Is Yakuza Kiwami 2 a good stopping point?

[SoadY w/ bad eyes]

I played Yakuza 0 about a month ago and enjoyed everything about the game from the excellent backstories and character development to the villains to the length of the game to the multiple playable characters even the story / plot was far better than I expected, all I had read on the Yakuza 0 plot beforehand was "Everybody fights over a small plot of land" hardly a solid plot material. Yet I found 0 to be excellent and teared up multiple times throughout during the sad moments involving Makoto

After enjoying Yakuza 0 I then decided to buy Yakuza Kiwami 1 and Yakuza Kiwami 2 to support the developers and didn't like a few things as they downsized the minigames with no disco, lack of arcade games besides the UFO Catcher and MesuKing, The Majima Everywhere system was weak but not in the way you may think. I took issue with the Majima persona change rather than the endless stalking aspect, although I did grow to like the change towards the end. The most depressing part about the whole game though was the rushing of the story and the death scenes to important side characters such as Shinji, Reina, Kazama, Nishiki and to a lesser extent Yumi amongst others if any all meeting their ends, all of them being close friends / allies. We lost Tachibana (sad) Nishitani (Fun character), Lee, Awano and more likeable characters in 0 but they are hardly on the same level as all the unnecessary deaths that occured in Yakuza 1 Kiwami, we didn't even have time to grieve properly in Yakuza Kiwami 1, it was such a disappointment :( The only thing I did prefer about Yakuza 1 Kiwami over Yakuza 0 was the enemy guard system, you couldn't just spam square like in 0 or Kiwami 2. the enemies were actually competent and a little frustrating at times.

Which brings me onto Yakuza Kiwami 2 we are surrounded by a bunch of new characters, new yet less interesting minigames with disco, bowling, pocket racing, pool all being removed and as for darts it was difficult I couldn't focus my analogue like in 0 and Kiwami. It was like I was in drunk mode 24/7 even with better darts. The anti aliasing was dreadful, the basic simplified combat system used in 2 wasn't as good as the system used for 0 and 1. What bugged me the most though was the relationship between Kiryu and Kaoru. I would have preferred both of them to keep it strictly professional than have both characters fall in love then axing her between Yakuza 2 and 3. When it comes to video games or TV-Shows I'm all about the characters and Yakuza series seems to be renown for introducing you to key characters then killing them all off or just erasing them completely for future titles. Bringing Yuki and Makoto back for brief spells was a nice touch from 0 to 2 but it would have been nice if they had done this with every game. Does anybody else feel the same way when it comes to character attachments? Maybe it's just me living a sad miserable life lol.

Well anyway I said a couple of weeks ago Yakuza Kiwami 2 would probably be my last game in the series after playing through the rollercoaster that was Kiwami 1 so I must ask Is it worth continuing the series if the remasters ever release on Steam or should I just end it here?

[lPaladinl]

引用自 Zuranai：

You found Nishiki's death rushed? I could agree on the rest, but there were a ton of build and development for him spread across Yakuza 0 and Kiwami, and his descent into madness was pretty well done imo.

With regards to Majima, my impression was that the whole Mad Dog persona is just a facade he puts on, drawing inspiration from Nishitani, Lee and Sagawa's way of life, because the Yakuza life isn't easy or fair. You see the more calm and calculated Majima in the Majima saga, during the cutscene before Kei's fight, with him dodging his shots and trying to kill him.

Majima is the only character I really felt was handled poorly, but that goes back to the original Yakuza 1. Or rather, the original Yakuza 1 and 2 and how he already changed between those.

As far as I understand it and vaguely remember tidbits of, it was the fact that they never expected to make a sequel to Yakuza when developing it.

It's exaggerated even more now that you have Yakuza 0 where he's maybe the most "normal" he's been. You also have Yakuza 6 where, while he has almost no screen time, he's pretty normal as well.

[Mosh]

Yakuza 0, Kiwami 2 and 6 are the only ones worth playing.

[HyenaTron]

引用自 Mosh：

Yakuza 0, Kiwami 2 and 6 are the only ones worth playing.

Nah
Yakuza 3 has amazing character development which is important for 6
Yakuza 4 introduces some great characters and is super fun
Yakuza 5 is super ambitious and introduces even more characters and is arguably the most dense in content among the series.