#Yakuza 2 game upgrade#

It’s just a fantastic quality-of-life upgrade over 0 and Kiwami. Not only can you place custom guide markers on Kiwami 2’s map, but there’s even a skill that highlights side missions so you’re not stuck wandering at random (or more likely consulting a walkthrough for the ones you’re missing).

#Yakuza 2 game free#

Then at the end, it’s straight back into the game and you’re free to proceed to your next objective.Īnd this one sounds small, but if you’ve played 0 or Kiwami you know how important it is: The map is finally usable. You transition straight into combat now, and are given a huge area to roam around in while taking on foes, giving you more than enough bicycles and traffic cones and planters to pick up and use as makeshift weapons. There are no longer lengthy preroll cutscenes before every fight to mask the transition, nor are you locked in small walled-off arenas. IDG / Hayden Dingmanįights are smoother as well. Even fast travel is handled with just a quick fade to black and back. Kiwami 2 is seamless in all but a few instances, allowing you to enter restaurants, bars, batting cages, karaoke clubs, or simply wander through the rare building interior without ever hitting a loading screen. I loved Yakuza 0 and Kiwami, but every time you entered or exited a building you sat through a load, even on an SSD-equipped PC.

Perhaps the most welcome change is the elimination of loading screens. The Tojo Clan’s slowly tearing itself apart though, and before long the Omi Alliance is once again threatening to move into Kamurocho and take over. Set a year after the first Kiwami, Kiryu’s abdicated responsibility for the Tojo Clan and become a pseudo-father to Haruka, the girl he helped protect from scheming yakuza the last time around. That said, I can’t say I’m as enamored with Kiwami 2’s overarching story as I was with 0 and the first Kiwami.

#Yakuza 2 game series#

Yakuza’s the rare series that manages the same feat, with B-tier figures like Kashiwagi and Daigo and Date feeling as if they have just as much depth as Kiryu himself. Dandelion and Zoltan, Triss and Yennefer, it always felt like these characters drifted in and out of Geralt’s story in a naturalistic way, like they had lives separate from his monster-killer adventures. The parallels extend to The Witcher’s wider cast as well though. Reviewing 0 and Kiwami, I brought up The Witcher to explain how I like well-defined protagonists, and how that plays into my love for Kiryu-a character who sometimes acts differently than I might but is always true to his own code. And it feels somehow more real than your average video game because of that. It’s a very organic form of memory that Yakuza builds up over time, a rich world with characters who drop in and out of Kiryu’s life, businesses that appear and disappear, buildings that rise and fall. There’s the batting cages, where we taught a young Daigo Dojima to stop relying on his father’s name to intimidate others. Here’s the bar where we met a naive journalist all those years back. You begin to have a relationship with this five-block-by-five-block square of Tokyo the same way Kiryu does. Because this is the story of Kazuma Kiryu and Kamurocho, a man and his city, told over the course of seven different games, you really get a feel for these places. It’s a byproduct of Yakuza’s commitment to continuity, which I talked about at length after starting Kiwami. But it’s very impressive, returning to the same maps I’ve already spent 50 or 60 hours on and seeing them given renewed life.