When comparing Yakuza Kiwami vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best open world games for PS4?” NieR: Automata is ranked 15th while Yakuza Kiwami is ranked 38th. The most important reason people chose NieR: Automata is:
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Compelling story
Yakuza Kiwami tells the story of Kiryu getting dismissed from the yakuza, only to get swept right back into their world once his loved ones are in trouble. As he tries to find out what happened to his love interest, Yumi, he meets Haruka, and learns to care for her as if she were his own daughter. While protecting Haruka from the yakuza who target her, Kiryu discovers more about how she and Yumi are both connected to a larger crime of ten billion yen that's gone missing from the crime syndicate, all the while his best friend Nishiki pulls strings from the shadows.
Overall, the story leans successfully on its memorable characters and Kiryu's attachments to them. Finding out what happened to the missing ten billion yen also includes figuring out why Nishiki went down such a dark path, finding Yumi, and keeping Haruka safe. It's compelling to play through the game and discover these answers while also getting to know the characters more along the way.
Pro Memorable cast of characters
You'll encounter a diverse batch of characters in Yakuza Kiwami, like Kiryu's childhood friend Nishiki who goes down a dark path that changes him, creating an intriguing drama throughout the story. There's also Haruka, a determined young girl who is looking for her mother, and ends up forming a strong bond with Kiryu as he tries to protect her from the yakuza who want to harm her. Goro Majima, one of the antagonists, is a foil to Kiryu in how wild and unhinged he is, often throwing a wrench into the game's story with his over-the-top antics when you least expect them, such as driving a truck straight through a building.
It's easy to grow attached to the cast in Yakuza Kiwami and want to follow their stories throughout the rest of the games in the series. For players who jumped into the franchise with Yakuza 0, they'll have even more backstory on these characters and their struggles in this installment.
Pro Great amount of side content
In between story missions, Kiryu is mostly free to run around the city and engage in optional side quests or mini games. Side quests in Yakuza Kiwami mostly deal with various shady characters trying to scam Kiryu out of his money, like a supposed loan collector who calls his cell phone and demands that he pay up or get beaten up, and a thuggish guy collecting toll money on a street and also threatening to fight Kiryu if he doesn't pay. Mini games can be found in the SEGA arcades, like the classic UFO catcher, or elsewhere at the mahjong parlor, the shogi building, the karaoke parlor and much more.
Pro New cutscenes add more depth to the main antagonist
In the original Yakuza 1, Nishiki's change from Kiryu's best friend to a cold-hearted villain didn't feel natural, but new scenes in Yakuza Kiwami flesh out this transformation. The cutscenes give more context and background on why Nishiki made such a drastic change, portraying him in a sympathetic light that helps the player understand him more. It helps a lot to see his sorrows and his struggles against his own subordinates in the yakuza who disrespect him, as well as his resentment toward his superiors who think he'll never live up to Kiryu.
Pro Fast-paced, action-packed combat
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Pro Unique storytelling with a real emotional impact
NieR: Automata's outlook on storytelling is incredibly special. To get the full experience, you have to run multiple playthroughs of the game, each of which offers a new experience and perspective. Your world view of the story events and characters expands drastically as you complete each playthrough, playing on your expectations to help you develop a deeper emotional bond with the protagonists and become invested in their plight.
Things take a real turn on your third playthrough, putting you on an emotional roller coaster all the way to the true ending. The plot twists and knocks on the fourth wall elevate the story to a truly unique place. Getting all the way to the very end can be a religious experience from how much heart and meaning you discover in the symbolism.
Pro It's got a hauntingly beautiful environment
NieR: Automata is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape after Earth has been overrun by hostile machines, and the artists really nailed what that would feel like. Abandoned and overgrown cities litter the landscape along with old refineries, graveyards, and eerie forests. When you add the beautiful soundtrack to the experience, it fills you with a bittersweet mix of loneliness and hope.
Pro Varied genre-spanning gameplay elements
NieR: Automata has different types of gameplay to keep things interesting. From the very start, you're on an on-rails bullet hell section, and then you switch over to the more traditional action RPG style of fast-paced combat. Things change up again not long after with some side-scrolling platforming from a 2D view. Later on in the story, there's a hacking mini-game where you navigate a tiny ship through a short puzzle, with the music changing to a charming retro sound to fit the theme and mood. This is a game that doesn't stay boxed in a single genre.
Pro An incredible amount of content
Outside of the main story, there's plenty of optional content to dive into. The side quests are the best way to get to know the characters and lore of the world, with some of them giving clever and subtle foreshadowing of the game's most critical events. There are also weapons to collect and upgrade, each of which offer nice little tidbits of lore after you get them to max level. And after reaching a certain point in the story, you get access to Chapter Select that lets you go back and replay whatever you want. You can easily spend 60+ hours exploring the world and still have much more to do.
Pro Gorgeous, ethereal soundtrack with amazing vocals
NieR: Automata's music is out of this world. It's so stunning and elegant in a way that nothing else can really live up to. The soundtrack manages to emotionalize the game through music, from the action-packed tracks with hard-hitting wind instruments and percussion, to the softer, somber songs that encapsulate the hauntingly beautiful environments and story moments you encounter. Vocals in the lore's indescribable language makes the music even more memorable, adding to the ethereal quality of the sound. This soundtrack is definitely one that you can go back to again and again without getting sick of it.
Cons
Con Boss battles are cheap
Getting stunlocked during boss battles is all too common in Yakuza Kiwami, like when the enemy uses a weapon to constantly hit you over and over. There's also an infamous battle against two gang leaders who enjoy knocking Kiryu to the ground again and again, leaving little room for recovering or dodging. Even if you love the game's story, these annoying fights could be a deal-breaker, especially on harder difficulties.
Con Majima Everywhere system is annoying
The Majima Everywhere system features the fan favorite character Goro Majima who sneaks up on Kiryu around the city and challenges him to random fights. It's an amusing idea at first, with Majima hiding in giant cones or manholes and popping out to surprise the player. But sometimes these encounters are too frequent, and they can go on for too long as Majima gains more health.
Con Graphics aren't impressive
Yakuza Kiwami looks like it could have been a PS3 game with weak textures, stiff character animations outside of cutscenes, and too many repeat copies of NPCs around the city. Invisible walls also block off the city's boundaries. Thankfully the characters and facial animations look great during story scenes, helping to make up for the poor visuals elsewhere.
Con Limited open world
Even though NieR: Automata is technically an open world game, it doesn't always feel like it. It's more that there's a big open space in the center of the ruined city you explore, with branches that lead off to vastly different environments, like a desert, a village, and a few other places. These locations aren't that spacious, either, and it's a bit of a stretch to even imagine all of these places being so close together in the first place. It's not too much of an issue as long as you find the story and combat engaging enough.
Con Second playthrough can get repetitive
Once you get to Route B, your second playthrough, you may find that too much is the same. There are some big differences, such as the new way you get to see things play out, but a lot of it rehashes Route A, your first playthrough. There's a ton of hacking you have to do as well, which gets pretty boring after repeating it over and over again. But if you stick with it, Route C and onward are absolutely worth the time spent getting to that point.
Con Some boring fetch quests
The pacing gets messed up when you're forced to run certain fetch quests near the start of the game. This is somewhat forgivable after the fun and action-packed introductory level, but the quests themselves are still a drag to play through. Some of the side quests can also boil down to the same thing. Even though these quests give a lot of useful information about the world, they're not all that fulfilling, and you may dread having to repeat them when playing through the game again.
Con Buggy on PC
Some players complain about the game crashing, freezing, their save files mysteriously disappearing, and more. As of June 2018, over a year after the game's initial release, there is still no patch to fix these problems. Not everyone on PC will have these bugs, but it's still quite prevalent. If you continually run into issues, your best bet is to find a mod or play the console versions instead of waiting on an official patch that may never happen.