Why did they drop combat styles in K2?

[Exist]

Kiwami 2 was made after Y0 and K1, so wouldn't it make sense that the developers keep the feature that made the combat a lot more interesting? I get that K2 was made with a different engine but why did they dumb down the combat so much?

[Rivers]

In my opinion, it's not really from a fun or interesting perspective, but more from a lore and character development perspective.

Kiryu was younger, and was still developing himself and his skills, so in Y0 he learns dragon way later on in the game, and to make it good, you had to farm quite a bit. In Y0, a lot of the combinations for dragon are not shown to you, and there are several videos on youtube showing the potential of Dragon in Y0.

In Y1 it becomes a really powerful style when you get Tiger Drop, but even then, Rush or Beast can get you the same power Dragon does.

Y2 is where the developers wanted to tie the game together a bit more with the rest of the Yakuzas, Kiryu is no longer a young "Yakuza", he learned a lot, and perfected Dragon style to be his own style. Dragon in Y2 features a bit of every fighting style from Y0 and Y1, the multiple dashes, parry that lets you go behind an enemy, nice block, damage from finishers, potential to tank bullets and sword hits, taunt being actually good, and even becoming unkillable for a bit. All these moves were in the previous games, just under different styles you played with.

[Lar Dass]

Dragon style in k2 is a mixture of all the 3 battle styles from 0

[Exist]

Originally posted by Rivers:

In my opinion, it's not really from a fun or interesting perspective, but more from a lore and character development perspective.

Kiryu was younger, and was still developing himself and his skills, so in Y0 he learns dragon way later on in the game, and to make it good, you had to farm quite a bit. In Y0, a lot of the combinations for dragon are not shown to you, and there are several videos on youtube showing the potential of Dragon in Y0.

In Y1 it becomes a really powerful style when you get Tiger Drop, but even then, Rush or Beast can get you the same power Dragon does.

Y2 is where the developers wanted to tie the game together a bit more with the rest of the Yakuzas, Kiryu is no longer a young "Yakuza", he learned a lot, and perfected Dragon style to be his own style. Dragon in Y2 features a bit of every fighting style from Y0 and Y1, the multiple dashes, parry that lets you go behind an enemy, nice block, damage from finishers, potential to tank bullets and sword hits, taunt being actually good, and even becoming unkillable for a bit. All these moves were in the previous games, just under different styles you played with.

You really think so? It is hard to believe that it is a matter of lore and not a matter of wanting to simplify the game play from a game design point of view. What you said is a good justification of it, I just don't feel that gullible (for lack of a better word) to believe that cutting combat styles wasn't just out of laziness or out of pleasing a simple-game-loving playerbase.

[Rivers]

Originally posted by Exist:

You really think so? It is hard to believe that it is a matter of lore and not a matter of wanting to simplify the game play from a game design point of view. What you said is a good justification of it, I just don't feel that gullible (for lack of a better word) to believe that cutting combat styles wasn't just out of laziness or out of pleasing a simple-game-loving playerbase.

Could be for simplification, sure, but it's not like people don't struggle with dragon style alone. Just search a bit and you find a lot of people asking for advice on fights. I struggled a lot more with Japanese minigames like mahjong and stuff, rather than the combat. I feel like most people do too.

Reality is, they took a bit of freedom when creating Y0 and YK1 and made a lot of combos and different approaches to combat, but to keep the same momentum, they would have to remake every game, to have that same idea. Because they only remade the first 2, you would be asking this in Y3 discussions instead of YK2, if you get what I am saying.