Hey guys ! i just finished Yakuza 2.
First of all let me say it's fucking awesome.
Second, let me start by telling you what kinda game it is.
Imagine taking Metal gear solid 4 + Final fantasy X + A brawler (urban reign type) + Grand theft auto.
Now, how exacly do all these games come together ?
Well you take, Story telling and cutscene type (sometimes lengthy, but it's nowhere as extreme as mgs4) from mgs4. You take random encounters from FFX along with the typical experience in RPGS (You choose new skills and abilities when you level up) Exploration from GTA (although not as extreme) and the fighting from a really really good brawler.
That is Yakuza 2. Now i haven't played the first Yakuza but there was a recap telling me everything that had happened. I'm still plotting to go grab it though. Would be cool to be able to play through the game because there are so many elements i'm sure you won't see in the recap.
Your main char is a dude who left his clan a year ago due to a series of events. (yakuza 1) In the beginning of this game you return because of 1. Wanting to set things right and 2. A bunch of crasy stuff happens that mostly forces you to return. I won't go into the plot more than that, as you'll find out about it as you play, or you can ask me for more detail.
So, Down to the good the bad and the ugly.
Story:
Epic story telling. It equals metal gear solid on many levels. By that i really mean many. For instance there is a chapter called "The Snake Yakuza Eater" and the font bears a striking resemblense aswell. I thought it kind of funny, but it's not bad in any way. The game is told through cutscenes that are all with ingame assets keeping you immersed as you never break out of how everything looks. The story also progresses and every time you think 1 thing will happen, something else does. I thought it was about to end when i aparently was less than half way through. The only thing i can set a finger on is that the story felt a little slow at times but that would be nitpicking.
Grade : A
Gameplay:
The gameplay is fleshed out, with elements of exploration, brawling with weapons and an ability to use the envirement in your fights, along with minigames such as bowling and going to night clubs and other things. The gameplay is broken down in 3 "seperate" gamestyles.
The first way gamestyle, is when you are out on the streets (not fighting) .. I call this the RPG element. It's basically the same control sheme as playing FFX. You run around, talk to people, enter/exit areas and so on. You can't interact with much of the envirement, except for picking up things on the ground. (such as keys, not tables or anything)
The second gamestyle is the brawling. When you go into battles, the screen will fade out and the game will load. It'll then fade in in "battle mode" as i'd like to call it. In this mode, you are (often) limited to where you can go, although you never need to leave the area so it's a none issue. Here you are also able to use weapons (you can add 3 items and a weapon to your char and the game pauses when doing so) or anything else that looks like you might be able to pick it up. This goes from bottles to chairs, tables and small street signs. It does break immersion a little when it enters/exits battle, but it's not bad. (on a sidenote it doesn't do this in yakuza 3 :P can't wait) When meeting a random encounter, fortunately it's someone on the screen who you can actually outrun, but if they catch up you'll hear some lame line and then it's fighting time. :p
The third gamestyle is the minigames. These all functions differently but from what i've played (bowling) they are actually entertaining. I never found minigames in GTA fun, but atleast the bowling i played in this game had me come back for more :P there were a lot of options such as spinning the ball that you don't often see put into a minigame. It's obvious they took a long time to detail it.
A final note in this area is all the side missions that really makes it worth it. It has a ton of side missions. I thought i'd completed a lot but it turned out that i'd only finished 10 percent of them.
Grade: A
Visual:
Visually the game looked like it should. Like Tokyo. I've read another place that the game is as close as you get to actually seeing Tokyo without having been there. Animations were decent for a ps2 game but felt a little stiff in some places. (your walk animation looked a little weird too XD) Cutscenes were very well presented at all times, life felt vibrant and immersive. It took me about 6 hours before i noticed that even though there were parked vehicles, no vehicles were actually moving within the areas you can explore. There were a whole lot of things going on at all times, many people, good coallition when you ran into them etc. For a ps2 game it looks very good :)
Grade: A-
Audio:
Voice acting is Superb ! The japanese voice actors are great and i'm glad i'm not forced into playing a dubbed game (hates dubbed things) The audio did have some annoying elements though. One being the ambience. Although good and immersive there were a lot of Obvious loops that would loop in a area each 2-5 second which got really annoying at some point. Another thing is that music at times were very obvious when appearing (without a reason too) however, i won't complain too much about the last thing because once you got used to it, it was actually a nice thing. When music were there it were at most times fitting.
Grade: B+
Summery:
When grading this i was wondering about the good and bad things about the game, i came to the conclusion that the game is very well made and it's a shame i never picked up the first title, (i might do it when i see it in the store now though) because what we have is a underrated genre breaking game and i'd like to give it the overall rating:
Completely Awesome !
Thank you for reading :) Hope you found my review informative! Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions:P
Check out my game about moles ^
and Wii 
