Beat both discs, 31 missions, in 4 hours.

It's honestly a miracle this game was made at all. 95% of games would be worse than DMC2 if they were also made in under 6 months.

It doesn't mean this one is good.

This game isn't perfect by any means, but man if they didn't nail how perfect it feels to control.
Movement and the score system in this game feel amazing to learn and master; if you want to feel good at a video game, play this. Found my eyes were red as hell and my body learning towards the TV screen from just how exhilarating it was to combo in this game. You'll get sidetracked trying to land certain sequences and gaining certain scores; exploring the movement system is what it's all about.
The story isn't half bad either, it knows when to be stupid and when to actually say something, and it really isn't all too intrusive. Characters aren't anything to write home about, but it's a really fun world to be a part of.
Graphically the game isn't mind blowing, but it runs so smoothly and facilitates this flow of colors and animations that kept my eyes glued to the screen. On the surface it's nothing amazing, but in execution it's exactly what it needs to be. When you aren't thinking about the problems the games has, it just feels right.

This is a game I don't want to be critical of, I just want to love it. I said before Jet Set Radio is like a really ugly dog, and this game is a really cute dog that you haven't taken to the vet or washed for a while. And the doctor prescribes your dog with zero voice acting, zero facial expression changes, plentiful but underwhelming unlockables, characters with identical animations, crashes often, bad fast travel, bad wanted level system, and repetitive story. I don't want to expand on any of these because I don't know it just would feel mean to, but these are undeniable problems I think any player would have with the game. But the vet is expensive alright the dog is healthy enough for now I'm sure that the NEXT dog will be perfect (this analogy is falling apart).

I've really enjoyed my time with this one and expect plenty of repeat playthroughs, but I do wish it was better in a lot of aspects. I really hope we won't have to wait another 21 years for the next installment in this series, because nearly all of the issues could be fixed with little tweaking. But at the end of the day, game really fun, would recommend.

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.

Possibly my least favorite game ever made. Maybe I'm biased because I played the original first which is my second favorite game of all time but nothing about Kiwami 2 works for me. The game uses revamped combat from 6, a combat system I already disliked, and throws it into a lame copy paste of random assets from other RGG games while labelling itself as the definitive Yakuza 2 experience. I guess I can give RGG credit for remaking all of Sotenbori for this game, but to be honest it was obviously just so they could paste it into a future Dragon Engine game with no worries.
The presentation is significantly worse, using the rather flat photorealistic Dragon Engine aesthetic as 6, losing all semblance of atmosphere from the original. Rain, a common weather motif that added to the Neo Noire vibe of the game, simply doesn't exist. Cutscenes are also presented in a worse fashion, with significantly weaker cutscene music to enhance this gloriously shitty remake. The two cutscenes with the added SiM music are already notorious enough but to cut it short- they're terrible. They don't fit the jazzy vibes of the original game and ruin one of my favorite moments in a video game ever.
The soundtrack is abhorrent, only reusing select tunes from the original while also having new music that is extremely forgettable. Not helping this is the fact that the remixes aren't very good either. Phenomenal tracks like Evil Itself and The Grudge arent present either which is super disappointing.
The cut shopping district is another example of Kiwami 2's rampant laziness, and instead just inserts a pointless Majima side story as a substitute. Shinseicho worked because it was a relatively small district that had everything tightly knit together which made discovering the clues very fun. That doesn't exist here.
There's no reason to play this when Yakuza 2 is one of RGG's best games ever. Nothing about this remake is superior to the original, in my opinion anyway. If you prefer this game that's fine but I'm simply tired of hearing that Kiwami 2 is better because it's less dated and blah blah bla-... Shut up!!! The Dragon Engine combat was far more dated than the original when it first came out. The fact that RGG is insistent on saying this is a superior product while refusing to make the original accessible outside of reprints of the PS2 game they did years ago is infuriating. Overall one of the most corporate games I've ever experienced, don't play this.