Although these areas were recreated as fictionalized versions, many real life landmarks remain such as Dōtonbori's Sammy Ebisu Plaza (サミー戎プラザ) and Shinsekai's Tsutenkaku Tower (通天閣) and Billiken (ビリケン).

The group is ambushed by Omi assassins and Terada is fatally shot, asking Kiryu to negotiate peace in his place.

Ryuji refuses the idea of a truce between the Omi and the Tojo and attempts to stage a coup, but they are interrupted and arrested 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.

Kiryu and Sayama discover that Omi patriarchs Ryo Takashima and Toranosuke Sengoku have placed hits on them, and that Daigo and Jin Goda have been kidnapped.

The two escape to Tokyo, where they find Detectives Makoto Date and Jiro Kawara investigating a bombing of the Kazama family offices by the Jingweon Mafia, a Korean syndicate thought to have been massacred by the Tojo in 1980.

Fearing an invasion by the Omi and Jingweon, Kiryu recruits former allies Goro Majima and the Florist of Sai for help and rescues Daigo as well as preventing a coup staged by Koji Shindo, the second patriarch of the Nishikiyama Family.

Kurahashi takes Date and the Florist of Sai hostage and plans to bomb the room, only for Kiryu, Sayama and Kawara to arrive and defeat him.

The Florist of Sai discovers the Jingweon have placed bombs throughout Tokyo and plan to detonate them on the anniversary of the massacre, when Ryuji intends to invade the city.

Arriving, Kiryu also finds chairman Goda and Sayama, who attempts to dissuade Ryuji from fighting after learning from Kurahashi's files that he is Suyeon's other child.

He believed that gaining Kiryu's trust and faking his death would trigger a war between the Tojo and the Omi so that the Jingweon could destroy them both and fill the power vacuum.

However, Takashima kills chairman Goda and Terada to usurp them, telling Kiryu that he never cared about the Jingweon's quest for revenge in the first place.

Terada reveals a hidden time bomb as he dies and Takashima attempts to launch his final attack, but is killed by Ryuji.

It was made much easier, for instance, to attack foes that come at the player character from multiple directions, and to switch targets in the middle of a combo in order to quickly take out someone who may have snuck up on your flank.

When scenes involving characters exchanging insults and threatening each other take on cartoon cadences, the sense of tension and suspense evaporates.

As it so happened, Sakamoto was a huge fan of the original Yakuza game, so being commissioned for the sequel was not the kind of offer that he was about to pass up.

To write music that complements the compelling depth of the narrative, it was necessary to proceed from the point of view of bridging the gap between the scenarist and the player.

In order to make realistic recreations of Tokyo's Kabukicho and Osaka's Dōtonbori, Sega made 17 tie-in with famous Japanese companies.

On December 11, 2014, this "HD edition" was re-released in the budget range "PlayStation 3 the Best" dedicated to best sellers on the Japanese domestic market.