If Japan had made The Godfather...
Saturday evening. I was just relaxing, having a night about the town, minding my own business, when suddenly, in the middle of the most crowded street in Kamurocho, some guy walks up to me and demands an apology for my presence on "his turf". This gentleman has clearly mistaken me for someone else, but he is clearly not susceptible to reason. After all, who would choose to pick on a guy like Kazuma Kiryu, a man who has seen his fair share of battles and looks the part? Nonetheless, he and his friends decide to try and beat me up. I look around for something, anything to use as a weapon, and a bicycle catches my eye. That'll do nicely. I pick up the bicycle and proceed to smash it over the faces of the goons who have clearly chosen the wrong man to pick on. When they've all gone down, I grab the last man standing by the collar and smash his face into the nearest wall. The punks give me 5,000 yen for bothering me and I proceed to go about my business of trying to avert a full-scale war between two rival gangs.
This kind of ridiculous scenario typifies Yakuza 2 pretty well. The entire premise of the game is just realistic enough to not feel totally Metal Gear Solid-like crazy, but when you dissect the game's finer points, it's obviously a very embellished version of reality. There is a man who apparently has cameras scattered across the entire city, even in peoples' homes. But the very Japanese-y high drama approach suits the game's pretty serious story very well. It's basically a soap opera centered around the Japanese mafia. It's also a pretty good story, and a lot of work clearly went into writing and realizing it, as the (Japanese) voice acting and motion capturing makes for some very cinematic cut scenes. It's easy to become engrossed in Kazuma Kiryu's world, and the story will probably be the biggest impetus for you to keep playing during the parts where the game drags a little.
Yakuza 2 has a habit of dumping you in the city without giving you any sort of objective, which essentially means walking around town until you trigger a scripted event which allows you to progress the story. This happens just about once per chapter, and as the game is comprised of 16 chapters, it really slows the pace of the game down. Eventually I just resorted to consulting a walkthrough whenever this occurred, as there is little fun in wandering around hoping to run into whatever the game wants you to find.
The city itself, however, is one of the game's highlights. Though held back by aging PS2 hardware, which is clearly having a hard time coping with the scope of the game, the city still manages to impress. There are loads of people wandering the streets, and all the buildings look unique. There are also plenty of optional things to do in the city, from visiting the local Club SEGA to playing a male host in Japan's famous host bars. It makes me very excited to see what the team will be able to do with the Playstation 3 hardware.
When it comes to fighting, which it frequently will, the game boasts a simple but satisfying combat system. There's a fast and a heavy attack button, which you can use to string together basic combos by hitting fast anywhere from one to four times followed by the heavy attack, resulting in a different finish depending on the number of attacks. There's also a grab button for basic throw or picking up weapons. It's pretty shallow stuff, but it gets exciting when Kazuma enters HEAT mode. This happens when you fill up the HEAT meter by hitting bad guys and not getting hit. When in HEAT mode, you can execute special moves with weapons or the environment, all of which have very painful effects for the recipient. Whenever you're near a surface that allows for HEAT moves you can grab someone and press triangle to execute a context-sensitive move, like smashing someone's face against a wall or throwing them off a bridge. When holding a weapon you can just press the triangle near a bad guy and watch Kazuma go to town on him in various ways depending on the weapon equipped. You'll obviously want to be in HEAT mode as much as possible. Combat is simple but satisfying, and frustration is kept to a minimum as there is a generous supply of health items scattered around the combat-intensive parts of the game, and when you fail a boss battle several times the game offers to lower the difficulty to easy temporarily, solely for the fight. The camera will occasionally trip up in tight spaces, but it's usually easy enough to center behind Kazuma.
The good story and satisfying combat make up for the game's somewhat repetitive nature and haphazard pacing. And as it's half the price of a new release on the current generation of consoles, it's the perfect excuse to bust out the good old PS2 one last time.
