Ryu ga Gotoku / Yakuza Kiwami review

When I was playing RGG0, I was thinking they could easily use the assets to remake the first game and less than a year later, the game came out last week. First thing that stands out is that it doesn't look as good as one which is understandable since its a reskin of RGG1 with some extras thrown in.

There are some new sub stories to do including two new ones which are very funny. One is called old men who are a bit dangerous and one involves the vending machines from Zero.

They've moved the battle system in from Zero which is great with four fighting styles. The styles feel a bit incomplete but that's because they want the player to switch styles on the fly. Now you can switch styles after doing a combo or getting hit etc. For example, there is a move in chinpira style to use on dizzied opponents but the best style to dizzy them is rush style.

My main problem with the game is my main problem with the series since Ishin, that is you can't get all the moves just by doing the sub missions.

Now they've added this stupid thing called Everywhere Majima and its just non-stop repetitive Majima battles. You need to fight Majima many, many times in order to get half the moves in the 4th style, the Dragon of Dojima. What about the other half of the moves? Well, you need to fight many times in the arena to get drawings so that Komaki can teach you those moves and trust me when I say you need to fight many, many times in the arena.

So I thought fuck it, I'm just going to use three styles in this game. Problem is, there is this new thing whereby you can do finishing moves on bosses and you need to unlock the finishing move and be using the right style. So more bosses towards to end are susceptible to the Dragon of Dojima style finishing move including last boss Nishikiyama but to unlock it I needed to get the bloody Majima relationship to SS. WTF.

I beat the bloody game with less than half the Dragon of Dojima style unlocked. Pisses me off. Not as bad as screaming bloody murder when Nishikiyama was flashing red and I couldn't pull off the finishing move because I didn't want to waste my time fighting Majima again and again and again.

I liked that they fleshed out the Nishikiyama story but seriously, they needed to show him and the sister (which they should have done in RGG0) cause it was her death and how she died that drove him over the edge.

I was really excited for Hatano Yui but the two hostess stories sucked and were boring. I thought less quantity meant better quality but I guess not.

Is Kiwami the definitive version of the first game? I prefer the HD remake on PS3 to be honest because they've turned this and every other recent RGG game into a stupid grind game. Anyway, I'm happy to donate money to Sega so they can make RGG6 real good. I'm not surprised the game turned out the way it did but whoever implemented the dokodemo Majima thing should be stomped.