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.

literally soul vs. soulless. every single bit of the original's presentation has been crushed into some sloppy paste. whatever it can't recycle from yakuza 6 is recycled from yakuza 0 and then recycled from the PS2 game, and everything else that's actually original is horrifically unpolished even by this series' standards.

if slapping PS2 animations on 2017 models, gutting set pieces, substituting Norihiko Hibino's score (MGS2 and 3 composer) for dull song loops, and awkwardly crowbarring in uninteresting side content into the main story is your idea of a good remake then you should probably be put out back and shot

A problematic game. In some ways, this game is the most refined in the series - the level design is dense and full of secrets and the environments, bosses, and enemy designs are consistently imaginative and creepy. But this game is lacking in many of the features that made Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and even the much-maligned Dark Souls II so memorable. It’s hard to overstate, for instance, how disheartening it is that the under-baked narrative of this game is basically just a collection of Easter eggs and retreads from earlier Souls titles. The second half of the game is also filled with bosses and enemies that have effectively infinite stamina, leading to some drawn-out slogs with inflated difficulty (saying this as someone who has beaten this game shieldless and who generally speaking doesn’t have a hard time with it - it is not fun to fight enemies that just constantly attack with no break). This emphasis on difficulty feels like a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the developers - the original Dark Souls was great because it tested your mind, not your reflexes. The linear world design is also a major disappointment that saps a lot of the replay value out of the game - starting a Dark Souls game by consciously choosing to take on a harder area first is a satisfying experience that is completely missing here.

With the caveat that this my least favorite modern From game out of the way, I’ll finish by saying that this game is still a lot of fun, and that you should play it. Just don’t expect something revolutionary like the original game.