I've been at home sick with a nasty cold, and really felt like playing some Yakuza, so I decided to re-play a Yakuza game for the first time. I wanted to play a fairly recent game (e.g., the dragon engine) that had that classic night life scenery, so I ended up choosing to play Kiwami 2 again.
I was planning to just put a few hours into it, but I've already invested another ten hours and it's just so good. This game has even better pacing than I remember, things get rolling fast and you quickly unlock all of the main attractions.
I've always really liked the game's story. The Tojo Clan and the Omi Alliance are these two big rivals, but this feels like the only game where the two are actually at war. Ryuji is a great villain, and overall I think all of the villains in the game are pretty good. I've critiqued the game's ending before for its ridiculous plot twists and over-the-top soap opera ending, but re-playing it now I see that at least some of the events that I previously felt came out of nowhere were actually foreshadowed. For instance, Majima strongly hints that he doesn't believe that the Omi alliance would actually kill Terada. There are also other hints that flew over my head last time.
I know people critique K2's combat, and I get it, but to me it's just so fluid and a bit of chaotic fun. The weapons mechanic is also pretty neat; how you can pocket weapons from the battle and bring them out whenever. One annoying design decision is how expensive it is to buy the super situational heat actions which you unlock after befriending a person (like, if you're fighting close to the guitarist in Osaka, you can trigger his heat action). In Judgment they made these heat actions freely available IIRC, which was a good idea. They're just not worth the large amount of exp they cost to buy in K2.
One thing I had forgotten is how short most of the substories are in this game. I had one substory which was literally just *substory starts* "hey man do you have an energy drink?" *hands over energy drink* "thanks" *substory ends*. It kind of tracks for the game's high pace, though, haha. Some of the slightly longer substories, like the fake Kiryu double, are pretty great. I had also forgotten how important eating is in this game. The experience points you get from eating is ridiculous; you're basically constantly eating every few street fights.
Can't believe I'm actually going to go through the cabaret club for now a third time (0, K2, K2 again).
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