More Yakuza Kiwami 2 thoughts:

“Drinks beer out of aluminum cans” is such efficient shorthand for a specific type of 25-35 year old noir tomboy tsunderes

There’s definitely a stereotypical Japanese beat cop face

This and Yakuza Zero’s takes on “Dontonburi” are making me appreciate the nuances of Kansai identity, and how its common translation as Dixie southernness isn’t quite right

The Cabaret Club Fever music sounds almost happy hardcore, which makes sense for 2006 Japan

Cops having moral dilemmas about shooting people attacking them, or legal dilemmas about a group including two cops and one retired cop shooting a guy who had already shot two of them during a terrorism investigation, is WILD

Went on to get Yakuza Kiwami 2, cause God knows there’s no shame in staying in playing vidya on a nice day now. Thoughts:

The new engine is beautiful and smooth, and I’m impressed with how faithfully they reproduced the sites from the old one. I don’t know how you expect me to go back to play even the remastered ¾/5 after this

I wonder if the “different types of XP” inspired the recent Spider-Man, or if there was a mutual influence somewhere

Challenges seem better balanced, can be tough but not frustratingly impossible, and award XP you could just grind for some other way

It doesn’t pause cutscenes if you go back to the PlayStation menu, gotta get used to that

Yakuza Zero and Kiwami each kind of eased into things, with slow starts and twists accumulating; this one is like here’s your themes, remember this guy? he’s giving you a new mission, oh he’s dead, here’s a new character and the organizing tension, go!

I guess Zero and One were both slice-of-life introductions to minor soldier Kazuma Kiryu, and you can’t so much do that for Fourth Tojo Clan Chairman (ret.) Kazuma Kiryu. Maybe that’s why they started adding other playable characters

People hold their wafer-thin 2009 flip-phones in all sorts of wrong pistol grips, cross-keypad overhand grips, etc. That’s fascinating, was there just not the expectation in Japan that you hold it from behind like a corded phone?