4/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Yakuza Kiwami 2.

Continuing on from last game, I wasn't sure what to expect. While I still enjoyed it, Yakuza Kiwami was a bit of a letdown in comparison to the stellar Yakuza 0. Where does this game fall in my opinion of the series so far? Well, in the middle actually. This game definitely is a much better experience than Kiwami 1. Not only is the game using the newer, Dragon Engine used for Yakuza 6, the side content in this game is MUCH more like the kind featured in 0, which was one of my major complaints about last game. The substories in this game are much longer and have much more depth in comparison to Kiwami 1. This is so satisfying after having sat through that game after the phenomenal substories of 0; getting to have that level of sidequest in this game makes me so happy and I hope it continues to be this way going forward. Also the fully voiced/animated cutscenes for substories from Kiwami 1 (the best part of that game side-content wise) are back and even higher quality due to the new engine. This game also brings back an old favorite: the Cabaret Club minigame from Yakuza 0 makes a return. It's the same minigame with the same type of story, but it does build upon what was done in that game and it's satisfying seeing the callbacks to 0. I very much enjoyed having this back and it's a great way to make some money as well. The other major piece of side content in this game is the Majima Construction minigame. Similiar in scope to the Cabaret Club minigame or the Real Estate one from Yakuza 0, this has its own associated story and gameplay mechanics. However, this one, I didn't get quite as much enjoyment out of. It's *fine* really. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's just long, a little boring, and a bit arduous. Thankfully it doesn't take too long to get through but it's not really something I enjoyed too much. Combat-wise things are also quite a bit different this time as they ditched the 3-4 combat styles of the previous two games in favor of a single combat style with a lot of variation. It's not quite as specialized as each type of style in the previous games, but it does have a wide variety of options and I feel you explore them much more than the overwhelming amount of moves and such in the 4 different styles of Kiwami 1 and 0. Speaking of the gameplay, the new Dragon Engine is absolutely phenomenal. This game looks fucking incredible and is probably one of the best-looking games I've ever seen. I was legit blown away seeing how good this game looks. This, unfortunately, comes at the cost of framerate as this game is capped to 30fps as opposed to the 60fps of the previous two, but honestly (and I'm not usually one to say this as I almost always prefer higher framerates but) the upgrade to visual fidelity alone makes the sacrifice worth it to me. Story-wise, it's fairly enjoyable. Again, I think Yakuza 0 still had a much better story, but this one isn't bad by any means. It still carries that problem I had with Kiwami 1 in where there are certain sections that don't flow well in the overall plot and feel like filler or padding (such as, yet again, another time helping out the Florist's kid, or when you randomly have to help out a tattoo artist), and the cutting of those sections definitely could've helped tighten the pace. Also, near the end, the story becomes a bit "this guy is the bad guy, no wait it's actually this guy, NO WAIT, it's actually this guy," and that got a little silly to me, but this game still had enough good moments to balance out this silly ending to me. Overall, this is a great game and definitely my second favorite in the series so far, right behind Yakuza 0. Can't wait to see how the next game stacks up!