of this game. Lastly, I experienced several crashes in random places, the most infuriating one happening as I selected the save option. I wouldn't recommend this version of the game due to technical issues.

Now onto the complaints about the game itself. Kiwami is a remake of Yakuza 1, but instead of improving the game it either adds in unnecessary bloat or changes that make the game play worse. Every single boss in the series reuses a moveset from a different boss in a different game, which doesn't sound bad until you realize that the gameplay does not suit these bosses. The skill system from 0 returns which isn't bad on its own, but the leveling system requires a metric ton of experience points to get the most useful and needed skills. On top of that, the Majima Everywhere system is extremely obstructive to gameplay since he can just interrupt anything you're doing for a long-winded and tedious fight that you need to do AT LEAST 50 TIMES to max out your Dragon fighting style. The gun cripple mechanic from Yakuza 0 returns in a game filled with enemies that use guns, over half of all enemies moves have super armor that you can only counter with the Tiger Drop ability, which requires you to grind in the coliseum against obnoxious opponents, the vast majority of moves you get from leveling up are insanely situational and you probably won't use unless you're a crazy no-damager, there isn't a single completely unique minigame in this game (Mesuking is just a reskin of the atrocious cat fights from 0), and a lot of substories from the original PS2 release of 1 are ruined by either additions of unnecessary sequel substories or by adding new dialogue that was completely also completely unnecessary. I've got even more gripes to go off with, but I'll stop here.

I wholeheartedly do not recommend Kiwami as a game. Even past being a Yakuza game, it's really frustrating to play to the point where I doubt the game was ever even playtested. As a Yakuza game, it's embarrassing how poorly the asset reuse is done, especially since you have games like 4 and 0 that do a fantastic job reusing old assets. I recommend the PS2 release of Yakuza 1 because despite it's worse graphics, it's got really punchy and fun combat, none of the bloat Kiwami added, some of the best atmosphere the series has ever had, and an absolute banger of a soundtrack. I would also like to recommend the PS2 release of Yakuza 2. While Kiwami 2 isn't as bad of a game, Yakuza 2 has some of the best combat in the series as well as one of the best soundtracks plus the same grungy atmosphere of Yakuza 1. Still holding out for official re-releases of the games, but as of now the best way to play them is through emulation, and if your computer can run Kiwami, you can emulate Yakuza 1 and 2.

no. Yakuza 1 remake with the budget of 100 Yen
minor story spoilers in the first paragraph of the Story section

Story
Same as Yakuza 1 but with a better translation + new scenes that explore what happened with Nishiki during the timeskip. That sounds neat and all but the new scenes don't make that much sense. Why would Nishiki, a person who is considered as just a regular bozo yakuza be given his own Family to lead. I know Kazama pushed for it but surely he knew that Nishiki was simply not ready for it. Speaking of Kazama why doesn't Nishiki go to him for help concerning his sister's medical issues. Kazama was already paying for her treatment before Nishiki joined the Yakuza so what changed? Even if Nishiki took over the payments it seems unlikely that Kazama would just stop keeping tabs on someone from his orphanage that he helped raise. For a bunch of cutscenes that are supposed to expand and clarify things it sure does make you ask more questions instead.

Besides that the story is pretty good to me but playing Kiwami a long time after the original made me aware of the pacing issues in the story. Not sure how I missed those on my playthrough of the original, some segments of the story feel like substory material (Good ones mind you but still odd to have in the main plot).

It was a mistake to add Majima Everywhere in this game. Yakuza 1 was probably the worst game to add a system like this cause while it is somewhat fun, it isn't accurate to how Majima is. In the original game Majima was the type of crazy that you did not want to be anywhere near but Majima Everywhere turns him into funny eyepatch meme guy. Fighting him constantly on the streets leads new players to think that he's an important character when really he's always been a minor character. An iconic minor character sure but still less important than the cast of literally any game where he isn't a protagonist.

Technically a gameplay complaint but I don't like how bosses reuse movesets of characters from other games.

Gameplay
Same as Yakuza 0 but better and worse at the same time. Gameplay consists of 4 combat styles. Brawler(balanced), Rush(speed), Beast(strength) and Dragon(iconic style from 1-5). The first 3 styles are upgraded through spending XP on 3 different skill trees. Each tree upgrades a different aspect of Kiryu. Soul gives him more heat moves(finishers), Body upgrades his health and things related to eating, Technique gives you more moves.

Dragon Style is unique because you don't use XP to upgrade it. Instead, after the timeskip in the beginning, you get a severely nerfed version of Dragon(you can't finish a combo and you can't do heat moves) and have to upgrade it through a system called Majima Everywhere.

Majima will spawn near you every time you leave a building. He can spawn on the map or hidden in some way like in the boot of a car, under a cone, in the sewers, in an alley and he can even interrupt certain fights with regular enemies. He fights with his 3 styles from Yakuza 0 and later on his Mad Dog style too. Every time you beat him you gain XP in your Majima Everywhere rank and it goes from F to SSS. In theory its fun and I actually did have fun with it myself at times but in practice its tedious and discourages players from using Dragon Style because the average player will not progress the ranks and do the unique encounters in order to make Dragon good when they already have 3 good styles.

Speaking of tedious, the Komaki training(fights that unlock great moves for Dragon) in Kiwami is actually cancerous. Instead of unlocking new training sessions by upgrading your 3 skill trees like the original, you have to grind at the coliseum and use the points you win to buy the training. You get pitiful amounts of points for most of your time there too making it a boring grind. When you do grind it out and buy the training sessions, you're treated to some of the worst encounters in the series. You're pitted against enemies who would be easy in any other style but because Dragon is nerfed to hell and back it becomes annoying. You might not have even unlocked heat moves when you do the training if you're unlucky. One particularly godawful encounter I remember is fighting a group of bozos who keep stunlocking you and your only option is to run and get a few hits every now and then. Some story fights are like this also but the one in Komaki training is the most memorable.

Music
I listened to the remixes before playing the game and felt immediately compelled to install the classic music mod. Pretty much every track except Receive You Reborn and For Whose Sake is either worse than their original counterpart or almost as good.

Conclusion
No dub and better translation are very compelling reasons to play this over the original but weird gameplay decisions + worse music lead me to put it at the bottom of my Yakuza tier list. I admit it was somewhat nostalgic when I first started the game with the classic music mod, hearing the old song and the old UI sounds but by the end I just wanted the game to be over with.

the characters and story are still fantastic (especially factoring in how little the presentation of everything was changed from the original game) but god this is miserable sometimes.

this game is half or less (even accounting for fucking around with side content) the length of 0 but the fatigue that set in during and is still lingering afterwards is so much more severe this go around. you could say that a lot of flaws come from the game being a remake of a 2005 game but the most damning issues for me were new elements.

i just can't fathom the thought process behind decisions like the Kiwami heat moves/healing boss states, Majima Everywhere having like 5 minutes of engaging content and then just never stopping, or so on. the original game might be clunkier with gameplay but i wouldn't be surprised if i like it more because at least it's brief and to the point about everything comparably.

in hindsight i can see why i finished this and then fell off with progressing the series for so long that i restarted with 0 when i got back to it. going to move onto 2 to avoid having a repeat of this situation, i've had enough of this one.

Yakuza Kiwami is an epic mobster tale of deceit, betrayal, and hope just like its chronological predecessor in Yakuza 0, however it shows its origins' unavoidable age when it comes to the combat and sequencing of the game.

Gone is the multi-faceted, chess-like gameplay of 0 (which, released later, but I figure most people coming into the series will play it in narrative order) in which you could reliably beat enemies and bosses through reasonable style switching and timing in favor of one of the most aggravating combat experiences I've had in recent memory. Just about everything knocks Kiryu down, and you'll get hit by a lot because of how clunky the dodge and quickstep mechanics are, now this is completely manageable in mob/normal fights, but in boss fights becomes a massive flaw. Bosses have almost no hitstun and can break out of animations which leads to fights that feel (and are) completely unfair. Couple this with a technique that allows them to restore health (which had me excessively frustrated with in the final boss fight,) and you have an experience that players are sure not to forget, for all the wrong reasons. Any narrative grandeur or epic-ness is completely lost in most boss fights in the game because of how annoying, or rather cheap, the enemy mechanics are. I didn't feel like I was getting beaten because I wasn't good at the game, but rather that the game was finessing me for playing it logically. Stock up on healing before every boss fight, its the only reasonable way to complete this game.

Characters are a strongsuit in Kiwami just as they are in 0. Kiryu's arc is depressing, but you definitely see why he's become such a mainstay (as you do in 0) in the gaming medium. Nishikiyama, Date, The Florist, Kazama, and Reina are genuinely interesting and great characters that populate the games screentime. These are multi-faceted personalities that make a narratively intense mobster game like Yakuza work. The biggest issue in character I had was Majima, whose nuanced figure in 0 is completely butchered in Kiwami. Now, again, this game came first technically speaking so this is a bit of a weird critique. In 0 he's built up to be a tragic hero of sorts who grapples with the dark side. In Kiwami, he's basically a clown worthy of little to no screen time and really brings down the game with him whenever he appears on screen. He's just kooky silly haha man with an awful mechanic that sees him chase Kiryu around town to fight and unlock moves. This isn't fun, it's just annoying.

Kamurocho is again amazing, re-mastered in beautiful neon lighting and teeming with life. ThorHighHeels did a video essay on liminal spaces fairly recently, and highlighted Yakuza as a series that makes urban spaces feel... real and lived in. Kiwami is no exception, you as Kiryu legitimately feel like you are in a city with all the hustle and bustle. Drunkards rambling along the city's tight streets, couples and businessmen walking en route to their daily activities, places of leisure all around you that are approachable and enjoyable. The city, even though it is the sole location of the entire game, doesn't feel too small as it is complete with plenty of people and their stories that give it a realistic feeling.

Because of the absolutely poor combat I can't recommend Yakuza Kiwami to anybody, but I had enough fun with Kiryu once again and the world of Yakuza. If Kiwami 2 doesn't improve on the combat when I play it, I'll re-examine my will to play the rest of the series.

it's a bad remake! feels more like an expansion to yakuza 0 than anything else and i'd easily recommend just playing the original PS2 game (emulate it if you have to) over starting with this as a substitute, and kind of assumes the player has already played yakuza 0 to begin with, both within its gameplay design and added story content. it feels like the RGG team didn't want to choose between just making a straight up remaster and making a full-blown, completely different remake, so the lion's share of the original game's content is all intact with JUST enough tweaked mechanics and new content available to make it different.

how they handle the main plot is kind of a reflection of this - a lot of the clunky story beats from the original game are still there and aren't really improved, and you can REALLY tell they just straight up lifted a lot of the PS2 cutscenes and just painted over them with nicer looking textures rather than just completely re-doing them. this is REALLY evident when you contrast it with the new cutscenes involving main antagonist nishikiyama that actually look like they were made with the PS4's graphical capabilities. it's like the new blood showing the old guard up! the "majima everywhere" mechanic is also an example of this weird both-waysing deal kiwami's got going on. the mechanic is definitely a fun addition, gameplay wise! but the entire thing cuts into majima's character so badly that it kind of overtakes his role in the actual plot from the original game.

that being said! it's still a yakuza game, and there are way worse games you could lift game mechanics from than yakuza 0. i had fun with it - and if i'm being honest, it's not SIGNIFICANTLY worse than the original version of yakuza 1 (in fact, it definitely plays better, gameplay wise) - but i'd still recommend just starting with the original playstation 2 game for series newcomers and playing through the series in release order, if only because it's satisfying seeing the progression of everything as the series continues. i guess i just wish the RGG team took more care with making kiwami to rationalize remaking yakuza 1 in the first place.

RULING DIES OUT
I don't really know how to start this review. It's hard for me to put into words how I feel about this game, it's perception given by others, and my already strong feelings for the source material it's based on. I should preface this review by saying I don't think Yakuza Kiwami is a bad game, but I think it's an absolute failure as a remake and several other things. Everything about the original game that made it so unique is... simply gone. The fantastic atmosphere, stellar soundtrack, rock solid pacing, it's not present anymore.
Visually this game is just extremely bland. The aesthetic is simply copy pasted from Yakuza 0 but now without the 80's flair from that game, making it look so bleak and uninspired. The game still looks good, sure. But none of it's original vibe is even close to being present. The dingy, lived in streets of Kamurocho, filled with a nasty underbelly hidden from the average citizen... missing. Everything feels just a bit too sterile. The residents of Kamurocho no longer feel like individuals who live here and have their own lives to attend to, it's just generic NPCs transiting.
The combat is "technically" better than the original, but I also don't care. It's the exact same as Yakuza 0 with some slight enhancements, that's great! Maybe make your enemies better designed around this. I won't act like Yakuza 1's bosses were particularly amazing, but they were fun and quick. Now these bosses have became absolutely loaded with health, even having the ability to entirely regenerate full bars if you don't have the correct heat action to stop them. Everything is so much more bloated for NO reason. All of these enhancements to 0's combat would be perfect in a game that ISN'T THIS ONE. Every boss is worse than the original, the only one even being close in quality is the final boss... yeah. I'm being serious.
Even the music is worse. They're not exactly bad remixes I guess but they're so much less interesting and several tracks are flat out missing. It doesn't help that this game doesn't ever USE any of the music it has for normal battles aside from like, 3 themes. The remix for the chapter 10 boss, Turning Point, is horrid. It maintains nothing that made the source so atmospheric and emotional, now becoming a lame trap remix pretty much.
Pacing was another major strength of Yakuza 1. While I still managed to finish Kiwami in a similar length of time, everything generally felt more drawn out for no reason. For example, in chapter 3 you pick up this one item pretty quickly and move on. Kiwami, however, decides to slightly draw this out by adding a couple extra steps after finding the item and like - literally what is the point. SERIOUSLY. Thanks for wasting my time, I guess?
Majima everywhere is another detriment to both the pace and tone of the story. Majima in og 1 only appeared like three times, and I a story context it made sense. For some reason in this game however Majima has gone full cockstalker mode and will stop at nothing to fight you in both scripted events and random battles. Now, to be nice for a second, I like the scripted events! They're charming. But why are they in this game? It's extremely inconsistent with his presence in the main story, now being this goofball of a character compared to his gritty maniacal self in the main narrative. Who is this even trying to appeal to? Majima didn't act like this in 0, nor did he in 1. It's like RGG thought the original game was too mature so they needed the game to be sillier like 0, so they threw in a popular character from that game and wrote up a bunch of wacky scenarios. I don't get it man.
And that's sort of just what my problem is. I don't understand what this game wants to be. Is it trying to turn Yakuza 1's story into a sequel to 0's? Well, I'm sorry but... the game wasn't written like that. It was meant to be viewed in it's original context with no future retcons or whatever. Then is it trying to be a remake of 1 that preserves what the original intended to be? Well it surely didn't do that either! Copying 80% of the content and assets from 0 alongside even cutting a couple substories, cutscenes, and songs from the source material is a major red flag and a sign that your remake isn't working. The game is simply just lazy.
I'm tired of this whole common mentality that Kiwami is better than 1 because it has new things to tie into 0, because Kiwami doesn't improve upon... ANYTHING from it's source. I genuinely can't think of a single thing this game did better than the original. "They added Nishiki backstory cutscenes!!" They're superfluous. They elaborate upon things we didn't need to know and isn't enough to warrant a full blown remake of a perfectly solid game.
I don't really know how to structure or end this review at all, because quite honestly I'm just writing off of pure instinct. I'm sorry this review has been so negative but like, I'm just disappointed. It's a pointless remake that isn't worthy of replacing Yakuza 1. At all. Easily the weakest RGG game I've played so far, being ""okay"" at best. And that does not cut it for this studio period. Skip this one. Play the original instead.

Kiwami means Extreme

After beating Yakuza 0 last year, I decided that this year I would continue exploring this series by playing Yakuza Kiwami. I've never experienced the original PlayStation 2 release of this title, so I can't compare it to that at all. While I am curious about that version, I'll have to save that dive for another day.

Playing this game was certainly a treat, for the most part. Experiencing the story of this game often left me excited to see what would happen next. It's very much a crime drama that has tons of twists and turns, so if you like those you'll love this. Even if you aren't too experienced with action games like this, this game is honestly pretty forgiving in terms of difficulty. I played through on the Normal skill level, and I was constantly being showered in health items and was able to make myself pretty strong very quickly, so I feel that anyone can brute force their way through this game if they wanted to. This is definitely an experience that can be had by anyone!

One of the core parts of Yakuza Kiwami's gameplay is the combat. You get four different styles to fight enemies with, each having a unique playstyle. As you play, you'll get used to often switching styles on the fly, which can be done with the push of a button, to take advantage of scenarios that lend themselves to specific styles of fighting. You also gain access to special moves called Heat Actions, which use a meter to allow Kiryu to unleash powerful moves that make quick work of foes. Mastering the styles and learning when to use specific styles in combat is one of the best parts of playing this game. Nothing is more satisfying than building up a ton of heat with one style and then quickly switching to another to use a heat action that knocks out a crowd of foes!

You can unlock new abilities and combos for three of your styles by gaining experience points from fighting enemies, eating food, and completing substories (more on those later). One style, the Dragon style, can only be enhanced in specific scenarios. A majority of these scenarios revolve around a gimmick referred to as Majima Everywhere. Majima is not only a comfort character of mine (seriously seeing him always brings a smile to my face LOOK AT HIM GO THAT'S MY SON) but he is also literally everywhere. He's in alleys, dumpsters, cars, anywhere he can try to sneak up on ya and force you into a fight. By beating him in combat (which gets harder over time) you'll begin to unlock more moves and abilities for this style. You'll have to fight him a lot in order to get all the skills, so try not to go too wild with this if you really want to see the main story unfold. You don't need to worry about this, but it is fun having some tougher fights to keep you on your toes.

Speaking of things that keep players from seeing the story unfold, let's talk about one of the biggest draws of the Yakuza franchise, the side content! Mini games and substories await you, and man is there a TON in this game. Substories are basically side quests, often being very short. These will often reward you with cash, rare items, and experience points. The more of these you do, the easier it'll be to make Kiryu really strong! Plus they're all pretty entertaining and show more of Kiryu's goofy side (Kiryu is also a comfort character of mine I love my stoic strong responsible son who's very good at falling for scams).

Mini games are aplenty here. Karaoke, casinos, and bar games like darts will do a good job of keeping you entertained for a small while. There are two mini games that gained a lot of my attention during my playthrough, however. One is MesuKing, a kid's card game where you collect trading cards that display provocative scenes of barely dressed women wrestling and then use them to battle in Rock-Paper-Scissors matches against children (it's as insane as it sounds). These cards are scattered all across Kamurocho, and the more you find, the more options you'll have when setting up your deck. Despite it being Rock-Paper-Scissors at the end of the day, finding new fighters and moves to use and seeing them in action as you trounce the kid who always picks rock for the twentieth time is very satisfying.

The other mini game that ate more time than it ethically should have was Pocket Circuit! Players of Yakuza 0 will recognize this one. Collect parts for your car and tune it to be just right to get the edge over opponents on the race track. It's surprisingly really deep, and I often spent over an hour fine-tuning my racer to be able to get it to clear a track in first place. It's easily the most interesting of the mini games to play in this game, and I highly recommend any Yakuza Kiwami player to not overlook it!

Fighting and checking out side content also earns you Completion Points, which can be redeemed for items and abilities, like being able to run without getting tired or gaining accessories that allow you to find hard-to-see items. One accessory you can get allows you to see the locations of all currently accessible substories, and this one item brought my playthrough to a major halt. I began exploring everywhere, doing as many as I could because of how beneficial they were. This also caused me to get engrossed in finding every MesuKing card as well as spending way too much time with Pocket Circuit because of course there are substories tied to them WhY wOuLdN't ThErE bE? I got that thing in Chapter 4 and I think I spent over 10 hours of my playthrough in that chapter because of it. Do I regret any of it? Absolutely not. The side content of this game is great fun and absolutely worth seeking out. However, it's important that players don't get too lost in the sauce of the side content so they can see that plot unfold!

If I had to think of any issues I had with this game, it would be with some of the enemies you face towards the end of the game. Towards the very end, you'll begin encountering lots of enemies that use guns, which interrupt your combos and immediately knock you to the ground, requiring you to mash the X button to get back up before another enemy hits you while you're down. It is very possible to enter a situation where one enemy shoots you, you get pummeled by others, and then when you get up another enemy shoots you, repeating the cycle. These are escapable, but they are very annoying. I also began getting annoyed by some of the later game bosses, who really like to dodge out of your moves and begin countering you real fast. I found that the best strategy for these was to use the Rush style and quick step around them constantly to get behind them to punish them, but this quickly became the song and dance for most bosses because of just how many acted like this. I wanted to take advantage of other styles but their dodges didn't move fast enough to allow me to do some serious damage, so I'm a bit sour about that.

Overall, I really enjoyed Yakuza Kiwami. my playthrough lasted 31 hours, but probably would've been a little over 20 if I didn't do so much side content. I enjoyed exploring Kamurocho, playing mini games, fighting Majima, and seeing what the plot had to offer. Needless to say I'm excited to see how this is expanded upon in Yakuza Kiwami 2, and I highly encourage those who want to give this series a shot to play this game!

After procrastinating for a solid 2 months I finally got around to finish and I gotta say it's pretty alright overall. The story is pretty good especially the start of it but I really felt that I was very lost a times.

The gameplay mechanic of this game might be the weakest to me by far, I like grinding stuff if it feels worth but the majima everywhere was such a damn chore to go through especially endgame, whenever I tried to do main story I get a random encounter of him and it feels very saturated. The experience of this game was good but I just that they tweaked some things out especially the dragon style.

Excited to play Kiwami 2

What if Warioware was an R-rated crime melodrama with a 4 figure body count?

Overall, this gets a thumbs up from me. I found the combat to be pretty flat and uninteresting, although there is a bit of strategic depth as you unlock more abilities. The side activities are all well fleshed out and pretty fun (I even tried to learn Mahjong) but ultimately don't dovetail with the main activities and the whole experience ends up feeling like a sort of sampler platter, rather than a cohesive whole.

I did enjoy the main plot, though, primarily due to the inclusion of Haruka who I found to be cute and spunky without drifting into cornball territory. She effectively grounds the melodrama and once the story became primarily "protect the child" I was fully engaged even if I wasn't quite following every beat of the Yakuza clans' convoluted skullduggery.

Pros:
# Haruka - I can't wait to see what they do with her
# Pocket circuit - I played so much of this
# A solid, well-paced, high-drama plot
# Beating a group of guys with a park bench

Cons:
# Battle Bug Beauties is abhorrent; the game loses a full star for this
# Combat is repetitive
# Way too much button mashing (I hate button mashing)

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.

Imagino que o jogo original deveria ser do caralho pra época, pelo menos a história é bem acima dos padrões do que eu esperava de um game de 2005, e sem dúvidas esse é o seu ponto mais forte. Já se tratando de mini-games, mecânicas e o combate, fiquei frustrado ao ver como todos esses pontos nesse remake é inferior ao seu título anterior (Yakuza 0). Majima Everywhere por exemplo, eu não acho "insuportável" como muitas pessoas dizem, mas dá pra se dizer que é muito 'QUALQUER COISA', sabe. Até as sidequests, que eram super elaboradas e engraçadas, nesse batem sempre na mesma tecla de "scam" ou então são super simples e sem graça. Sendo bem sincero, eu preferia que eles só dessem um copia e cola nas atividades extras, estilos de luta e mini-games do 0, por que aqui tem bem menos coisas pra se fazer e as que tem não chegam nem perto da profundidade das que se encontravam em Yakuza 0. Ainda assim isso não é um ponto exatamente negativo vendo como um remake, até por que todas essas atividades ainda assim são adições ao título original, e no geral acaba sendo uma baita "versão definitiva" do clássico de PS2, só é frustrante ver que poderia ser ainda melhor.

I suppose this being a step down from Yakuza 0 is technically true, and it's true in pretty much every aspect of the game, but I feel like I was way oversold on that idea. Kiwami was a great time, and doesn't feel like the skippable entry in the series that I had heard it was. The story is quite entertaining even if it's not on the same level as 0, and I felt it was enhanced quite a bit knowing some of the characters' backstories from 0 as well, though that's a double edged sword with things like Majima's character changing drastically between games, or some characters that were important in 0 being killed off without much attention given to them. The combat was a lot of fun to me. It's nearly identical to 0's, and I'm not sure exactly what the differences even are, but I found myself enjoying it a lot more here than I enjoyed Kiryu's combat in 0 at least. Maybe it's just sticking with him the whole game gave me time to actually learn his combos and moves better rather than perspective swapping a lot. Kamurocho, despite being the same map, feels a little smaller here. There just aren't as many side events and minigames, and the substories feel substantially weaker for the most part. The Majima Everywhere system did add some fun to exploring, and I enjoyed the fights themselves, but I wish there was more unique dialogue to it, or more of the situations that felt hand crafted like the party one, or the zombie movie. It's possible I missed some more like that as I didn't go for 100%. Anyways, fun game overall, it kept my attention enough to play through it pretty quickly even if I mostly focused on just the main story.

Stays faithful to the original PS2 game despite reusing 0's mechanics and groundwork, which also means including all of the faults. The original Yakuza hasn't aged particularly well, especially after playing 0 which had over a decade's worth of experience and polish from the creators. Many of the sub-stories are just Kiryu getting obviously scammed over something and then being stopped, with only few rare exceptions that stand out like saving Yuya's girlfriend or rescuing a poor young boy after getting sick.

The main story itself is just okay; it starts out interesting at first and also the remake clearly benefits from if you had started with Yakuza 0 as Nishiki's character arc has more power behind it if you have the experience of who he was before this game's events. It definitely falls apart by the end though, with way too many sudden twists and turns happening within the last hour of the game that come out of nowhere and eventually just come across as laughable.

The gameplay should have been fine, being based on Yakuza 0's combat, but it just isn't due to some baffling design changes that feel like were done solely to make the game harder but simultaneously intentionally less fun. Enemies block and dodge far more often than they used to in Yakuza 0, forcing you to play essentially "red light green light" with cheap one-two punch combos before dodging away and repeating. Enemy encounters were also unchanged from how they were in the original PS2 game, which just does not work combined with 0's combat towards the end. There's a boss fight in particular that is filled with nothing but enemies that use guns and knives, all of which completely halt Kiryu in his tracks and forces you to mash a button to get out of his stunned state; something that the original game didn't have, and the devs just did not account for with 0's combat.

There's also the whole thing with "kiwami" attacks, where bosses can just suddenly in the middle of a fight regenerate their health unless you use a specific move from whatever color of style they're glowing. This whole mechanic is ridiculous and beyond frustrating to deal with as it serves to only pad out boss fights unless you have items to waste. It's even worse because you're not given these moves right from the start which could potentially completely soft-lock your playthrough from one of the earliest story missions against Shimano if you don't unlock several of them for your first three styles.

Majima Everywhere is also tied to progression, which could have been a funny neat little addition if it wasn't for how it's required to level up your Dragon style. Instead of having a gimmick that catches the player off guard every now and then for fun and laughs, it turns into a frustration very quickly when you have to actively seek out and fight the same guy over literally 30+ times just to progress a certain moveset. It doesn't help either that adding Majima Everywhere also breaks his role in the original story; there's even a particular part near the end of the game where Kiwami has to make up a new excuse for why he's still able to fight Kiryu after something that had happened several chapters beforehand, despite still fighting you with Majima Everywhere in the free roam sections after that. It's an addition that sounded funny on paper, but seriously should have been dropped after seeing it in execution.

Frankly, you're better off playing the game on Easy difficulty just to get through it without extra frustration. It plays worse than 0 for no good reason, and the old PS2 roots show through just enough that makes matters worse overall. It's not like you get an extra achievement or trophy for any difficulty besides a replay on Legend which you only unlock after beating the game once; just save yourself the frustration.