Kiryu going to a hostess club: ''i'm just here to relax and talk to someone'' Yakuza 2 NPCs going to a hostess club: ''i'm just here to say how ugly this carpet is''
"JINGWEON could be here" he thought, "I've never been in this neighborhood before. There could be JINGWEON anywhere." The cool wind felt good against his bare chest. "I HATE JINGWEON" he thought. Rouge of Love reverberated his entire car, making it pulsate even as the 949.52 yen sake circulated through his powerful thick veins and washed away his (merited) fear of koreans after dark. "With a car, you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.
@@AgentDanielCross "uh errr.... I mean ignore the bad words Uncle Kaz just said. Ryuji is a very bad man and this is how he is paying me back for being bad"
Just commenting as I see it, when I see the "Remember the events of last year? No." thing, I think of it in the sense of "No, I don't remember the events of last year." That interpretation just seems a lot funnier to me.
I still have the 150 page FAQ guide for this game. I remember printing it on my school's copy shop and someone freaked out of the amount of bullshit I was printing.
I wonder how many of those pages were the "legal notices plz don't copy without permission" or extremely dated unfunny jokes or the table of contents or the intro.
@Tehsnakerer I wish you would not worry about your videos being too long. One of the reasons I like your channel is that so many of your videos are so long. Maybe I'm in a minority, but I prefer long form content that goes really in depth over short videos. Most creators only make short videos, so its great when I find a channel that makes good quality long form content like you do.
I haven't finished the video yet, but the thugs not picking fights with you indicates you've unlocked an "encounter boss". these are minibosses that show up once you've fufilled a quota of thugs beaten up. you have to find them, beat them, then you can continue doing random thug battles until you unlock the next one. I'll admit it's one of the worst side distractions in this game, there's little to no hints or explanations and the bosses that spawn are totally random and too hard to find. defeating every boss is even more of an obnoxious grind than the club minigames.
Having replayed 2, I can say this isn't entirely true. The game has an exp cap per chapter where the limit makes encounters disappear when the criteria meet (like 12 bars of exp being the limit for chapter 1). The amount of upgrades you put into your also affects this. Basically, if you're "overleveled" or reach the exp cap, chances are you won't get encounters for the chapter. Any time I see there are no encounters, I could not find a single encounter boss in either city. So in a way, the street bosses don't really affect encounter rates much. Either way, its a very weird detail.
pretty late but Ive just finished 2. apparently on some chapters there just wont be random encounters, regardless of encounter bosses, cant remember which ones are affected though. For real, once ive got to Chapter 6 or smth, the encounters outright stopped until just before ive got to the final chapter. The encounter boss from (or supposed to spawn in) Chapter 7 only spawned at that point as well. It's honestly a dumb system but KINDA understandable since it can be easy to max out shit close to ending the game.
To be fair, 0 majima is fucking terrifying, kiwami hes primarily holding back the whole game and even in his final fight thats...definitely not his whole moveset. K2 seems more for the fuck of it, and he barely seems phased after the fight, lost or not. In 3, seems more like a formality than an actual fight, 4 i mean, do YOU wanna gut your sworn brother like a fish after suffering the days of guilt and sorrow as to their circumstances? I wouldnt be in much a fighting mood myself, plus saejima just kinda collapses so at least hes still a scrapper, and in 5, he was fucked up himself, not in good condition, and yet he had the energy to, yknow, summon shadow clones for some reason. Hes just built different. That, and it could be anybody, a street thug or a deity, you are the player, you WILL win. So no matter who you are playing as, your character comes out on top.
It could be that the jingweon shown being massacred was just a side branch or they just recruited more members in the time it took to get to Yakuza 2 I personally believe that they are just very good at playing dead
@@gonb5434 One of those bullets fixed a crick in a Jingweon lieutenant's back, the other smashed a lamp and a senior enforcer is kind of miffed about that, another guy had the phone shot out of his hand while he was on the horn arranging a date...
I loved the club management so badly that when Goda was goading me towards the final, bomb-filled show down, I replied to him "Sorry bud, my totals just came in, can you postpone that?"
for people who, like me, enjoys a team doing a little "hommage" to the past at 6:18 the cheeky dialogue is actually a nod to the previous translation team who worked on the franchise, that's why the thug says "something might have gotten lost in translation" because in the japanese version kiryu just says "i'm very sorry" in the second dialogue choice it's thanks to devileon7's channel and the community i know that >v>'
The Yakuza series is how you make a game that is both a weird niche masterpiece full of Japanese cultural weirdness and stereotypes and a story experience that is well written, that hits the major high points of any good crime story, and has characters that are believable and wacky at the same time. The Yakuza series would never be a book, movie or comic and could only exist as a video game and damn it if it doesn't do what it set out to do in stunning fashion. With Zero and Kiawami 1 & 2 out and selling well for the first time in the west I hope that the series gets the Kiwami treatment so that people that missed it the first time around can experience it.
Never played any of the games, never had any interest in playing them looked grindy and kind of boring. I watched the first video in this series and thought well the story looks kind of neat, saw that Yakuza 0 was on a deep sale and thought "ehh I've spend a lot more for a lot more retarded shit". Oh boy had I been wrong, this series of games is just pure awesome and now I'm going through the rest of the games with glee, I just hope we get localizations of the spin off games as well, as they look fucking awesome as well
I definitely appreciate a lot of the changes that Kiwami 2 made after seeing this. Especially Majima’s much better goatee, lol. Kiwami 2 is definitely more beat-for-beat than I would’ve ever expected, though.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe The Go-Ryu invasion is especially weird in K2 since the finale if (K)2 and the Snake Flower invasion in 3 is pretty much what you'd imagine it to be
@@amarson2322 I am of the opinion that they aren't good remakes of the og, but are average yakuza games. the Kiwamis are less remakes and more re imaginings, with kiwami 1 being the guiltiest one out of the two. throwing out most of the original tone and setting og 1 had in place of Yakuza 0 but again. Which makes it cleaner and easier to jump into, sure, but makes it sterile basically. im also ignoring the atrocious amount of re used movesets in both kiwamis for important characters. hayashi deserved the treatment in og 2.
I would highly recommend the Japan only HD collection if you want to play these over Kiwami. The frame rate goes from 30 to 60FPS. Tweak things like Yakuza 1's lock on and letting you store items at telephone booths. They even improve some boss fights like adding shooting baseballs that damage both sides in the bating cage fight with Majima
Hopefully someone will do a ROM hack with English subs, because these games are VERY story heavy and you miss 90% of the game without the subtitles IMO.
I did notice Sayama has a more Korean look to her. Might just be me though idk if it's an intentional choice or if I'm noticing something that isn't there.
I'm surprised to see how faithful her K2 face is to the original (and more detailed, compared to the other characters in this game), her Y3 face looks like someone else.
Just reached the stabbing bit in Kiwami 2 - man, the music in the remake during that scene is downright horrendous. The version here had so much more oomph with it's jazzy soundtrack.
This series is great. Even though I'm pretty familiar with the games, it's nice to hear your analysis. I really like your style in general. Very informative but also entertaining.
Love the use of Shoji Meguro's work as background music: Keiichi Okabe notwithstanding, Persona/Catherine and Like a Dragon series are everything soundtracks should aspire to be.
This is cliche, but you deserve more views. For me, it was a great way to pass an hour and a half. Looking forward to more. Personally I would wait until the Yakuza 3 remaster, because they said they're re-translating the whole thing and adding back in a HUGE amount of content cut from the English release.
1:14:50 The cleanest cuts and edits in this review. Man, Tartarus is such a good song. Enjoyed the review too. Yakuza 2 is a good game. Good stuff as usual.
getting to watch your yakuza videos after i've finished the respective game is always a treat, ended kiwami 2 yesterday and couldn't wait to watch your video on it the next day. thank you so much for your detailed videos on these games!
Can I thank you for still helping grow interest in the Yakuza community man, I've been a fan of this series since I was 7 back in 2006 with Yakuza 2 and to see you cover it with a great deal of finesse and a great attention to detail in this day and age is fulfilling to say the least, I and I'm sure many others are very grateful...what's your favourite entry in the series? (I had to ask, it's my nature as a hardcore fan to find out haha)
It's a bit of a mixer, 4 is likely my favourite overall, though it has reasons in that the plot is so ludicrous that I adore it, and after having played 3 first it's the entry that really got me into loving the series, 5 for wealth of content and the the general quality of that content, and 0 for how refined, slick, and just filled with personality it is
i played kiwami 2, and the finale was sad of course, but I haven’t cried or anything. But seeing those scenes here, brought tears to my eyes for some reason. I must say, you have made a great video, again! Three down, two to go
Most of the music used in this video is from the Persona series. Specifically Persona 3 and 4. There are also some tracks from the game Katherine sprinkled in there
20:31 the FUNNIEST fucking scene i've seen so far (1/4th of the way through 3, started at 0) The way that Kiryu just shrugs of the bottle is the pinnacle of comedy.
Great take. Gotta remember too that this was 2008 when we finally got it ported to US. This game came out in Japan in 2006, one year before Mass Effect. I mean, the writing and storytelling standards were so low back then. We didn't have high expectations in general. Mass Effect was the first to open up a new way to experience storytelling that bled into other games that came after it. The amount of thought and consideration put into Yakuza 1 and 2 was immense compared to what we were used to. Especially when NA was not considered high priority/quality translations back then. Often we'd get just awful very basic ports. But the writing and consideration came through even the translation. Yakuza will always be one of my favorite series of all time. I remember seeing comparison screenshots to the real location the game is based on. And the details were so spot on. And they didn't have to do that, but took the extra time to do it. It definitely made for a more immersive experience.
I disagree, there were still plenty of franchise that had good written back then from the us and Japan alike. Like Metal Gear, Silent hill, The og fallouts, KTOR 1+2, Halo, God of war, Shadow of the Clossus, Ico, Final Fantasy,
Final Fantasy has been doing story based games since the late 80s, plus a bunch of other games from the time How were the storytelling standards low in the mid 2000s when a lot of highly regarded games are from the 90s
@@chronica6457 You can't point out exceptions to a rule and disregard the rule. If you wanna talk about 90s games, most NES games were simple gameplay crash grabs with no story whatsoever. PS2 catalogue similar. What was the overall story of Contra? of Qbert? What was the impact of Need for Speed on plot? Even when you had good stories, translations would often make them garbage by the time the west played them.
The main villains in at least the first few games are a foil to Kiryu: Nishikiyama is a reflection of Kiryu should he go past the Despair Event Horizon, Ryuji is a corruption of Kiryu's noble traits and Mine is a dark reflection of Kiryu's self-destructive desire to help others.
I've been binge-watching your reviews all week and I'm halfway through your first Yakuza playthrough, guess I'll be watching this one not soon after I'm done :D
You know hearing all this Persona music makes me wish that someone like Kiryu, Majima or maybe even Ichiban would show up as a social link in a future Persona game. Also yes I am aware of the Yakuza costumes in Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight, Ann dressed as Majima makes me think that she'll turn into the Mad Dog herself.
They should do it the same way they added Lars into Naruto. Have it be an adaptation of the character to match the setting. Since Persona is all demons or shadows they could do the creatures on their backs, themselves as demons similar to what Tokyo Mirage Sessions did, or do shadowy humans like in 3-4 and have them resemble the characters.
I know this may very well be very far down the line from now, but I think there is enough interest for you to revisit this in your longer form. Either the same game or the remaster I would be happy with. I'd love to see your extended review and synopsis of the plot. Thanks once again Snakerer, you're the Kiryu of Yakuza reviews and truly Like a Dragon
Very well done video the hour and a half just flew by. Best yakuza 2 rewiew I have ever seen. The only thing I slightly disagreed with is the problem with super armor on enemies and some bosses while I did find it tedious on normal foes on bosses there are several ways to go around this for example: during the fight with the guy who pulls out the pipes save your heat until the 2nd phase then grab the cones on the side and hit him till the weapon is on its last durabillity point and then perform the heat action since weapon attacks ignore his armor just build up heat with every swing and this way you can bypass the 2nd phase almost completely. As for the 3rd phase a good strategy is too dodge an attack and then punch twice to agro him into doing his heavy attack at that moment go behind him and grab him this always works since grabs from behind cant be blocked. As for everything else your rewiew has an excellent pace and you never waste time by pointleslly repeating something youre the only person I saw go this in depht in analysing the substories and how well they develop the people inside kamurocho and sotenbori. Good job youve more than earned my sub.
it's worth noting that there are a lot of ties between the yakuza and Japan's construction industry (the government has been trying to crack down on this more recently but I have no idea how successful they've been in that endeavor), so the fact that Majima is running a construction company is likely meant to hint that he hasn't exactly gone straight.
I'm about ten minutes in and I jumped to this one after the Yakuza 1 video (and after part four of the yakuza 5 video) and I had already forgotten who...Shindo(?) was. Wow. Anyway, I don't know why you don't have hundreds of thousands more subscribers. These videos are stellar, my guy! Also, whoever complains about the length is a coward.
I finished Kiwami 2. And thank merciful Kami-Sama the hostess club minigame in Kiwami 2 isn't as bad as Club Marietta in the original Yakuza 2. Also, I SUCK AT MAHJONG AND OICHO KABU. And I wish Kaoru and Kiryu had stayed together 😭 Am currently on 3..hoo boy. Edit: had to restart, cause got my own PS4. Finished 0, Kiwami 1, and am currently working on Kiwami 2. But I'm currently residing in the black hole that is The Sims 4.
I was thinking how cool it would be to have a host club minigame in Yakuza. I've only played the remake of Yakuza 2, I didn't know there was one in the original. Still, I would've preferred the same kinda minigame like the hostess one from Y0 and YK2 but with hosts instead so I guess it's not a complete loss.
Has anyone ever thought of how Kiryu manage to scrape up funds to not only afford that apartment him and Haruka lives in, but also manage to provide for the both of them?
Yeah, I generally prefer to use music from whatever game I'm covering but that wasn't much of an option, I couldn't find anything but the fight music anywhere, so I used a bunch of Catherine, P3, 4, 5, and a bit of Sonic CD
Hearing all this Persona music I really hope we get Persona retrospective like this Yakuza one. One off videos on one of the other SMT videos would be awesome as well.
There's a game that you may (probably not) find enjoyment from playing, it's a GTA clone that only stands out because Vin Diesel is the main character. It's called Wheelman, as I said its a GTA clone set in gangland Barcelona. Do what you want with that information (for your own sanity, probably nothing).
