Yakuza / YMMV - TV Tropes

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The Original Game

Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Burning Grand Prix's stipulation of making anyone who touches the ring's walls suffer an explosion is a clear nod to the 'explosive barbed wire deathmatches' made famous by FMW.
Angst? What Angst?: Haruka is barely shocked when she learns of the possibility of her mother being dead. She also goes through a ton of stuff that would leave anyone else traumatized for life relatively unaffected.
Bragging Rights Reward:
- Completing all missions in the Battle Record with S-Ranks rewards the player with the "Master of Fighting" option for the main campaign, allowing Kiryu to use HEAT actions without having to fill the bar. Considering the time and effort one would put into doing this, a better reward is expected.
Breather Boss: Nishiki is no pushover, but most fans agree that he's much easier than the fight against Jingu immediately beforehand.
Broken Base: The English voice acting for the first game, despite having an All-Star Cast, wasn't at all well received and was quickly dropped from the sequel onward^notealthough it was more likely due to budget and time constraints instead of Pandering to the Base. Judgment, being a spinoff, also features english dubbing, which it is even better. While this move was praised by many fans who expressed the English dub took away from the intended Japanese feel of the game, there are fans who enjoyed the English voiceovers and want to be able to play the games with spoken English dialogue again, or at least hear Mark Hamill voice Goro Majima again.
- Judgment was released with both English and Japanese voice acting, and was well received enough for Yakuza: Like a Dragon to receive the same treatment. Many English voice actors from the first game returned to reprise their characters, although Matthew Mercer ended up taking on the Goro Majima role. Interestingly Mercer does provide the voice for Luke Skywalker in at least one other game.
Catharsis Factor: Retroactively speaking. If you've played Yakuza 0 (and to a lesser extent, Yakuza 4) before this or Kiwami, then it's definitely quite satisfying to put Shimano down for all the things he put Majima and Makoto through in 0. Kiwami would fuel this further by having Majima's weapon (the Demonfire Dagger) available for Kiryu to use after completing Majima Everywhere, allowing you to finish Shimano with the very weapon Majima's eye was gouged out with.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Latecomers to the franchise would be surprised that Goro Majima in the first game started off merely as a minor obstacle to Kiryu with no major significant role in the main story. But his Ax-Crazy personality that borders on Crazy Is Cool and Mark Hamill's performance in the divisive English dub were what made him so popular that he became a Breakout Character in the sequel onwards.
Game Mod: Yakuza Restored is often recommended to people interested in playing the original game instead of the remake. It modifies the game to be more faithful to the Japanese version and switches over to the original Japanese voice over instead of the So Bad, It's Good English dub. Some examples include re-translating the script to be more accurate, restoring the original character names^note, consistent use of honorifics, toning down the gratuitous profanity, and fixing typos and dialogue bugs that were present in the original version. The creator claims that 50% of the game's 20K lines were modified in some way.
Goddamned Bats: The generic "boxer" type enemies that can be identified by their short, slender builds and the way their idle stance has them guard their faces and bounce on their feet. They may have low health, but they're skilled enough to dodge Kiryu's attack, and their attacks are quick, unpredictable, and tend to have invincibility frames making them a pain to deal with. This sort of enemy continues to appear in later games, but they're no longer invincible when attacking and are overall easier to deal with.
Good Bad Bugs: Finishing the last enemy in a group with a HEAT action ends the round before the HEAT bar gets drained, meaning you could get an extra HEAT action. Since HEAT was slightly harder to build up and drained more quickly in the early games, this was particularly welcome.
Ham and Cheese: Though the script is rough and there are issues with the direction, Mark Hamill as Goro Majima really did the best he could with the role, and is considered a fun and over-the-top performance that stands out as probably the best overall performance in the games English cast.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The seedy soapland love hotel of Shangri-La tries to reject Kiryu and Haruka from entering because it's simply not a place for children to be, though Kiryu intimidates his way in regardless. Come Yakuza: Like a Dragon, we find out that around twenty-eight years prior to this game, Ichiban was raised in Shangri-La, slapping the place with a hilarious brand of Dramatic Irony that wouldn't become apparent for another fifteen years in both real life and in-universe.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- In her dying moments, Yumi tells Haruka to not run away, because her happiness will slip away. In 6, her running away is a major driving force of the game's plot, where her beloved father figure Kiryu chooses to disappear from her life by Faking the Dead after the game's events to protect her, though his reasons are not exactly connected to her running away.
- When Sega was promoting the All-Star Cast featured in the English dub through interviews with the voice actors, Michael Madsen expressed that he wanted his character Futoshi Shimano to return in the sequel in an important role, perhaps joking the game would be called "The Revenge of Shimano" considering the character is killed late in the game. Come Yakuza 2, Shimano indeed appears in a flashback segment, playing an important part of the plot, except with none of the English voice cast returning to reprise their roles.
Just Here for Godzilla: Most people who revisit this game admit that Mark Hamill's Majima was a highlight of the dub.
Memetic Mutation: Shares a page with the rest of the series here.
Moral Event Horizon: Kyohei Jingu crossed it when he orders the deaths of his own lover and daughter simply to protect his political career. And if that's not enough, he tries to do the deed himself.
Narm:
- The absurd amount of Cluster F-Bombs heard in the English dub of the first game, the flat acting and unusual pauses found throughout it.^note Even random encounters on the street aren't exempt from this, one infamous example being a guy suddenly cracking out a high-pitched and squeaky, "What the fuck?!"
  Hayashi: Go! Kill this arrogant mo.ther.fuc.ker!
- In the ending, when Nishiki sets off the bomb in the Millenium Tower, the next scene shows that Kazuma, Haruka and Yumi were somehow unaffected by the explosion while everything else around them is destroyed.
Narm Charm: Some supporters of the first game's English voice acting consider it this.
One-Scene Wonder:
- Punk-Ass Abe, the random street dweller who fights you on your way to Stardust near the start of the game, gets a disproportionate amount of love from fans in spite of his minuscule role and easy difficulty. Even Yakuza Restored, a popular fan-made patch that undoes many of the English dub's inventions, keeps Punk-Ass Abe intact.
- Hiroshi Hayashi, for a very minor Punch-Clock Villain, has a decent amount of appreciation for being one of the few antagonists in the game to be fully respectful for Kiryu, with the dub performance (arrogant mother. fucker.) certainly helping. His return in Yakuza 2 and especially Dead Souls in expanded roles were much appreciated.
The Scrappy: Jingu. While he's meant to be a Hate Sink, fans' reasons for disliking him go beyond his evil actions, namely that he's considered a weak villain compared to Nishiki and his boss fight is seen as one of the worst in the entire series.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- The series' first attempt at combat is a bit tough to return to if you're used to later entries, as even Yakuza 2 would make many significant quality of life improvements to it. For some of the details:
  - The big sticking point is the lack of a 'soft targeting' system; if you are not manually locked-on to a specific enemy, then your attacks will be based on Kiryu's current position without any regard to where nearby enemies are standing. This makes crowd-control and trying to switch between targets very difficult, and can easily lead to a lot of missed attacks. When players complain that the combat of the original Yakuza feels clunky in comparison to its sequels, this quirk is likely what they are referring to, subconsciously or not.
  - The positioning criteria for environment-based HEAT actions can be very awkward and overly-precise; trying to slam enemies against walls can feel random as to whether any specific part of the wall will work or not.
  - Your HEAT gauge drains rapidly in this game at a level that makes it frustrating to try and keep its benefits; just getting knocked down can put you in a position where your HEAT is likely gone by the time you've recovered. There also isn't any grace during the downtime in extended fights, meaning that after you finish one fight you may as well assume that you won't have any HEAT remaining by the time you've finished running to the next one.
  - For follow-up attacks after perfoming HEAT actions, for whatever reason the game will cancel the QTE prompt if you perform any input while the preceding cutscene is playing. Many players don't even realise the first game had follow-up attacks just because it is easy to never get a prompt for one.
- The Virtua Cop-esque car chase shooting sequence due to its controls and Panzer Dragoon-like camera system, which doesn't go as smoothly as one would think. It returned in 0 with a huge overhaul without the camera controls, and the mechanics would be reused in Kiwami.
- The inability to move items between your inventory and storage without visiting an Item Box. This inventory management system is let down by three major flaws: Your inventory in this game is tiny (a maximum of nine items and three weapons at any time), is taken up by both combat and non-combat items (if you want to equip items that will help you out with minigames or side-missions, that almost certainly means sacrificing a chunk of your healing items), and Item Boxes are extremely rare (within Kamurocho, you're effectively forced to run all the way to either Serena or Purgatory every time you want to swap something out). It would ultimately take until Yakuza 3 for this to be fully fixed, with a more permissive inventory size and Item Boxes now being a function of the plentiful Save Points.
- Several side-missions can become Permanently Missable Content if you don't complete them in the Chapter they appear in, a trait that would be fairly quickly phased out in later entries. Low points include "A Doctor's Duty" (the start point for this one is on the path of the main story, but it requires that you give a character a Bento before proceeding. If you decide to continue the story for now and get a Bento later, you have already missed your opportunity to do this side-mission), "The Price of an F-Cup" (not an example by itself, but it contains a very specific dialogue choice that turns out to be the only way of accessing a secret casino, which in-turn is a requirement for two later side-missions), and "The Boxing Gamble" (requires taking Haruka to Bantam at a specific moment, something the game doesn't prompt you into doing).
Padding: Chapter 6 could very easily be cut out of the story without changing much of anything. It basically boils down to Kiryu helping both The Florist and Date out with some family troubles that have no connection whatsoever to the main narrative.
Suspiciously Similar Song: The opening of "id", the song used for long battles, sounds remarkably similar to the opening of Rammstein's "Engel", with both songs opening with similar electronic notes before the guitar comes in. Kiwami gets a completely new song in its place.
So Bad, It's Good: The infamous English dub of the original game. Rife with gratuitous and forced profanity, Line readings that run the gamut from Dull Surprise to hilariously overzealous in the most malapropos of places, all seasoned by a generally pretty poorly mastered audio mix, replete with clipping and white noise, and it’s no wonder that, in a series that is often hailed for its supreme voice work, the terrible English dub is what the original game is most often remembered for.
That One Boss: Kyohei Jingu. He's not the real problem, it's the soldiers that accompany him that will do everything to keep you from touching him. They will occasionally shoot at you while you're distracted with one of them, making it hard for you to deal with them one at a time. Even if you take them out the first time, they'll shortly regain consciousness and fight you again at full health. Even if you try and target Jingu first, he'll run away from you and leave you open to his mooks all the while taking pot shots at you. Kiwami makes the fight even more difficult, which gives Jingu an explosive he can throw at Kiryu that can be hard to predict, and getting hit takes off a huge chunk of health.
- Similarly, Kazuto Arase. He wields dual handguns and dodges around the arena so incredibly fast he's nearly impossible to hit by the time he activates heat mode for the last stretch of the fight. In Kiwami this is compounded because he'll often go into healing mode right after draining your heat meter with a bullet so you can't use a Kiwami finisher on him.
That One Level:
- Many of the missions in the unlockable "Battle Record" count as this, with some requiring the player to fight as an underleveled Kiryu against late-game bosses along, low health or strict objectives. Of note are a no damage mission involving the car chase with Snake Flower Triad, a mission where Kiryu may only use parries, and missions where you cannot lose HEAT to name a few. S-ranking these missions can also be a challenge, requiring the player to defeat foes in quick amount of time and avoid incurring large amounts of damage.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: Or in this case, "Took the Bad Dub Seriously". Michael Rosenbaum's performance as Nishiki is often regarded as the one consistently decent performance throughout the entire dub (not counting Mark Hamill's gloriously hammy, yet somewhat inconsisent run as Majima), particularly his delivery during the scene where Nishiki executes two henchmen for killing Mizuki.
The Woobie:
- Yumi. She's shown to be a nice girl and is clearly in love with Kazuma, but her life is shattered when she's kidnapped, nearly raped by Dojima and gets a front row seat to his bloody murder courtesy of Nishiki. Traumatized, she loses her memory and runs away, but never manages to return to a normal life. She lives a life of constant danger once Haruka is born, and even has to hide her identity from her to protect her from Jingu. Although she finally does reunite with Kazuma and her daughter, she helplessly watches as two of her childhood friends beat the crap out of each other. Finally, she takes a bullet for Haruka and dies with a lot of regrets, but not before Kiryu tells her that he's always loved her.
- Haruka is one as well. Just imagine a little kid who's left alone in the streets, constantly hounded, kidnapped and threatened by criminals and killers while the people around her get murdered before her eyes. Then, she has to cope with the death of her mother, only to realise that her mother and aunt Yumi were the same person all along, meaning that she never truly knew her mother. And just before Haruka can be truly reunited with Yumi, her Jerkass of a father tries to kill her, only for her mother to take the bullet instead and die in front of her.

Yakuza Kiwami

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- In regards to what Shimano said in one of Nishiki's flashbacks, did Kazama intentionally give Nishikiyama family members who wouldn't respect him, such as Matsushige, or was that a genuine blunder on his part? If the former, was it so Nishiki could earn their respect and grow as a leader? To make sure Nishiki's family wouldn't surpass his? Or was it poorly thought-out Batman Gambit that would ensure that once Kiryu was released from jail he would quickly take power from Nishiki due to the member's greater respect for him?
- Now that the details of his Face–Heel Turn have been revealed, Akira Nishikiyama's Heroic Sacrifice becomes a possible subversion, with him potentially crossing another Despair Event Horizon yet again. Already dying and having realized that literally everyone around him abused and manipulated him, after years of Kick the Dog incidents from his own men and father figures, after burning every single bridge he had with his past friends, and realizing that even his delusional ambitions of reaching the top of the Tojo clan may have also been fabricated and egged on by others, he kills Jingu and detonates the bomb just to have one real moment of control over his life. This is evident as he pretty much doesn't care that Kiryu, Haruka and even Yumi are pretty damn close to the blast radius.
Author's Saving Throw: A meta example. Amid concerns that the remake was merely a Mission-Pack Sequel to Yakuza 0 with considerably less content (one playable character and one city to explore for starters), the overseas release of the game launched at $29.99/£29.99/€34.99, half of what new PS4 titles are usually priced at upon release. The game sold well enough to become a "Playstation Hits" title.
Broken Base:
- The use of recycled elements, such as the bosses having their moves taken from previous bosses in the series. Some fans are disappointed to see them not have completely unique movesets of their own, while others argue it's not the first game in the series to do this, and don't seem to take much issue with it.
- The game's soundtrack compared to the 2005 original. Some fans have been vocal in their disappointment in it considering what they're used to in the series, finding the first game's music replaced mostly with generic and forgettable techno remixes with none of the flair of the originals. But others enjoy the soundtrack and the new tunes added to the game (including remixes from other games), and everyone seems to agree that Kiwami's version of the final boss song is outstanding, if not a modern rendition that the rest of the soundtrack should have followed.
- Majima's expanded role with the "Majima Everywhere" system. Some fans can't get enough of the Mad Dog now that he's back to his crazy antics, and find that facing him keeps the remake from going stale now that Kiryu is the sole playable character again. Others think his encounters could have been toned down, his characterization here conflicts with his scenes in the main story, and his many encounters weakens the impact of his story boss fights, both from a story and gameplay perspective.
- Nishiki's story detailing his Start of Darkness. Some found the beginnings of his Face–Heel Turn to be both interesting and tragic, while some others found him to be the Yakuza equivalent of Anakin Skywalker, and not in a good way.
- Due to the combat system being recycled from Yakuza 0, the attempts to make veteran players have criticized the combat challenging as being unbalanced with Fake Difficulty, as enemies are far more aggressive, evasive, and do more damage. But those who felt 0 was too easy found themselves appreciating the increase in difficulty and justified in-story by Kiryu's imprisonment.
Cry for the Devil: Nishiki had become a cutthroat Yakuza who was willing to have his own adopted father murdered, as well as being responsible for the deaths of Reina and Shinji. But Kiwami expands on his story through flashbacks of his life while Kiryu was in prison, only further aided by his role in Yakuza 0. He constantly gets berated by his superiors for a position he clearly was ill-prepared for, mocked by his own men who treat him like dirt, and all of them comment how he would never live up to Kiryu's legacy. To make matters worse, his sister needed expensive surgery to survive and to get the money Nishiki had to grovel in front of his own Jerkass men. Then tragic circumstances caused his sister to die regardless because the doctor was lying to him the whole time and bailed on him once he got the money he wanted, meaning that all his efforts, from swallowing his pride to enduring being chewed out by his superiors were All for Nothing. From that point on, it's clear that the Nishiki that we had known in 0 was dead.
Game-Breaker:
- The Max Crush ability involves using your beast style to use a charged grapple move on an enemy; while this may not sound that handy at first, this move gives you a massive damage upgrade that also applies to your heat actions, which you can use to one-shot bosses with. Even more insane is that it’s an incredibly early upgrade of which you only need 1 xp to unlock; learning how to utilize it can make getting through even the toughest sections in the game a breeze.
- The Tiger Drop is very broken in this game. Besides its ease of use, it does more damage the less Heat you have, meaning most random encounters end in a One-Hit Kill for most standard mooks, while Bosses can be floored within a few hits once you get the timing down pat.
- On the topic of Counter Attacks, the Brawler style's Body Counter is neck and neck with the Tiger Drop in terms of utility and power. Not only does it do a lot of damage and knock the opponent down (unlike the Dragon of Dojima style equivalent, the Komaki Knock Back), but it also generates a lot of Heat, making it quite handy to have well into the endgame.
- Time for Destruction amps up the Tiger Drop's (and also every Heat Action's) damage to a ludicrous degree. Once activated, a Destruction Tiger Drop drops bosses like flies. Pair this with Max Crush above and any semblance of difficulty in this game goes out the window.
Goddamned Boss:
- The boss fight against Futoshi Shimano in Chapter 3 is often cited as one of the most annoying in the game. Not only does he have a mountain of health, but he is also immune to flinching most of the time, meaning that, even if you're beating on him, he can still hit you back in the middle of your combo. The Kiwami Attack mechanic only worsens his high HP. At times, he will start to regenerate health, and the only way to interrupt this is by using the Essence of Extreme Rush Heat Action... which has to be unlocked in the skill tree beforehand. If you didn't know this in advance, prepare to waste up to half an hour slowly chipping away at his health (you can bet that most players immediately rush to unlock all of the Kiwami moves as soon as possible after the fight). Once you've memorized his patterns and when he's safe to attack, he's not too difficult, but Shimano is still a boring and annoying enemy to take down.
- Kazuto Arase's guns barely do any damage, but getting shot is a guaranteed knockdown, forcing you to Button Mash to stand back up. Whenever he's not shooting at you, he's rolling all over the place and is completely invincible. He can also roll in the middle of your combo, stand back up behind you, and shoot you, all before you have the time to finish throwing your punch.
- Once Breaker Majima starts to break dancing, you can do nothing except sit back and wait for him to finish break dancing unless you want to get caught in the whirlwind of death. This may drag out the battle until you unlock parry or counter moves to deal with him. One worthy tactic is to abuse Rush Style quick steps around him if he's performing one of his less mobile spinning attacks. With the "Last-Minute Evade" Soul upgrade, one of the earlier upgrades possible before Breaker Majima becomes commonplace. You'll be able to build heat quickly since the game thinks you're evading his attacks, allowing you to use more heat moves on him for heavier damage. It's an unorthodox tactic, though, and heavily reliant on using heat moves that get weaker if repeated. You better hope you have multiple objects around or varying unarmed heat moves unlocked if you don't want to waste that heat meter.
Good Bad Bugs: The PC version of the game sometimes glitches during bowling so that it is impossible to apply spin to the balls. Where this comes in beneficial is when playing against an AI opponent, as those often make generous use of spin and the glitch applies to them as well. For those curious, the glitch seems to be triggered by doing Windows task switching during a game of bowling.
Hilarious in Hindsight: During the first Goromi event, Majima asks whether Kiryu would like to be a Cabaret manager, guess what he does in Kiwami 2?
Ho Yay: While Majima has always skirted the line of whether he likes Kiryu or not, the creators really seem to enjoy toying the line of whether he is a Stalker with a Crush or a Stalker without a Crush, with the Majima Everywhere storyline addition. It begins with Kiryu getting out of jail and Majima putting on a seductive pole dancing routine complete with pink hearts but doesn’t take off his clothes aside from his usual attire of a yellow boa print snakeskin blazer with no shirt on underneath, and only gets more homoerotic from there with disguises and special encounters based on ranks.
- For disguises, Officer Majima and Goromi are two of the most notable examples, with players encountering them at Rank G & F respectively. For the former, Nishida will contact Kiryu, telling him that Majima is in front of the Millennium Tower dressed as a police officer, where he will frisk him and if Majima finds a weapon fight him. For the latter, Nishida contacts Kiryu again to tell him that a hostess at Club Shine is raising a ruckus and is refusing to leave unless she sees Kiryu, the hostess in question turns out to be Goro Majima crossdressing as Goromi, with Kiryu being able to flirt with her or not based on the player’s choice.
- For special encounters, these can be divided between Majima attempting to goad Kiryu into fighting him and Majima challenging Kiryu to different activities that don’t even end in a fight. For the former, one notable encounter occurs at Smile Burger after Kiryu orders something, with Majima appearing behind asking if he wants a side of Majima with that and continues his Erotic Eating dialogue wanting an order of Kiryu…to fight. For the latter, Majima ropes Kiryu into doing all kinds of quasi-romantic activities such as darts, pool, bowling, shogi, pocket circuit racing, and MesuKing.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
- An unusual case in that some of the the complaints aren't about how similar it is to the original, but as mentioned above, many of the animations and moves in the boss battles are taken and recycled from previous recent titles, even if slightly modified. A portion of players consider it an inferior version of Yakuza 0 with less content.
- On the other hand, some have complained about the cutscenes being identical to the original, and that some of the design shortcomings of the original carry on over to the remake.
Jerkass Woobie: The Kiwami remake expands on Nishiki's backstory and his Start of Darkness, and it's not very pretty... To see how much crap that he had to go through that ends in a "Shaggy Dog" Story, it's easy to see why he snapped and became the ruthless man that he is now.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- While the Dragon of Dojima fighting style has been Kiryu's default style throughout the series, it suffers the biggest Nerf after his prison sentence, becoming the only fighting style that cannot be upgraded with experience points, but through "Majima Everywhere" fights and Komaki's training. Because certain events involving them are locked out until certain chapters in the story are reached, the Dragon fighting style is practically unusable until late in the game. You'll probably have completely maxed out your other stats and other styles long before then.
- Bosses and strong enemies now will rapidly regenerate health during certain points in their fights, and it can only be countered by the Essence of Kiwami Heat Action, which must be unlocked for each individual style. Some bosses tend to go into this state right after a Heat Action is used against them, and they can recover a lot of health before you can regain enough Heat again to put a stop to it, provided they aren't a Flunky Boss. If you change styles when this happens, their rising health bar won't slow down.
  - In addition to this, super armour rears its ugly head against bosses. Instead of just immediately blocking after a combo (which they do regularly), some bosses ignore being punched and knock you with a solid hit in the middle of your attacks.
  - Heat Actions do less damage the more times they are used in a fight, which generally isn't a problem against normal enemies, but often makes boss fights a slog to get through due to their high amounts of health. The Essence of Kiwami Heat Actions are also not exempt from this mechanic, which means that the boss will likely have healed enough to make the Essence of Kiwami Heat Actions' effect negligible.
- "Majima Everywhere" can also be this. Even if you equip any accessories which reduce encounters (Silent Shoes, Head Honcho Scarf, and Beads of Good Fortune) the "Majima Everywhere" system still triggers regardless, which becomes especially tedious and time-wasting when speedrunning the game on EX-HARD (LEGEND on the localized version) as well as exploring for getting 100% completion for Premium Adventure mode, even if you've gotten SSS Rank for "Majima Everywhere" and defeated him at the batting cages. On the bright side, at least Majima is a fantastic source of experience points on a first run, which makes him especially helpful for unlocking essential abilities like increased damage and health.
  - Also, certain nodes on the Dragon of Dojima grid require you to fight certain versions of Majima. The problem is that which version of Majima spawns is purely RNG. So your only real option, if you're looking to fight a particular version of Majima, is to enter and exit buildings until the desired version of Majima spawns.
  - And hell, even if you want to be the one to actively initiate the fight for that extra XP, doing so is still a hassle. Thanks to the aforementioned RNG, it's a toss-up on whether or not Majima will be hiding (with your only indication that he's nearby being a "KIRYU-CHAN!", which doesn't help much since it's hard to pinpoint where it's coming from), spawn right around the corner, or spawns in the middle of a regular encounter with the usual flock of Kamurocho goons.
- Getting knocked down ensures you'll always take a hit if an enemy decides to attack since you can be hit with it even if you're getting up. While the damage is fortunately minor, it's frustrating mashing out of being knocked down and then getting hit anyway.
Sequel Difficulty Spike: Compared to Yakuza 0. Bosses and several enemies are Immune to Flinching, and can easily escape in the middle of a combo to attack from behind with their own. They are far more aggressive, do more damage, and attack more frequently in large groups. Kiryu is also much more prone to being stunlocked, although some late upgrades help alleviate the pain somewhat. Some of his moves and styles have also received a Nerf, and Heat moves will do less and less damage the more they're used during a fight. The game reminds you regularly that ten years in the slammer did a number on Kiryu's strength, and you'll be feeling it.
Special Effect Failure: The game reuses the cutscene animations directly from the original game, and even for Yakuza having been a 2005 title, it really shows. Kiryu's model doesn't quite emote how it should, which results in him being more of The Stoic than he should be; numerous characters move incredibly stiffly to the point of robotic when motion capture isn't used, expressions can sometimes seem off or exaggerated, and other various problems. It's even more apparent thanks to the new Nishiki flashback scenes, which use animation and asset quality on par with Yakuza 0, borderline looking like a different game altogether sometimes.
Squick: How Nishiki's Expository Hairstyle Change is performed. He slicks his hair back using Matsushige's blood after killing him.
That One Boss:
- The Akai Brothers in Chapter 8 are extremely difficult to beat. The generic goons surrounding them aren't hard, but the brothers are a nightmare to fight. The younger brother moves far faster than a guy his size has any right to and will constantly pummel you...and that's when he's not constantly getting you into a grapple that will either make you waste a few seconds trying to get him off of you or open you up for attack from the elder sibling. Speaking of which, the elder brother isn't much better; since he's using Majima's Breaker style, he can easily smack you around with multiple blows and stunlock the player and will dodge damn near every attack you throw at him just like his brother and, when knocked down, can get up damn near immediately and get a couple of extra hits off with his wake-up attack. What would normally land each brother in Goddamned Boss territory skyrockets them to this position. Both brothers will be ganging up on you even if you try to focus all your firepower on just one of them. Couple that with the aforementioned boss healing Scrappy Mechanic listed above - which will extend the length of the fight even further - and you've got a fight that more inexperienced Yakuza players will struggle to defeat, even if you've been keeping up on upgrading Kiryu's abilities.
- Charon Martinez from the coliseum. He appears as early as in E Rank Tournament and is incredibly hard to defeat despite being an early opponent. Even maxed out Kiryu are still having trouble defeating him. Despite his giant size, his fighting style is graceful and confusing to read at times as his fighting style is based on Lao Gui, an assassin and a Final Boss and he deals massive damage with each strike, even rivaling many S ranked opponents. In the early game, his presence guarantees a loss and makes grinding for Komaki's paintings a pain in the butt.
- Brother Shinen is another source of ire if you're grinding the coliseum. Like Charon above, he uses Shibusawa's Rush moveset (also a Final Boss) with damage that racks up very quickly and is a massive pain in the ass to avoid thanks to his quick speed and incessant Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs barrage. His only saving grace is that he has one bar of health, but unless you already have the Tiger Drop (or Komaki Parry) by that point and got its timing down pat, try not to pull your hair out dealing with this guy.
That One Level:
- The car chase level will have people wanting to throw their controllers against the wall. The chase starts out manageable until the Triad comes with their truck, where you have to take out two triad members who are armed with a rocket launcher and machine gun, respectively, and have lots of health meaning that you be emptying out your gun several times to take one of them out. Not helping matters is that you still have to take out the normal goons chasing you. Oh, and after that, you'll have to take out the truck driver who too has a lot of health. But by then, you'll probably be low on health which leaves you an easy picking for the driver, whose ramming deals a lot of damage. This is especially egregious for those playing on Legend difficulty, where failing the level will have them restart from the previous save point. The problem? Your last save point would be before you go to Yokohama, meaning that you have to fight through the Snake Flower Triad and Lau Ka Long all over again.
- The Weapon Master GP in the Coliseum. You're limited to using weapons that do laughably low damage (the vast majority dealing significantly less than you'd deal bare-handed) and lock you out of nearly all of your Heat Actions. You can't even get the Komaki style bonus to katana attacks with the wooden katana because you're also locked out from switching to the Dragon style. This makes the huge healthbars you're dealing with an incredible slog to grind through.
  - The only real silver lining is that unlike the katana, the brass knuckles defaults to the Rush style version of the weapon meaning you at least have full access to the quickest style with the best dodging ability along with some unique Heat Actions. The only caveats being that your selection of Heat Actions is still pretty limited, there are no stuns from repeated punches unlike unarmed Rush style, and no parries whatsoever. Still, this all effectively makes brass knuckles the only viable weapon to choose if you care about actually winning against some of the juggernauts the Coliseum throws at you.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- The soundtrack, which some consider to be techno remixes of the original tracks that don't do the originals justice. An interview with Famitsu prior to the game's release revealed they struggled with the music.
- "Majima Everywhere" does change one aspect of his role in the main story. In the original game, Majima took a knife for Kiryu, leaving him absent and his fate ambiguous for much of the game before suddenly re-appearing at Shangri-la with his knife wound bandaged. Here, he immediately recovers from said injuries without explanation, leaving players scratching their heads. And after teaming up with Kiryu to fight Dojima Family members, Majima is shot and falls into the sea, before suddenly re-appearing at Shangri-La with his bullet wound bandaged. What left players scratching their heads this time is once Majima is lost at sea, Kiryu is uncharacteristically unconcerned about his friend's fate and simply leaves him behind. Some people suggested that "Majima Everywhere" should have been the main feature in the endgame (or at least after said Shangri-La fight), so it doesn't affect the impact of the main story. They could even do what they did in 4 with Akiyama using his imagination to bring back Hana in order to finish certain substories reliant on her still working for him.
- "Intelligence for Violence" was played during fights against Nishiki's family, and was enough of a fan favorite to get a remix in Yakuza 3 and Ishin! Here, "Ideal For Violence" plays only during the first fight against them in Serena, which is very brief, and is replaced by different songs afterwards.

YMMV / Yakuza

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