Yakuza 3 Remastered

I sure do love these Yakuza games.

I played the PS4 remaster of this on my PS5.

I'll start this time with the gameplay: it's a Yakuza game alright. Combat is very similar to earlier entries with this feeling like the earlier games with some of Kenzan!'s quality-of-life improvements. You'll still be pummeling guys with your fists or with certain weapons while building up Heat to pull off Heat actions, and many of the Heat actions from prior games (even Kenzan!) are unlockable. Revelations, as featured in Kenzan!, make a return, and they're largely the same here.

You can still buy weapons like in the earlier Yakuza games but this game's take on that mechanic allows you to repair the things you buy. You can't carry found weapons between fights, however. In a lot of ways it's a bit like Kenzan!'s weapon system, only with weapon durability now being factored in. While there isn't a weapon upgrade system like Kenzan!, you can now craft weapons that effectively function like upgraded versions of their base templates. All in all, the weapon management in this is far more advanced than it was in either prior Yakuza game, and is closer to what was seen in Kenzan!. Like that game, enemies once again drop money and crafting resources, though there's a "random adjective" added that's sometimes pretty funny.

Thankfully, these adjectives don't actually mean anything.

You'll also still be managing equipment and gear like you were in Kenzan!. While that game had the "Silent Shoes" which muffled your footsteps and did little else, an item that returns here, this game adds the "Mew Shoes" which make each footstep sound like a very loud cat meow. It's just as obnoxious as it sounds and, well, just as funny. You can also craft more useful items, of course, like an upgraded bulletproof vest or a modified stun baton or what-have-you, but the silly stuff stands out.Between the weapons and gear you can craft, there's a lot more equipment to toy with to suit your playstyle.

You can still beat people with bicycles too though, so don't worry.

This game's setting, as I alluded to earlier, adds the sunny beachfront locale of Okinawa. Much like how Yakuza 2 split its time between Kamurocho and Osaka, this game alternates between Kamurocho and Okinawa. Okinawa, like Osaka before it, is not quite as big as Kamurocho, but it sure is dense. There are two cities worth of sub stories and locker keys to find, two cities of minigames and hostess clubs, just two whole dang cities that are absolutely worth exploring.

Look at him. He's happy!

As for the story, I have pretty mixed feelings. A friend of mine called this Yakuza's "beach episode" and that's not entirely wrong, for better or worse. The plot is a lower-stakes thing than the first two games and, well, a lot of it takes place on (or near) a scenic beach. That aspect of it actually reminded me a bit of the film Sonatine, though beyond being about a Yakuza hiding out on a beach there aren't really any other similarities.

The plot follows Kiryu, now out of the Yakuza life once again, as he runs an orphanage with Haruka. It offers a chance to see a happier, less serious Kiryu, though this being a Yakuza game he of course gets dragged back into the world of organized crime. Personally, I loved all of the stuff in Okinawa and think that Rikiya, especially, was a wonderful addition. The main plot, the thing that drags him back to Kamurocho, though, was kind of, well... it was kind of dumb. The story goes full soap opera and, compared to the strong antagonists and evil schemes of the first two games, this game feels substantially weaker. It's not necessarily bad, but I was letdown by the plot.

Always happy to see Majima though, and this time he has a suit!

I mentioned substories and minigames earlier and boy oh boy did I do a lot of those! There are the usual scammers and criminals to deal with, but there's also just a lot of good writing and fleshing out of characters in there. 

The murder mystery in particular was a highlight.

I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend playing every substory like I did though. I'm glad I finally got to see the secret boss Amon and now I can say I've seen what the hostess clubs are like to their fullest, but as you'll see later on I spent significantly more time on this game than I did any of the earlier entries. On the subject of hostess clubs, there's a pretty lengthy substory that puts Kiryu in an active role at a club, though rather than a job as a host (as he did in Yakuza 2), he's coaching women to be hostesses here. It's relatively involved and easily missable, but it's always funny to imagine Kiryu as being the sort of person who'd go to great lengths to help out some stranger he just met. I found that more interesting than going to the hostess clubs as a guest, at least.

Some of the hostesses were... a lot.

Because I didn't manage my time incredibly well, I wasn't able to do all of this before the ending mission, so I instead took advantage of the "Premium Adventure" feature which lets you run around and do whatever side-content or collectible hunting you missed in the base game. It's a neat feature, and you can even change Kiryu into any of the outfits he wore during the game, which was neat. In addition to needing to sit through all of the hostesses, I also had to get somewhat decent at some of the minigames and I waited until the post-game to do most of that. You need to bowl above a 200 for one, and you need to win a certain number of nine-ball pool games for another, for example. 

Who do you think you are? I am!

As I just mentioned earlier, I played a bit of the Premium Adventure mode so rather than include my results from the end of the game, I thought I'd share what my stats looked like as of the time I stopped playing instead. This was a... much longer game than Yakuza 2 and Kenzan!, though making a point of doing all of the sub stories almost certainly contributed to my inflated hour count.

If you look closely on the right, you can see the portrait Haruka drew in Yakuza 1. How sweet.

I've already said this, but I have pretty mixed feelings on this game. On one hand it's way bigger than Yakuza 2 and as a result I spent far longer on it than I'd initially planned to, and I also have some significant issues with the story, but on the other hand I wouldn't have spent over eighty hours on it if I didn't love it. I'm all-in on the Kiryu train at this point and I'm looking forward to starting Yakuza 4. I'll wait a bit, though. I love it but I may need a bit of a break from Kamurocho.

If you've made it this far I suppose I should talk about the elephant in the room. Or, rather, the elephant that isn't in the room. They took out the Don Quijote music! I assume this was a licensing deal that ran out at some point, since the game apparently had the music when it launched, but man is its absence felt. I've gotten to know parts of Kamurocho like the back of my hand so even though I rarely went to Don Quijote in this game, when I did it felt like a completely different place without that music.

Rather than end on a downer, I'll leave you with an example of Kiryu at his best: being a somewhat confused, but respectful, ally.

Let's just pretend the Michiru stuff from the original release doesn't exist.