Yakuza Kiwami

Not much point in reviewing this specific version since it's no longer available for purchase, but whatever, I have some feelings on this game. And those feeling are mostly that this game is like the mostly excellent Yakuza Zero but worse in every single way. I had pretty much slept on the series entirely until I finally tried Zero a while back and was VERY pleasantly surprised. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty darn good. So I rolled into Kiwami 1 here expecting a similar level of quality and DID NOT find that. The story isn't bad, but it sure isn't the top tier story of Zero, and the combat is MUCH worse. So many boss battles are absolutely miserable, and there's just something about the overall AI tuning that feels off. Like, I know that enemies in any single player game are just punching bags meant to lose, but when a game does things right, it doesn't feel that way. But the way the enemies in this game alternate from stupidly doing nothing to having superhuman dodging and blocking reactions when you actually start attacking, and INSTANTLY throw a jab every time you try to pick something up, and will randomly combo stunlock you from behind when they feel like it, is just uniquely infuriating and makes it constantly feel like you're fighting superior AIs who are randomly being bad on purpose, rather than goons and mooks doing their less competent than you best. AI effectiveness for generic goons is just way too erratic here to feel natural in the least. It's not even that combat is especially intensely hard, (though definitely harder than Zero's, don't play this game on hard and expect the same breezy good time as Zero hard was,) it just never feels right or fun, you know? On top of that, the the exact same, not very fun minigames that Zero had have returned. Which would be fine if they were TRULY totally optional, but just like in Zero, mastering them all is required for full completion, so in my book, they aren't truly optional in the first place. In which case, once again, the fact that they are all just a bit too slow in terms of menus, or waiting for pool balls to come to a COMPLETE AND ABSOLUTE STOP before proceeding, and yeah, I'll say it, are all tuned just a little too hard in general, is once again a huge drag. And that's not even touching the inclusion of unfamiliar, incomprehensible Asian card games. Which, like in Zero before, is the final minigame deal breaker. I don't even like familiar western card games like blackjack, and this game expects me to learn a handful of even more complicated games I have zero prior experience with? NOPE. I really, really hope that later games either drop that stuff entirely, make it truly optional, or at least make difficulty settings apply to minigames so you can ratchet them way down if you want. With that all said, the one almost ray of sunshine was Majima Everywhere. That part was almost good, because Majima himself is always fun and the many ways he comes up with to start a fight were entertaining. Unfortunately, even that initially good system became tedious by the end because as the game progresses, like all the rest of the enemies, his HP doesn't just keep pace with your advancement, it grows even faster. So simply put, fighting him over and over just feels like more and more of a slog as he just becomes an ever huger damage sponge. Combine that with standard boss AI that basically makes a few fast pokes in Rush style, wait for an attack, evade behind, and poke again, repeat fifty times, the only viable combat strategy and he becomes as miserable to fight as the rest of the bosses. Seriously, combat in Zero was sooooo much better. So much better. With all that noted though, Yakuza Zero set a pretty high bar to begin with, so "worse than Zero in every way" still isn't well and truly bad, As such I'll give the game a 6/10 which barely qualifies for a recommendation in Steam's annoyingly oversimplified rating system. And I really hope the series starts getting better again from here.

this game has good plot, yakuza 0 combat, and overall just pretty fun 9.4/10

I have no shame in saying that I played this game, rushed the story (and maybe 10-15 side missions) and I will probably not touch it again. I *might* play the side story of the pocket cars because it was really fun in Yakuza 0, and I'm interested to see my old friend finally pick up a full time job somewhere else. Overall, the reasons for this are twofold: Yakuza 0 is too good, and Yakuza 1 is "only" a remake of a 2005 game-- with its dated aspects transpiring through the Yakuza 0 engine makeover. The side missions are not as funny, because it was the dev's first time and they are 2005 standard (except for the pocket racing that I assume is new considering its clear nod to Yakuza 0... and it's no coincidence that it will be the only one I go and pursue further). The gameplay also shows that its a remake of an old game: some of the fights are incredibly frustrating in a way 0 wasn't. Some NPC dodge perfectly one day, and get rammed another quite randomly. The boss fights are not as hard as 0 generally, and for some reason Majima in the baseball court was the hardest for me. Boss fights are a lot less varied than 0 in the way to fight them, and the regen breath they do is awful game design aimed at prolonging a fight for no reason. Like Y0, the minigames and their animations and UI take so long to roll out. So if I'm to suffer through it, I'd rather do that in the overall better game that was Y0. That way, when going from point A to B, I can also avoid unnecessary street fights by throwing money on the ground (if a similar way to bypass street fights in available in Kiwami 1, I haven't found it). Despite this seemingly negative review, the story is still straight fire, so is the presentation. Apart from some pacing issues that I think I can again blame on the original material being dated, the story was amazing. Just like everything, its main shortcoming seems to be that it doesn't surpass Y0. I've apprehended playing Yakuza Kiwami for years because I've always been told that "Yakuza 0 is the peak of the series, in story, combat, minigames, etc..." and while I found this to be true so far, it's because we're comparing a 10/10 game with a 8 or 9/10 one. This doesn't matter to most people since this version can't be bought anymore and is abandoned, but for some reason my GPU was running unusually high in this game (could be a Linux issue but I did not have it with Y0).