Yakuza Kiwami Review: Don't Keep Yumi A Dream

Yakuza Kiwami is a remake of the original Yakuza 1 for the Playstation 2. Other than the English translation, Yakuza was way ahead of it's time. At that time in gaming history, you either played Final Fantasy or Shenmue for a Japanese game fix (unless I'm forgetting something, which I'm not). Then Yakuza 1 shows up, kicks the fucking door down and slaps around these established titles, making them look like students before the master. The Final Fantasy series had nearly zero basis in reality, leaving only fiction, whereas Shenmue was "a little too real" leaving nothing but the mundanity of day-to-day life in all its boring glory. There had to be a balance somewhere, somehow. Showing how the bleakness of everyday life (in Tokyo) could not only be exciting, but thrilling, without having to rely too heavily on fantasy elements like magic or mythology, etc. Yakuza found the happy medium and planted its flag deep within it's little niche, sturdy, and with the purpose of staying there a while.

There is your history of the time, all the Kiwami remake did is added a few sidestories, made the combat sections much more fluid and fun, and improved the graphical fidelity. Some might argue with me on 2 of those points but they are wrong.

Onto the Big 4. For starters, the art style: it's good. It's really, really maxed out Unreal engine beauty. For this engine or with these tools, this is as good as it gets. You can see the pores on the characters faces for Christ's sake. So the photorealism is there. The style is based on older Japanese games, just simply overdone in a good way. Like a good char-broiled sirloin steak, this title is designed for enjoyment with an extra layering or two of flavor. The trails behind characters during fight scenes add a certain artistic flair that you don't see very often in gaming intentionally, except for motion blur effects, and those are usually disorienting and awful. Nearly every object in the game is high-fidelity and just a pleasure to look at and that adds to nearly every other good thing in the game, simply looking good matters. The entire game is smooth as hell and gorgeous.

As I said in part 98 of this series: it's the old "pre-prison best friend/girlfriend loses her mind while boyfriend is locked up to have a kid with a prominent politician, only to lose the kid (somehow) and the kid then randomly meets up with the boyfriend after his parole, and the boyfriend basically adopts her and is bringing her back to her mother post-finding her mind" story we have all heard a million times... That is a joke, but legitimately I have never heard that story before and it was an absolute joy. There is more to it than that, but the story on its face is solid. Kiryu, Nishiki, Yumi, and Reina all grew up at Sunflower Orphanage, that we learn later was set up by Shintaro Kazama, and of them only Kiryu survives the conflict in this story, unfortunately. Shinji, Sera, Jingu, Patriarch Dojima, and a bunch of other people I'm probably forgetting also had to give their lives during this conflict. None of that is Kiryu's fault, mind you, but Kiryu will have to live with that weight on him for the rest of his life. It will affect him and that's what the story is about. That and killing in self-defense is acceptable, but murder is not acceptable. Notice, Nishikiyama didn't lose his mind when he killed Dojima, protecting Yumi. Nishikiyama lost his mind after murdering his subordinate for no reason (the one in the purple suit, I forgot his name). This is the clear distinction that the game is illustrating, excellently I might add. 2A self-defense at its finest, in my opinion.

The soundtrack and sound engineering is incredible. Footsteps, all the way to the overwhelming loudness of the city and industrial areas of town are wonderful to listen to. Never overbearing, but always constant. Sounds during fights are satisfying to a fault, visceral and not lacking impact. Not quite as good as The Last Of Us, but close. It's pretty good. Soundtrack is superb, there are better soundtracks out there, but this one is great. The final round of the underground coliseum's song is my favorite on this soundtrack. Ambient songs are sweet, intense songs are heart-pounding, it's good.

Finally, the gameplay, the most important element to a title such as this, you would think. It really isnt', the story is the main part of this title. The combat is a given in a Yakuza story about the Yakuza called Yakuza, so it should be good and feel good to play, and it absolutely does, but you can skip every single fight almost and it won't change much. The start of the game gives you 3 great fighting styles to choose from at a moment's notice during combat for maximum domination. Brawler is my pre-Dragon go to because of the versatility, I use Rush to leave slower fighters in the dust and to avoid damage, and Beast is for doing big damage quickly when there is a ton of debris around to use and deal even more damage. Interesting rock, paper, scissors approach to the problem of making a fun beat-em-up/simple fighting game that you can get way into and just reign supreme, if you want, but don't have to. Just when you think each style is getting quite powerful, Dragon style gets the speed boost. It's the ability that speeds up combos at low health, at that point in the game it just becomes too fun not to use Dragon style. Sliding around enemies going faster than Rush, hitting harder than Beast, and having more to do than Brawler is when the game opens up. So a fast, creative, destructive fighting style that becomes easier to use and faster (which is the most impressively important skill in a fight [speed, I mean]) becomes an offer that cannot be refuse. That is Dragon style, that is Kiryu, and that is this game. What you once though was good, is left so far behind that I never used those styles again. I used Brawler, Rush, and Beast against the Mob outside Stardust at the end of the game just as a gimmick and to see how bad they actually were maxed out. They were bad, I was getting my ass kicked for a while there. Dragon is the dragon of fighting styles. It's so fun to use with all the abilities, too, Majima Everywhere is worth it and training with Komaki is worth it to become that powerful .

To conclude, gameplay is some of the most fun you can have in a video game about 2/3rds of the way through Kiryu's training, soundtrack/sound design is great, story is as good as it gets in this series and among the best in gaming as a whole, and the art style is timeless. This game will always be great, no other game coming out will make this game any worse. There is a reason this series is so popular and is only gaining momentum and popularity and it is because of this title. It all started with this story, and Yumi. Great work.