Yakuza Kiwami was my first entry into the series. I do wish I started with Yakuza 0 to understand the story more since there are characters and references I missed. I had the time of my life playing through this game and spent around 30 hours on it.

Kiryu is a character that I didn't expect to have a less hostile side towards him and he did some badass things throughout the game. I really have a lot of respect towards this character and if it keeps up I could see him becoming one of my favorites in gaming.

I LOVE the minigames and side quest which were things I didn't expect and I still can dive more into them in the future. Learning to play Majong and also Shogi was really neat and I must say that the karaoke was great as well, especially when you bring someone along.

The combat was pretty good and I liked the number of finishers and being able to switch fighting styles, although some of the bosses, later on, felt a little cheap. I felt like Rush and Brawler became more important towards the end of the game since a lot of the attacks in beast mode were too slow. I loved the story, characters, and semi-open world environment. Just going around the city and having random stuff happen really felt like how an open-world game should be. There was always something you would come across and the missions could range from thoughtful to outright funny.

I will probably go back and play the prequel in a few months and see how it improved the series since the Kiwami 1 games took a lot of the original source material and added more to it. The Yakuza games are something I've been sleeping on for a couple of years now, but I am happy that I took the plunge to get into it.

9.6/10 ~ There is a little something for everyone.

I had such a blast with this game. I finished the story on Tuesday night (2/7), but I do intend to go back and work on some of the substories and other side stuff. Doubt that I'm going to do everything, but there's definitely more that I want to delve into before tackling the next game.

Kiryu is easily one of my favorite protagonists of a video game ever. Man has been through some shit and can also beat the shit out of anyone, but what a heart of gold. I loved his relationships with the people supporting/working with him (like Date) and he is absolutely precious with Haruka.

The combat was a little frustrating sometimes--namely the boss/Majima fights when they'd start healing. The Jingu fight was atrocioussss. Any of the fights where a dude would just be zooting around dodging was annoying. Otherwise, I had such a great time venting frustrations by saving people from goons, street thugs, and the like. What a satisfying feeling to just beat up bad guys with bicycles and ramen shop signs.

The story itself is pretty short, but it's a solid tale of redemption, revenge, love, and friendship. There are some heavy themes and scenes and it doesn't really pull any punches when it comes to killing off characters and putting you in your feels. But the game also made me laugh a lot! I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Despite my middle of the road score, I had a lot of fun with this. If I had gone straight from Yakuza 0 to this, I think it would've been a lot more disappointing but after a couple month break from the series, it felt nice to return to the world and see the characters again. The minigames and substories are again the best part and are consistently funny and wholesome.

Where the game really shows its age is in the writing department, with the main story being melodramatic and overly complicated. The main villain of the story is absent from it most of the time and there are several ancillary characters that bloat and weigh the story down. The combat in particular is a straight downgrade from 0, with boss fights being a combination of boring or frustrating. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Majima Everywhere system. While Majima and Kiryu's interactions are a highlight of the game, the 50+ boss fights get old quickly when you realize that the enemies will spam armor, heal themselves constantly, and make you use the same few moves if you want any hope of the fight ending in a reasonable time. There are times when the near constant interruption of thug fights while you're trying to navigate across the map becomes a detriment as well.

Taken on its own merits, Yakuza Kiwami is a solid and interesting game, albeit a frustrating one. There's a lot of fun to be had if you can put up with some strange design choices and a sometimes grating combat system.

Having previously played Yakuza 3, 4, 5, 0 and Judgment, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with this entry. It's still a lot of fun, but the formula is clearly getting stale for me, specially in the old engine, which was clearly dated by the point this game came out in 2017, with visuals that look only marginally better than the entries that had come out on the PS3.

Combat is still simplistic but enjoyable thanks to the flashy and brutal heat actions. Its main downside are those cheap healing animations that all the bosses have. Hope the one that came out with that idea got fired, because it's incredibly frustrating and stupid. Combat styles and movesets are, again, very unbalanced. The Dragon style is utterly useless until you get the ultimate skills, specially the Tiger Drop, and then it becomes broken. Maybe it was designed as some kind of late game reward, but I don't think it works well that way.

The story is a bit convoluted, as usual in these games, and is quite melodramatic as well, which was the case with the earlier entries. Minigames can be fun, but it's disappointing that there are no new ones, and in fact it has way fewer than the previously released Yakuza 0. What could be considered "new content", Majima Everywhere and Haruka's requests, are the worst type of padding a game can have, with repetitive fetch quests and encounters that become boring after just a couple of instances. Because of how much of a slog they are, I don't recommend people to 100% this game, even if I think it's one of the easiest and quickest entries to do so.

All in all, it's nice to have the earlier entries accessible in modern consoles and PC, but I found this remake to be a bit lazy. With the same old engine as previous entries, no new minigames, lots of reused content and some frustrating new mechanics, its strengths are the same as in other Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's games, with no real identity of its own and bringing nothing new of value to the table.

After digging Yakuza 0 so much that I actually returned to play through a bunch of sidequests, I decided I should probably play this title next… and I'm really glad I did!

I went in with modest expectations. Yakuza Kiwami is a remake of the 2005 original, so while its story follows that of Yakuza 0, I knew it wouldn't have the same scope. I also knew it might lack whatever series refinements that may have benefited its prequel.

I ended up being pleasantly surprised. So much of what I loved about Yakuza 0 is present and fully-formed in Kiwami. There is something really special about exploring Kamurocho and seeing how it's evolved from 1988 to 2005. I also found the game's characters and story resonated that much more deeply based on my experience with its prequel. And while the game's length, characters and environments are smaller, I found its comparative straightforwardness (while still being stuffed with quirky sidequests and optional challenges) quite charming.

If I had to do it over again, I'd still play Yakuza 0 first. But Kiwami makes a terrific follow-up that justifies the franchise's staying power.

Also: There's a wonderful fan-made "making of" documentary on YouTube called Forging the Dragon I'd highly recommend (after finishing the game, of course):