izigame.me

Another amazing Yakuza game, and another added straight to my favorites list. Once again, amazing characters and story. Kiryu and Majima are as amazing as ever. And the story, once again, is amazingly crafted. The gameplay is also amazing. A ton of quality-of-life and improved mechanics from Yakuza 0, and the combat also feels very smooth. Only thing I found annoying was the boss recharging mechanic, but other than that, absolutely perfect.
Being the person I am, I absolutely fell in love with Haruka. She is so damn adorable and is the perfect adopted daughter to Kiryu. I love how much Kiryu protects and cares for her, I'd absolutely do the same too, no matter what happens. The perfect way of showing how caring, loving, and family-oriented Kiryu really is, and I absolutely adore it. Yumi as well, is another fantastic character and in the end, felt so bad for what she went through, but I'm glad she had the closure she needed in the end. I honestly wish that in another timeline, Yumi and Kiryu get married, without everything being ruined, and eventually have their own Haruka together. And Reina, she will never be forgotten, such an amazing character in both Yakuza 0 and Kiwami. So upsetting to see Reina go in such a brutal and undeserved way. Much like Makoto Makimura from Yakuza 0, Haruka, Reina, and Yumi are some of my most beloved characters and I have a major soft spot for them. I got teary throughout the game for a number of reasons, some from the main plot, others from some substories, but that ending really did kill me, from the cutscenes to the flashbacks, it got me good. (I still don't understand why they put such a heavy watery filter over the screen during those cutscenes).
The substories were also really enjoyable. Everything from the humorous ones to the more serious ones. One of my favorites has to be the follow up with Kyoka and Takashi. It's actually such an adorable story between them two, I'm glad it was introduced as a minor subplot in the main story, even though I'm sure most thought it was unnecessary for the main plot. Another one of my favorites was the "Memory of the Bubble", having recently just played through Yakuza 0, it really does show how awesome this entire franchise is connected, even after years apart in-game, there's still references to previous events and history from the past. There were quite a few callbacks which I thought were amazing, but the first two that comes to mine had to be the bubble substory and the callback to the shrink-wrapped magazine with the finding presents for the girl to give to the boy. The hostess mini-games were also really enjoyable. I'm not the type of guy to do it for the spicy video, just for the interesting dialogue and the achievement, obviously, but one of Yui's discussions really put my emotional side into perspective with the specific topic about emotional movies, age really does matter in my case.
Overall, this is an amazing game. Both the story and gameplay mechanics are so well done. I enjoyed literally almost everything. The table top mini-games are the most infuriating, but other than that, everything is great. I even enjoyed the mini-game they brought back to be the improvement of the infuriating cat fight club from zero, MesuKing.