Yakuza thread

It's been nearly a week, what do the japs think of Kiwami 2?

Hopefully someone will upload the whole soundtrack soon, I'm dying to hear the north menace remix

I can't imagine how it would be bad, all they need to do is follow the formula they used on 0 and Kiwami 1. Hopefully SEGA puts out a release date soon for North America. I'm getting 6 despite only having played 0 and Kiwami and would really like Kiwami 2 to come out sooner than later.

Kiwami 2 is pretty bad user, it has worse cuts than Yakuza 3 had in the west.

Literally half of the OST is removed, including all the memorable licensed music (Crazy Ken Band for example, so Kaworu's scenes and Kiryu getting stabbed are completely soulless now).
The entire last act of the game is completely cut, as in the third district/city. It's cut in its entirety.
What was critical to main story from it was moved to Sotenbori, while non-critical stuff is simply gone.
Roughly 20-25% of the sidequests are completely removed.
Minigames and side activies are copypasted from 0 and 6 with barely any changes, mostly straight up copypasted (like Karaoke, down to same images flashing in the background and everything).
Memejima's story is literally around 4 hours long, most of which is only cutscenes. Factually tested by skipping cutscenes with a timer on, you can do entirety of Majima's gameplay sections (all of them combined) in roughly 20 to 30 minutes depending on how good you are.
A LOT of minor animations that added flavour are straight up removed (such as Ryuji's sword spinning) due to animators being too lazy to recreate them (and they didn't want to just copypaste PS2 animations this time since they got a lot of shit for that with Kiwami 1).

It's pretty fucking bad, I'd never recommend this to anyone as their first Yakuza 2 experience.
Kiwami 1 was objective improvement over the original since Y1 didn't have any licensed music to begin with, nor did the remake remove anything (only added).
But this "remake" not only removes a ton of shit, it also changes mood of many scenes and whatnot.
It's just fucking insulting. Yes I am salty because Yakuza series wasn't like this before this new "Dragon Engine". Note how the only badly affected games are Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2, both that JUST SO HAPPEN to be on this new fucking "Dragon Engine".
The engine is clearly a problem, the devs can't work with it well and on time to shit got cut in both Y6 and Kiwami 2.

Outrageous if true, and here I was hoping it would only get better since they had two games now to get used to their new engine

Well thats a bummer.

>Kiwami 1 was objective improvement over the original since Y1
no it isn't

Well, you're right if you're going to say Kiwami 1 fucked up with music remixes, that's the only thing that wasn't straight up improvement. Everything else is though.

Legit is true, you can even check the playthrough of the game on youtube (already some people uploaded it) and you can see that Shinseicho (the game's third district where the last act takes place) is gone, among other things. Some of the removed music is substituted by new music mind you, but the new music isn't anywhere near as good, and not all of the cut music has substitutes.
Scenes are still ruined by animation cuts, music changes and overall mood shifts, it's just a very unfaithful and lazy/rushed remake.
I blame SEGA and their 1 year dev cycle for the series, the devs can't do it in 1 year dev time on the new engine and it's blatantly obvious from both Y6 and Kiwami 2 suffering from the same issues.

Here's hoping the Hokuto no Ken game will be good since it's using the older Y5/Y0 Engine.

>Everything else is though.
>reused bossfights are an improvement
>making a lot of sections more obnoxious is an improvement
>adding the dumbass majima everywhere system is an improvement

It's new content, even if reused from 0, it's still better than Y1's original wooden everything and it's still new content that original Y1 didn't have.
You're an idiot that clearly never played Y1, judging Kiwami 1 from the perspective of Y0 rather than from perspective of Y1.
Is Kiwami 1 better than 0? No.
Is Kiwami 1 better than Y1? Objectively, factually yes.
Also when PS4 inevitably gets hacked, the music "issue" will also be solved by mods, since there are people already waiting to replace the remixed with original Y1 music.
And by people I mean me, I already have the files ready and waiting, tested on PS3 version of Kiwami.

>It's new content, even if reused from 0, it's still better than Y1's original wooden everything and it's still new content that original Y1 didn't have.
it's not new content if it's reused from 0. you were giving kiwami 2 shit for this but now you're giving kiwami a pass?
>You're an idiot that clearly never played Y1, judging Kiwami 1 from the perspective of Y0 rather than from perspective of Y1.
i have played 1 you idiot. why the fuck would i point out these things if i never.
>Is Kiwami 1 better than Y1? Objectively, factually yes.
it's not worse, but it's certainly not better.

Yakuza 2's soundtrack was my favorite of the whole series and I was looking forward to hearing them again, even if they wubbed it up, so I'm kind of disappointed to hear that

The third district is kind of a loss as well, I liked the fight in the mahjong den and small riddle leading up to it.

It's NEW compared to Y1 you fucking imbecile, why the fuck do you keep comparing shit to 0 even though I explicitly said I'm comparing it to the original exclusively. Whether or not the good content is good or not is irrelevant, the point is that it's new content you fucking imbecile.
I'm giving Kiwami 2 shit for REMOVING CONTENT THAT WAS IN THE ORIGINAL FUCKING GAME, ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED OR JUST BRAIN DAMAGED AND CAN'T FUCKING READ? I also called out the fucking Memejima content for what it is, lazy garbage shit. Is it new? Yeah, and that would be fine if it was new content that didn't come at the price of REMOVING CONTENT FROM THE ORIGINAL FUCKING GAME. But what you get is glorified 4 hours long movie that had time devoted to it, time that could be used to have content from original Y2, CONTENT THAT THEY CUT.
Fuck you I'm mad at how dumb you are.

imagine typing this and thinking you have any sort of high ground

are you fucking stupid?
you're the one who keeps comparing this shit to 0, not me.
i'm aware that you're complaining about content they cut, but you're also complaining about how they rehashed minigames from other games while kiwami fucking does this shit too.
kiwami also adds the dumb fucking majima everywhere system which is objectively worse than an optional side campaign since it fucks with the tone of some sections of the story, but you still say kiwami 1 is an in improvement over the original?
get tae fuck.

Because Memejima Everywhere is literally optional. You're not forced to do it to finish the main story.

well they never said that Majima's campaign is going to be as long as the main game

I'm going to ask the same question that is probably asked every thread.

I'm new to the series, should I play 0 or 1 first? Thanks.

That's not really the point.

it's mostly optional but it's intrusive, and still fucks with the story.
>majima makes you fight him just after you get out of prison then
>majima will still constantly roam the streets after the batting cage fight where he just got fucking stabbed .
>they had to make a new justification for majima wearing a bandage during the second fight since he appears all over the place, so they just throw you in a dumb coop section with him at the harbour where he gets shot.
the system itself is just super shitty, and tedious. some of the appearances are comedic which is alright, but it still fucks with the story regardless.

Start with 1, preferably the original so you can experience the evolution of the series as intended.
Zero has MGS3-style "callbacks" to what comes after it, much like MGS3 despite being a prequel basically expected you to know MGS1 and MGS2.

start with 1 since 0 actually does reference the other games in the series. it's also fun to see how they improve the gameplay and other content with each entry.

I agree it could be done better but honestly it doesn't fuck with the story unless you're unlucky enough to run into comedic Majima fight in the middle of a serious story segment but that is entirely on the player since you can avoid him, just need to look around on the streets.

What is your point then?

The point is that they wasted resources making a 4 hours long glorified movie instead of remaking the content from the original game, content that they cut. It doesn't help that this glorified movie is also pretty bad and doesn't fill in the void left by cut content at all.

I would say start with 0 because it just makes 1's story better by playing 0 first.