Posted on: October 5, 2025

dome001

Games: 54 Reviews: 10

Coming from Yakuza 0...

...Kiwami has been a disappointment. I have seen some people argue that judging Kiwami as a modern game is unfair, since it is essentially a remaster of the original "Yakuza" from 2005, and that it should be judged by the standards of that time. However, I don't agree with that. The game was released in 2016, so it is entirely reasonable to judge it by the standards of that year. It's not like the developers didn't have the option to remake the game from the ground up, including altering the story where needed to address plot holes, improve pacing, etc. With that out of the way... => Story Compared to 0, the story is a lot more straightforward, and with few twists the story is a lot more predictable. Playing through the main story, I found many plot holes, and general issues with the writing, such as... -After Kiryu hadn't fought anyone for a while, he notices his abilities have weakened significantly, yet he shortly after picks a fight with a large group of goons as if he was still at full strength -A guy drank himself into unconsciousness, but literally a few minutes later, he follows after Kiryu as if he hadn't even touched alcohol that evening (and no, he was not faking it) -An armed guy with many armed guards have their guns pointed at Kiryu, but instead of just pulling the trigger, the main guy just waves his gun around and gives a speech about how and why he wants to kill Kiryu Also, the game is ~20 hours long, but most of the (back)story is told in the final ~2. Seems like the writers ran out of time. => Combat I'm a approaching GOG's character limit, so briefly: Having finished 0 on Normal difficulty, I initially selected the same in Kiwami, but the bosses are so insanely spongy that I dropped it down to Easy after only a few hours (a very good decision)... The boss fights weren't difficult on Normal, but rather felt really drawn out, as bosses seemed to have double the health that they should have.

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Posted on: September 5, 2023

wilkan

Verified owner

Games: 509 Reviews: 157

Bad Story, Bad Content, Stiff Combat

NOT RECOMMENDED. When the game trailer manages to spoil the plot, you have a story premise with zero pay-off. The final fights against Jingu and Nishikiyama are lame. The game feels like a re-skin of Yakuza 0, which clashes with the Y1 story a lot of Kiryu's contacts dying and the original darker colour schemes. Get Yakuza 0 instead. The side activities are re-purposed from previous games and nothing seems to have been made for this game, except for the eight 90-second "date videos" made for the re-designed hostess club segments. Despite being rewritten to be a sequel to Yakuza 0, it feels empty, forgettable and skippable. The overall feel of the game after having beaten it is bored and let down. Technically it runs lighter and with less loading times as Y0, probably because of it using asset caching. This means e.g. zero loading screens when starting Climax Battles. While these Kiwami releases are at parts better than the originals, a lot of detail and content has been lost in the process, including removed sound tracks. The story is so lazy it features Haruka the little girl needing to get saved 3+ times. That makes the story feel padded, even though it does not have much content to begin with. None of the side activities tie with the plot at all. The worst part of the game is that in comparison to Y0, even basic enemies block a lot more and the guard break moves are nowhere to be seen. Where in Y0 you could enjoy pulling of crowd moves with relative ease, here you are pretty much screwed against multiple opponents because they all mercilessly gang up on you and chase you. Add in the the fact that Kiryu gets stuck in a 2-second immobile daze every time anyone even love-taps him and you have one painful experience whenever multiple enemies are involved. Oh and the AI behavior gets even more violent and chasing if you turn your back on it. Enjoy being caught in a 10+-second paralysis as enemies practice their Art of Kiryu Punching on you. Majima stuff +1 star

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Posted on: October 29, 2023

CarmillaTLV

Verified owner

Games: 301 Reviews: 13

Crisis of identity: the game

This game kept getting recommended to me as an alternative to GTA I think all those people may have misunderstood. This game is NOT an action sandbox game no matter how many times I'm told it is. It's an interactive movie intermixed with segments of a fighting game. This game falls into the same problem as Mafia. They are virtually identical gameplay loops. This isn't as big an offender as Mafia in the series of linear gameplay separated by cutscenes since there are some minor side encounters. On the other side, the rest of the gameplay is sadly repetitive. The fighting is mostly just tedious button mashing. If this had been billed as a fighting game with some running in between maybe that would be better... Unlike Mafia, I may come back to this but it will be a while. Unfortunately, I have six other Yakuza games I'm unlikely to try now and honestly, I would be much more angry if I spent full price on them. As it is I'm still annoyed I dropped $30 for the set I need to stop getting excited about games like this

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