Yakuza Kiwami Reviews by Sarah Valentine

[Sarah Valentine]

Y'all knew this was coming, so I'm gonna get right down to business :3c

What is Yakuza Kiwami?
Yakuza Kiwami is a remake of Yakuza, a PS2 beat-em-up adventure that follows in the footsteps of 80’s/90’s Yakuza crime dramas. You play as Kazuma Kiryu, an ex-Yakuza with a heart of gold who gets caught up in a complex plot involving the whole Japanese underworld.
What I did:

• Played the game on easy mode.
• Tried every activity at least once.
• Completed the main story.
• Got Rina to affection level S.
• Any side story I encountered by chance.
• Obtained every CP item and every locker key.
• Completed the Pocket Circuit storyline.
• Got Majima Everywhere to Rank S.

Breakdown of Game:

1. Controls – Mostly good but a little sluggish in places. Kiryu gets caught on edges instead of sliding across them. There are little spots that you may or may not be able to walk into, and at times it can be hard to tell them apart because Kiryu might be getting caught on something. The camera controls are ass, clearly unchanged from the PS2 version, but if you leave the camera alone it tends to do okay by itself.
2. Graphics – The remastered graphics look great. If it weren’t for the control/camera issues I wouldn’t have guessed it was originally a PS2 game. The faces are more realistic and less wild than Shenmue’s, but still clearly inspired by anime stereotypes. Face and clothing textures are very high quality.
3. Combat – Crazy fun, very over the top. I used Beast Stance almost the whole game because of the high damage and hilarious animations. When that got a bit repetitive I just switched styles for fun. The one truly frustrating part of combat was when strong enemies take a breather to recover HP. You’re supposed to switch to the style that matches the aura the enemy gets when they do this, then use a Heat move of that style to counter them. In reality, a lot of the time it just wouldn’t give me the Heat action prompt regardless of which style I was in or how full my Heat gauge was. I was able to overcome this by just wailing on them during their recovery times, but one foe in particular recovered so much HP that I had to counter him or he’d get all his health back.
4. Story – A classic Japanese crime drama in the style of 80’s and 90’s Yakuza films. Very serious, very interesting to watch it unfold. It was like a blend of film and anime, with the interactivity of a video game. It can be graphic at times and that’s to be expected, but it also has heart and doesn’t end on a total downer.
5. Side-stories – Mostly un-serious, hilarious, and varied. The few that got serious were also really good, well-told stories. The Pocket Circuit storyline sucked me right in!
6. Minigames – A very interesting bunch with a lot of variety. Bowling, Batting, Darts, and Pool were all done well enough that they could have been standalone games back in the NES/SNES days. Shogi could have benefitted from an option to have English translations on the pieces, or a beginner’s guide to Shogi built into the minigame’s menus. Karaoke was hard for me to follow at times and I think there was some desynch between the button timing and the beat of the music, but I still had fun and scored well (just not perfect). Pocket Circuit was the last minigame I got into because I thought it would be dumb, but it was surprisingly deep and challenging. I wound up having a lot more fun with it than I would have guessed!

(continued below)

[Sarah Valentine]

Top 3 Things:

1. “The Price of an F-cup” side story: I noticed something off about my second drink and said to myself “are they trying to roofie me?” I felt like a champ when I turned out to be right in refusing to drink it. Encountering something like this early on in my playthrough greatly elevated the game in my estimation, made me sit up and start paying more attention so to speak.
2. Goro Majima’s Barely Disguised Homoerotic Obsession (speaks for itself)
3. The song “In a Dead Heat” from the Pocket Circuit Stadium. An absolute banger with a strong late 90’s SEGA feel to it.

Top 3 Complaints:

1. NO PET KITTY?!
   
2. Can’t eat here:
   
3. The version of In a Dead Heat with lyrics that plays in convenience stores and the Mahjong parlor was never released, so any version of it you find has been sampled from in-game sound.

Other Details:

1. During one sidequest I gave a young boy some food. As he ate it, the text box said “*gobble, snarf, snap*” and I lost my shit. Those are the exact same words used in Final Fantasy 6 when Sabin eats in the Phantom Train’s dining car!
2. Why does it sometimes play “Oh Christmas Tree” in convenience stores and the Mahjong parlor? (SOLVED: I realized the game takes place around Christmas time!)
3. There’s a character whose surname is Yoshikawa, and who speaks/behaves like a character from an Eiji Yoshikawa novel. A nice little Japanese culture reference.

Conclusion:
Despite the fact that the game is called Yakuza, Kiryu is actually a really good guy. You can play him as more of an asshole, but the more sidequests you complete the more you see Kiryu standing up for weaker people and helping others even when he doesn’t have to. He shows respect for others’ points of view, but isn’t afraid to tell someone when they’re being a shitty person. It was nice to be able to play a game where the violent protagonist isn’t also a massive asshole I’m ashamed to play as (every GTA except San Andreas, I’m looking at you!) His story is a struggle from start to finish, and while he doesn’t get his way every time, in the end things turn out mostly okay. To me the ending is just right for setting up a sequel, with neither a fully concluded story nor a tryhard cliffhanger. I highly recommend this game.