Yakuza Kiwami - PS4 Game Review
Posted on: 2017-08-29
Our rating:
Sega have finally released Yakuza Kiwami, which is a remake of the original game which was released all the back in 2005 on the PlayStation 2.
It’s been a great year for the Yakuza series in the west as we got not one, but two releases in the series on the PlayStation 4. Yakuza Kiwami is a remake of the original game which was released all the back in 2005 on the PlayStation 2.
What this does is overhaul the graphics (obviously), add new scenes to build better context for certain characters and tweaked gameplay that makes it feel more like Yakuza 0.
Yakuza Kiwami starts off in 1995 in the fictional region Kamurocho, where you play as a young Yakuza enforcer named Kazuma Kiryu who is on his usual errands collecting money from local businesses. It’s not long before his best friend Akira Nishikiyama kills the head of the Dojima family and Kiryu takes the fall for him, which lands him in prison for 10 years. 10 years pass and Kiryu is finally on parole and he has been expelled from the Yakuza, where he is then embroiled in a power struggle with each family as they are fighting over a cash sum of 10 billion yen.
He then finds out that his best friend who he hasn’t seen for 10 years Nishiki has formed his own family, however he has been killing other high ranking officials in the Tojo Clan to rise to power, Kiryu has to stop him before he throws the Tojo Clan into a civil war. The Japanese cast provide excellent performances once again and that is saying something when I don’t understand or speak the language, this game has some tense and emotional scenes that actually got teary eyed.
If you’ve played Yakuza 0 you’ll be very familiar with Kiwami as the combat in this game is practically identical, where you get into random encounters with random people on the streets of Kamurocho. The combat does take a degree of skill, as the encounters do get exceedingly tough in the later stages of the game when they start to introduced enemies with guns and bigger health bars. How the combat works is that you have a heat meter which fill by hitting and dodging enemies and then you can pull special moves, these can range from stomping on their face or beating them to death with a dust bin.
Kiryu has four fighting styles instead of three like he did in Yakuza 0. There is bawler which is the happy medium not too fast or too slow, beast is the slow yet powerful fighting style, the fast fighting style where you can dodge at ridiculous speeds and dragon where you learn new moves by fighting Goro Majima.
The new feature in this remake is the “Majima Everywhere” system where at random times, Majima will ambush you, and if you defeat him you’ll gain a new ability or move for your dragon fighting style. The more you fight Majima the harder it is to defeat him as the difficulty goes up and by the end of it when you hit a triple S ranking he has five health bars and has a high damage output, which gets insanely hard.
That is why you must upgrade your character, how you gain experience points is by partaking in fights, which the boss fights give you the most experience or you can participate in sub-stories. Sub-stories to put it in basic terms are side quests, these can show the quirky side of the game where it doesn’t take itself so seriously, these can range from helping someone get their stolen goods back to the more silly like winning a crane game for someone. It breaks the tension from the more serious tone of the main campaign, giving it a much needed sense of levity.
Presentation is great they have completely remade it for the PS4 and it looks absolutely stunning. Character models no longer look like blurry textures and can now emote like human beings, as well as the environments looking fantastic, especially at night with the neon lit streets as the rain falls.
It also helps once again this game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second and a crisp resolution of 1080p. Sound design is also worth noting as you feel every punch, every kick and bone shattering thud as you slam an enemy’s head into a wall it is really visceral, coupled with the heart pounding musical score.
Only issue I have with this game is that it starts to introduce enemies with guns in the later stages of the game and this gets very frustrating. For example there was one fight where there were half a dozen Yakuza thugs armed with pistols, when I was shot and staggered to the ground another enemy managed to land a shot on me immediately as I got up before I could move. Besides that there are no glaring issues with the game.
Yakuza Kiwami is a fantastic game and is how you should remake a game, if you missed out on the game original back in 2005 then I would highly recommend this version as it overhauls everything from the graphics, gameplay and of course they got rid of the horrendous English dub. Get this game it is easily one of the best games of the summer.
Article by:
Sam has lived in Bristol all his life. A keen cyclist he speeds around the city but video games are his bread and butter. Whether the old Nes and Snes games or the XBox One and Playstation releases he loves them all. Sam runs his own gaming blog called Bristolian Gamer where he had been reviewing indie games, doing retro reviews and venting his anger at the industry when it does wrong since 2010. Sam joined the 365Bristol team in December 2014.
