Yakuza Kiwami 2
2017
Audio: Japanese · Subtitles: English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean
- role-playing (rpg)
- adventure
- action
- single player
- multiplayer
The story
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a remake of Yakuza 2, and is an action-adventure game set in an open world environment and played from a third-person perspective. Combat is based on that previously seen in Yakuza 6. A new "Majima Saga" story scenario features recurring series anti-hero Goro Majima as a playable character.
What it’s like
Neon-soaked nights in Kamurocho and Sotenbori, all garish signage, rain-slick asphalt and hostess-club glow, rendered with a remake's sharper lighting and crisper textures over the original's hand-built streets. Cinematic cutscenes lean on static two-shots, slow pushes toward a stone-faced face, and sudden cuts to hard-edged fight choreography, while the soundtrack swings between mellow jazz-funk and brass-heavy street themes that drop out when a scene turns sour. The vibe is gritty, bombastic and deliberately goofy at once, with a loyal-brotherhood melodrama underneath that never quite lets go of sincerity. Violence is frequent and stylised: fists, bats, bicycles and whatever is lying around, often played for slapstick but with bloodied faces and some brutal finishers, plus crime-story menace, betrayal and a few grim turns; sexual content is present in the back-alley and nightlife sidequests but kept comic. Pacing is uneven by design, with long walks through the city and karaoke, mahjong and arcade diversions between bursts of combat. Its emotional arc follows a retired gangster and a disgraced wanderer each drifting toward a last chance at loyalty. It suits players who want a long, dense, sprawling city to live in, with a streak of absurd humour and heavy violence.
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