Outerlude 01: Yakuza Kiwami

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Okay, we technically finished Kiwami before Christmas, but shit was so crazy I didn’t really have the time or brainpower to write a real review until right now. I was debating writing one at all, given how I played this on PS4 rather than on Steam, but I figured, hell with it, I’m putting time and love into this game, I might as well put time and love into a review.

Kiwami is a remake of the original Yakuza game that came out in 2005, using the same engine and a lot of the same assets as 0. The prologue catches back up with Kiryu in 1995—he’s well established in the yakuza life, and he’s very close to becoming patriarch of his very own family. Then he takes the fall for a murder he didn’t commit and spends 10 long years in prison. When he emerges, he finds a Kamurocho very different from the one he left, with vanishingly few allies on his side.

I’m gonna be real: going from 0 to Kiwami is a little difficult. The remake is unerringly faithful to the original’s story, down to the same camera angles and animation. The story that was fuckin’ amazing in 2005 is, really, only okay in 2018. It’s like having a beloved author and then going back and reading something they wrote at the very beginning of their career—the spark is there, the sensibilities are there, but the expertise and finesse is not. What the remake adds, though, is vastly expanded side content AND a string of cutscenes that expands on the backstory of the main antagonist, fleshing him out in a way that’s necessary and really gripping.

And then there’s The Husband.

Okay, so, here’s what happened with Majima, I bet, all the way back in 2005: they make this crazy motherfucker as a joke character, to be crazy and swing a bat around and wear no shirt in December. Then, as the series continued, he got more and more popular with fans and with the creators, and his story got more nuanced, and then they hit 0 and made him a deuteragonist and gave him THE BEST story in the fucking game and WHOOPS now he’s a serious for-real motherfucker and he’s the most popular fucking character in the series. And now it’s circling back to the beginning and they have to find a way to make how the character began and how he is now jive with each other. A tall order.

That’s where the Majima Everywhere system comes in.

Beyond being a fun, thrilling side thing (this motherfucker’s hunting you and is ready to pop up at any time to fuck you up!) it helps deepen the character, marrying who he was at the end of 0 to how he acts in Kiwami. It’s not perfect, but for me it works well, and it’s interesting to see this behavior through the lens in which we got to know him in 0. Through this, too, we get to see different sides of Kiryu, too, the both of them really good foils for each other. Also, the different shit Majima comes up with is hilarious.

On the whole - the overall story is a little weaker, and the tone and pacing suffers, too, but it’s still fun as hell and worth playing. There’s a lot of goodness brought over from 0 which I don’t mind - more of a good thing is still a good thing.

Next up: Kiryu Kazuma’s story…. continues!

See you soon!