The Yakuza Kiwami games have always been a bit of a mixed bag. The first two felt like their cutscenes were simply slapped into existing games with some unnecessary systems, leading to them failing to actually feel like their original counterparts. The awkwardly titled Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides, conversely, manages to mostly feel like its own game, but with an almost shocking amount of the original’s extra content completely replaced. Story-wise, it’s still one of the better pre-Yakuza 0 games in the series and the new Dark Tides mode is meatier than I expected, making for an enjoyable Yakuza experience that still doesn’t replace the original game.
One thing that Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides does far better is the combat. The original game is often disdainfully referred to as “Blockuza” due to how the AI for stronger enemies tends to just stand and block endlessly. The AI mercifully doesn’t do that here. Instead, strong foes spend most fights in a super state that grants them hyper armor, meaning that you won’t be able to stunlock them. You too have your own super mode that can be used far more sparingly, but the combat here is the absolute best part. Kiryu gets a brand new Ryukyu style that uses a host of Okinawan weapons that I really got a kick out of too.
The game’s main villain, Mine, is the protagonist of the secondary mode, Dark Ties. His fighting style isn’t as enjoyable to me as either of Kiryu’s, but it still made for a nice change of pace. Mine has a longer main string than Kiryu and his own set of tricks, including a super mode with what amounts to three bars. Both characters gain new moves and boosted damage potential (including hyper armor), although only Kiryu gets a special finisher for his styles. The Ryukyu style also has a shield built in that lets him block blades and guns by default, in addition to letting him use brass knuckles to instantly guard break any enemies that haven’t gotten the memo that this isn’t Blockuza. It also gives you a perfect parry, which is always a plus in my book.
The combat, of course, still has a bit of that Dragon Engine jank here and there including awkward ragdolls and strange tracking issues (especially for both of Kiryu’s fifth charge attacks for either style.) Sometimes you can use a heat action while hammering a foe, only for the attack to go after an enemy that you weren’t even looking at. All of this is more common than I’d like, but the combat is still on the upper scale for the franchise. Visually, the game looks about as you’d expect, but some of the characters and environments look weird (including Kiryu’s face.)
Early on in the Yakuza 3 portion of the story, the game takes you on a forced detour and makes you do its new side content consisting of taking care of things at Morning Glory (which has turned almost all of the kids’ storylines into optional substories instead of them being integrated into the main narrative.) Then there’s the baddie gang that Kiryu joins that’s basically a biker gang version of Pirate Yakuza‘s crew battles apparently (I haven’t gotten to that game yet, but SmashPad’s EIC set me straight on that aspect.) Overall, I liked both of these, much moreso the Morning Glory side stuff.
In this, you can help the kids with their homework, sew for them, play games, etc. It all increases their affection and grants you access to their stories. Plus you can grow crops and whatnot to cook dishes for them, which is the crux of that storyline. The baddie battles are Musou-esque fights that don’t take long to get through, but they culminate in the hardest content in the game where your ally AI simply can’t survive unless you spend a significant amount of time level grinding. This was the only major piece of content in Yakuza 3 that I didn’t finish. Maybe I’ll grind later if I feel like it.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides cuts out around 3/4ths of the original game’s substories, which makes the former game considerably shorter than the original (although the lengths are similar overall when combined with Dark Tides.) The new content doesn’t even come close to replacing this. It took me about 26 hours to do nearly every major part of Yakuza Kiwami 3, whereas it’ll take about 40 hours to do it all in the original game. Granted, many of the original substories were boring, tedious fetch quests, but cutting so many of them is such a bizarre choice that alone makes the original still worth playing in spite of all the constant blocking.
I was expecting Dark Tides to be another short expansion akin to the Majima one in Kiwami 2. It does seem that way, as I finished the story in five-and-a-half hours, but that number ballooned to 11-and-a-half once I completed all of the side content. Some of this expansion feels kind of perfunctory, as you need to run around Kamurocho doing fetch quests for the disgusting creep known as Kanda. I didn’t mind this, though, and the story was honestly pretty decent here. But the other big draw is Survival Hell, a mode that has you go through five floors while looting treasure chests and grabbing fistfuls of cash.
Dying in this results in you lose everything you gain too, which happened to me a single time. Mine also has 11 colosseum fights, which is strangely more than Kiryu’s 9. Altogether, the two modes took me about 38 hours, not counting time I spent in the arcade (they’ve added Slashout, one of the most underrated 3D beat em ups in existence, which is worth at least a couple of playthroughs.) It’s a bit odd for a remake of a game and it’s expansion combined to be shorter than the game it’s remaking, but I did have a very good Yakuza experience here. Should I even call it that?? Are we not saying “Like a Dragon” anymore?
Of course, I must mention the other disgusting creep you’ll be seeing in Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides, and that is the actor who is the new voice and likeness for one of the game’s villains, Hamazaki. His actor admitted to sexual assault, but apparently RGG only refuses to cast actors who’ve merely been falsely accused of using drugs. This was a major gaffe on both the studio and Sega’s parts, and a lack of an apology of any sort is a truly horrible look that has done a significant amount of brand damage. Two other major characters have received new likenesses as well. All three of them are downgrades from the original, but the new Hamazaki looks and sounds much worse than the original especially.
Speaking of other things that have been cut, the original game had chase sequences where Kiryu had to repeatedly hit enemies while running after them to catch them. These are weirdly completely gone, save for some simplified versions in a few substories, albeit without any of the attacking. Revelations, the pictures you had to take to unlock moves, are also gone, which is a shame. This also means that Mack’s training missions have been completely cut, as has Mack in his entirety. It’s weird just how much has been removed here.
Despite the controversy and the plethora of missing content, I still had a pretty great time during my nearly 40 hours with Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides. It makes some unnecessary changes, that’s for sure, some of which are quite disappointing (including the needless retcons at the end that will have serious ramifications for Yakuza 4‘s story), but the combat’s so much better than the original’s that it’s hard for me to be too cross about it. It’s weak that Sega has delisted the original game on most storefronts outside of a bundle, as there’s still plenty reason to play that one too, as this one doesn’t replace it. I prefer to think of it as a mostly new game with old cutscenes ported in when all is said and done.
The Yakuza Kiwami games have always been a bit of a mixed bag. The first two felt like their cutscenes were simply slapped into existing games with some unnecessary systems, leading to them failing to actually feel like their original counterparts. The awkwardly titled Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties, conversely, manages to mostly feel like its own game, but with an almost shocking amount of the original’s extra content completely replaced.
The Yakuza Kiwami games have always been a bit of a mixed bag. The first two felt like their cutscenes were simply slapped into existing games with some unnecessary systems, leading to them failing to actually feel like their original counterparts. The awkwardly titled Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides, conversely, manages to mostly feel like its own game, but with an almost shocking amount of the original’s extra content completely replaced. Story-wise, it’s still one of the better pre-Yakuza 0 games in the series and the new Dark Tides mode is meatier than I expected, making for an enjoyable Yakuza experience that still doesn’t replace the original game.
One thing that Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides does far better is the combat. The original game is often disdainfully referred to as “Blockuza” due to how the AI for stronger enemies tends to just stand and block endlessly. The AI mercifully doesn’t do that here. Instead, strong foes spend most fights in a super state that grants them hyper armor, meaning that you won’t be able to stunlock them. You too have your own super mode that can be used far more sparingly, but the combat here is the absolute best part. Kiryu gets a brand new Ryukyu style that uses a host of Okinawan weapons that I really got a kick out of too.
The game’s main villain, Mine, is the protagonist of the secondary mode, Dark Ties. His fighting style isn’t as enjoyable to me as either of Kiryu’s, but it still made for a nice change of pace. Mine has a longer main string than Kiryu and his own set of tricks, including a super mode with what amounts to three bars. Both characters gain new moves and boosted damage potential (including hyper armor), although only Kiryu gets a special finisher for his styles. The Ryukyu style also has a shield built in that lets him block blades and guns by default, in addition to letting him use brass knuckles to instantly guard break any enemies that haven’t gotten the memo that this isn’t Blockuza. It also gives you a perfect parry, which is always a plus in my book.
The combat, of course, still has a bit of that Dragon Engine jank here and there including awkward ragdolls and strange tracking issues (especially for both of Kiryu’s fifth charge attacks for either style.) Sometimes you can use a heat action while hammering a foe, only for the attack to go after an enemy that you weren’t even looking at. All of this is more common than I’d like, but the combat is still on the upper scale for the franchise. Visually, the game looks about as you’d expect, but some of the characters and environments look weird (including Kiryu’s face.)
Early on in the Yakuza 3 portion of the story, the game takes you on a forced detour and makes you do its new side content consisting of taking care of things at Morning Glory (which has turned almost all of the kids’ storylines into optional substories instead of them being integrated into the main narrative.) Then there’s the baddie gang that Kiryu joins that’s basically a biker gang version of Pirate Yakuza‘s crew battles apparently (I haven’t gotten to that game yet, but SmashPad’s EIC set me straight on that aspect.) Overall, I liked both of these, much moreso the Morning Glory side stuff.
In this, you can help the kids with their homework, sew for them, play games, etc. It all increases their affection and grants you access to their stories. Plus you can grow crops and whatnot to cook dishes for them, which is the crux of that storyline. The baddie battles are Musou-esque fights that don’t take long to get through, but they culminate in the hardest content in the game where your ally AI simply can’t survive unless you spend a significant amount of time level grinding. This was the only major piece of content in Yakuza 3 that I didn’t finish. Maybe I’ll grind later if I feel like it.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides cuts out around 3/4ths of the original game’s substories, which makes the former game considerably shorter than the original (although the lengths are similar overall when combined with Dark Tides.) The new content doesn’t even come close to replacing this. It took me about 26 hours to do nearly every major part of Yakuza Kiwami 3, whereas it’ll take about 40 hours to do it all in the original game. Granted, many of the original substories were boring, tedious fetch quests, but cutting so many of them is such a bizarre choice that alone makes the original still worth playing in spite of all the constant blocking.
I was expecting Dark Tides to be another short expansion akin to the Majima one in Kiwami 2. It does seem that way, as I finished the story in five-and-a-half hours, but that number ballooned to 11-and-a-half once I completed all of the side content. Some of this expansion feels kind of perfunctory, as you need to run around Kamurocho doing fetch quests for the disgusting creep known as Kanda. I didn’t mind this, though, and the story was honestly pretty decent here. But the other big draw is Survival Hell, a mode that has you go through five floors while looting treasure chests and grabbing fistfuls of cash.
Dying in this results in you lose everything you gain too, which happened to me a single time. Mine also has 11 colosseum fights, which is strangely more than Kiryu’s 9. Altogether, the two modes took me about 38 hours, not counting time I spent in the arcade (they’ve added Slashout, one of the most underrated 3D beat em ups in existence, which is worth at least a couple of playthroughs.) It’s a bit odd for a remake of a game and it’s expansion combined to be shorter than the game it’s remaking, but I did have a very good Yakuza experience here. Should I even call it that?? Are we not saying “Like a Dragon” anymore?
Of course, I must mention the other disgusting creep you’ll be seeing in Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides, and that is the actor who is the new voice and likeness for one of the game’s villains, Hamazaki. His actor admitted to sexual assault, but apparently RGG only refuses to cast actors who’ve merely been falsely accused of using drugs. This was a major gaffe on both the studio and Sega’s parts, and a lack of an apology of any sort is a truly horrible look that has done a significant amount of brand damage. Two other major characters have received new likenesses as well. All three of them are downgrades from the original, but the new Hamazaki looks and sounds much worse than the original especially.
Speaking of other things that have been cut, the original game had chase sequences where Kiryu had to repeatedly hit enemies while running after them to catch them. These are weirdly completely gone, save for some simplified versions in a few substories, albeit without any of the attacking. Revelations, the pictures you had to take to unlock moves, are also gone, which is a shame. This also means that Mack’s training missions have been completely cut, as has Mack in his entirety. It’s weird just how much has been removed here.
Despite the controversy and the plethora of missing content, I still had a pretty great time during my nearly 40 hours with Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Tides. It makes some unnecessary changes, that’s for sure, some of which are quite disappointing (including the needless retcons at the end that will have serious ramifications for Yakuza 4‘s story), but the combat’s so much better than the original’s that it’s hard for me to be too cross about it. It’s weak that Sega has delisted the original game on most storefronts outside of a bundle, as there’s still plenty reason to play that one too, as this one doesn’t replace it. I prefer to think of it as a mostly new game with old cutscenes ported in when all is said and done.
by Andrew Farrell
