Yakuza Kiwami (NS2) Review
Summary: Kiwami gets it second Switch port in so many years, and is a great excuse to take this compelling epic for another spin. It would be criminal not to.
4
Play it again Kiryu
It’s crazy to think that Yakuza Kiwami is 10 years old and the series as a whole is 20 (in Japan at least).
To celebrate this fact, Sega has brought the first two remakes to modern consoles, with Kiwami only making its way to the Switch last year. It’s welcome and somewhat surprising that we’ve now got an even better version of it for the Switch 2, instead of just a patch.
Essentially, this new port is the same as the Switch version. It just takes advantage of the Switch 2’s beefier hardware, so it runs and looks better, which is no bad thing.
The framerate has effectively been doubled from the Switch port and is in line with the PS4 version, at a solid 60fps. Likewise, the game runs in 1080p in docked and handheld mode, just like Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut.
The one thing I was hoping to see with these new ports, which is unfortunately missing, was a new English dub. Don’t get me wrong, the original Japanese voice acting is absolutely superb, but I’m a lazy gaijin, and I have a fondness for the modern English cast of the Yakuza series, especially Matt Mercer’s take on Majima, which is definitely on par with Hidenari Ugaki.
You’ll also be happy to hear that Kiwami still holds up as well as it ever did. Riding that fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous, part homage to Japanese gangster movies, part overwrought melodrama, and, in its more ridiculous moments, part goofball comedy.
Players step into the polished wing tips and sharp suit of Kazuma Kiryu, a young moralistic yakuza in the Tojo clan, who takes the fall for the murder of his patriarch, Sohei Dojima, to protect his sworn brother Akira Nishikiyama, who saved their childhood friend Yumi Sawamura from being sexually assaulted by the evil bastard and murdered him in the resulting struggle.
After spending ten years inside, Kiryu returns to the neon-soaked streets of Kamurocho to find the world he once knew in tatters. Nishikiyama has become a cold, ambitious, money-minded careerist. The clan is tearing itself apart, and every yakuza in Kamurocho is on the hunt for 10 billion yen that’s gone missing from the Tojos’ coffers.
While on the trail of the missing cash, Kiryu’s life is changed forever when he encounters a young girl called Haruka who is searching for her mother, Kiryu’s childhood friend Yumi, who may also have stolen the cash, and has a massive target on her back. Thus, it’s up to Kiryu to get to the bottom of the mystery of the missing 10 billion while protecting Haruka from anyone who might harm her to get to her mother.
Cue several dozen hours of ass-kicking, moralizing on what it means to be a manly man, beefcakes tearing their shirts off to show their lovely back tattoos, beating the shit out of each other, and the occasional drunken night at the karaoke bar. Complete with a round of darts or pool.
You can even head to the arcade to try your hand at the crane machine or play the world’s horniest game of rock, paper, scissors with kids (don’t ask), though unfortunately, it doesn’t include any of the Sega classics seen in Yakuza 0, but you can go to a club and chat up a hostess if you like.
It’s a unique blend of Japanese crime epic and slice-of-life melodrama, with a heavy dose of brawling on the side, which remains a ton of fun to this day. Though admittedly, it doesn’t have the most refined fighting system in the series, giving you access to four distinct fighting styles: Brawler, Rush, Beast, and Dojima. Brawler Kiryu uses hard-hitting punches, kicks, and the occasional traffic cone on his foes. Rush has you ducking and weaving cruiserweight style. While Beast is about grabs, landing heavy blows, and picking up the heaviest objects you can find, and beating thugs half to death with them. Then there’s Dojima, Kiryu’s deadliest form, which you slowly relearn by having punch-ups with Majima, who’s decided he wants to get Kiryu back and fighting fit by ambushing him at every opportunity.
Each style suits a different situation, and as you progress, you’ll gain experience that can be used to expand your offensive arsenal of punches, kicks, and grabs.
General combat is brutal and incredibly satisfying, especially when you set off a heat move that sees Kiryu use an object he’s picked up or a part of the environment to cause serious damage with brutal blows that drive your opponents into the ground.
Though Kiwami’s brawling is a lot of fun for the best part, it’s worth bearing in mind that some of the boss battles do drag on a little, and you should make sure to tool up before embarking on one to make sure you’ll get through it, and you can do some decent amounts of damage, which improves their pacing significantly.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, though, if it’s your first time playing the series, Yakuza Kiwami is a decent place to start. Though technically, Yakuza 0 is the beginning of Majima and Kiryu’s stories, Kiwami is a fairly faithful remake of the original game from way back in 2005, so presents the actual beginning of the tale, as it was initially meant to be told (aside from a couple of bits to tie it to 0). It also doesn’t quite have the same flair or scope that much later entries have (technically 0 is the 6th).
That being said, it also doesn’t have the level of bloat that many of the later entries have, and the Switch 2 port is incredibly slick and, like Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut before it, is an absolute joy to play either docked or in handheld mode.
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