So I've played about 20 hours of Kiwami so far, enough to get about halfway up each skill tree and unlock a good chunk of the Dragon of Dojima style as well (which is a whole other topic I also have opinions on).

I'm not sure I'm feeling the Climax heat actions during boss fights, though. In Yakuza 0, most boss fights had an interlude QTE or an ending one that really punctuated the action. Kiwami seems to set it up, through the prison fight scene, as needing Heat to do those end-of-fight actions, though that's not the case. Sometimes a boss or miniboss will just enter a regenerative state, and then you need to hope to have enough Heat to pull the move off or try and frantically wail on them until you do. The game isn't very clear on this, so if you're just getting into it: it's a skill on the skill tree. You need to purchase it, so do that before the first major boss battle, I would've loved to have it then.

This has led to me not really using Heat actions during boss fights, which sucks, because Heat actions do a ton of damage if you keep them varied. And that's another issue: if a boss enters their vulnerable state more than once, the Climax Heat action just barely breaks even. Since repeating Heat actions reduces their damage for the duration of a fight, and each boss is only vulnerable to one stance, this can lead to the same action appearing two or three times and it just stops being effective.

The worst case of this was during the first zombie Majima fight (and I know there's more to come) which has you running from place to place and fighting Majima three(?) times, each time with a renewed health bar. His Climax Heat action ended up appearing eight or nine times for me and by the end, it was more effective to just bust out a knife or other weapon and wail on him until a new Heat action was available, rather than repeat the intended one.

This wouldn't be so bad, but since they also regenerate health while they're vulnerable, it can drag some battles out for a pretty long time. It feels like the Climax Heat mechanic should have just been an if-you-feel-like-spectacle sort of thing where the end of the fight just had them down for a few seconds. Having them interspersed throughout the fight wears down their usefulness just by virtue of how Heat actions work in the game, and it feels like it discourages using the abilities you're working so hard to get. I wanna snap legs and crunch fists and put people's heads in car doors, not peck away at them with Rush or Brawler until they decide to take a knee.

Also an aside: the actions themselves just aren't that great. They're pretty cool the first time but even the basic face-kick or 1-2 gut punch Heat moves feel more brutal, especially after seeing them all so many times.

If it's a Rush action I'll save for it every time cause it's the best one in the game.

Otherwise I have generally found that it takes so little heat to use the climax actions that I can use it pretty judiciously and still be able to belt one out when they go into the regen state.

Definitely annoyed at how shitty they tutorialized it though. Save tutorials for AFTER an abilitease!

@efesell: rush is definitely the best one. It's crazy and over the top, whereas the others are very tame even compared to normal heat actions.

Since Kiwami was made on a smaller budget I would guess the climax heat actions were their way have something similar the QTEs during boss battles they usually have without having to create a bunch of new animations. I agree with you though that I found it to be a pretty poor system. The health regen just makes it really frustrating and lame. Especially during some late game boss fights. It didn`t end up bothering me too much though and I do think that in general Kiwami is a lot of fun to play.

Yeah, it is fun at first but becomes a chore afterwards, especially since bosses regain health so quickly when you are switching between styles. I'm really interested in how Kiwami 2 approach the combat, from what I gathered is that Yakuza 6 somewhat reduced (and simplified?) the HEAT actions, but since it's the first Dragon Engine game, they were probably still experimenting with the engine.

That sounds like a shame. I haven't reached the first major boss yet (or if I have, the regenerating health was more of a slight annoyance than anything), but when I learned that the in-fight QTEs were intended to be triggered by ME doing a move, that sounded really cool. I liked the idea of needing heat to use it because it felt like I would have to earn my cool finish. Of course, I was assuming that the finishing heat action would be that: a FINISHER. I guess that is kind of lame if I'm just going to be using it two, three or more times a fight.

But since I really like playing Kiwami (and have no problems as yet with the Majima Anywhere/Dragon style setup), I think I'll be able to forgive it. Still, even if they just recycled old in-fight QTE animations in this game to achieve the same effect (I remember some of Akiyama's and Kiryu's from Yak4 being real effing good), I feel like that would be better than using "punch boss a lot" heat move over and over. Ah, well. I still love this game.

I always end up using Tauriners to get enough heat to interrupt their regen state, it's always inconvenient timing with me doing a heat action just before or something. It is kinda annoying.

They really dropped the ball with the combat this time. I'm powering through because of the story but I'm starting to feel like Dan was with 0 (oh dear...)

I don't mind the Brawler/Rush/Beast styles but I was done with them after 0, would have much preferred just levelling up Dragon of Dojima style with XP. Instead I have to grind out the repetitive Majima fights and the Coliseum just so it's useful for when I will presumably have about 25% of the game left? Screw that.

I guess Dragon style being a real slow burn hasn't bothered me much yet cause I've played probably hundreds of hours of that style so I can hang with the 0 trio a bit longer.

@efesell: Since you've played so much of the other games (I take it, anyway), when does the Dragon style stop sucking? I'm rank C in Majima Everywhere and I've learned three abilities from the master in Purgatory, but so far it seems like the worst of all three styles combined (for reference, I'm 14-ish points into Dragon). It's weaker than Beast, slower than Brawler, and less maneuverable than Rush and easily the least effective means of dealing damage in any style. I'm just not seeing any reason to use it, aside from that sweet-ass dropkick. It feels like Brawler is the natural progression when developing the fighting system, whereas Dragon seems like fanservice more than anything.

Honestly I'm still totally okay with using the styles from 0, since they're all really fun and have specific uses. Dragon seems like a jack of all trades, master of none scenario so far.

Near the end of the progression when you have all the speed and damage upgrades it get pretty useful, but not necessarily more useful than the other styles in general. For most of the game though the other styles will probably be stronger. The Komaki Tiger Drop (as in all the games) though is easily the most powerful move in the game and can just chew through enemy health bars. It`s really useful in some of the later boss fights (especially the high level Majima Everywhere fights). The Dragon Style never really becomes quite as strong as it is in the later games though, but I think that`s kinda OK because otherwise you would have no reason to ever use the other styles.

The reason Brawler feels similar to Dragon style is because it`s supposed to be an unrefined version of Dragon style. The fighting style young Kiryu used. While Dragon style is very weak at first, when it`s fully upgraded I think it`s better than Brawler.

Kiryus fighting style in the rest of the games eventually morphs into a series of savage counterattacks or ridiculous AoE Heat moves.

If you get good at the tiger drop nothing can stand before you, throughout the entire series. For just general beating up on dudes though yeah it feels like any of the three styles in this game is a better fit.

It also doesn't seem to combo into as many finishers as later versions unless I've looked past them in the tree.

@odinsmana: I remember that tidbit somewhere else, though I can't say if it came from Yakuza 0 or just some info on the internet. It just seems strange, though, that Brawler seems so much more fluid and reactive than the Dragon of Dojima style. I haven't gotten into the later moves, so I'm missing the more powerful stuff obviously, but when it comes to just beating up on dudes it's way too stiff and unwieldy to get anything done. I can see the idea of it being more disciplined and therefore a little more rigid, but I'd expect a fighting style that comes chronologically after Brawler would be more adaptable to the situation at hand. Obviously there's no way the devs could have planned for this years and years ago, and making Brawler purposefully inferior would just be not very fun, but it leaves something to be desired with the Dragon style is all.

I think the charged finishers are enough to at least make me choose it over brawler, but the rush dodge is so good that I almost always default to just doing that.

e: After finally being able to reference the whole tree it does look like it learns most of moves from later games so I can't imagine I would use anything else IF I had all this maxed out. Now whether that's sensible or not is another matter.

Thank you for explaining this. The tutorial for this stuff is abysmal.

I've had a miserable time with the two boss fights I've done so far. I think I just need to do a bunch of side stuff and level up a lot before the next boss encounter, but in particular my not being able to interrupt their health regeneration was really getting on my wick.

@xenocrat: That first one at the Tojo clan headquarters was beyond rough. Not particularly difficult but tedious as all hell. The Mr. Shakedown fighting style is my least favourite thing because the hitboxes are so fucked up and there's not a lot of openings to get hits in, and they tend to just slap that style on to any "big" character you have to fight. Especially so early on, when your health and Heat are both pretty low and no damage upgrades have been unlocked, the health regeneration paired with the poor tutorials can be extremely frustrating.

I spent about 5 hours grinding out sidestories and XP, and thankfully the Majima sidequests are great at giving you tons of Xp for a relatively small amount of effort. Just remember to keep either Tauriner or Staminan on you once you've unlocked the Climax heat actions and you'll be golden. it's not a big deal but it is so, so poorly-explained at the top.

I'm not mixed on it, it's a terrible mechanic. It'd maybe be fine it it only happened once per fight, or only on a few select bosses but it's every single one and sometimes a boss can do it multiple times per fight. It just makes the fights drag on needlessly especially since it does less damage each time you use it in the same fight.

I usually just pop a heat restoring medicine, switch to the appropriate style and immediately use it. It stops regeneration and later on it will take some off too. That said, yeah they are kinda underwhelming especially as far as yakuza games go, as are quite a few things about this game. But this is a budget title and a remake so I feel I can only rip it so far, it's still good fun though I think it is a bit of a tough sell for newcomers to the series who are just coming off of Y0.

I love the story and set pieces of this game but it definitely doesn't feel on the level of 0 and is probably one of the weaker ones, at least to me.

It is so incredibly unsatisfying to pull off one of these finisher actions only to have the boss survive with a small chunk of HP. I'd prefer a scripted QTE to end it.

@mudkatt: The biggest issue with the tauriner+stance change is that the boss's health still restores the the full rate even when time slows down. If you have the Quick Change Quickstep ability unlocked it isn't so bad, but I've bungled that button press before and had a health bar go from 3/4 full to being 1&1/2 full, and then having the second Climax action put their health back in exactly the same spot. I really, really hope they patch it somehow soon, either to remove the health regen or only have the stance become active when triggering it will end the fight.

I just keep wailing on them to regain heat, they never seem to regen faster than I'm punching it away.

@the_nubster: i hear you, though I doubt it since it has been out for a while in Japan. The good news is if you get the tiger drop skill from Komaki it will no longer matter, lol.

There are some pretty frustrating things about the combat and mini games that have become even more evident as I've gone on, though I still enjoy the game. Weapons seem almost useless. Pocket circuit is such bullshit man.....I also don't like that if you put good effort into the majima everywhere stuff then you end up with excess exp pretty quickly. I would have preferred they just let me dump points into stats forever like 0.

By the time I beat the game (40ish hours and 95% substories) I had 4000+ levels built up after maxing out the 3 main skill trees and an A or S rank of Majima everywhere. Basically if you miss any boss deaths with a kiwami/extreme heat move just go back to grinding Majima battles if you feel you need the exp for upgrades. Dragon feels slow, it may get better with the speed boost at rank A I think? I definitely used rush in this game far more than 0. MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA

@odinsmana: It definitely shows. The amount of fetch quests just makes it feel padded. Helping the dog especially.

The main thing that bothers me is that it happens _twice_ per major fight. That makes it unnecessarily repetitive, as its the same move both times.

Once I got to about 30 DoD upgrades, I found myself switching from Brawler default to Dragon default. The later dodge rolls you get are useful (so even though it's slower than Brawler marginally, you can get out of a bad spot and regroup much more easily), and there's a charged kick combo (square x4 then hold triangle IIRC) that does a nice amount of damage (less than Beast still, but far more reliable as you don't have the long windups). It feels like a natural culmination of the three styles (basic move set from Brawler + some of the movement abilities of Rush + damage potential of Beast), and it's nice to have all of those facets merging (vs. in 0 if you need Rush you do far less damage, for instance).

It's not well explained in the game, but weight matters _a lot_. I found that, e.g., losing the side stabiliser but going for a rubber frame made my car a hell of a lot faster (going from losing to lapping an opponent), despite the stats (other than weight) and descriptions making it sound like you'd lose out massively on corning speed. Once I started optimising for weight (and realised that Heavy Suspension is basically a cheat engine for any course with hills/ramps/jumps), I didn't have too much of an issue going forward.

FWIW, the rest of the Zombie Majima fights are far more straight-forward - it's just Majima, in a single location, and he has much less health than in his other incantations. I've maxed out the Majima/Dragon skill tree, and that was definitely the longest fight sequence for me.

@stordoff: I just stomped through to the end of the game this evening. I got up to Rank B with Majima everywhere, and while I did see that on the Dragon skill tree there were some more useful moves like increased speed and better quicksteps, the end of the game was so close that I just sprinted towards it. The game is recycled enough from Yakuza 0 that I wasn't getting the same joy out of simply existing in that world and grinding like I did with the businesses in Y0, and the Majima fights were becoming so frequent and he had so much health that I was getting tired of doing the same thing over and over.

Also, it's always Slugger Majima. Always, oh my god. Or sometimes zombie Majima, which is just straightforward Majima like you said. I liked the idea of Majima everywhere, but like in Y0 with Mr. Shakedown, the fights eventually just become drawn-out slugfests because of the increasingly ridiculous health bar and the added wrinkle of the Climax actions. I'm glad to have seen the story, but at about 25 hours, I was pretty done with it.

I definitely wish I had ignored expanding the heat gauge as much as I could and instead focused on the climax heat gauge but that might not be possible to do if you want to get to climax 2+ or something.