Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties review – unlike a dragon

The third Yakuza game gets a remake and a brand new expansion, as the series now known as Like A Dragon goes back to its roots.

Many fans of Sega’s Yakuza series will tell you that 2009’s Yakuza 3, for the PlayStation 3, desperately needs a remake. So, last year’s announcement of Yakuza Kiwami 3 should have been an easy crowd pleaser. And yet, even before its release, it has become far more controversial than anyone could’ve realised. Even more so than that time the series added zombies.

At the centre of this controversy is the casting of Japanese actor Teruyuki Kagawa, who has lent his voice and likeness to one of the game’s villains, Goh Hamazaki, replacing the original performance. Aside from being woefully miscast (transforming the cartoonishly mountainous Hamazaki into a slimy goblin), Kagawa is infamous for admitting that a 2022 report about him assaulting a staff member at a hostess club was true.

As such, his casting in Yakuza Kiwami 3 prompted petitions for his removal and boycott demands, but while it’s unfair to dismiss a collaborative work like a video game based on one person’s actions, even if this controversy never existed, Yakuza Kiwami 3 would still be an incredibly mediocre remake and a mediocre Yakuza game in general.

This may be surprising to hear, when we spoke relatively positively in our initial previews, but it wasn’t clear at the time how oddly regressive Kiwami 3’s combat is.

For comparison’s sake, we revisited Kiryu’s last playable beat ‘em up appearance – Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name – and found him to be more sluggish yet loose in Kiwami 3, lacking any sense of nimbleness and control, resulting in a lot of instances of whiffed attacks against enemies that weren’t even trying to dodge.

Kiwami 3’s combat has more in common with the last remake, Yakuza Kiwami 2, which launched nearly 10 years ago. Maybe this was done for the sake of consistency, but it’s still strange to see the combat be taken backwards.

Kiryu’s new Ryukyu fighting style does offer more defensive options and decent crowd control, which made it our go-to for the busier fights, but it’s hard to get attached to it when it’s likely never to reappear and be built upon in future games.

One thing that wasn’t apparent in our preview was how much enemies love to block. This was a common complaint with the original Yakuza 3 too and while the remake does give you the tools to deal with this, it doesn’t mean much when enemies can just block you mid-combo.

If anything, the problem is exacerbated by bosses having new auras that make them more resistant to flinching, allowing them to shrug off attacks. The auras can be temporarily broken by landing certain attacks (like hitting from behind), but it makes some boss encounters more annoying than they should be.

The story hasn’t been improved either, although perhaps that was too tall an order. Yakuza 3’s plot regarding land disputes and government conspiracies was never that interesting and nothing short of a substantial rewrite could’ve helped it. Kiwami 3’s retelling is mostly faithful, with shot-for-shot recreations of its cut scenes, but there are a handful of new scenes added to flesh things out. Sadly, these do nothing but pad the story since what context they add was never needed in the first place.

There is one substantial change to the story that we won’t spoil, but it is so insultingly awful that it borders on parody. It makes The Rise Of Skywalker’s ‘somehow Palpatine returned’ look like a masterclass in writing and frankly sours the whole experience.

So, we turn to Kiwami 3’s side content and, to be fair, the usual gamut of side quests offer far more entertaining and amusing adventures for Kiryu (such as one where he has to hide a racy magazine from his kids), and copious minigames from previous entries are back, like karaoke and the batting cages. We were quite pleased to see bowling finally return too, after a decade’s long absence.

We would’ve happily dedicated more hours to managing the Morning Glory orphanage if we had the time, which consists of various activities that help improve your bonds with the orphans, including cooking, sewing, and assisting with homework. The bug catching contest minigame, which wouldn’t feel out of place in Mario Party, became a quick favourite. A lot of it is very familiar, but the presentation is undeniably charming and perfect for those looking to see Kiryu in a more domestic setting.

The other main side activity, where Kiryu takes charge of an all-girls biker gang to defend Okinawa from rival groups, isn’t as endearing and, though not one-to-one identical, is fundamentally a reskin of the crew battles from last year’s Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii.

It also annoyingly forces itself upon you at one point, demanding a certain amount of progress be made before you can continue the main plot, and the novelty of spearheading an army of kickass ladies wears off quickly, since you’ll start recruiting men to the cause as well.

Is Yakuza: Dark Ties worth it?

Kiwami 3 also comes packaged with a separate side game, called Dark Ties, that serves as a prequel story for antagonist Yoshitaka Mine, but anyone who picks up Kiwami 3 just for that is going to come away thoroughly underwhelmed. The story is even shorter than The Man Who Erased His Name, clocking in at under five hours, and it offers nothing interesting about Mine’s backstory that wasn’t already inferred in the main game.

Sega has billed it as a far darker story than anything seen in the series prior and while Mine is a far less virtuous character than Kiryu, the story’s no more mature than past games and doesn’t broach any sensitive topics, like Lost Judgment’s commentary on bullying and suicide.

And yet, Dark Ties is at times uncomfortable in how you’re forced to team up with yakuza member Tsuyoshi Kanda, a thuggish brute whose most defining characteristic is his penchant for assaulting women. One of his first scenes has him drag a woman into a dark alley to have his way with her and yet there are moments where his debauchery is played for comedy and his transactional friendship with Mine is given undeserved sincerity.

Thankfully, Dark Ties doesn’t try to completely rehabilitate Kanda’s character, but it’s hard not to find it rather distasteful at times, especially given the aforementioned casting controversy.

Dark Ties does have a lot of side content, but it’s all things you’ve done before, both in Kiwami 3 and previous Yakuza games. The odd jobs you do around town, to raise Kanda’s reputation, typically involve getting into fights and while Mine has a distinct fighting style compared to Kiryu’s, the same issues we have with Kiwami 3’s combat are present here.

There aren’t even any unique minigames, with Mine only getting one karaoke song (which isn’t even original) and the roguelike-esque Survival Hell dungeons just offering more excuses to fight people.

The Yakuza series is well-known for re-using content and assets from game to game, which to some makes a lot of them feel too similar, but has been extolled by others as a virtue that’s helped with cutting down development times. It’s a big reason why Yakuza has managed to release new games on an almost annual basis since its inception.

But for Kiwami 3, this strength has turned into a weakness, since the game offers nothing that hasn’t been done much better in other Yakuza games that you can already play, with the likes of Yakuza 0 and Lost Judgment having superior combat and better stories.

The most novel thing about Kiwami 3 is its unique selection of retro Game Gear and arcade games. Where else can you play obscurities like Magical Truck Adventure or Emergency Call Ambulance?

This remake isn’t even that much of an improvement over the original Yakuza 3, aside from modern quality-of-life touches and the updated graphics. But even then, the default lighting makes sunset scenes too yellow and night scenes too dark (though this might be rectified with a promised day one patch).

We honestly recommend buying the Yakuza 3 remaster if you can since it’s not only cheaper, but Sega plans to delist it as an individual purchase once Kiwami 3 launches, forever locking it to the £115 Yakuza Complete Series package.

Yakuza Kiwami 3’s legacy is to be remembered for cynical business decisions, controversial casting, and a heinously bad retcon, all of which make it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the series’ future. Like Yakuza 7 protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, the series has hit rock bottom and we can only hope it manages to claw its way back up.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC
Price: £54.99 (£69.99 for Deluxe Edition)
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Release Date: 12th February 2026
Age Rating: 18

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