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

This remake ruins the atmosphere of the original. It doesn’t necessarily botch it but the noir atmosphere of the first game is kind of lost with the change in visuals and music. A lot of this remake is very cheap and derivative in comparison to the ps2 game which was an original game. Reused animations in cutscenes look bad and making all of the boss fights carbon copies of fights from the previous games makes it less enjoyable to play. It feels less like a remake of the first game and more like a lesser version of yakuza 0 with how much it copies from that game. Most of the side content is just Yakuza 0 again which is lame. Despite my issues with this game, I still like it more than the original solely because the combat system is leagues better. That’s the saving grace with this game