Yakuza Kiwami

Yakuza Kiwami is an open(ish)-world brawler, set in a fictional district in Tokyo in the year 2005. The game features an incredible variety of minigames, side quests and more, despite the relatively small size. Outside of the mini-games, however, the main gameplay is a 3D brawler, where you fight enemies in limited arenas (while you can free roam, once an encounter starts you are limited to a small section of the map). The combat gives you a lot of levers to pull, providing great variety early on, although later the enemy AI will push you away from certain skills/strategies (certain enemies can be very annoying, continuously dodging your attacks and forcing you into more reactive gameplay). The combat is actually very fun, it's just that it's also very uneven in the strength of the various abilities (some are almost completely useless, a good chunk are interchangeable with one another, and some turn the game into a cakewalk) and enemies (some barely qualify as cannon fodder, others are a true menace). The other negative aspect of the combat (and actually a good chunk of the side-content as well) is that it's kind of grindy/repetitive. Leveling up isn't necessarily slow, but the good stuff is kept from you for long. The side quests are fairly repetitive, gameplay-wise (if you like their quirky humour, which is a departure from the main storyline, you can have a lot of fun with those anyway). Speaking of the story, I must say it's not the greatest: while it has some solid ideas for the kind of game it is, a lot of elements feel contrived, and some of the pathos feels unwarranted (Yakuza 0, which is the only other game of the series I played so far, has a much better main plot). The story provides several twists and turns, but honestly the gameplay carries the experience. The presentation isn't astonishing, but it's not shabby and the world is very detailed. The music is very appropriate and will get you pumped for the action when necessary. Recommended.

Packed with action, quite solid combat system, though I would love to be able to turn on a dime, so that I could face block attacks from behind, or attack new opponent while previous is send flying. It is also possible that problem lies with me and my lack of skill. Nevertheless this game gets my blood pumping. And incase you don't want to progress the story, there is countles substories to discover, Each built with care and attention to detail, so those with keen eye or inquisitive mind might pickup on whats happening and see through scams and other tricks that your opponent throws at you even before story reveals it to player.

It's a great game, it's very fun and I enjoyed every moment of it, but I'm not sure if it stands on its own because even though is supposedly a faithful reproduction of the original PS2 game (I didn't play it), it borrows too much from Yakuza 0 when adding new content (I played it a lot). The good news is that if you came from Y0 like me you will feel that you already know how to play it, and the combat system was definitely improved. Unfortunately I think the game lost an opportunity to add more depth to the main story and the additional content made the main story feel less important and less rewarding, by the time I was in the last missions I was basically tiger dropping everybody in my way because I was just more invested into minigames and chasing Majima around to unclock the full dragon style. This story does not follow up right after Y0's story, so I believe that they could have fleshed out more of the main story and it's characters so we could have more moments with them, for good or bad. Nonetheless I'm satisfied with the game overall and looking forward to play Yakuza Kiwami 2.

The original Yakuza is a great game, but Kiwami shoves Yakuza 0's combat into a game that clearly wasn't designed for it, while removing sidestories (Which is half the replay value OF Yakuza Games), and overall making the game worse than its PS2 counterpart, while adding a glorified meme to shove more content into the game (Got 'ya now, Kiryu-chan!!). If you have a PS2 (or better yet, the Japanese exclusive HD remasters on PS3), go play that instead, you'll have a much better time.

The very few differences between the PS2 original and this one, are in the improved graphics (but nowadays high-resolution graphics are not magic), a few more combat moves with animations a little more choreographed and a little more fluid in the movements as far as the piloting of the character is concerned. Everything else is precise and identical to the original with a few softened variations for today's kids. I only recommend it to those who have never played the original PS2.