Kyohei Jingu (Yakuza Kiwami)

Note: This is covering the fight in the remake.

Heihachi's got some stiff competition.

Kyohei Jingu is the secondary later hidden true antagonist and boss fight in Yakuza Kiwami. He's the main boss of the Skyscraper and, overall the twenty-third and penultimate boss of the game.

In a series filled with memorable characters and bosses, many consider him to be one of the worst, due not only to the presentation of his character but the design of his boss fight.

Why He Sucks

1. Like Lucien and Jasper Batt Jr., Kyohei Jingu is a very loathsome character, though this time it’s because his own reasoning doesn't really make a ton of sense, he betrays his own wife and daughter just because he wants money, and he only really appears just before you have to fight him, making the player unlikely to have any real interest in him other than the fact that he is the villain. Unlike Councilor Vay Hek, Lord Brevon and Frank Tenpenny, which are amazing and memorable villains in their own right, Kyohei is simply not.
2. You don't fight him at the start like most bosses in this game. Instead, you go through his SWAT bodyguards first, which are loaded with pistols, knives, and grenades that do a lot of damage and may even knock you down.
   • This means that you are forced, or at least have to use your health items, when you wanted to save them for both Jingu and the boss coming up after him.
3. When you do reach him, the fun begins (but for wrong reasons). He also wields guns and grenades, and on top of that, he has 2 armed bodyguards helping him with boss-like HP, which means that you will be spending most of the fight falling on the floor.
4. While you can focus on Kyohei, the bodyguards will pester you.
5. If you manage to beat the bodyguards, they will revive. However, while they trade their guns with knives, they can still be a pain.
6. All of his attacks can deal high damage.
7. In the second phase, when the bodyguards loses around half of their HP, they will gain a buff in attacks, and deal even more damage, making it feel like you're taking on 3 bosses at the same time.
8. For starters, the game has this mechanic where if a boss' health is down a certain point, you must do a finisher, doable by having enough heat in your gauge (the blue bar beneath the health meter) before they successfully regain health. Since getting hurt also drains your heat gauge (a job for the bodyguards to do here) and you don't have an item to recover it, he'll gain a huge chunk of his health back most of the time, wasting all your hard work & dragging the fight far longer than it should.
9. Despite the brutal difficulty that makes Kyohei more like an optional Super Boss, he is mandatory to beat in the Story Mode.
10. His defeat cutscene isn't really all that satisfying; after you beat him, he will reach out for the main character while making a few grunts, then fall on his back, and you barely get to hear him suffer after all he has caused.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Kyohei's battle theme (The Wicked) is amazing.
2. Jingu doesn't have as much health compared to other bosses (like 2 bars).
3. The boss that comes after this one is one of the best in the game, so at least he serves as a good buildup to the finale.

Tips

1. Focus on the bodyguards.
2. The moment your Super Gauge is up, use it. It will make the battle far more tolerable and easy to manage.