Playing Yakuza Kiwami again was an interesting experience because I remember having a fondness for the original Yakuza's story and even going out of my way at multiple points to say it's one of the better narratives in the series and how the series got dumber and the villain writing got worse the more the franchise went on like say Metal Gear Solid. Playing Kiwami again however, it's hard where I got those notions from. I'm starting to think it was me being enamoured by the idea of the original Yakuza's story more so than the execution of it. It's not a repulsively terrible story but at the same time I question how you could make a long running series with an average at best story with an amazing premise like this one. I can now see why Yakuza 0 and 2 were considered better narratives especially with the flaws the latter has or how the former does very little legwork to improve Yakuza 1's story.
Before I start describing why I'm so lukewarm on Kiwami. The game itself isn't really a remake of the original PS2 game from 2005, it's more of a remake that is sequel to Yakuza 0. It's easy to see with Kiryu having the fighting like Brawler, Tiger and Rush from 0 and having his signature Dragon of Dojima locked behind the Majima is Everywhere is system. This is one of the most questionable aspects that Kiwami brings. It's retroactively made after the fact that Majima had limited screen time in the original game and the devs never expected him to be as popular as he was. You love Majima from 0 especially? Here's more of him more than you could ever want. This is still ultimately a mostly faithful retelling of Yakuza 2005's story so there are bizarre moments like where he gets stabbed and then pops up later in Soapland where the story still acknowledges his stab wound.Then there is how bosses can have fighting styles that are similar to ones found in 0 like one of the Akai brothers having the Breaker style Majima had in 0.
With all that out of the way, Yakuza Kiwami and by extension the original game's story has an interesting premise of a man who was in jail in 10 years and having to take care of his lover's daughter while trying to find his foster father while learning about how his best friend has become a completely different person during those 10 years.
Much of this said story is mostly a series of wild goose chases and completely unrelated subplots that don't really advance the story. For example subplots involving Date and Florist is just filler. When you solve Florist's family issues the dead body with Mizuki pops up not because Kiryu did the favors but out a random picture of that dead body that Florist just suddenly finds. After that Haruka gets kidnapped a few times, you find her. Then go after Shinji and Reina and then the plot slowly wraps up and as you given so much information on everything. It doesn't help that characters like Shinji Tanaka barely show up and have much presence in the story. Shintaro Kazama barely has much presence in the story since he is in hiding for much of it. Shimano barely does much of anything that makes you dislike him. Nishki himself could be an awesome combination of Fredo from the Godfather and Harry McDowel from Gungrave but even he's out for much of the actual story.
I do like some of the flashback cutscenes with him but much of them is going over how awesome Kiryu is. Shimano even tries to glorify Kiryu taking the blame for Dojima's murder even though it was supposed to be an act of selflessness.
The cutscene where Nishki becomes the person he is in the main story and how he got his hair was pretty well directed.
Then there is fact that the bad guys only get anywhere in the story because Kiryu doesn't kill them but someone else will kill them after. This is an issue with the whole series unfortunately.
What does prevent me from disliking the story as much as say the first Red Dead Redemption is that the last few hours of Kiwami are pretty good and has some solid character work. Yumi telling Nishki that he is just running away is a solid line even if the writing up until that point was lacking. The final battle was pretty epic and Kiwami's version of "for whose's sake" make the final boss more epic than the writing did. Made me want to ignore Majima is everywhere more so the song and battle last longer.
The gameplay is pretty much Yakuza 0 but much harder. Heat moves do much less damage. Bosses now needed get hit by heat climax finishing move or else their health will regenerate.
What's worse now brittle Kiryu is even by comparison to the PS2 original. He can be staggered very easily and if enemies have weapons it's a game of how much Kiryu gets staggered and how many healing items the player has to see if the enemy and boss health bar will go down before Kiryu gets stunned yet again.
This does get mitigated with more upgrades you put into Kiryu but it'll still be prevelant.
Overall, while Kiwami is okay, I can see the lukewarm reception it got
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