Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties - Switch 2 Review

So, here we are at the end of a long line of remakes in a long-running series before it turns its sights onto something completely new. Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties will be the last Kiwami game, as confirmed by Ryu Ga Gotoku a short time ago. Instead of an over-the-top crescendo of the Kiwami games and Yakuza as a whole, however, Kiwami 3 has left me with feelings that are decidedly mixed. It’s not all bad and I can see their reasoning behind some of the changes from both the original and what has come to be expected of the Kiwami remakes. I just think that Kiwami 3 was not the place for those changes; there’s a lot to get into, so let’s just go-ba!

The Good

Let’s take a quick breath and consider what the game does right. Straight off the top, I love the Ryukyu fighting style and that it condenses a bunch of weapons management into a cool combat form that manages to give each of those weapons a chance to shine. Combat, in general, feels extremely fluid and responsive, and few are the moments where getting knocked on your arse results in a long, frustrating wait for Kiryu to compose himself. The Dragon of Dojima is in top form, as you’d hope after three games already of mastering and remastering his skillset. 

I’ve not played Kiwami 3 on PC for myself; I only have online shots and clips to go by for comparison, but my overall impression is that the game looks fine on the Switch 2. There were some visual and lighting glitches reported around launch but they must have been fixed by the time I got to the game because it was a smooth experience as far as that was concerned. Sure, it doesn’t look as pretty as it would on, say, even a medium-level desktop machine. It does still look good, however, and as I often say, it feels like some kind of technomancy to me whenever games like this run as well as they do on a system like the Switch 2.

Arguably the biggest draw of Kiwami 3 is Mine’s story, allowing you to play as one of the game’s antagonists and see things from his perspective. At a brief three chapters long, I’d describe it as short but sweet but definitely leaving you wanting more. It’s the kind of addition to a game I would love – not just an extended view into a villain but a chance to be them and see things from their side. In a game like Yakuza, that could be a golden opportunity to really flesh out one of these characters we’re so often suckered into liking at the last minute for what feels like a cheap reason. I’m undecided if Mine’s story in Kiwami 3 achieves this, and I feel like that’s largely because of how much time it was afforded – something I’ll get to later.

The new content added to the game is good, in that these sections are both well written and fit the vibe of the game. I have some problems there, as well, but I’ll get into that later. The Bad Boy Dragon minigame, akin to the Real Estate game from Yakuza 0 or the Majima Construction minigames from Kiwami 2, is a solid, though not especially noteworthy, addition to the series. The gameplay for that one gets a little repetitive towards the end, but, being as short as the rest of the game, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. This can also be said of the new substories that have been added in and the changes to the overall narrative. I probably spent at least a third of my game time in just the orphanage alone, and I’m unafraid to say that manly tears were shed during some of the moments Kiryu shared with those kids. On their own, in a vacuum, these changes are all passably fine by the standards of the series. The problem comes as a question of "Why?", and I guess we’ll get into that now.

TL;DR

• Ryukyu style effectively replacing weapons
• Combat flow and feel is great
• New content additions mostly fit well

The Bad

Let’s address the smaller technical issues real quick, as they seem tertiary to the rest of the problems I’m going to talk about. There is some slowdown, stuttering, and frame-freezing present on the Switch 2. This mostly only occurs when battles get really large but considering that’s what Yakuza games build to, it means that they’re also most prevalent at the apex of each content section. It’s not excessive, but it’s there and far more noticeable than anything I’ve seen of the game on PC, either for this game or its predecessors. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about why this game has been kind of a disappointment.

This is not the most faithful of remakes, as we’ve already established. I think I should define what I think Yakuza, and by extension the Kiwami remakes, have been up to now. Yakuza is ridiculous and silly, but also heartfelt and dramatic. A good amount of that comes from how we see Kiryu out in the world, interacting with the community around him. That world is massive, often bordering on bloated, but never quite essential; participating in it can yield rewards that make the main story easier and the characters feel richer, but never has it been a requirement. And yet, it’s these non-essential elements that truly make the Yakuza games so memorable, so strange and unique in the way they present their setting. 

The Kiwami games, then, are a celebration of that excess, taking it to new heights of "Oh my God, there’s just so much to do" and adding a few dollops more on top. They polished the presentation to a standard set by Yakuza 0, and consistently hit new highs over the past two titles by just giving us more Yakuza. So, to have these elements removed in the name of a new philosophy for the series going forward leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth, especially when this was to be the last Kiwami game anyway.

A lot of substories have been yanked out from the original, bringing it down from over 100 to a svelte 30, for example, and more galling is that new content was added in. Some of the removed storylines were done for “sensitivity reasons", such as the “Talking about me?” storyline, which has been criticised as being transphobic by some. Given the studio’s willingness to change so much other content, however, this feels like it could have been a golden opportunity to rewrite some of the content to better fit the times. While the Ryukyu fighting style is fun and reduces the irritation of weapons management, they’ve also removed Revelations. These fun little moments where Kiryu would spot something bizarre with his phone and learn a new fighting technique have been replaced with an ability upgrade tree that’s just very… boring. It’s very dull and irksomely straightforward, throttled only by the fact that there’s no “fast way” to make money, like there was in the previous games. They’ve made a part of Yakuza boring, and that feels like a sin. 

If the idea was to reduce bloat from the game, then this clashes with them adding in the Bad Boy Dragon series of missions. They wouldn’t have greatly expanded the orphanage content or added so much functionality to the phone. And it certainly seems that removing bloat from the game was their intention, since that even extends to reducing the size of downtown Ryukyu. When these changes seem so unpopular, as well, it makes one question why they were done, which I think may be explained by the changes to the game’s narrative. 

The game’s ending has been changed from the original and it’s difficult to talk about how it’s changed without entering spoiler territory. Effectively, it’s safe to say that a major plot point of the original was retconned, and this is tied into the new story that allows you to play as one of the game’s antagonists, Mine. While I can’t actually talk about what these specific changes are, I can say that I don’t like them, and the reason for their existence isn't clear. They’re also the kind of changes that leave large, open questions because of the inconsistencies they create for the story we already know. 

Right now, it feels like this narrative change and the newly created story content that justifies it were the sole reasons for reducing the rest of the content on Kiryu’s side of the game. That feels bad and isn’t a great indicator for what’s coming since the story incongruities certainly suggest that there will be remakes of a kind in the future, just under a different name and, potentially, with the same eye for content reduction.

TL;DR

• Some slowdown and stuttering during cutscenes
• Frame freezing during fight transitions

Final Score: 6/10

It hurts me to give a Yakuza game a “mid” score but it truly feels like they missed the mark with this one. It seems that the studio has a new vision for what the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series will be going forward, with smaller games that have deeper gameplay. I think that’s a fine idea, but Kiwami 3 shouldn’t have been the place to begin that philosophy. In this case, less was most definitely not more, though it’s potentially fixable if they just put things back in. That said, the narrative changes feel as though this remake bodes potentially bad portents for the remaining games in the Yakuza series as they address the newly created plot holes. I’ll be watching what Ryu Ga Gotoku does from this point with great interest and anxious anticipation.

Thank you for checking out our Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties Switch review, thank you to Sega (via Five Star Games) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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