Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties Review – Review
Tempted with a good time, and a fun role reversal detour, too.
When the original Yakuza Kiwami released on Switch, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the port. The reimagining of the original Yakuza lost very little in its translation to Switch. On Switch 2 we’ve seen a multitude of Yakuza titles arrive within the first year. As the original target hardware for these games has spanned multiple generations the Switch 2 runs the gamut in terms of performance metrics. Yakuza Kiwami 3 along with its side story, Dark Ties, presents the first day and date release for a Yakuza game on the platform, and thus the greatest technical challenge for the series thus far.
Due to the scope of this title, I will be covering the technical aspects of this release while Jordan Rudek will be diving deep into the brand new Dark Ties expansion. But as for Kiwami 3 itself, as expected this is an excellent modern re-working of the PlayStation 3 original. The story does take quite a while to get going, but once it finally kicks into gear it proves very compelling. New content abounds and outside of the very small explorable environments, little remains to hint at its 2009 origins. I’ve particularly enjoyed the new expansive questline involving Kiryu getting mixed up in an all girls gang in Okinawa and waging war against the other gangs. The storyline is ridiculous and paired with fun over the top gameplay that truly exemplifies the Yakuza series.
Kiwami 3 avails itself well of the Switch 2. While I’d by no means call this some sort of miracle port, it feels very natural on Switch 2. There are some compromises of course when compared to other versions, but all well within reasonable expectations. In both docked and handheld mode the game runs at 30 frames-per-second. I found that outside of expansive combat within heavily populated areas, the framerate remained very consistent throughout. The game does suffer from a noticeable hitch going from gameplay to cutscenes that lasted just long enough to make me question if the entire game had actually crashed before loading into the next scene.
Resolution is dynamic in both docked and handheld mode and both are upscaled via the system’s native DLSS. The actual underlying pixel counts range from about 1080p down to 720p when docked and from 720p to 540p in handheld mode. In the vast majority of scenarios I found the range to sit closer to the high end of those metrics, but select circumstances were able to visibly drop the resolution. Of course with DLSS in the mix those underlying numbers don’t really tell the whole story, and the general perceived resolution winds up generally sitting significantly higher.
Dark Ties Review
Yakuza Kiwami 3 continues SEGA’s mission to remaster the original Yakuza titles for modern platforms, including Switch 2. Whereas Kiwami 1 and 2 released as budget titles at launch, Kiwami 3 is going for the gusto at $59.99 USD, but to sweeten the deal, the package includes a standalone side game called Dark Ties, which sees players step into the polished shoes of Yoshitaka Mine. It is Mine who takes on the role of primary antagonist for Yakuza 3, and switching sides with Dark Ties makes for an enticing little diversion, coming in at about 4-6 hours to roll credits on its main story.
While you can start Dark Ties without finishing Yakuza 3, the game warns that the ending of the former spoils the latter, so it is recommended that you play through Kiwami 3 first. That said, I found it an interesting experiment to spend time with Dark Ties right away since it has much less preamble upfront compared to a full Yakuza game and its version of Kamurocho is very much a condensed one. The combination of being pushed out of the company he founded and being a witness to a grisly encounter with Sixth Chairman of the Tojo clan, Daigo Dojima, push Mine into the criminal underworld, but it’s a fresh scaffolding for his story that makes Dark Ties a delicious aperitif or nightcap to the main game.
The gameplay premise sees you as second-in-command to a bumbling oaf of a man, Tsuyoshi Kanda. It’s comedy to see the stoic, calculating Mine acquiesce to the laziness and horniness of Kanda, as your main objective is to raise his reputation around town by solving citizens’ problems and granting their requests. About a dozen of these missions play out like the Substories the Yakuza series is known for; others are simple fetch quests or rescues where you get to beat the stuffing out of bad boyfriends and boisterous bullies. Every time you level up Kanda’s standing, you earn money to spend upgrading your stats and sometimes a special cutscene featuring Kanda and Mine. Your hard-earned yen can also help you procure a variety of CDs to change your traveling music and even a handful of Game Gear cartridges to help you unwind back at the home base. If you’re still traumatized by the decision to buy a real Game Gear in the early ‘90s, you can sock a few dingers or invite Kanda out for some darts instead.
Wanting something more compact after recently spending time with Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1, and Kiwami 2 on Switch 2, Dark Ties was a perfect encapsulation of what makes the series so fun and charming, without the bloat that can creep in from time to time. Mine’s combat style is simple but fast-paced, meaning random street encounters with unfriendly Yakuza never lasted more than 30 seconds. It may hit differently if you choose to roll credits on Kiwami 3 first, but for what it is, Dark Ties represents a welcome pack-in and the type of additional content I hope we see with the next Kiwami remaster.
