Yakuza Kiwami 2 localization announcement - August 28th 2018 (PS4 exclusive)

This was announced at the Yakuza LA art show today:

Personally, I am puuuuuummmped! Yakuza 2 was universally considered the best game in the series before Yakuza 0 came out, and now it's being redone in an improved version of Y6's dragon engine and has added back all the major things that were missing from that game. If you have yet to play a Yakuza hurry up and pick up Zero, because we are living in the renaissance of the dragon!

Very interesting.

I just started playing Yakuza 0. I already own Yakuza 3 and 4. Played Yakuza 5 digitally for a brief moment, got sidetracked, and never had the time to get back to it.

I have reached the point that the Yakuza series is a great franchise, having played Yakuza 3 and 4 thoroughly has brought innovative experience to gaming. But the combat gameplay is very repetitive and has deterred me from buying other Yakuza games having bought Yakuza 0.

Yes!!!! I can't wait. I sorta want to play this before Yakuza 6 but I don't think I can wait that long.

@omegamaster: Yakuza is for story first and foremost.

Going to be weird going 0, 1, 6, 2, 3, 4 and then 5.

I played the import version and is awesome.

This is good news.

Yakuza 6 has an 83 on metacritic.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/yakuza-6-the-song-of-life

I will most likely be picking up Kiwami when I get a ps4 again, so it's good to see I can play the second game. I never owned a PlayStation 2 or 3 so I missed out

Is it me or does a new Yakuza game come out every week?

It's been an annual series since 2015, but we're also playing catch up to Japan because there was a 3 year lull between the localizations of Dead Souls and Yakuza 5. Yakuza 6 came out in Japan in 2016, for example, and we still haven't gotten Ishin (and we may never) as well as the new Fist of the North Star game.

Nice. I'm going to play Kiwami 2 before 6 , and if Kiwami 3 happens , I'll hold out for that before 6.

Kiwami 2 is the more technologically advanced game. It is said that you won't like going back to Yakuza 6 after playing that. It is also said that the stories are mostly self contained and it is ok to play them as they were released, even if you only started with Yakuza 0. I guess you will miss a reference or two but it isn't worth worrying about. Unless you are hopelessly OCD.

If you're wondering if you need to know anything about Yakuza 2 for 6, don't worry you don't. There's only one reference to that game (the Jingeweon Mafia) but they don't go into any of the details over what happened in Yakuza 2. For 6, I'd say the only games that you need to play are 0 and Kiwami 1. Playing through 3-5 will give you backstory information on a lot of the characters, but they're not the focus in this one, which is all about Kiryu.

Yeah that is what I have heard. Thanks for confirming that. I've only played 0 and kiwami 1 and I think it will be fine to play Yakuza 6 and then Kiwami 2 in that order next. I'll get to the rest eventually and I feel bad about sleeping on this excellent series but will rectify that eventually. I hope the newest Yakuza game with the new protagonist is released in the west and in Japan simultaneously.

I still need to play remake of original game first, never played one of these games before so figured this gives me perfect opportunity to jump into the series. Someone suggested I start with Zero but not sure if that's a good start point since it's a later release. Anyhow, are these games stand alone like GTA entries are or should they be played in order?

All of the games are connected as they're following the same characters, but the story is loose enough that you can get away with not playing them in order, plus most of them have main story recaps too. This is not a Kingdom Hearts situation, but not all of the games are on the PS4, so that can make it difficult to play in release order. Thanks to the Kiwami remakes of Yakuza 1 and 2, you can at least ignore the PS2 games.

Zero is the perfect one to start with, because not only is it the best game in the series in terms of gameplay and story, it, unlike the others, doesn't require you to know anything about the plot. I even include Yakuza 1 when saying that, as Zero is so good, it retroactively makes Y1's story better. In the case of Kiwami 1, they added new substories and gameplay elements so it feels even more so like an expansion to Zero.

So in short, play Zero, then Kiwami 1, and after that you can decide if you want to play in release or story order (it also depends on whether you have a PS3 and/or PS Now).