Continuing from the last post:

Kiryu’s fundamental style, Brawler, is just swinging around his heft. It’s crude street fighting with no form, rough execution, and relying mostly on his immense strength and size to do damage. This may sound belittling, but it actually isn’t: It works. In a fight, what matters is that it works. Kiryu’s really good at fighting, and while he’s very lacking in experience in 0, he’s still got a keen eye and the curiosity (as we mentioned before) of an expert that allows him to catch good techniques and incorporate them into his arsenal. Beast is giving form to him massive strength, using moves and motions that capitalize on explosive impact to better utilize his raw strength, while Rush is about using form to move freely, emphasizing footwork and rebalancing when struck to maintain the offensive even on the defensive. If you notice, Kiryu is emulating the moves of the people that he derived the styles from, he’s copying them and then adding his moves on top of them. He is a curious man, and if he sees something that works, he incorporates it to then build on it. The result is his trademark “Dragon of Dojima” style that is based on fast, short, explosive combos putting an emphasis on finishing blows and HEAT moves.

This is in stark contrast with Majima.

Majima’s fundamental style, Thug, is about precise strikes and finding opportunities to deal massive damage. He has form, but it’s entirely self-taught, and while he has access to short combos with explosive might behind them, if you find the right opportunity, he also has his 16 autopunches from mashing Square, which at any moment can be cancelled into the spinning kick with Triangle. Eye pokes, front kicks, fast jabs, it’s all stuff you expect in a street fight from someone who’s been in them in years. His advantage in experience over Kiryu’s is represented by how he has to invest half as much as Kiryu to get skills in his skill tree (and in gameplay, it’s a balance measure, because Kiryu’s Real Estate minigame and ‘Deep Pockets’ Shrine bonus means he’ll make a lot more money than Majima, because Yakuza 0 is a well designed video game made with love). His Slugger style, born from both his love for baseball and a flash of inspiration while seeing a trained swordsman, utilizes unpredictable strikes that attack and defend at the same time, while Breaker takes inspiration from his lithe constitution, allowing him to move however he wants, allowing many escapes, consecutive strikes, and grab attacks by sliding on the floor. Notice that all of these are based on unpredictability. Unlike Kiryu, who copies his masters and then builds upon the styles, Majima just takes inspiration, and invents his styles from scratch. This is beautiful, because Kiryu is curious, but Majima does as he pleases. It’s very in character for the two of them. This culminates on his Mad Dog of Majima style, a facade in which Majima emulates, in his words, “the wildest mother fuckers [he’s] ever seen”, principally Nishitani, and is based on pure bedlam, twisting around, slashing wildly yet precisely, and moving like a true mad dog that’s given in to rabies and bloodlust. A very cool nod at how the Mad Dog persona is a facade is how his taunt, his trademark cackling while clutching his face, actually decreases his HEAT. Taunts increase HEAT in all other cases. He’s not getting fired up in this persona, he’s actually calming down.

Dragon of Dojima’s HEAT aura is white to represent how it’s a blank slate upon which Kiryu works, while Mad Dog of Shimano’s aura is black, representative of how it’s a style deeply influenced by others, almost like a tribute to others. Dragon of Dojima is the start of Kiryu’s work, while Mad Dog of Shimano is the conclusion of Majima’s work, like white belts and black belts in karate.

All in all, Yakuza 0 is a very well thought out game, and it’s beautiful to see how much effort they put into making each character’s gameplay truly their own thing.