It's pretty unfortunate that the fate of Yakuza Kiwami 3 was sealed long before the game even came out. The concept of a Yakuza 3 remake was somewhat divisive even before it was announced, but after the reveal of recasting Rikiya, Nakahara and Hamazaki, especially with the last one being a known sex pest, that was kind of it. I want to evaluate Kiwami 3 on its own merits, mostly as a remake but also as an individual game, but I think it's important to clarify that you should not buy this game. I do think you should play it if you're a Yakuza fan, it's a decently fun game with a handful of good changes and additions and has some of the most interesting metatextual commentary in the series, but you should not support this kind of behavior financially. With that preamble out of the way, let's start with the base game.
Yakuza remakes have been known to be a little sloppy in terms of quality (as has been admitted by RGG themselves) and Yakuza Kiwami 3 is no exception. In fact, it might be the least polished Yakuza game I have ever played. There's more bugs than usual, the requisite Kamurocho filter is back (now in blue flavor!) but is weirdly completely absent during cutscenes which makes things quite jarring when jumping from one to the other, the combat, while not bad, feels a little more lacking than in recent games, a lot of unvoiced scenes are now voiced and some already voiced scenes have been re-recorded and you can really tell the difference with the ones that were left unchanged (especially with Mine who almost sounds like a different person). Keep in mind that none of this is experience ruining, but it does linger in the back of your mind as you're playing. It's still a perfectly functional game, Okinawa as a setting is well crafted and fun to explore, the new combat style is fun, and Kiryu looks as good as ever. People have been overselling the bad aspects of this game and while they're not invalid they are mostly overblown.
One of these aspects are the character recasts. I'm a little more receptive to these than I thought I would be. I expected to heavily dislike them, and, well, I do, at least in principle, but I mostly got used to them over the course of the game. Rikiya is a lot less expressive, often times his face feels like it's frozen in place but he admittedly grew on me a little by the end. Nakahara's redesign is a pretty significant downgrade, his design and general attitude encapsulated the Okinawan vibe really well in the original and now he's just... some guy (the same also applies to Rikiya). Hamazaki's recast, controversies aside, is the best one, which is weird because, simply put, that is not Hamazaki. He's a wholly different character, a rather good one in my opinion, but he's so drastically changed both in appearance and personality that I have no idea what they're going to do with him in a remake of Yakuza 4.
There's been quite a few changes that I find odd. The number of substories has been thinned down significantly, and while a lot of them in the original were one-off things and almost entirely forgettable, this feels like too few, though they're mostly pretty solid so I can't complain too much. More importantly, Mack is gone along with the Revelations system, and I just have to ask; why? Do you hate fun, RGG? Do you hate it when your games are silly and whimsical? Why did you remove this? To what possible end? Whatever, the orphanage stories have also been relegated to side content, and I'm in two minds about it. While it kinda sucks that they're entirely missable now, there's also a case to be made about them being more impactful when you have to actively engage with the orphanage to see them. Whenever I tell myself that I don't like this change, I think: "Would Infinite Wealth have benefited from making Life Links mandatory?", and I think the answer is no.
The story is mostly unchanged, it's the same gibberish politics, Chapter 9: The Plot is still gloriously there although this time around strangely insecure about its own length with the game prompting you to take a break literally every five minutes, Mine is still very good and the highlight of the story along with the orphanage. The baffling part is that they forgot to change the parts they were supposed to. [spoiler]Kashiwagi still gets riddled full of holes, Lau Ka Long still gets shot through the brain. Mine and Andre still fall off of the rooftop of Touto Hospital (this one gets explained I suppose, although it's indescribably moronic). These characters are supposed to be alive, RGG, this was your opportunity to make it seem like they had some chance of surviving.[/spoiler]
The biggest and by far the most interesting change is the new post-credits cutscene. It feels so bizzare and out of place, an almost hamfisted presentation of themes ruminating on Kiryu's life to come, but I honestly find its inclusion mesmerizing, it feels like a direct meditation from the writers on arguably the most important Yakuza game, one that is simply channeled through the characters of the story. Mine tells you in no uncertain terms that Kiryu is a man shaped by conflict and violence and will inevitably always return to it. It's not that it follows him wherever he goes, it's that it's who he fundamentally is, what defines him, and so, a life of peace, of quiet domesticity, is not only something he doesn't truly desire, it's actually hell. The best way to punish Kiryu, therefore, what will hurt him the most, is to just leave him be, to make him suffer the perceived penance of his past sins. And on first blush, this all sounds like gibberish, doesn't it? Like, huh? Kiryu? The guy that just wants to be left alone but keeps unwittingly getting thrust back in Yakuza conflicts time after time? The guy who loves his children above all else and would give his life for them? But, honestly, I think what Mine is saying here kinda makes sense, at least with the hindsight of the rest of the series. Kiryu feels overwhelming guilt and remorse for his contributions to the Yakuza, it's one of the most prominent and profound themes of Gaiden and especially Infinite Wealth, and one that recontextualizes a lot of the series. Even as he's literally dying, it's the one thing constantly eating away at him, something that has been torturing him for decades. It's not so hard to believe that he started an orphanage not just to continue Kazama's legacy, but to do some tangible good in the world for once, to raise and care for these children in order to balance the scales for the lives he's ruined while in the Yakuza. And also, of course, Kiryu is undeniably drawn to conflict. He loves to fight, he actually chooses to return to Kamurocho every time, and he believes that he has to do everything by himself. It's this behavior that leads him to his lowest points in both Yakuza 5 and Gaiden, away from the people he loves so much and living with no real purpose. And so, Mine is right, in a sense. Kiryu's humanity is the biggest obstacle to his happiness. He wants to atone, to go back to the Yakuza to fix the problems he believes he's contributed to or caused, but he also needs his family, and in trying to pursue the former, he has to forsake the latter, all the while telling himself it's for their sake.
So I would normally talk about Dark Ties next but it turns out that doesn't fit within the confines of a Steam review so I've just written the full thing [url=https://backloggd.com/u/pkrSilver/review/4389930/] here. [/url]
