By Sam Coles:
Yakuza is a franchise that I have grown fond of over the years, with their engaging plots, characters that you grow to love and teeth shattering combat. My journey with The Dragon of Dojima has been a blast, and now I have returned to Kamurocho and Sotenbori with Yakuza Kiwami 2 which Sega were kind enough to supply me with a code. I want to talk about how this is one of the best remakes that I have played in recent years.
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a remake of Yakuza 2 and takes place one year after the events of the first game, Kiryu is trying to live his life as a civilian. However he is dragged back into the criminal underworld as there is a dispute between the Tojo Clan and Omi Alliance, which sees innocent people getting caught in the crossfire. Kiryu solves the issue the only way he knows how, by kicking everyone’s teeth, as he polishes his shoes with someone’s nose cartilage. The story once again is very engaging with superb performances from the entire cast; you can really feel their emotions and I found myself tearing up in certain scenes. The cutscenes are shot for shot from the original, but obviously have a graphical boots and it looks stunning, but more on that later.
Gameplay is familiar if you have played Yakuza 6, and that is because it uses the Dragon Engine which was design specific for the current generation of consoles. Before Yakuza 6 the games were release simultaneously on the PS4 and PS3, that’s why Yakuza 0 and Kiwami look a bit off in places due to those games having to compensate for aging hardware. Back to the gameplay it feels weighty and slower compared to other games, however this is not a bad thing as you can feel every kick, punch and head-butt as you shatter someone’s jaw with the heal of your shoe. Coupled with the bone crunching sound design, I found myself smiling with glee when I repurposed someone’s face as a mop, it just all comes together when you see someone’s nose cartilage explode on your shoes.
Yakuza has always been known for a magnitude of mini games and let’s be honest wasting your time with distractions, but there are fun nonetheless with claw machines, Sega arcade games or the best and my favourite karaoke. If it were up to me in this review I could talk about the karaoke for an entire page, it’s just really funny how a hardened ex-gangster has this inner singing voice and emotions and then goes back to slamming someone’s face into a wall in the next scene. This is what I like about Yakuza it betrays its own serious tone; it knows when to laugh and when to be serious with its story and gameplay.
The visuals are a huge bump from the original which is expect from PS2 to PS4, it runs on the same engine as Yakuza 6 where reuses assets from that game especially in Kamurocho. Cutscenes look beautiful with excellent redone animations; it adds an extra layer of engagement to them coupled with the photorealistic character models which are stunning. The different cities look great especially at night, where you see neon lit streets as the rain slowly descends down on you to form puddles under your feet.
The only two issues that I had and one of them is specific to me, is one the framerate. The framerate mostly sticks to a consistent 30 frames per second, but when the busy crowds come into play it can stutter a bit not so much to hinder the experience, but enough for me to notice. Secondly they brought back text only dialogue, after the fully voiced Yakuza 6 it was a bit of a downgrade. Now I know this was a lower budget affair and they couldn’t possibly make every NPC and bits of dialogue voiced given the scale of the game, but it kind of sucks you out of the experience with how good the voice acting is in this game.
Yakuza: Kiwami 2 is an excellent way of experiencing Yakuza 2, with its beautiful visuals, dark story darker than the rest of the series and weighty combat that is immensely satisfying. A must play if you are slowly going through the series!
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