Yakuza Kiwami
Released: February 19, 2019
Game Length: 33 Hours
Grade: C
What's New?
Preliminary: After playing a game that introduces you to a new series like Yakuza 0, you start to wonder if it is worth going back and playing the older games. The good news is that the company came out with a proper remake of the originals. They updated the graphics, applied the Yakuza 0 engine to all aspects of the game, and included some optional content for those replaying it for a second time. The bad news is the game still retains a lot of robust problems not only from its initial release but also with the recent changes now mixed into the pot. It can get pretty confusing trying to differentiate where all the problems are coming from when you have the original Japanese version, the Western version, the remake, and a better refined version of the series to compare it to.
Additions: There is a few new things I like to point out here from the remake. For starters, do not liken this remake to a simple re-hashing of the graphics. The graphics have been drastically improved. You won't be seeing those little PS2 polygon charactures running around from its release back in 2005. There are added scenes showing what happened to Nishikiyama during the time jump. I feel there is a divide in the community of the type of impact these cutscenes left in them. Some say that they were unnecessary and lowered the "bad boy" persona that was originally present. Others say that it brilliantly helped define how the character hardened his emotions overtime. Although I respect both positions, one thing I really wish they would have done was added a timestamp! Even a "three years earlier" notification or a grey flashback outline would have cleared up the massive confusion I had when it dawned on me we were talking about the same person. You are able to retrieve some DLC items from the weird clown, but don't expect a sudden performance boost. Like before, the clothes can only be switched after the game has been completed and a lot of the freebies can be easily obtained in the game. However, I highly recommend using the Marlin Cannon whenever you can.
Majima Everywhere: So someone in their department thought it would be hilarious if good o' funny Majima would pop up everywhere you go. Did you order a burger with a side of Majima? Did Majima appear in the back of one of your pictures while you were in the photo-booth? Did Officer Majima search you for weapons? There is a whole slew of locations he can appear. Some of these can occur randomly as you traverse the city while others force you to go out looking (even if that means turning over objects that mysteriously rattle when you pass by). Some encounters are pretty creative like when he becomes a zombie. Others are somewhat... cringy. Sometimes Majima's lieutenant Nishida will call your cell phone regarding the location of his boss. This can either lead you to a green marker or have you searching for clues (like figuring out what "hiding in plain sight" means). The benefit of all of this is to unlock spheres in the Dragon Stance grid. The problem? It takes way too much time and effort to unlock them all. I might have had a total of 71 fights, but you need to defeat Majima at least 30 times for some abilities to unlock. After a certain point, I grew tired of the "Kiryu-chan" alarm and gave up figuring out what I needed to do to unlock each tier battle.
Pocket Racing: 10 years might be a long time, but "Fighter" from Yakuza 0 will still be in the same spot pocket racing. The setup is eerily identical from the other game as you buy parts for your little race car in an attempt to win tournaments. Your opponents are all grown up now and will challenge you for a race. There are a few new tracks and items you can use. One fascinating thing they did add was the ability to go into 1st person mode in your track during a race by holding the 'X' button. There will come a time when even Majima will want in on the action. The story is decent and the mini-game is just as fun as it was in the original game. As an added bonus, you can see a picture of you with your pal while singing Bakamitai Sorrow.
Cabaret Girls: I see they included the "dating sim" from Majima's Cabaret Club Training Sessions. You have the opportunity of chatting between two different girls from two different clubs in a sort of multiple choice story adventure. I really liked the role reversal idea as now you are the customer buying drinks and chatting with the girls. It is just too bad both of the girls were awful to converse with! Yui Hatano is a realist when she talks about refusing to find love and actively complains about her job. My honest opinions, like how I suggested how her sister should not go through with having plastic surgery, was generally met with heavy-handed scolding in response. Rina Rukawa, on the other hand, makes it very clear from the start she is a lesbian and somehow that automatically means you must help her relationship work with other girls. What ever happened to the interesting conversations how Ai Uehara talks about how she doesn't like bullies, Saki Hatsumi wants men to respect an athletic girl, or Hibiki Otsuki wanting to take care of her family. All of those were very interesting! If that isn't bad enough, there is also a chance they will be impressed or repulsed depending on what sort of items you have equipped.
Save System: It is fascinating when all my complaints of the outdated save system in Yakuza 0 are answered in Yakuza Kiwami. Instead of needing to run to the telephone booths to save, you are now able to save anywhere. The game will also periodically auto-save in designated slots when transitioning between chapters or other important events. There is one technical problem I thankfully discovered early on. The game will highlight the most recent file that was auto-saved. This might sound good at first, but this means it will not highlight manual save files. So be careful when trying to continue your game.
Main Campaign
Story: We really doing this? Ok. When I played Yakuza 0,
I fell in love with several of the characters. I thought for sure that
the ones I saw in that game would be available throughout the whole
series. I was so wrong. Everything I cared about was dashed to pieces in
this game. For example, Goro Majima now goes by "The Mad Dog of
Shimano" and has been transformed from his gentlemen-like state running a
cabaret club to a madman, a clown, a free-spirit that doesn't follow
any sort of rules. This was already demonstrated at the end of Yakuza 0, but I didn't think he would consistently be the comic-relief throughout Yakuza Kiwami. The concept of him being a jokester was only compounded with the new Majima Everywhere
system; I think the way the new system portrays him as a goofball
conflicts with the spontaneous meanness from the original game.
Nishiki... I mean Akira Nishikiyama goes through the same process and suddenly
eventually becomes this hardcore leader of a yakuza family to the point
of being a downright sociopath. It is possible to excuse their behavior
with the 10-year time jump, but things get pretty messy as the
story progresses when several important characters start dying
left-and-right. Then the ending literally ends with a bang when Kazuma Kiryu is pretty much the only one left standing. It definitely was not the type of ending I was expecting to see in the final hours.
Combat: When you go back and watch some videos of the old combat system, you begin to have a new form of appreciation for the 4 stances they added from Yakuza 0. Instead of providing you what would be considered your brawler stance with your punches, hard left hooks, and special abilities, you can rotate between rushing your target, the standard brawler stance, beast mode, or the legendary dragon stance (which was only obtainable after completing the business story in the previous game). Locking onto targets has drastically improved, but not to the point without still causing problems. Enemies outside your typical street thug still seem to be able to meticulously evade and counter your abilities with ease. However, the game introduces a new problem when you proportion your points into a sphere grid. No, it isn't like some sort of super complex system from Final Fantasy X. However, arbitrary locking things like attack power and health wasn't part of the original game's philosophy. Instead of learning new abilities from a trainer in each stance, your experience points will be devoted between three trees - specials and anything associated with using heat, health and things that help you resist attacks, abilities and things that extend your standard attacks. Things get ridiculously complex once discussing how your abilities in the dragon stance come from strictly defeating Majima and Komaki.
Bosses: Now comes to the part where I explain the ultimate reason I hated the game. When you are playing the main campaign, you will encounter enemies that will consume your soul. They will evade your every strike, absorb your every counter, cannot be blocked, cannot be knocked down, and will pound you to the ground with a simple strike. They have the capability of regenerating their own health, building their own heat, and using their own special moves against you. The game tells you of a way to interrupt this transition, but it requires you to build-up the necessary heat and be in the right stance. Your first test of will comes in the final portion of Chapter 3 before you have a chance to explore the city. I appreciated the developers adding in hard boss fights, but these fellows go beyond what is considered as a "fair fight" in my book. It's hard to pinpoint any one particular example, but many point to the second to the last fight as being the worst of them all. I managed to get about 80% of my abilities (outside dragon stance) by completing all the available substories within the first six chapters, but the big bad wolves still found ways to blow me down at every turn. I only managed to defeat them by whittling away their health one strike at a time.
Side Content
Things Seen: Things you will see are like all of the gambling mini-games. This time around you can a ton of different items to "cheat" the system. Things like making the roulette ball land on black, making sure the blackjack dealer bust, or automatically winning a round in a round of cards. Since you can only bet a maximum of 1000 per round, your rewards aren't very lucrative. However, placing that much on a 1 to 36 odds for roulette can help you get anything you need from the casino. Bowling, pool, and darts are all still in the game. Batting is a lot easier. On top of seeing a digital pitcher and one large area to aim for a home run, the game no longer ends after a certain number of strikes or foul balls. They removed the need for "running bases" as well.
Things Unseen: So obviously there are a lot of things that you won't see in the game from Yakuza 0. These include dream machines that toss out random items, disco dancing, fishing, video arcade games, telephone club, and any business activities. You now directly converse with the clown to use completion points instead of at a shrine. There is only one person and one city. All activities are departmentalized - you will win a certain amount of points for set prizes, like tickets from Chucky Cheese, instead of receiving a lump sum of money you can drag out of the store to buy things. Since experience is gained instead of money, don't expect giant wads of yen bills to be flying out of everything you punch. You won't be hearing Mark Hamill's voice as Majima since all the voices have been reworked for the remake.
MesuKing: "Whoever came up with this idea should be shot" is exactly what went through my head when a kid nicknamed The Professor explained how scandalous women dressed up as bugs while wrestling each other was the latest game craze every little boy and girl wanted to play at the arcade. Now at first I thought this might have been a homage to Pokemon. You collect cards scattered about in the city, from vendors, and from winning matches with these women and their abilities on them. Some even require you to enter first-person mode and "snapshot" the hidden item. You swipe the cards in a sort of rock-paper-scissors format into the machine and hope for the best after starting the match. Honestly, I did not realize the arcade was based upon Mushiking, an actual real life game of the same concept. If any of this looks familiar, it is because Yakuza 0 used the same assets for their underground cat fight tournament mini-game.
Locker: What I found as a refreshing change of pace is finding hidden keys throughout the city. You can take any of these keys and open the marked compartment by the Millennium Tower. Inside could be anything from weapons, potions, or items you can use to cheat at gambling.
Tournament: In order to receive training from the old man, it is up to you to buy back the art pieces he "threw in" as prizes. The tournament is relatively identical to the one in Yakuza 0. You face off against three people without any equipment, perform crowd pleasers for bonus points, and use points you earn (instead of cash) to buy from a list of prizes. The opponents you face can either be relatively easy to take down or extremely difficult to even knock down to the ground. The one thing I did not like out of the whole experience is the fact you sit in front of the register with a sliver of health remaining whenever you lose. I guess you could easily grab a potion from the nearby telephone booth to use, but would it have killed them to at least added a massage parlor? Oh wait, that was removed from the game. Well, I guess I could always have taken some burgers to go before a big match.
Missions
Substories: When you check the wiki page for missions, you come to about 78 different substories. I personally managed to complete at least 40 substories, enough to gain points off from the list. Those points then helped me buy some really nice equipment. The substories aren't what I call "bad" in a sense. I simply found them to be less than thrilling to look forward to. Not a lot of them give you fun little multiple choice conversations. The majority were either scam artists trying to make you pay an insane amount of money or people you had to chase down for breaking the law. Things like Pick Pocket Pursuit has you going down several streets to get back what was stolen. Then there was the gang at Shichifuku Street that wanted you to cover "medical expenses" and "a forgiveness fee" for bumping into them. A few revolve around some simpleton wanting to be your apprentice. Then there was this small trading mini-game where you help one person to obtain an item to help another. However, there was still a couple nice substories I do remember quite fondly of. There's one where you encounter a Man with Big Head and end up showing him around town. Then there is the Cell Phone Plan when you get tasked with killing someone after you answer a dead man's cell phone. It is pretty easy to complete the substories somewhere between Chapters 4 - 7, but I did miss out on a few nice follow-up quests that are only available in the last few chapters. If it gets too hard tracking down some of them, you can always use the Trouble Finder and pin down the quests in the area like some sort of MMO.
Chapters: As for the chapters, I found much of the story more... streamlined over Yakuza 0. It is very hard to put down the controller when you get a three minute cutscene, followed by you running to a place, watching you converse with a couple people for a couple minutes, then battling some thugs over-and-over again. They did the typical "let me show you in your perfect state at the start of the game before you have to crawl your way back up" technique. It seems like they cut down the content to about half of what was in the other game. There is more interactive sections like having to visit the store to buy food for a dog or running from one place to the next. I also found it entertaining that not all of the main story is centered around the Yakuza. Somewhere around Chapters 6 & 7, you'll be helping out the characters you encountered in the previous chapters. The way a man goes flying after Kiryu kicks open the door had me laughing so hard. Though, I think I'm starting to see a pattern with how every Yakuza game is going to go from here on out. Chapters 9 - 13 followed the same elements with Yakuza 0 - Chinese get involved, a girl needs saving, a fight on a boat, a weird car chase sequence, and a confusing ending to tie everything together. I might have figured one of the plot twists early on, but there was no way I could follow everything that happens in the game. Regardless, I will say that it was an enjoyable story for sure.
Miscellaneous Notes: To let you know, I refused to replay all the boring mini-games. That left me with a 53% completion in 30 hours. I think the only thing that saved me from dropping the game was the ability to use special heat moves. I was still discovering new ways to pulverize people in this game. Buy a certain type of food from the store and you might just be shoving into people's mouths before stepping on them. Drag a guy by a vehicle and you might just use the car door to knock him unconscious. Still plenty of Nani moments to go around. And since you have four battle styles, using a weapon is as easy as "swapping" to the same stance again.
Technicalities
Bugs: No, I'm not talking about MesuKing here. I was actually surprised to see quite a few problems that could have easily been fixed. There were several cases where people shouted out what they normally would during a mugging during a side mission. Their voices were actually louder than the conversation Kiryu was trying to have. There was one particular woman I talked to that spun around like crazy as if she was applying to be in the next Mega man lineup. If you meet with a cabaret girl and have already went through all the available dialogue, the conversations will repeat themselves from the beginning. Watching a giant barrel roll down a tiny hallway and simply phase through my target without causing any bodily harm just proves there should be better hit detection.
Annoyances: Then again, there was just a lot of things that irritated me. I didn't like how the game frequently reminded me of "abilities to spend" almost every time I paused the game. I didn't approve of the difficulty spikes, especially when it came time to "pay the toll" to the idling boy on the street. Why does the game force me into battling Majima before progressing with the story, and why do I have to search out the blue gang before the white gang even if I found them first? Repairing equipment can cost up to 400,000 for the average item or even 1,000,000 yen for rarer items. I can't afford that! I realize the original game was void of music, but the least they could have done was added a few tracks here and there. Debolah's music seemed trifle when watching thirty people dancing their heart out on the floor. I also found it really awkward listening to various Christmas tracks being played in the most unusual places. Certain cords being played at overly dramatic moments and "Amazing Grace" being the chosen song to play during the credits didn't help either. Speaking of rolling the credits, do they have to be unskippable? I mean, there wasn't any extra scenes as I patiently waited to open up Premium Adventure Mode.
Summary
Review: For many people, Yakuza Kiwami is another chance to play that one game that was so different than all those other games that came out during the Playstation 2 era. Not only does it improve the graphics drastically, but the remake also adds a bunch of content and mechanics that helps tie-in with Yakuza 0. The substories and mini-games aren't as glamorous as I had hoped, but there is enough material there to substantiate the $20 price tag. The story was enjoyable and expanded on a lot of things not contained in its predecessor like the history of their tattoos and the darker side of a city that has fallen into disrepair. However, the game still retains a lot of problems and a few new ones. They could have better refined the Majima Everywhere system and made it easier to gain abilities inside the new sphere grids. What really drags down the whole game is how notoriously upsetting and annoying it was to fight every single boss in the game. Finding out what really happened to your beloved characters from the prequel is also a bummer. I say the game is only worth it if you are a true fan of the series. Otherwise, I'd give this game a pass.
2-17-2021