3.5/5 ★ – Mason_D's review of Yakuza Kiwami.

It’s a fresh coat of paint, but don’t let the facade fool you, this is a sixteen year old video game and while it has the look of the PS3/PS4 Yakuza titles, Kiwami is still the original PS2 game at heart and has the simplistic gameplay loop to prove it. Yakuza was an open world 3D brawler in 2005, it hadn’t achieved the silliness and sheer volume of distractions that later entries would acquire and Kiwami reflects that. This is a significantly more polished open world 3D brawler and its padded out slightly with extra content, but this isn’t Yakuza 0, even if it looks like it. The core gameplay loop consists largely of going to a designated map point, getting into a fight, watching a cutscene and repeat. It’s broken up by side missions, which also mostly also boil down to getting into random fights (which gets repetitive and spammy over time). It’s a loop that can get tedious but is saved largely by its story and by its impressive overhaul of the PS2 original. Certain things like bowling, pocket circuit, darts and the batting cages are still available, but aside from pocket circuit these activities feel more like tacked on minigames than ever. At about 20 hours, the game does overstay its welcome but I don’t hate Yakuza Kiwami, it was a lot of fun and I think it still has the spark of what makes this franchise so great, even if it feels undercooked at times. Maybe the fact that the visual overhaul is so dramatic actually hurts the game somewhat, giving the player the impression that they’re playing a more recent Yakuza installment and not the first game where things were still getting established. Still, the game broadly holds up, I’m glad it’s in the hands of modern players and you gotta give love to the one that started it all. Plus they did a hell of a lot better with this than whatever Rockstar did with those GTA rereleases.