Games I Beat in the Year 2024: Yakuza 3 Remastered (PS4)

Games I Beat in the Year 2024: Yakuza 3 Remastered (PS4)

Overview:

On my mission to tackle my mountainous backlog of video games, the second game I beat this year is Yakuza 3 Remastered on the PS4. Along with going through my backlog, I’ve also been going through the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio games one-by-one; beating Judgement and Yakuza 2 Kiwami last year. This being the case, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and jumped back into the story of Kazuma Kiryu.

Story:

All the main character Kazuma Kiryu wants to do is run an orphanage. However, a slice of life game wouldn’t sell, so Kiryu finds himself at the center of political and Yakuza-type turmoil. You meet some new guys, reconnect with some old guys, all while trying to be the best surrogate father you can be.

One of the biggest complaints I have with the story of Yakuza 3 is that the start of the game feels like it drags on for too long. The game starts off as a slice of life parent simulator where Kiryu helps out the orphans of Morning Glory with their orphan-related problems.

Some of the problems you get to solve are:

-One girl ran away because she is too nice to everyone

-Bowl cut glasses boy is getting bullied in school so you need to play golf

-Another girl wants a dog

I feel like with the last few RGG games I’ve played, you kind of just jump right into the story - Yakuza 0, you literally punch a dude and jump out of a window in the first 30 minutes of the game. For this game, I think the first Morning Glory section takes 2 hours - then the second Morning Glory section takes 1 hour. In a 20-ish hour game, that’s 15% of the game doing slice of life stuff!

While this part of the game does drag on, there are parts of the story that hit harder because of this slow build-up. Also, I might have read somewhere that the kids show up a few times in the future games, so that’ll be fun to see how they change throughout the years.

Another weak point with pacing was that there was this chapter dedicated to exposition dumping the entire plot onto you. The chapter was literally titled “The Plot” and it was just 30 minutes of some angry looking guy talking to you.

Aside from the few issues I had with the pacing, the story itself was good. I don’t want to give away spoilers, but a few story threads from the previous game kind of just have a hard stop here, and there’s this… really goofy “plot twist” - but I liked the main villain's pathos and motivations, and the other new characters introduced here are very charming. The mustache boss was a cutie pie, and I wish he was my grandpa. Once you get through the slow parts of the game, the characters definitely keep you coming back.

Gameplay:

As with all other RGG games, the gameplay loop for Yakuza 3 Remastered is the usual:

-Go around town

-Beat people up in absurd ways

-Get better at beating people up

-Repeat

If you’ve never played an RGG game before, then the above means that this game is a dial-a-combo styled 3D beat-em-up game with light JRPG elements. You can progress throughout the game by increasing your stats, learning new techniques and special moves, and crafting weapons and gear. When it comes to combat, I can’t think of any stand out mechanic or feature that only exists in Yakuza 3 Remastered, but the gameplay does serve the purpose of… having fun gameplay.

The only complaint that I have with the combat is that the enemies are so guard-heavy that it feels like you’re playing Street Fighter x Tekken on launch day. You can try to grapple the enemies and bosses, but there is a good chance they’ll tech the throw. Funnily enough, one of the hardest boss battles in the game was one of the first ones because your punches do low damage, and he kept teching your throws and blocking your punches. You’re left just… spamming the starting attack string you do.

Luckily the combat gets better the more you level up and train with Komaki and Japanese Dr. Emmet Brown, but it feels like the game wasn’t balanced with a level 1 Kiryu in mind. Just like with the story, starting off is the hardest part - but once you get over that hump and unlock more options, fighting becomes more fun and you’ll be torpedo headbutting people in no time.

Content:

I feel like with these Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio games, there needs to be a separate section just for all the extra stuff you can do in the game.

Starting off with the content, there are hitman missions, hostess dating, and coliseum fights; each of them have their own side stories. For example, with the hostess dating, each hostess has their own characterization and story with a conclusion - and there’s like over 10 hostesses! You can easily spend hours just reading each coliseum contestant backstory or going through the hitman contracts to finish that storyline as well.

When it comes to the minigames; since I’ve played through the Yakuza series in reverse by first getting into it with 0 (though I guess story-wise, I’ve gone through it the right way), I can see that a lot of the unique gameplay mechanics that appear in later games were prototyped here: like the hostess club manager game from 0 and Kiwami 2, the chase sequence minigame from Judgement, darts, etc. As these were prototyped in this game, the minigames themselves are pretty barebones. Like the club manager minigame consists of you just walking through the club and dressing/training the hostess instead of… whatever game genre the club manager minigame was in 0 and Kiwami 2. So while these minigames aren’t ground breaking, you can see that they paved the way to better minigames.

The substories here are as ridiculous and as memorable as ever; in one substory, Kiryu becomes an actor, and in another one he’s… chasing a serial dine-and-dasher. So it’s your usual assortment of crazy adventures.

I don’t recall if this has happened in previous games I played, but I feel like there’s a lot more substories that focus on serious story-telling. For example, there’s a substory where you hook up your long time ally with a woman he has a crush on; or a few substories that are continuations of substories or story lines from previous games. For the latter, I had a bit of trouble remembering what exactly they were referencing, but it was nice to have some substories that progress the side characters.

As with all of the other content-heavy RGG games I’ve played through, Yakuza 3 Remastered does not disappoint as you’ll be spending hours getting lost in the mountain of content.

Conclusion:

After beating Yakuza 3 Remastered, I am constantly reminded about my regret of not getting into this franchise sooner as it’s become one of my favorite series of all time. In 2009, I was doing nothing and now I got bills to pay, man. I could have 100%’d this game back then.

But 3 satisfies everything I look for in an RGG game. I heard a lot of negative criticism about this game going into it with the Morning Glory section and the gameplay, but I believe the complaints were coming from people who started playing through the RGG games with 0. The original Yakuza 3 came out in 2009 on the PS3 so of course it’s going to feel a bit dated. I can appreciate that this was a stepping stone to be able to get to a masterpiece like 0.

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