ONCE WERE BROTHERS
Have you ever played a good game that ended so poorly it almost soured the entire experience? For me, Yakuza Kiwami begins as well as one could reasonably hope, picking up the story in 1995—seven years after the events of the masterful Yakuza 0. Well told, gripping, funny, absurd, and thrilling are all adjectives that usually apply to a good Yakuza game. For a time, that’s true here as well—until it slowly dawns on me that something isn’t working.
With perhaps ten percent of the lengthy playthrough remaining, I had more or less accepted that I was no longer enjoying my time in Kamurocho. Very little held up to scrutiny. Neither the gameplay nor the story felt cohesive anymore, and even exploration—normally one of the series’ greatest strengths—had begun to irritate me. And those ten percent might be an understatement. The dissatisfaction crept in earlier, like a buzzing fly you can’t swat, gradually wearing me down throughout much of the second half.
To be fair, Yakuza Kiwami is a full-blown remake of an oldie—the flawed PlayStation 2 title originally released in the West as Yakuza. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio recreates the original cinematics with updated visuals and audio while modernizing the mechanics, but the underlying story remains largely intact. As a result, the game is bound by narrative conventions from a time when developers were still finding their footing.
Games have evolved considerably since then—and while there’s still room to grow, the medium has learned a lot. Yakuza 0 demonstrated just how far the series had come. Yakuza Kiwami, by contrast, feels like a step backward. The acting is still mostly strong, but the cutscene direction is often flat, and the writing—especially the shallow or inconsistent character development—frequently disappoints.
OPERA OF DECEIT
You once again control Kazuma Kiryu, voiced by Takaya Kuroda, as a younger, idealistic version of the stoic hero from Yakuza 0. On the brink of becoming head of his own family, Kiryu’s future looks bright. He is supported by his mentor Kazama, an unusually benevolent yakuza patriarch, and cheered on by his childhood friends from the Sunflower Orphanage: Nishiki and Yumi. A romance with Yumi blossoms, and Kiryu’s legendary combat prowess earns him the title “The Dragon of Dojima.”
Naturally, this idyllic setup doesn’t last. After a night of misfortune, Kiryu takes the blame for the murder of a high-ranking yakuza boss and sentenced to prison. He is expelled from his clan—mercifully spared outright execution—and sent away with the faint hope that the decision might someday be reversed.
Ten years pass.
Kiryu, now thirty-seven, is released on parole and returns to the streets of Kamurocho. Almost immediately, he’s dragged back into yakuza affairs as old grudges resurface and unfinished business demands attention. The Tojo Clan is on the brink of collapse following the assassination of its third chairman, Masaru Sera. Power struggles ignite, and civil war looms.
At the center lies a friendship turned bitter rivalry for reasons that feel both tragic and strangely inevitable. I’ll leave the rest of the bloody opera for you to uncover. Suffice it to say, many characters wear masks of perpetual aggression, brows furrowed as if violence were their default response to any inconvenience. The story is a serviceable melodrama of love, greed, jealousy, and betrayal. It starts strong, but midway through begins leaning too heavily on clichés and cheap twists.
When a story repeatedly relies on a single dramatic device—such as characters leaping in front of bullets to save loved ones—that device loses its impact. By the final stretch of Yakuza Kiwami, taking bullets for one another becomes almost routine. What should feel tragic instead veers into self-parody, undermining the emotional stakes of the climax.
MAJIMA EVERYWHERE!
Another major disappointment is the handling of Goro Majima. After his nuanced, dignified portrayal in Yakuza 0, his transformation into the fully unhinged “Mad Dog of Shimano” feels abrupt and unearned. Here, Majima is reduced largely to a maniacal jester whose sole purpose is to antagonize Kiryu. This extends to his own gameplay system: “Majima Everywhere!”—a concept that’s initially amusing, but quickly spirals out of control.
Kiryu’s decade in prison has left his skills rusty, and Majima’s constant ambushes are meant to serve as a playful way to retrain him. Majima can spring from almost anywhere—vending machines, manholes, trash bins—and frequently interrupts other activities. These encounters usually devolve into lengthy, resource-draining fights, rewarding you with experience points for skill upgrades.
At first, the system produces some genuinely funny moments—Majima crashing a date night stands out—but eventually it becomes exhausting. Late in the game, I endured four Majima encounters within fifteen seconds, simply while trying to reach a drugstore to restock healing items. Each fight dragged on, and by that point I had already maxed out all relevant skill trees. Thousands of experience points piled up, utterly useless.
AN INSANE CITY
Thankfully, Kamurocho still offers the absurd, unvoiced substories you stumble upon while exploring. Though fewer and less memorable than in Yakuza 0, they retain the eccentric charm that defines the series’ world-building. Alongside high-quality mini-games—pool, darts, bowling, dating, underground fighting, pocket circuit racing, karaoke—they elevate Yakuza Kiwami above the average open-world experience.
I skipped traditional gambling, shogi, and—mercifully—mahjong.
One standout diversion is the collectible card-battling game inspired by Pokémon. Inside SEGA arcades, you meet the “Professor,” a lab-coated child obsessed with MesuKing—a game centered on cards depicting provocatively dressed women loosely themed after insects. Beneath its absurd presentation lies a glorified game of rock-paper-scissors, wrapped in a cheesily moralistic storyline reminiscent of a Saturday-morning anime. It’s ridiculous—and oddly charming.
Despite Kiryu’s long absence, Kamurocho itself hasn’t changed much. People still chase fame and fortune, often becoming scheming opportunists in the process. Those who remain honest tend to stay poor, but their stories are still worth telling. I tried to uncover them all, though the completion list reminds me how much I missed.
Geographically, the district feels familiar, but at its heart now stands the Millennium Tower, built atop the former Empty Lot. Given how central its construction was to Yakuza 0, its limited narrative importance here is surprising.
BRAWLING LIKE CLOCKWORK
Exploration is constantly interrupted by random street fights against punks, yakuza, and assorted delinquents. Combat follows the established formula of four fighting styles, each with its own skill trees. Dedicated players will master all of them; patient grinders can focus exclusively on the Dragon of Dojima style via the “Majima Everywhere!” system.
I did neither. I mostly relied on the Brawler style, which trivialized regular encounters but left me ill-prepared for certain late-game bosses. One fight near the end nearly broke me. Rapid enemy health regeneration—combined with limited counterplay and sustained gunfire from multiple foes—pushes frustration to unreasonable levels.
Combat is flexible and theoretically rich, allowing players to develop personal styles. In practice, the cramped streets of Kamurocho and Majima’s relentless pursuit make it feel overused. I can tolerate that. What I struggle to forgive is how some storylines, so carefully set up in Yakuza 0, fizzle out here.
SUMMARY
I still like Yakuza Kiwami, but I recognize that I approached it with unfair expectations. Unlike most games, which I meet with a blank slate, this one carried the heavy legacy of its prequel. After Yakuza 0, I expected all its elements to snap into place like a perfect Tetris line. Instead, many pieces simply don’t fit.
Made eleven years apart, the original Yakuza and its remake form an uneven patchwork. Beneath the polished exterior lies a story that is wildly inconsistent—at its worst hackneyed, cliché-ridden, and unintentionally funny at the worst possible moments. At its best, it offers quiet, sincere scenes of real emotional weight. Unsurprisingly, many of those were added specifically for the Kiwami remake.
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has clearly evolved since the series’ inception, and I still have much of Kiryu’s journey ahead of me. I refuse to believe I won’t again experience the heights reached by Yakuza 0. Even here, those moments exist—but only in flashes. They feel comforting, like returning home after a long absence. That is what I choose to take from Yakuza Kiwami.
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