Yakuza 3 has always been considered one of the best stories in the franchise, according to its passionate community, but considering the fact it had always been the oldest game to never receive a fully-fledged remake, it has always been the “roughest” one to revisit. Its heartfelt story, revolving around Kazuma Kiryu’s quest to take care of kids from the Morning Glory orphanage, is one of gaming’s most impactful tales about growth, maturity, and fatherhood. The announcement of a Yakuza Kiwami 3, a remake just like the treatment given to Yakuza and Yakuza 2, was welcoming news, but it has also resulted in one of the most controversial games in the entire franchise. And I really want to point out that it’s “controversial”, not bad. Far from it. Still excellent, in fact.

Kiryu’s got nunchuks now, for no particular reason. Not that I needed one to begin with.

The position of Yakuza 3 in the franchise’s canon is a crucial one. The first two games (three, if you count Yakuza 0, which came out later) were excellent, and were responsible for estabilishing the origins and motives of the main characters. Thanks to them, we learned about Kiryu’s upbringing, role inside the Tojo Clan, his main rivals, as well as his growing intentions to simply get the hell away from this life in the Japanese underworld of crime (even though he, himself, sucks at being a “criminal”). From Yakuza 3 up until Yakuza 5, Kiryu’s motivation is driven solely to take care of his orphanage in Okinawa, as well as his efforts to become a full-fledged father to Haruka, the daughter of his deceased love interest. He doesn’t want to deal with the yakuza, he wants to slowly disappear from this life and just be a civilian living next to the beach.

For real, he’s gaming’s best dad.

Yakuza 3 is beginning to this chunk of the story. Of course, the plot eventually thickens and gets increasingly absurd, as all Yakuza games do, but this is the first showcase of RGG Studio itself trying to expand the franchise’s scope to characters other than Kiryu himself. That would be consolidated in Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5, where Kiryu is just one of many playable characters in much bigger stories. Everything related to Kiryu wasn’t touched in Yakuza Kiwami 3: you still get him slowly becoming a father figure to nine kids in the most wholesome and heartwarming way possible, you still get him beating the living hell out of anyone who even dares touch his children, and you still get every nook and cranny of his investigation related to the people trying to acquire his plot of land in order to build a resort for some dumb tourists.

Controversies arose at the end of the game, with RGG Studio deciding to change the ending completely, in a way that actually confused me. Considering the fact not everyone has played the original Yakuza 3, I’m refraining from mentioning its ending, as well as this remake’s take on it, but I digress. Are they coming up with a different timeline for future games to come? Will another Gaiden game be released in order to tie things together? Was it really necessary? This is one of the things that irked me a bit, but that only happened more than thirty hours into my playthrough: almost everything up until then was either untouched or massively improved… with one exception.

Kiryu decided to join an all-girls biker gang… just because…

The exception being RGG Studio’s decision to recast some characters. New actors (as well as their faces) were brought in to portray bumbling ally Rikiya (with a boyband-esque pretty boy replacing the original character’s silly perm), and most controversially, villain Hamazaki. Now, the latter is the reason people are approaching Yakuza Kiwami 3 with skepticism and justified anger.

It’s not that the new actor doesn’t deliver an actually AMAZING job, but his past as, well, someone who just isn’t particularly kind to the opposite gender, if you know what I mean. I’ll just leave this link here and refrain from talking about it for longer, because it was a stain in an otherwise fantastic selection of voice actors delivering fantastic roles. And what sucks the most is that the guy is incredible as this slimy villain. Too bad it’s because he’s a real-life scumbag as well. Guess he knew the craft way too well.

Yakuza Kiwami 3 features some of the best combat mechanics this series has seen so far.

I know I sounded overly negative with Yakuza Kiwami 3 so far, but the reality is that this remake is exponentially better than the original in every other aspect. You need to understand that the original Yakuza 3 is now 17 years old, and has been the clunkiest Yakuza to play ever since the first two games in the franchise received full-fledged remakes. Not only did the game receive a well-deserved visual overhaul, but its combat has been completely revamped, and a crapton of content has been added, making it a lot meatier and enjoyable.

I would say that Yakuza Kiwami 3 has the third best beat ’em up combat system in the entire franchise, only behind Lost Judgment and Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. It’s not even that different from other combat systems, but acts more of a culmination of previous combat systems present over the series’ history. Kiryu has access to a Dragon-style system, one that is very similar to other brawler styles he has used over the years. The other style, Ryukyu, feels like a return to the ludicrous styles used by Majima in Yakuza 0, as it completely based around Okinawan-native weaponry, such as tonfas, daggers, and of course, nunchuks. It makes zero logical sense for him to wield so many weapons at once, but who cares about logic in Yakuza games, anyway? It’s fun, it’s ludicrous, it’s responsive.

He has a shiba inu at the orphanage. Instant 10/10 game.

The Ryukyu style is great for crowd control, as you have access to a kunai with chain, nunchuks, and big fat spear that deals spinning area-of-effect attacks with ease. Crowd control is the basis of one of Yakuza Kiwami 3‘s main side modes, one in which you guide a gang of female bikers, from humble beginnings until you become the biggest gang in the whole of Japan. You fight off against gangs in enclosed brawls that reminded me of The Warriors. They also reminded me of the Dynasty Warriors franchise, as my army of about sixteen gang members would have to face about fifty enemies being rendered onscreen at once. Let me tell you, dealing an area-of-effect attack on a bunch of fools at once, and defeating them in the process, was one of the coolest and most rewarding moments I’ve ever felt in a Yakuza game, ever.

Another main side mission is an extension to what Yakuza 3 is best known for: taking care of the Morning Glory orphanage, and interacting with your foster children. I am not the biggest fan of overly cozy and “wholesome” farming sims, but something about the heartfelt character development and interactions with these adorable kids made me spend an ungodly amount of hours growing crops, taking care of cows, petting the shiba inu, catching fish and bugs, doing my children’s homework, and sewing patterns on their shirts. I’d do all of that without a care in the world, with a big smile on my face.

Yep, Kiryu sucks at being, y’know, a member of the yakuza…

Admittedly, the canonical interactions with the kids has been reduced in the main critical path, and that is a bit of a bummer. Very few sidestories feature them as well. But I’d say that the whole Morning Glory subsection is more than worth your time, regardless of these plot cuts. RGG Studio even went as far as to make sewing incredibly fun, as they basically adapted the gameplay style of old-school racing games such as Outrun and Top Gear into a freaking sewing simulator. Not to mention that hearing Kiryu say “LET’S SEWING” in all of its epic broken Japanese glory, is worth the experience alone.

As for other additional side content, there’s your usual stuff: karaoke, bowling, billiards, some unknown Sega arcade games from back in the day (as well as Virtua Fighter), and a pointless social media collectathon bit that felt like a huge waste of my time. Oh, and Kiryu actually owns a Game Gear, and you can buy cartridges and play them whenever you have some free time. That’s basically it for the content featuring in the base game, in base Yakuza Kiwami 3. But that’s not the only “game” included in this package. Let’s talk about Dark Ties.

Just wait until you find out what you can see on the internet.

A brand new inclusion, Dark Ties is a prequel mode that lets you play as one of the game’s main antagonists, Yoshitaka Mine, showcasing how he joined the yakuza, how he took control of an entire family for himself, and how he became the character we all know and, uh, love to hate? A much shorter story, it still features sidequests and additional content to explore, but it is more limited in terms of location and fighting styles, as Mine only knows one. A powerful one, however, to the point you won’t even care about its limitations.

I have qualms with this mode, however, as it can somehow spoil Yakuza Kiwami 3‘s main story. I feel like this mode should have only been unlocked after the completion of the main story, keeping it as some kind of surprise; not even the game itself treats Mine like the main threat up until, say, the final fourth of the plot, so highlighting him as a playable character and putting him on the game’s cover was a bit anticlimatic. Furthermore, it’s that mode’s ending which messes up with the franchise’s continuity, as previously mentioned. As much as I liked having more hours of content to enjoy, and another reason to revisit Kamurocho for the bagillionth time, I treat Dark Ties more like an interesting add-on than an actual main selling point.

Arigato!

Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is an interesting, but very controversial package. The recasting issues, changes to the series’ continuity, and massive drop in sidestory quality were disappointments, something I rarely see in a RGG Studio game, but there’s no denying that, when it comes to gameplay and content, this game is an exponential improvement over the original. The combat mechanics are near-pristine, the heartfelt moments with the orphans are still adorable, and the Dragon Engine keeps on impressing with ultra-detailed worlds to explore, and tons of elements onscreen at any given time. When you add everything up, the pros still massively outweigh the cons, and it’s still a great time for any fan of the franchise.

Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch 2.

Reviewed on PS5.

A copy of Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties was provided by the publisher.