Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties Review – Go Home and Be a Family Man

In the eight years since Yakuza Kiwami 2 gave us the showdown between the Dragons of Dojima and Kansai, SEGA and the Ryu ga Gotoku Studio, six remasters/remakes and eight new titles in the series have graced all of the major platforms (with even Google Stadia getting to experience Judgment Remastered). Now, the third numbered title (and fourth chronologically) in Kazuma Kiryu's ascension as the most valuable member of the Tojo clan is here, bringing us to Okinawa and some unusual casting choices.

In the short period of time since Yakuza Kiwami 2 wraps up its narrative, Kiryu has taken a step back from the glamorous Tokyo city life and instead resigned himself to take care of the orphanage where he fosters a number of orphaned children alongside his pseudo-adopted daughter, Haruka. Kamurocho is teased in front of the player's face before Kiryu hops into a cab with the intention of making Okinawa his new forever home. Naturally, he's brought back into the fold of yakuza power dynamics when the land his orphanage is built on is crucial for a pair of lucrative government contracts, including a new resort meant to bolster Okinawa's future as a tourist attraction. This doesn't sit right with the Dragon of Dojima, and he finds himself hitting the streets once more to protect his newfound family and give them a place to grow up. From here, Yakuza Kiwami 3 spirals into a narrative spanning both cities with major players of the Tojo clan all claiming a stake in the future of that orphanage and Kiryu is having none of that.

It doesn't matter who stands in Kiryu's way when it comes to protecting his newfound family and the orphanage he founded. Whether it's a sworn brother, Tojo clan lieutenant, or even the local minor family that has staked its claim on Okinawa, his fists will do everything they can to protect the family. Kiryu's Dragon of Dojima style is just as formidable as it was in Yakuza Kiwami 2, letting Kiryu rage out and use everything from salt shakers to motorcycles as weapons in the series' signature brawler combat. New to Yakuza Kiwami 3 is Ryukyu Style, a fighting style based on Okinawan traditions. Here, Kiryu loses the ability to pick up weapons from fallen enemies and instead comes to battle with eight different weapon types, each assigned to different button commands and swapped around freely during the course of combat. Kiryu loses some of the freeform combos from his main fighting style, as each weapon only has one or two used mapped to specific commands and cannot be upgraded independent of one another.

In streamlining Kiryu's weapon-focused fighting style, the entire equipment system of the original game is lost in Yakuza Kiwami 3. This means no weapon durability, no armor, and more importantly, no Golden Gun for completing every substory. What Kiryu does get this time around is a customizable cellphone where accessories like stomach bindings and charismatic photos are instead replaced with lock screens and three charms that can hang off the cellphone. This oversimplification is just one of the core issues surrounding Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties.

Kiryu's roster of substories is also massively cut back for the Kiwami-style remake in lieu of including Bad Boy Dragon (one of the series' best minigames to date). While the original title featured 119 substories, many of these have either been combined into the same multi-part substory or removed altogether. With the Hostess minigame once again MIA for Kiryu's adventure, that's nearly ten substories missing alone. Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties only features less than three dozen substories, which, in proper Yakuza fashion, all need to be completed before Amon calls on Kiryu for the signature superboss fight at the end of his adventure. Mine's story also features an Amon fight of his own, but despite completing every bit of content available, I was not able to figure out the requirements for that one.

Yoshitaka Mine, the financier of the Tojo clan, remains the ultimate antagonist of Yakuza 3 but his motivations and rise to power were largely unknown in earlier games. The smartly dressed yakuza in a pinstripe suit was calculating and had a firm hold on the clan's purse strings, but what were his ultimate ambitions? This Tojo lieutenant was once recognized as the series' tenth most popular character, so it's only natural to want to dig a little deeper into a man who was only featured in a single mainline title (not counting the ghost photograph easter eggs in Yakuza 6).

The second half of the game's title, Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties, centers solely around Yoshitaka Mine, from his beginnings as a startup founder pushed out by his board of directors to seeing an attempted assassination of Dojima Daigo. This moment becomes the formation of Mine's motives as he strives to learn just what about this man would make people want to risk their lives to protect him. Getting into the Tojo clan's good graces requires a lot of footwork and getting in with a minor family first, starting with befriending the equally bald and hot-headed Tsuyoshi Kanda. Rather than the usual assortment of substories, Mine's side activities are all about doing damage control for Kanda and doing good deeds in his honor (which usually involve punching faces in any case) to raise his reputation. Completing all of these side missions is by no means mandatory, but it does give the player some motivation to want to stick around just a little bit longer to complete the otherwise immensely short narrative.

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Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties clocked in at less than forty hours in total: thirty for Kiryu's campaign and around eight to ten for Mine's Dark Ties story. Much of this is attributed to the removal of minigames and substories alike, streamlining the optional experience while keeping it padded with the usual assortment of bowling, golf, darts, and the like. There are several arcade titles new for a modern release, and both Kiryu and Mine can collect various Game Gear titles if you're itching for that nostalgic fix. Sadly, Surf Ninjas isn't one of those titles you can pick up and play here.

The casting choices at play here in Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties are perhaps the most controversial we've seen in the series to date. Pierre Taki's character in Judgment/Judge Eyes was famously removed and recast as Miou Tanaka due to drug use. Yakuza 4's Tanimura was also recast for the remake due to alleged drug use as well. Here, the most famous of the recasts are of Rikiya, a low-ranking yakuza who wants to become Kiryu's sworn brother in Okinawa, and Goh Hamazaki, a scumbag who is only interested in the resort deal to enrich himself. Hamazaki's recasting alone is perhaps the most controversial, as his face and voice likeness were replaced by Teruyuki Kagawa, a kabuki actor known for playing villain roles in a wide number of TV shows and movies. However, he had his own controversy of sexual harassment that was well-known and documented ahead of the casting announcement. During an interview with Japanese outlet GAME Watch and independently translated by IGN, the director of Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties admitted that he wanted to cast someone who would make players think 'this guy's a creep'.

Casting choices aside, Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is a complete package that carves away so much of the slow and methodical pacing of the original and dresses it up with HD flourishes and streamlined content. What was once one of my favorite entries in the series for being a story about being forced out of retirement for 'one last job' to save his family, Kazuma Kiryu's adventures through Okinawa and Kamurocho alike are given a death by a thousand cuts. Seeing the title's antagonist through a more human lens is an interesting addition for Dark Ties, but I would not recommend this remake to anyone who wants to remember Yakuza 3 as fondly as it was back in 2010.

[Editor's Note: Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties was reviewed on the PlayStation 5 Pro platform. Review code was provided by the publisher.]

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