Open-world games have evolved a lot in the 19 years since the original Yakuza was released. Quirky fetch quests and meandering storytelling were often characteristics of the genre, as was the sense that the developers were gleefully mashing together ideas and holding everything together with an offbeat sense of humour. It’s a positive, then, that this 2017 remake, Yakuza Kiwami, now released on the Switch, updated and modernised much of the 2005 original, so much so that they’re effectively two distinct games.

For example, the remake completely overhauls the original’s fixed-perspective, Resident Evil-style Tokyo streets. The 2005 game featured just one combat style, while the remake has four — Rush, Brawler, Beast, and Dragon — a development first seen in a similar way in the much-superior 2015 prequel Yakuza 0. The game’s story was also significantly fleshed out by developing an important subplot concerning the game’s tragic antagonist, Nishiki.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

For us, these were good decisions, but — and yes, there’s going to be a 'but' — Yakuza Kiwami still arguably has a little too much of that retro 2005 DNA. We came into the game with open hearts and minds, but an overabundance of cutscenes, criminal (ahem) pacing, and often brutal difficulty spikes gave us pause for thought multiple times during this 15–20-hour action adventure. We enjoyed a lot of our playthrough, but we also sometimes found ourselves genuinely frustrated. More than once we asked ourselves if we were really having any fun at all.

The opening couple of hours highlight some of Yakuza Kiwami’s strengths and weaknesses. When we were first set free to wander around the fully 3D Tokyo streets, we spent a silly amount of time exploring the nooks and crannies and appreciating all the little true-to-life details. Tokyo is a city like no other, and it was a delight seeing it replicated so well in Kamurocho – from the street-side vending machines to the brightly lit signs and arcades. We enjoyed strutting into supermarkets with colourful ramen packets. We stared happily into the little stairwells and lifts that lead to those iconic private-room-style bars, or the entrances to baseball batting cages, darts bars, and sushi bars. This artistic rendering – the streets filled with pedestrians and stumbling drunks, and groups large and small – day and night, rain and sunshine, made the game environment seem truly alive.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

The story starts off well, too. We followed Kiryu, initially the Lieutenant Advisor of the Dojima Family crime syndicate, who at the start of the game seemed pretty happy with his life. He openly expresses his lack of desire to rise up the ranks and seems much more concerned with impressing Yumi, a childhood friend and love interest. Early on we meet other important characters too – including the previously mentioned Nishiki, Kiryu’s friend and equal.

Of course, Kiryu’s ‘happy’ Yakuza life soon goes south. Without going into spoilers, there’s a time jump and power dynamics shift between competing factions of the organised crime family. A lot of money goes missing, and some important people too.

Yakuza Kiwami’s storytelling ambition is evident, even if at times there were so many characters that it was difficult to follow everything. It’s likely no coincidence that the original game was made while The Sopranos was reaching its final season and reigning supreme as the king of television drama. But there’s a cost too: for long periods gameplay takes a back seat to an abundance of cutscenes.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Clearly, players will have varying levels of patience when it comes to how much time they’re happy to sit back and watch the story play out. For us, the truth is Yakuza Kiwami pushed us a little beyond our limit.

Beyond the occasional, artificially dragged-out fetch quest, brawling is, of course, the soul of the game. And on the surface, the fighting system is fun. We were often tasked with fighting large groups in combat that felt a little like Rocksteady’s Batman games – though much more nuanced, complicated, and chaotic.

'Y' unleashes a quick attack, 'X' ups the ante with a knockout blow, 'A' grabs, and 'B' saves face (literally) by letting Kiryu dodge incoming attacks. The 'L' button blocks too, and all of this can be mixed and matched via the four combat styles in order to string together combos and unleash powerful ‘heat’ attacks that inflict a higher amount of damage.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

With the different fighting styles and a huge number of upgrades and moves to unlock — uppercuts, space-clearing rush attacks, extra feints and dodges — we had fun whenever the game let us get into a decent flow. Kiryu’s animations, whether ducking and weaving or throwing his bodyweight into a punch, add massively to the experience. Sure, at our worst, because our poor brains are only capable of holding so much new information at a time, we were guilty of spamming the same few moves, but when we had the space to experiment we had a lot of fun pushing ourselves out of our fighting comfort zone and discovering the limits of Kiryu’s destructive force.

But around two hours into the game we hit our first bottleneck – a fight with a pretty menial bouncer outside of a funeral that took us about half an hour to beat. Moments like this scattered throughout the game wouldn’t have been a problem, but far too often any sense we were making progress and mastering our moves would be undermined by what felt like extended sequences of unfair fights.

On normal difficulty, whether in a cage fight or a gambling den, these would stop our progress dead for what felt like hours – over and over again. Because these moments were so frequent, we started to feel as if we didn’t have any time to develop our skills in between. We like a challenge, but we’re not convinced that Yakuza Kiwami has this part elegantly balanced. The most egregious of these moments came in a fight with 10 or so enemies in a very small space in a gambling den. We could hardly see Kiryu to control him, let alone time evasive moves.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

As we progressed, we felt the game was losing focus. The consequence of the difficulty spikes was that we needed to keep stocked up with healing items, which we’d buy from supermarkets. Often doing that meant heading quite far out of our way. When we wasted five minutes heading down to the shop for the fifth or sixth time in a row, this once-novel idea started feeling tedious. Even worse was that every 20 or so steps we’d trigger a random battle. Often we couldn’t avoid these battles if we tried.

These bugbears were surpassed by a few tedious fetch quests and by some chapters shifting focus, halting the story, and shining a light on side characters. We were already feeling as if our playthrough was a little ‘stop and start’, and just when we urged to push on with the main story, the game threw an unwelcome curve ball. Arguably tightening up a few of these moments may have helped Yakuza Kiwami better highlight its more positive traits.

After seven-and-a-half years with the Switch, we’re all aware that there may be more beautiful versions of the game elsewhere – but the bottom line is that this version of Yakuza Kiwami is a fully functional and equivalent experience. Sure, we experienced a few stutters while running around the open world, but more often than not the game runs smoothly. Handheld mode features a little blurriness, but certainly not as bad as some ports of other games from the same era, and we quickly got used to it.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

There were other moments when the game’s quirkier personality really clicked for us. We were amused by its commitment to secondary distractions – the likes of slot car racing and darts. It’s just a shame that the flow was so often interrupted by cutscenes, or another sequence of pace-killing battles that sucked away much of our goodwill.

Ultimately, for players interested in trying out the first game in such an iconic series, we think Yakuza Kiwami on the Switch might be a great place to start, especially if you don't have access to Yakuza 0. Otherwise, for those looking for a tightly-paced, more satisfying experience, we reluctantly recommend looking elsewhere.

Conclusion

No matter how significant the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series might have become, this first instalment is a mixed bag. At times Yakuza Kiwami is full of life and ambition. At other times it’s as frustrating and seems too willing to draw things out in a slightly over-indulgent way. Experimenting with the battle system is satisfying for as long as the game gives you space to do it. But the game’s pace-killing negatives, the difficulty spikes and the quickly diminishing returns of wandering the Tokyo streets, marred by random battles and fetching items, hold it back from being an easy recommendation. You may well enjoy yourself during your playthrough, but we’d bet a few thousand yen that some of the less-streamlined elements will test your patience.