Yakuza 2

Yakuza 2 is as direct a sequel you can make to a video game. There are a few alterations and additions, but you spend over half the game in the same area you spent the first, the combat system is roughly the same, the graphics are mildly improved at best, and the story spends a lot of time dealing with the consequences of the first game. It still shares a lot of the same flaws as before, like a failure to gracefully increase the difficulty as it goes on and several small, odd hiccups in the presentation. If I was a jackass, I might call it Yakuza 1.5.

Not that any of this makes it a bad game. Just like the first I liked it enough to mostly forgive its idiosyncrasies, and would rate it as pretty good, if not great. Despite the previously mentioned reliance on the first game for a lot of the plot hooks, I actually preferred this story to the first, as it feels more like an epic crime drama and some of the character relationships feel a bit stronger. The first game was mostly a revenge story, and that's here too, but things are more complicated as they involve several warring factions and a specific deadly incident a quarter century earlier in the timeline. By the end the constant twists on who's REALLY behind everything start to feel half baked and the last scene before the credits would have been a terrible way to go out, but the scene afterward wrapped it all up enough for me to come away satisfied. Instead of rerecording the dialogue in English this time they saved on the localization by subtitling it, which I mostly preferred even if it hurt the sales. Unlike in film, I tend not to mind when a video game from overseas is dubbed in my own language, but in this case the entire project is just so inherently Japanese that I appreciate the authenticity.

As with last time, the game is a mix of beat-em-up combat with an RPG's leveling, money and item system, and plethora of side activities. You move through the story chapter by chapter, in this case in sections of both Tokyo and Osaka, beating up random thugs who accost you on the street until you can beat up other thugs to advance the plot. Although I didn't spend a lot of time on this one intentionally seeking out other missions, they're still there, as you can do anything from playing traditional board games for money to helping random passersby to trying to win over the hostesses at various clubs. You can even become a host yourself, although I ended up ignoring that when the game threw it at me because I just wanted to finish. The combat gets annoying quickly when they try to make it difficult, because it always seems like they're breaking the established rules to do so and the controls just aren't good enough to compensate for some of the crap they throw at you. I never got into an unwinnable situation, and thankfully the game gives you the option to temporarily turn down the difficulty if you're getting your ass kicked, though I didn't have to do that until the very end when I just ran out of health items. Despite occasional frustration with certain enemy types, it's generally fun to just beat the crap out of people in this game, and there's enough opportunity to learn new techniques that it doesn't get boring over the 15 hours it takes to beat. There have already been two more games in the series released in Japan, both for the PS3, and there's a strong amount of doubt on whether they'll ever make it over here. I hope they do, because while the first two games weren't exceptional, I did have fun with them.