Its a very underrated Yakuza spin-off, in which you play as Ukyo Tatsuya, a delinquent teenager who got caught robbing Chinese mafia guys, impersonating as the Tojo Clan thug and accidentally killing one of the Tojo Clan guys, so if he wants to get free, he needs to win in the underground fighting circuit 10 times in the row.

Combat is a mix of Yakuza and Def Jam, you have the small arena to fight in, a few thugs in there and random bullshit you can use to fight the thugs with. The Heat Actions (special moves) are pretty satisfying and they differ depending on your current fight style. Unlike in Yakuza, body parts can be damaged and they will cause a debuff, depending on how hard they've been hit.

The plot is fine, the cutscenes are now stylized as manga (due to PSP's memory limitations) and they look nice. Since its still a Yakuza game, you have the side activities, like substories, hostess clubs and minigames.

If you somehow skipped this one, please, give it a try (unless downloading ROMs is can cause you problems in your country).

The story is focused on Turner (an anthropomorphic rabbit), a retired warrior who lives a peaceful life in the village, until he leaves the village to kill a bunch of raiders who were allegedly endangering the village. As Turner came back, everyone in the village was massacred, so he starts avenging his beloved ones.

The combat in the game is kinda hard and requires getting used to it, but its kinda fun, until you meet the wolves, because they're agile and hit harder than you. The game lacks any sort of HUD, so you have to look at the posture and wounds to figure out his state.

There's not really a lot I could say about this game, its an indie game that somehow got traction and became an open-source project.

I had no idea Mortal Kombat has any sort of story, so here's a plot copied from the Wikipedia: Shinnok has managed to escape from the Netherrealm with help from the sorcerer Quan Chi, and seeks vengeance against the Elder Gods who banished him. In order to stop Shinnok's menace, Raiden requests help from the Earthrealm warriors.

The gameplay is simple: you have a selection of 15 fighters to choose with their own abilities (in "glorious" late-90s 3D), then you pick a difficulty and fight your opponents in a rounds of two (or three if there's a draw on first two rounds), until you reach the final boss.

The kombat in the game ranges from good to pretty hard, depending on the difficulty you're playing on, and its the first 3D game in the series, so you are able to sidestep. With the knowledge of some combos, you can get a melee weapon as well.

There's not much I can say about this game either, I'm not a fan of fighting games like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter (I personally prefer beat-em-ups), but it was fun.

Pretty sure you don't even remember this game, so the title is pretty ironic XD.

Jokes aside, in Remember Me, you take the role of Nilin, an errorist (rebel against corporation Memorize that owns people's memories through a device called Sensen, so yeah, its a cyberpunk), who was arrested and got memories erased. With the help of the leader of errorists Edge, she manages to escape the La Bastille prison and meet her old buddies, even if she doesn't remember them.

Its the first game by Dontnod Entertainment and it plays like a beat-em-up, where you can make your own combos and use the gimmick abilities against specific enemies. The plot is fine; memory remix, despite being scripted, is a cool gimmick; and graphically the game looks gorgeous.

For a debut project, its cool and has a potential, but lacks in execution. I guess its forgivable (unless you can't stand anything French /j), because the game was in development hell, since they couldn't find a publisher that wouldn't interfere with their creative freedom.

This is where that unhinged but also serious series has started. You take the role of Kiryu Kazuma, a member of Tojo Clan, who found his friend Akira Nishikiyama murdering their superior for attempting to rape Kiryu's girlfriend and since they were best friends (and because Kiryu is kinda selfless), Kiryu stood up for him and got arrested instead. After sitting in jail for 10 years, he gets out of the prison and finds out that the situation in Tojo Clan is pretty dire, since someone stole 10 billion yen from Tojo Clan and somehow his girlfriend was involved in that.

Compared to latest games in the franchise, Yakuza may seem to be primitive, but in my opinion its still holds up. You can do the Heat Actions and different combos, and grab random items off the streets to use them as a weapon, or you can carry your own weapon (or even a gun). There are also mini-games, substories and hostess clubs, which are traditional for Yakuza series.

If there's one thing that Yakuza has, but rest of the series doesn't is being grounded, since there aren't that many unhinged things in the game, other than Goro Majima or a grown ass man like Kiryu playing the UFO Catcher.

If you're interested in the series and haven't played the original, maybe you should give it a try. Unless you're looking for a few laughs, you should ignore the English version and play the Restored version instead, it brings back the Japanese voiceovers and properly translates the text, since the English translation has a lot of unneccessary swearing that weren't in the game originally.

This is a sequel to the first game, in which Tojo Clan bothers Kiryu to negotiate peace with Osaka-based Omi Alliance, but unfortunately, Omi's leader Ryuji Goda refuses and attempts to stage a coup. They were interrupted by the Osaka police, led by Detective Kaoru Sayama. Sayama makes a deal with Kiryu to help him stop the Omi threat in exchange for information on the Tojo, as she believes they are connected to her parents' disappearance as a child.

A bunch of things were improved since the first game, like the combat and additional minigames. In addition, the game is mostly set in Sotenbori, instead of usual Kamurocho. Another thing the sequel has is the love story between Kiryu and Kaoru, which is a part of the plot.

Unlike the first game, you don't need any mods to play it properly, since the Western realease of Yakuza 2 doesn't have over-the-top swearing and English dub, but it still gets the honoraries wrong.

If you're, again, interested in the series and haven't played the Yakuza 2, maybe you should give it a try as well. Besides, it has a few things that the Kiwami lacks, like licensed songs by Crazy Ken Band (which were authentic, time-appropriate and is probably something that Kiryu would listen to) and a whole new region (which was pretty small and short, but still).