Yakuza Kiwami Review
The year is 2005 and Sega America decides to go all-in on a bizarre little RPG where you play as a gangster in a fictionalized Kabukicho. They get Mark Hamill to play one of the villainous characters, do everything possible to localize the script to fit with American sensibilities of what a gangster drama should be. It will be the spiritual successor to Shenmue, a Dreamcast game that had a decent cult following.
Yakuza released to little fanfare. Even localized, perhaps the game was just too Japanese. Or perhaps the localization made it too American. Nuance replaced by rapid fire cursing. There’s a reason the dubbed version has disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Fast forward to 2007 and I’m a middle schooler who can only afford to buy games when they are less than ten dollars, something kids nowadays will never get to experience. Gamestop and EB Games, fine purveyors of used physical gaming, allowing cheap ass kids to use their allowance to actually own something they would play for hours on end. God I miss those days.
Anyway I see a pretty unassuming but very badass cover — a man, back to camera, displaying his sick dragon tattoo — and decide to go for it.
I beat it and quite enjoyed it. It made a great impression even if I didn’t understand the Japanese qualities. This was a time when anime was for weirdos and being a weeb meant being a total loser. Now the internet has made Japan a kind of Mecca of nerddom and that explains why it took a decade before the Yakuza franchise took off in the west.
We will get to why the series saw a renaissance in the late 2010’s, but let us begin where it all began…kind of.
Yakuza Kiwami is a remake, a reintroduction to the franchise for those who got into Yakuza 0 and wanted to go back to follow Kazuma Kiryu’s journey.
Here we find Kazuma at his highest. Ready to start his own family within the overarching Tojo Clan, he is riding high with his childhood friends Akira Nishikiyama, and Yumi…the girl he is in love with.
But things quickly take a turn for the worse when Yumi is taken by a family patriarch. Nishiki shoots him before Yumi can be raped and Kiryu takes the fall, spending a decade in prison and known as the guy who killed a leader in his own organization, basically patricide.
When Kiryu gets out the year is 2005 and everything has changed. Nishiki is trying to shoulder his way into Tojo leadership despite everyone finding him weak, Yumi has died, and a little girl who is somehow connected to Yumi winds up becoming a kind of daughter figure for Kiryu.
This story of brother versus brother, a man returning home after so long…it’s all been done before and here there are varying degrees of success. Nishiki is a pretty lame villain made even more lame by new Kiwami content that shows what a pathetic loser he really is. The true villain behind everything, who I won’t spoil, isn’t introduced until so late in the game he hardly has time to be more than a plot device.
Despite that the story is very involving and uncovering the seedy underbelly of Kamurocho is fun. The finale is long-winded but fantastic and has a sense of Metal Gear Solid cutscenery and anime emotional overload. If nothing else, it is well worth playing Kiwami just to see through the story; even if it isn’t as well put together as later games.
Some of the negatives of this game are very small nuisances. One of those is that Majima is shoehorned into everything possible. Having become the fan favorite character, the developers had to find more ways to involve him even though he had little to do with the story of the original game. Here he has a few more moments in the story and also can appear anywhere with the “Majima Everywhere” system. He will appear on the street as a miniboss, occasionally sneak up on you in often funny ways, and sometimes his crew will call you to meet Majima somewhere for a showdown. As you fight him you’ll gain new abilities for your Dragon style; but while there is payoff it does become a tad repetitive and annoying.
Another nuisance is the side content. Many people will tell you that while Yakuza’s main story is great, it’s the side missions that really make the series what it is. Often goofy, these help to create a sense of Kamurocho as a character itself.
My problem with Kiwami is that the side missions are often very dull. You bump someone and they want money for a fake broken arm. You step on their contact lens and they want money. It’s usually just some scam followed by you beating the tar out of someone and then moving on. My early ambition to do it all quickly fell away as I found every side quest to become a blur of dull dialogue.
And the main story itself does often have some lulls in the excitement and repetition in the tasks. There’s a lot of running back and forth between each side of the map to accomplish goals. It allows time to go pocket racing (where you race miniature cars) or play mahjong or arcade games, but if you are just trying to get through the story it will become a chore.
The combat has been revamped from the original, emulating 0 in its multiple styles and leveling system. It’s a lot of fun to play and a tad more tactical than you’d expect. You can go ham beating people over the head with everything in sight or you can throw quick punches with the Wing-Chun-esque style. Depending on the enemy you’ll want to switch styles, but it’s ultimately a more satisfying combat system than the more streamlined original game.
Graphically Kiwami looks very good on the surface though suffers from the usual Yakuza scuff. NPCs are a fairly generic crew you’ll grow to become accustomed to, the characters often have the same animations (many carried over from 0), and the biggest miss for me is how you have to see a load screen before entering restaurants and other buildings.
My biggest complaint as far as differences between this version and the original goes is that “Receive You” isn’t the theme. I don’t know why the song is indelibly etched in my mind (it’s on my Spotify playlist) but it slaps. Why wasn’t it brought back Sega?
Overall, Yakuza Kiwami stands as a solid remake but suffers from a handful of additions that makes the experience less organic. From the start, when you go to get the ring for Yumi, fans will immediately feel the bloat. New fans won’t notice that but I certainly did. The side content also wasn’t as strong as other games; especially the side stories.
But ultimately if you’re looking to get invested in the story of Kiryu and Kamurocho, Yakuza Kiwami won’t disappoint.
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