To say that Yakuza Kiwami is a great Nintendo Switch game is an understatement. It’s a fantastic port of an existing remaster that serves as one of the best entry points in the Yakuza series. It might have less to “do,” but that’s more of a reason for SEGA to port the rest of the Yakuza games for Nintendo players in the future. Hopefully (and I sincerely mean this), Ryu Ga Gotoku brings more of its library to Switch owners…preferably at the same quality as Yakuza Kiwami.
Yakuza Kiwami was added to PlayStation Plus in November 2018. At that time, I was not in a position to play it because of school and my obsession with Final Fantasy XII (which, for the record, I have yet to finish) on the PS4. Fast forward to 2020 when the whole world shut down, I was reminded that I was reminded that Yakuza was in my library when I was looking for something to play while I had nothing else better to do. I had heard drips and drabs about Yakuza as a series, but I had no idea what to personally expect.
Lo and behold, Yakuza Kiwami got me through a good month of the pandemic. It also got me fully onboard with whatever Ryu Ga Gotoku and Sega cooked up with the Yakuza series. My only quibble, though, is that the most of the Yakuza games were absent from Nintendo’s hardware, barring the Wii U editions of Yakuza and Yakuza 2 back in the early aughts.
Good news, Nintendo players! If you’ve been hoping to play Yakuza on your Switch…you will be able to, soon.
I have heard the Yakuza series critiqued as an acquired taste, be it their emotional rollercoasters of stories, pseudo-RPG elements which require grinding, questionable balance as it pertains to combat (this is especially true in the original Yakuza games), and even its subject matter. These elements, in a vacuum, are often the things I, myself, critique games for having when they’re instituted to be glaring issues rather than part of the core gameplay loop. The beauty of the Yakuza series, especially Yakuza Kiwami, is that of its organized chaos that is tightly held together by a plethora of contrasts.
As for its subject matter, Yakuza is a product of a time where adult thematics (read, serious storytelling, a culture of violence, human trafficking, and the sale of drugs/firearms) were positioned alongside absurdism as to lessen the seriousness for players. Fast forward to today where we see more games tap into deep emotional territories without skewing immature, Yakuza almost mocks the notion of mature thematics. The recent Like a Dragon games go so far as to embrace the absurdism as a way of illustrating the extent to which Yakuza‘s protagonists perceive the world.
I digress. This is not a review of the Yakuza series. This is a review of Yakuza Kiwami on the Switch. The first of hopefully many other Yakuza titles that make their way on Nintendo’s little console that could.
Yakuza Kiwami is the 2016 remaster of the original Yakuza game that was released on the PS2 in 2005. The decision to remaster the original Yakuza was a smart one – by fixing plot holes, implementing Yakuza 0’s (which is the prequel to Yakuza that was released in 2015) combat system, and adding additional content in the form of Majima Everywhere (more on this in a moment), they’ve brought the first entry in the series to a new audience. You could argue that that Yakuza Kiwami’s graphics were slightly upgraded, too. I don’t see many Yakuza games praised for their high-end graphics despite Ryu Ga Gotoku packing so much of Tokyo’s nightlife in the same map multiple games in a row.
Yakuza Kiwami takes place in the streets of Kamurocho, a fictional district of Tokyo, and places players in the shoes of Kazuma Kiryu. The game starts with Kiryu taking the blame for the murder of his patriarch at the hands of Kiryu’s best friend. After spending 10 years in prison, it’s now up to Kiryu to restart his life and locate his missing childhood friend. All of this occurs while warring yakuza factions terrorize the city in a plan to recover a massive sum of money.
Kamurocho is a bustling miniature city. In between story missions, Kiryu can walk through the city, go shopping, fight other gang members, and eat at restaurants. The third-person perspective that’s used to follow Kiryu around gives players the opportunity to see a wealth of NPCs, most of which are not to be interacted with, going about their lives. There’s a small amount of fast travel in the form of taking taxis to opposite ends of the city, but most of the game is spent walking through the city. Luckily, there’s much to do and uncover.
Main story missions often take Kiryu out of Kamurocho and into isolated environments full of fighting segments. Kiryu can occasionally fight on the streets of the city, but the fights in the main story missions are often back-to-back in line with story beats. For instance, one early chapter has Kiryu infiltrate a funeral procession, only to end up fighting his way out of the funeral hall by taking on wave upon wave of gang members. It’s during these story missions where Yakuza Kiwami shines by reimagining 90s-era martial arts flicks into playable sequences. While environments can’t be destroyed, Kiryu can pick up objects and use them as weapons against a seemingly endless stream of jobbers.
Combat sequences are simple. Kiryu can swap between four different fighting styles and can pummel gangmembers into oblivion using small button combinations, weapons, and special cinematic attacks. Additional attacks are unlocked by spending experience points in Kiryu’s ability trees, highlighting Kiryu’s return to his former power as the “Dragon” prior to being imprisoned. Early game combat is a struggle because of the lack of techniques, resulting in the first few hours feeling especially grindy. Being forced to use the same one-two punch is not that fun, but thankfully combat becomes far broader after the fifth chapter.
Side missions are plentiful, often having Kiryu go off the beaten path. These substories often involve a scammer impacting Kiryu or someone close to him, more or less resulting in a silly battle and a small reward. Some of the substories, though, go off the rails by not only painting Kiryu as out of touch with reality (thanks to being in prison for a decade), but also in goofy positions. Compared to other Yakuza games, these substories feel less varied, but they’re still silly and worth the time on the streets of Kamurocho.
Some of the substories involve minigames. Not combat minigames, mind you. Think of things like racing, mahjong, 2D fighting games, and more. There’s also a physical arcade location where I could play a crane game and a very suggestive Rochambeau game with scantily-clad women dressed as bugs. There aren’t classic SEGA titles like Virtua Fighter 2 in this game, sadly.
Majima Everywhere is one of the additions made when Ryu Ga Gotoku remastered Yakuza into Yakuza Kiwami. Goro Majima, Kiryu’s arch-nemesis and foil, constantly tails Kiryu and randomly starts fights with the player, be it at specific story points or randomly in between main chapters. Defeating Majima is always worth it, as it grants him permanent power for a specific combat style while also giving the player a good chuckle. Majima always shows up at the most inopportune times, taunting Kiryu while proving to be a formidable opponent.
It feels weird writing about Majima in such a cold fashion in this review, only because he’s my favorite character in the entire series. Yakuza Kiwami has Majima at his silliest, always emerging when the player least expects and lightening the overall tone of the story, regardless of what had transpired in a cutscene moments ago.
At the start of this review, I alluded to a wealth of critiques of the Yakuza series. What I failed to mention is how all of the games, Yakuza Kiwami included, keep the player entertained with minigames that are just as fun and sometimes more absurd than the game’s overarching story. In my hundreds of hours playing multiple Yakuza games, I spent a near-equal amount of time playing the minigames as I did advancing the main stories. Yakuza Kiwami has the least amount of minigames than its newer counterparts, sure, but there’s still enough distractions to keep you playing something in-game, even if it’s not beating yakuza jobbers down.
All of this is to say that Yakuza Kiwami is a good starting point in the Yakuza series. You could start with Yakuza 0, but that’s not available on the Switch…nor does it position Ryu Ga Gotoku’s fictional Kamurocho as a world that keeps players invested. Let me rephrase – Yakuza 0 is a great prequel, but it’s clearly made for those wanting to know Kiryu’s prologue after getting to know him as a changed man.
Now the big question…how does it run on the Switch?
Perhaps the most impressive feat of Yakuza Kiwami on the Nintendo Switch is its implementation. I have been conditioned to playing subpar ports of existing titles on the Nintendo Switch, often containing excessive loading screens, clearly downgraded graphics, and frustrating controls stemming from the Joy-Cons’ size. Yes, I am aware that Yakuza Kiwami is nearly 10 years old now, but…well, you know the rest.
Ryu Ga Gotoku has done some black magic trickery with Yakuza Kiwami, and I’m so excited for Nintendo Switch owners to see it. Despite Kamurocho being so large and busy, the city maintained its livelihood and activity. Animated neon signs and busybody NPCs peppered the streets. When running through groups of people, the Joy-Cons would vibrate as Kiryu pushed NPCs aside. Loading screens were few and far between despite constantly switching from cutscene to gameplay.
I don’t know how they did it, but Yakuza Kiwami runs…fantastic. No lag. No graphical stutters. It’s as though I was playing on a PlayStation 4 but with maybe smaller graphical differences. Even then, the average player would not pick up on these differences. I was stunned that I was rarely waiting in between cutscenes and gameplay beats despite so much happening in-game and on-screen.
To say that Yakuza Kiwami is a great Nintendo Switch game is an understatement. It’s a fantastic port of an existing remaster that serves as one of the best entry points in the Yakuza series. It might have less to “do,” but that’s more of a reason for SEGA to port the rest of the Yakuza games for Nintendo players in the future. Hopefully (and I sincerely mean this), Ryu Ga Gotoku brings more of its library to Switch owners…preferably at the same quality as Yakuza Kiwami.
