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- Strong graphics, smooth gameplay; no technical issues - Continues to strike the perfect Yakuza balance of zany and dramatic - Majima Construction Clan Creator is surprisingly addicting
- Mid story, more of a standalone compared to the other games - Inclusion of Cabaret Club feels forced - Boring combat and leveling system
While 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise, Nintendo consoles have only recently been home to the games, starting with the release of Yakuza Kiwami on Switch late last year and then Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut on Switch 2 this summer. (And yes, I’m aware of the Japan-only release of Yakuza 1&2 HD on Wii U, but it hardly counts.) With the exception of Yakuza 0, all of the mainline numbered games were released in chronological order — and in terms of gameplay and graphics, it shows. But while the Kiwami games have done a great job of introducing quality of life improvements and graphical upgrades (meaning Switch players got to start the series playing the improved versions), I was actually surprised by how much of a step backwards Yakuza Kiwami 2 felt from Kiwami (and certainly from Yakuza 0).
The story is as complex as one would expect from the series, but at its core centers on Kazuma Kiryu working to take down Ryuji Goda, son of the fifth chairman of the Omi Alliance who’s obsessed with taking the title of “one true dragon” from Kiryu. He’s earned the nickname “Dragon of Kansai,” which he despises because he feels there’s only room for one dragon and he’s it. As Kiryu gets dragged back into the Tojo Clan to prevent a war from breaking out between them and the Omi Alliance, he’s introduced to Kaoru Sayama, a lead detective with the Osaka Police Department who’s known as the Yakuza Huntress for her deep disdain for the yakuza. Together, they begin to unravel a decades-long mystery involving the presence of Korean mafia in Japan, and along the way build a friendship that blossoms into something much more.
As you progress through the story, you’ll eventually start unlocking the three chapters of the Majima Saga, new content that was added to Kiwami 2 post-Yakuza 0. Given that Kiwami 2 has Kiryu traveling between both Tokyo and Osaka, the development team took the opportunity to both flesh out some story elements relating to a critical decision that Goro Majima makes prior to the events of Kiwami 2, and give players some more and much-desired Majima-Makoto content.
The gameplay in Kiwami 2 was my biggest disappointment about this game and the main contributor to it feeling like a less polished, less fun experience compared to Kiwami and Yakuza 0. While those games gave Kiryu four different fighting styles to choose from, all of which had their own pros and cons and kept combat really interesting, Kiryu has one fighting style throughout all of Kiwami 2. The skill trees of the other two games are also gone, replaced with a very basic menu in which you slowly and incrementally increase your health, attack, and defense and unlock various Heat moves and abilities with experience points you earn through combat and completing substories.
While you can still use items in the environment to bludgeon enemies with, the variety seems starkly limited compared to the other two games, especially Yakuza 0. I relied on weapons a lot to keep combat from feeling like a slog, but the sheer amount of Yen it requires to repair your weapons (which can only be done once you complete a particular substory) was incredibly frustrating.
Granted, there are two ways to earn a ton of money in Kiwami 2: play the Majima Construction Clan Creator and Cabaret Club Grand Prix minigames, both of which were added to Kiwami 2 and were not in the original release of Yakuza 2. However, the money you earn in Clan Creator gets funneled right back into the minigame, and even if you want to go back later and play Clan Creator to earn a bunch of cash to use in the main story, it’s a time consuming process.
While we’re on the subject of these two major minigames, Clan Creator was a fun diversion that I enjoyed much more than I was expecting. This tower defense game has Kiryu acting as foreman of Majima Construction, leading a team to defend against land sharks and corrupt real estate agents that want to sabotage Majima Construction’s physical assets to bankrupt them and steal their rights to a massive, lucrative construction contract. Each team member has their own unique skill (i.e. increasing the team’s attack by X%), making it necessary to figure out what combination of guys to bring to the fight. It became addicting, leveling up my guys and finding the right team for me, and the story was the right mix of that bizarre Yakuza humor and drama. There’s a neat little minigame you can play where Kiryu goes out to lunch and then out to drinks with Majima and some of the main antagonists after you’ve won them over to your side, which had me laughing out loud at the absurdity of their conversations.
Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy Cabaret Club Grand Prix anywhere near as much, which was the second biggest disappointment for me behind the game’s lackluster combat. I absolutely loved Cabaret Club Czar in Yakuza 0, from dressing up the hostesses to going through their trainings with Majima. Much like Kiryu’s Real Estate Royale minigame, Cabaret Club Czar was a thoughtfully constructed minigame that gave the player the opportunity to understand why Majima earned himself the nickname of Lord of the Night (aside from his masterful dealings with Yamagata from Club Odyssey). Two years in the nightlife game, a carefully crafted refined, gentlemanly temperament, and a penchant for making women fall head over heels for him, all made Majima a natural at cabaret management and why it made sense for him to try his hand at managing Club Sunshine.
By comparison, throwing Kiryu into cabaret club management feels incredibly forced and nonsensical. He only gets roped into it by chance and agrees to help Club Four Shine because he essentially feels too bad to say no and because they’re being threatened by an underhanded competitor. The club is owned by Yuki, Sunshine’s former number-one hostess from Yakuza 0, and while it was nice to see her again, the cameo felt as forced as the inclusion of the minigame this time around. Kiryu tells her before his first shift that he’s never done anything like this before, which is apparent in the stiff, awkward bow he gives in the short cutscene at the start of every shift that’s supposed to hearken back to the one featuring Majima in Yakuza 0, where Majima greets guests with a much more elegant bow.
It felt weird when I got called over to the club’s premiere hostess for the first time, triggering the same cutscene from Yakuza 0 where Majima strides over, kneels, bows, brings the hostess what she’s requested, and then confidently strides away with a thumbs up over his shoulder, but all with Kiryu in Majima’s spot instead. Where Kiryu got his newfound sense of confidence is unclear, but obviously the development team was too lazy to animate a new scene for Kiryu that would better match his personality and lack of experience, so we got this instead and it just feels forced and lame. I also didn’t care for some of the changes to the minigame, which didn’t add anything of value — “if it ain’t broke…,” as they say. But in this case, the cabaret club management just shouldn’t have been included in Kiwami 2 at all.
From this point on, I’m going to discuss story spoilers, so proceed with caution. As far as the main game’s story is concerned, while it’s certainly interesting and keeps you on your toes, it overstays its welcome a bit due to some poor pacing toward the latter third or so of the game. There are also some details that left me scratching my head a bit and didn’t quite have the resonance I think they were intended to.
The story’s events are triggered by secret machinations of the Jingweon Mafia, a deadly Korean crime syndicate that essentially operates as a death cult and was believed to have been wiped out by the Tojo Clan back in 1980. All of them were residing in Japan illegally while committing crimes that were beyond the pale and appalled even the yakuza. However, for a good chunk of the game, you’re lead to believe that these guys were really more victims than anything else because of how brutally they were all murdered, and because a main character was believed to have been picking them all off for the sake of merely being illegal aliens.
Now, the last detail would obviously be horrific if true, but I was somewhat put off by the narrative trying to position a murderous death cult as poor, hapless victims. It’s even worse once you realize what the remnants of this mafia have been up to for the last couple of decades and what schemes they’re trying to hatch in Kamurochō. I didn’t feel sorry for any of them at any point in the game and am not really sure why the player should. You’re given no sensible reason to.
Sayama works in theory as a romantic interest for Kiryu, even if the “what if a cop fell in love with a yakuza” story beat wasn’t exactly a surprise to see once it started bubbling up to the surface. My main issue with her is that she’s an insufferable b-word for quite a lot of the game and it seems like she’s supposed to be forgiven for it because she has a tragic backstory, so she’s prickly because it’s her defense mechanism and blahblahblah. The problem is that if you want the player to care about a love interest for the protagonist, especially the first one Kiryu has had since the death of his one true love, you really need to make them likable and that’s not a word I’d use to describe her for a large portion of the game.
She despises yakuza, starts her association with Kiryu by hitting him with a fake arrest and demanding he do as she says, and continues to treat him like garbage for a while even after he saves her life. When she finally does a 180 and they go on a cute night out together, there’s some good chemistry between them, but it’s one of the only happy moments they share before she goes back to being flaky and cold. When I learned that she dumps Kiryu by the next game and jets off to the U.S. without him, I was left wondering why in the world the narrative spent so much time invested in them getting together.
Ultimately, if someone were to never play Yakuza Kiwami 2, they wouldn’t be missing much of anything in terms of plot. It’s almost a standalone story in how little of a ripple effect it has on the rest of the in-game universe going into Yakuza 3. You’d be left wondering how Daigo Dojima became the chairman of the Tojo, or why Kiryu has a new girlfriend who’s already leaving him at the start of the next game, but other than that, Kiwami 2 has little impact on the events of Yakuza 3. However, that’s not to say that it’s not worth playing. Ryuji is an interesting character that, in my opinion, was severely underused in this series, and his arc is an entertaining one. And if you don’t play Kiwami 2, you’ll miss both the origin of the famous “Kiryu pounds fist on table” GIF and his legendary fight with two tigers.
While Kiwami 2 has its faults, it’s still a fun action-RPG with all of the wonderful weirdness of the Yakuza series, all of the entertaining substories and bizarre NPCs, and the engaging main story that never lacks twists and turns. Graphically, the game looks great and played just as smoothly, so from a technical standpoint I had no issues. But while I said in my Yakuza 0 review that I’d recommend playing the games in chronological order, it’s worth noting that having a game of the caliber of Yakuza 0 as a series’ first story can result in this sort of drawback. Regardless, play it for more Yakuza while you’re waiting for the launch of Kiwami 3 next year.
Nintendojo was provided a copy of this game for review by a third party, though that does not affect our recommendation. For every review, Nintendojo uses a standard criteria.
