Finished
Yakuza Kiwami 2. Good game. Overall as good as 0 I suppose so around 8/10. The fighting engine is better but it has a few really cheap bosses (but then you just go cheap yourself and use some OP weapon you saved up or have unlocked some ultimate Kiryu skill on top of too many health items to care, it's still not fun but at least it's not annoying to keep dying on them), it has a bit more open feel to the city exploration, much closer to Like a Dragon than 0, but a worse story imo. The character relationships don't really work in the time frame it spans so they feel forced and the way characters survive or die just to advance the plot struck me harder in this than others. Like, how can you fight a damn army, guns included, then have everyone at a standstill because the culript behind the whole thing appears alone, with a pistol, and they act like he has the upper hand and they can't do anything and he offs anyone and everyone as he sees fit? They just didn't make the circumstances believable. The overall story is not bad, the mysteries, the twists and turns, but the way it's presented and unfolds is. Perhaps on the PS2 original it was more understandable to fill in blanks by yourself and for cut scenes to differ much more to gameplay like this.
If Kiryu's story keeps getting worse like this maybe it's best we didn't get 3, 4, 5 and 6 on PC, we'll see. Hopefully they keep making action games like this, like Judgement or Fist of the North Star, instead of only continue with the JRPG stuff as in Like a Dragon (which is my GOTY but variety is the spice of life). They definitely need to find a way to keep interest in the action without cheap enemies that don't follow the rules your character adheres to in terms of how and when shit can be blocked and when you cause flinching or can use specials. They also shouldn't be scared of imposing limits in terms of food and weapons and items you can have at a time. You can hoard way too much to the point you only get any difficulty if you play while hoarding items and not even using them for the majority of the game (which is basically what I did without thinking it, then when encountering the cheap bosses I was miffed at first then I was like oh well, I got this OP shit to use, whatever). The Majima mini story, which I didn't like to play as much because his fighting style doesn't work for me, does restrict you in some ways and it's more properly challenging, like with how you can't overeat unlike with Kiryu so if you wanna heal you'll use up your healing items or deliberately go cheap yourself and wait way too long for the hunger gauge to empty again (I guess a solution to that would be to have the hunger gauge only deplete per encounter, not just running around) so you can eat normal food, which is you knowingly breaking the system at that point. You could still hoard actual healing items too but I sent all my money to the sub story stuff and there aren't too many opportunities to make an excessive amount of money in Majima's scenario for the most part (it's not like Yakuza 0 where both characters are each a half of the game, it's just a short prequel scenario showing how some things unfolded for Majima before Kiryu's story even starts in Kiwami 2).
More side quests should use the arcade games, have Kiryu enter a Virtua Fighter 2 tournament or something, with actual "player" challengers. That'd be rad, instead in 0 there's just that old fuck asking you to just get past stage 3 or whatever, like Haruka in this game I guess had a Virtual On wins threshold to praise or pout.
