WorthPlaying: "I'll freely admit that I was a huge fan of the original Yakuza that debuted on the PS2 a couple of years back, and to this day, it remains one of my favorite brawlers on the system, even with the obnoxiously bad dubbing and somewhat tedious loading issues between battles. The story line had its faults, but I don't think anyone could deny that the main hero of the game, Kazuma Kiryu, is one of the better action game protagonists we've seen in a brawler in quite some time. He's got the whole stoic gangster thing down pat, and he's just an entertaining character to watch and see how his story plays out. Yakuza 2 manages to deliver on that aspect just as well as the original, while at the same time making some small, but needed, improvements to the overall system and gameplay.
I'm happy that we even got a chance to check out Yakuza 2 in the U.S., especially since this game was released in Japan just a year after the original title. I'm not sure if this is due to the warm reception of the side-story Yakuza title that recently released on the PS3 in Japan, or if this was Sega's intention all along, but it took nearly a year for this to get ported stateside, and I'm genuinely hoping that it's received well enough so that the eventual third title will be brought over from Japan in the next few years."
