Video Game / Kurohyo 2 Ryu Ga Gotoku Ashura Hen

The legend of the Mad Dragon of Kamuro fights against fate itself.

Kurohyō 2: Ryū Ga Gotoku Ashura-hen (translates to “Black Panther: Like A Dragon Ashura Chapter”); is a spinoff of the Like a Dragon series and sequel to Kurohyo Ryu Ga Gotoku Shinsho released for the PlayStation Portable on March 22, 2012.

A year has passed after the events of Kurōhyo, Ukyo Tatsuya has now become a world class boxer aiming to make it big. While visiting his hometown of Kamurocho, he sees that the underground fighting ring that changed his life for the better, Dragon Heat, is at risk of losing everything to a rival Osaka-based fight promotion Asura. Resolved to help the company that saved him, Ukyo Tatsuya gives up his boxing aspirations to join the fight in a competition between the two organizations. The fighters of Dragon Heat will battle against Asura's Eight Legions for their independance. As the fight goes on, Tatsuya learns that Asura's takeover has intentions beyond Dragon Heat.

Along with the Kamurocho map, Kurōhyo 2 reintroduces the town of Sōtenbori from Yakuza 2, with more jobs, substories, clubs and restaurants to choose from. The Stance System is back with more customization features with the option to augment your fighting style with unlockable abilities, and leveling your style beyond level 5 for a price. These features make it so that any fighting style one wants can be viable in battle.

Like the first, a television adaptation of the game was released on April 5, 2012. Returning for the role of Ukyo Tatsuya is Takumi Saitoh, who is also featured in this game as Tatsuya's new voice actor.

Kurohyō 2: Ryū Ga Gotoku Ashura-hen provides examples of the following tropes:

• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The Taxi cab service from the mainline games reappear here, making traversing around the big maps of Kamurocho and Sotenbori more easier.
  • Instead of sinking a bunch of yen upgrade your stats, you are instead given free points to increase your choice of stats every level up.
  • The Hostess clubs substories are no longer needed if you want to fight the Super Boss, which is a massive relief for the players of the fan translation as the hostess club minigames are left untranslated. The pachinko substory where you need to score a jackpot is also unneeded to fight Chaos.
  • Yellow heat (environmental heat moves) from the first game is done away with, making the change from blue to red heat faster. You can use the environmental heat moves by throwing the enemy against the wall and pressing X for absolutely no heat.
  • Instead of saving at phone booths or safe houses, you can now save anywhere. Even in the casinos.
  • The damage done to your limbs if you punch or kick guarding enemies is heavily lessened.
  • You can now simply toggle the fast foward on cutscenes instead of having to mash a button on each dialogue line.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Thor's Hammer special move that's unlocked by a password is a flashy two-hit air attack that charges quickly. Unfortunately, it begins with a pointless empty jump before Tatsuya does the two air punches and it does not combo. Even if the first punch hits, the enemy is very likely to parry or dodge the second one. It also suffers from Hitbox Dissonance and can miss when it looks like it shouldn't.
• Bag of Spilling: In the beginning, Tatsuya is back to being a level 1 weakling with only the Brawler and Boxing styles available despite having started a career as a boxer in America in the year that passed since the first game. Lampshaded early on, with him wondering if he's lost his "Philosophy" in America, his manager mentioning he hasn't been training properly, and Tsukahara lamenting how the man somehow forgot all the fighting styles and techniques he taught him.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Ashura’s ring can be set aflame and serves as a stage hazard.
• Betting Mini-Game: The Kamurocho casino makes a return with the addition of Roulette and you can unlock the Super High Stakes option in games you've won 10,000 chips out of. Its’ equivalent in Sotenbori is a gambling den where you can play more Japan oriented gambling games like Cho-Han (Even or Odd), Chinchirorin (Cee-Lo) or Kobuta (Pig). The game also introduces Pachinko and Mahjong where you can similarly win prizes for balls or sticks respectively.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The Yakuza members you can battle by bumping them on the street, they give out substantially more exp than regular encounters. The trade off is they are high leveled, have a lot of health and use the powerful Hard Arm or God Leg styles.
• Character Customization: In Chapter 8, Ryusho teaches you the Self-Taught style. With Self-Taught you can take the moves, grabs, and heat actions from the martial arts you have in your possession to make your own unique style and it has the most skill slots out of all the styles with a total of 8 to encourage creativity.
• Collection Sidequest: Tsukahara now needs Tatsuya to go find 102 of his lost cats for his granddaughter's cat café. As before, he offers discounts in his dojo as you find more and more of them.
• Continuity Cameo:
  • The Florist, Dr.Emoto and Akiyama from the mainline games once again makes an appearance.
  • The song in the Karaoke booth minigame is Majima No Majirock and was made specifically for the game, using the Mad Dog’s own singing voice.
  • Yuya makes an appearance when some hosts have a standoff with the newly-established Kamurocho Security Force.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Meteor Suzuki references Hyuga Sho of the previous game by using his “Can you hold out for 30 seconds?” line at the beginning of his fight.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • The Circle button now only throws grabbed enemies with the d-pad on neutral. By holding a direction it instead pushes them, and if they hit a wall then you can use an environmental Heat action with no meter cost. This replaces the yellow Heat aura from the first game, so now it charges straight from blue to red.
  • This sequel discourages players from freely running into pedestrians by making some of them heavy guys that cause Tatsuya to crash and drop money or enemies significantly more powerful than usual.
• Darker and Edgier: There are substantially more character deaths in this game than the last. There’s also a major crime group that's responsible selling firearms to minors (while modified to maim rather than kill), a website that puts bounties on certain people causing masked perpetrators to assault civilians, bomb squads, and a perverted hitman.
• Denser and Wackier: Downplayed. 2 is still as serious as it's predecessor but there's more comedic relief elements. Take for example in the cabaret clubs there is a slight chance of a QTE where you have to catch your drink from falling onto your hostess all in slow motion like something out of Yakuza 0.
• Disc-One Nuke: By loading a save file from the previous game, Tatsuya can start with two powerful fighting styles that have no stat penalties. One has a large boost to stamina and the other drastically raises Heat damage, so you can pretty much forget about learning all the other styles.
• Early Game Hell: The early game can feel a lot difficult due to a lack of power and a CPU partner to help fight the high-level yakuza thugs roaming around that can defeat Tatsuya in a few hits.
• Extremity Extremist:
  • The Hard Arm and God Leg styles are back. This time you can kick and punch with both styles, only that kicking or punching with the opposite style will result in a single, weak, highly-telegraphed attack. Customizing your Self-Taught style using the kicks of Hard Arm and the punches of God Leg makes for a good Self-Imposed Challenge.
  • Kazu Kakizaki only uses punches. Which is odd considering he’s supposed to be an MMA champion.
• Just Ignore It: There is a crime event where you can beat up solicitating homeless people to shoo them away. After the deed is done you get an absolute pittance in EXP and money and Tatsuya feels guilt, hinting to the player that they probably should have left them alone. The most moral thing the player can do for the homeless Crime events is to leave them be and a caption will come up after the event despawns telling you the homeless men were rushed to a hospital where they can recieve proper help.
• Money Sink: Raising the level cap on a fighting style from 5 to 10 requires a whooping 30K yen or more to be spent at once in the dojo.
• Mythology Gag:
  • A Kiryu Impersonator named Keeryu Kazooma shows up in Chapter 4. He uses his resemblance real deal to intimidate people and steal their money like the one in Yakuza 2, but it’s unknown if they are the same person. He’s beaten up by Tatsuya and a man named Ginji who looks up to the real Kiryu.
  • In Chapter 5, you visit a casino that was formerly Shangri-La. Ryusho references the events of Yakuza that caused it's destruction.
• Nerf: In the first game, raising a style to level 5 would convert all of its stat penalties into bonuses. In this one, maxing a style all the way to level 10 is only good enough to reduce the penalties, with the skill slot mechanic being meant to compensate for this as the player gains more of them.
• Non-Player Companion: The game focuses more on tag team fighting. At least once a chapter you are mandated an NPC follow you for a short period and help you in battle, which is perfect for the Sotenbori Ranking Battle that requires you to have a buddy to fight alongside with. The game also gives you a chance to recruit enemies you've defeated in battle and you can call them up on your cell phone to have them follow you around and help you in fights. Depending on which street gang they are affiliated with your partner can give you a variety of bonuses such as decreased enemy encounters or discounted item prices.
• Old Save Bonus: You can start with the fighting styles from the last two bosses of the first game by bringing a save file. They're fairly powerful, greatly boost at least one base stat and have no major penalties. The downside is that they have no perks either and only have two skill slots.
• Press X to Not Die: If Tatsuya and the opponent hit each other at the same time, it triggers a sequence of quick time events that are worth a load of damage and end on a Button Mashing sequence if you get them right.
• Product Placement:
  • There is an advertisement for Mahjong manga Akagi at the Mahjong Parlor, you can see the same ad in Yakuza 4.
• Random Event: A new addition to 2 are Crime events where you can help stop crimes happening around the map such as chasing shoplifters, stopping bullies or protecting women from creeps. Doing these random events are optional with no downsides to ignoring them besides a caption guilting you for letting the criminals get away.
• Recycled Script:
  • A subplot in Chapter 2, bullying victims buying guns to kill their bullies and Tatsuya having to convince them to stop, is similar to the plot of a substory in 1.
  • A substory of the first game had a girl lure Tatsuya with the promise of sex into a mugging. It's been recycled as a regular crime event in 2. It has a chance of starting if you stop some perverts from harassing women, the saved girl is either genuinely thankful and gives you an item or she's part of the scheme and leads you to get attacked by the rest of her gang.
• Same Plot Sequel: The circumstances are different but the plot of both games goes the same. Tatsuya is forced to win fights in underground fighting matches, the matches are part of a larger conspiracy the heroes have to uncover, the Greater-Scope Villain is an evil businessman and you fight the final boss on top of the Millenium Tower.
• Sequel Escalation: Last game had you protect an underground martial arts promotion. This game has you saving all of Tokyo from a corrupt police force and an evil governor as well as the underground martial arts promotion. The fighters of the first game were regular martial artists, the fighters in this game are renown combat sports champions from around the world and assassins.
• Stage Fatality: You can push enemies onto glass windows to break them and then repeat it to knock them either into some building or to a we-swear-it's-not-fatal fall onto the streets below.
• Unskilled, but Strong: The technical and counter heavy Hard and Soft Mastery from the first game is replaced with a complete antithesis in Extreme Instant Death, a fighting style that boasts having the highest raw power. Instant Death has Tatsuya take a hunched over Primal Stance, the attacks are seemingly amateur in nature and it comes with the ability to not be flinched by attacks and an increase in power at low health.
• Take Your Time: On Chapter 3, Ryusho tags along with Tatsuya to go look for Makoto on Sōtenbori. Do not immediately advance the story by taking the taxi and instead take the time to clear the available substories on Kamurocho and level grind to at least Ryusho's level. This is because not only does Ryusho part ways with Tatsuya too soon after arriving on Sōtenbori, but the yakuza thugs there are actually only worth half as much exp as the ones on Kamurocho.
• Tattooed Crook: All of the Ashura members have the eponymous divine being tattooed on their necks. Shosuke Oba has a full back tattoo that stretches to his upper arms and pecs.
• Theme Song Power Up: In the Dragon Heat-Asura fights, Tatsuya walks to the ring with the soundtracks of the previous game playing in the background.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Telling homeless men lying on the street to move out of the way gets them hostile on Tatsuya, resulting in a fight worth a small prize in experience and money. Ignoring those events displays a message about how somebody else rushed them to a hospital.
  • Bumping into women on the streets sometimes results in they screaming, which draws the attention of nearby thugs who think you're a bad guy. You can then beat them up with impunity for exp and money.
• Viler New Villain: The last game's fighters where only competitors in a martial arts ring, some even becoming allies for the protagonist and the villain was simply a corrupt business owner. This game however, every fighter is part of a criminal enterprise, arms dealers, loan sharks, assassins, domestic terrorists, you name it. The bad business man this time is the Governer of Tokyo and Chief of Police.
• Virtual Paper Doll: The player can customize Tatsuya with clothes from real life Japanese clothing brands. Beating the game once also gives you Shiraishi, Kuroda and Aono’s clothes to wear, which Tatsuya seems to think are quite ugly.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Tomoki returns as the first boss and he comes out of nowhere compared to how he's presented in the previous game's tournament. He's agressive and can dish out lots of damage with Heat moves, requiring the player to have learned the game's fundamentals well to succeed.