Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties Review

Thanks, I hate it.

Yes, Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is as mid as you’ve probably heard by now. Let's get that out of the way right from the jump. More pointedly though, the unusually selective and narrow manner in which review codes were distributed for it ahead of embargo, compared to the last few games in the series, would seem to suggest that SEGA knew it to be so.

Publisher: SEGA

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio

Platform: Played on PC and Steam Deck

Availability: Released February 12, 2026 on PS4/5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PC, Nintendo Switch 2

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For a bit of context as to where I’m tackling Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties from, my on-ramp to the series was Yakuza 0. I loved it, and eagerly devoured Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2 soon after. I then got to the remaster of Yakuza 3 and frankly found its overall clunkiness to be a bit of a chore. I never ended up circling back to it, having stopped somewhere around the midpoint about four years ago. I’ve since leapt ahead and completed the three new Like a Dragon titles.

This long preamble is to lay completely bare the fact that, if ever there were someone for whom Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties should be explicitly for, it’s me. Yet with all of this weight in its favor, I still found the game to be a frustratingly regressive and sauceless experience.

The story kicks off with former yakuza bigshot Kazuma Kiryu having left mainland Japan behind. He’s running a beachside orphanage in Okinawa and just trying to raise his adopted kids in peace. The land they’re living on comes under threat of development, thrusting him back into the world of organized crime — all while Kiryu tries to make sure he’s home in time to look after the children each night. It’s a great narrative setup that, in its original form, managed to keep the welfare of the kids front and center in the player's mind. Unfortunately, this remake crams so much unskippable new stuff into the first several hours that it derails this focus entirely.

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Early on in the adventure, Kiryu happens upon the leaders of an all-girl motorbike gang who were not present in the original. They aim to protect and empower women to stand up to the rival gangs who prey upon them openly in the streets. Kiryu is quickly convinced to join as they plead the case that they need his strength, which is a pretty weird feminist message that even he points out the awkwardness in. This would all be fine as a way to introduce a side activity for the player to loop back to later should they wish, but the core questline immediately demands that Kiryu then find and recruit ten members, then organize them into fighting squadrons, and then lead the charge on besieging a rival gang's turf.

It’s a whole diversion that is quickly revealed to be fairly analogous to Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s crew recruitment and treasure hunting in its scope and depth. Its existence as a feature is entirely fine despite its clunky and laborious introduction. The problem is that it’s only a couple of hours later that the revised storyline demands once again that Kiryu engage with a whole lot more of it.

It ends up hogging so much of the game's first few chapters that it leaves one feeling as if the biker girls and their problems are Kiryu’s main focus and not the plight of the orphans under his care.

While the visuals are a massive upgrade from the original game, they could still use some work.

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I tend to see little point or purpose in remakes which creatively aim to just be a 1:1 copy of the original but with updated visuals or whatever. If the original version remains available, then experiencing it in the best approximation of its original form holds more compelling artistic value to me. I’m actively welcoming of change in the type of product that the Kiwamis represent.

The issue is that so few of the changes made here feel as if they’re for the better. Drastically reducing the number of substories should be an endeavour in cutting bloat and improving what remains. It doesn’t, though, as most of the substories featured in Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties are very short and completely forgettable. Some are cute for those who have played the newer games, such as introducing an early prototype of the Street Surfer personal vehicle seen in the two games — Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii — most recently released and furthest along in the saga’s timeline. The downtown Ryukyu map, where much of the game takes place, has also been shrunk, presumably in an effort to make the whole locale not feel sparse due to so many substories having been cut. This in turn makes giving the player the Street Surfer at all feel jarringly pointless from a gameplay perspective.

There’s variation made to the brawling system with the addition of a second meter and a weapons-based fighting stance for Kiryu, as well as buffing auras for elite enemies. None of it means much in practice, though flinging nunchuks around is at least amusing. A parry mechanic has been introduced that feels unnecessary, but isn’t really intrusive or bothersome.

The issue is that so few of the changes made here feel as if they’re for the better. Drastically reducing the number of substories should be an endeavour in cutting bloat and improving what remains.

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Look, there is a level of quality to be found at the game’s foundational level. It is a Yakuza title after all. The immersive sense of place that each location communicates is as wonderful as always, even if the visual fidelity feels a little lacking. The whole system for blinging out Kiryu’s flip phone and gaining passive buffs for doing so is delightful. There’s plenty of charm to be found in many of the characters and scenarios, and I did get quite invested in all of the Animal Crossing-esque orphanage management. The fact that Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties cannot help but feature a solid and good base experience despite itself really just serves to amplify the aggravation it made me feel about everything piled on top of that foundation, though.

From top to bottom, Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties feels exhaustingly cynical. It’s as if its creation were a chore that the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios team would just inevitably have to deal with, but had little drive or passion to really do. The choice to recast a prominent role with an actor who has confessed to sexual assault, and then putting him in a scene where he fingerpoints mockingly at another character for being jailed for the same crime, is utterly baffling. The choice to have removed a trans-positive substory added in 2019’s Yakuza 3 Remastered, while also now delisting that version of the game from individual sale, is utterly deflating. 

The included Dark Ties add-on is a prologue adventure that serves to flesh out the character of Mine. It’s fine, but its 7ish hours isn’t worth the price of admission if you’ve finished Yakuza 3 before and it’s the only part of the package that you’re interested in. The ways in which the character is written throughout it just aren’t that compelling. I can’t help but feel as if it would’ve been better served as a smaller thing, either interspersed throughout the main game or frontloaded like the Haytham chapter that kicks off Assassin’s Creed III, alas. 

If there’s one remarkable thing I can say about Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties it’s that it truly made me empathize with its protagonist more than any other game in the series, as just like Kiryu, I spent the entire experience wishing I were sitting on a beach with my loved ones.

Verdict

Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is a depressingly tired experience and an absolute low point for the series. 

Please, RGG Studio, let Kiryu rest.

Image Credits: SEGA and Jam Walker

Disclosure: We received a free review copy of this product from the publisher.