4/5 ★ – jk26's review of Yakuza Kiwami.

I recall beating Shenmue as a kid and wondering why there wasn’t a sequel, would there be an end to the what I considered at the time “epic” story, and asking why other games weren’t immersive in the way that Shenmue is, or at least was at the time. For some reason I never played Yakuza and after finishing Yakuza Kiwami recently I learned, this is where Shenmue went and hid for all those years, but not only did it hide, it iterated, it improved, it became something really special. Kiwami is a remake of the OG Yakuza for the PS2 and as such is a great jumping off point into the series.I had the title leftover from an old PSPlus download and I am so glad I finally got around to playing it. The game is a very manageable size, it’s what I would call a very big small game. The majority of the game takes place in the fictional district of Kamurocho which is based off the real life Kabukicho, a red light district in Japan. You can go in a bunch of the restaurants, bars, convenience stores, there’s mini games, you can date hostess’s, there’s plenty of distraction to be had in the game, but unlike some of the later games it’s a manageable amount to see mostly everything and you can really race through this title if you get hooked by the story and want to keep carrying on with that. The main gameplay is wandering around distracting yourself with these mini games, or engaging in some really fun 3d fighting. I began the game terrible at the fighting system, but by the end had no problem demolishing my enemies. There’s a few mechanics that are a touch meh, but overall the fighting in the game is really fun, and once you learn it you feel very powerful and bad ass, leveling up requires some thought, but honestly coming from Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, I found a leveling system that wasn’t so punishing to be super enjoyable. The story I can not speak highly enough on. It’s amazing, it’s zany, it’s dramatic, it’s a soap opera. It’s 7 games (I think) long. The story is so much fun, the characters are all amazing, the voice acting (in Japanese) is top notch, they get legit voice actors that are famous in Japan for these roles. I learned one of the Hostess girls you can date is voiced by the Japanese Riley Reid, which is just awesome, and shows the detail in these game and the ridiculousness of it. It’s very enjoyable to engage with these characters, the cast is large and it can be hard to follow at times, but the melodrama is just so fun it’s an amazing ride to go along with. I have no idea how I am going to find time for this but I now have a goal to play through this series, it is one of the few games that is not only insanely fun, both melodramatic and hilarious, but also affords such a cool peak into Japanese culture, I almost felt like I was a tourist in Japan while I was playing and that was something really cool that you just don’t experience in very many titles. Go and play this game, and enjoy it, you’ll be glad you did.