Yakuza series has finally made it to Nintendo and it performs better than we expected
OVER the past few years the Yakuza series has delivered multiple games and all of them have been excellent.
Just in the last two years Like A Dragon: Ishin!, Like A Dragon: Gaiden, and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth have all blown away people’s expectations.
While the games have been a success across multiple platforms, one of the big four was always missing: Nintendo.
Yakuza Kiwami is the first game in the series to make its way over to Nintendo with its launch on the Switch.
It’s a remake of the first Yakuza game that scraps the old combat system and replaces it with the more modern combat from Yakuza 0.
This is a lot more fun than the PlayStation 2’s original system, and a welcome upgrade for fans.
If you’ve only played newer games, you might not be used to the series’ roots where Kazuma Kiryu is the sole protagonist.
The first game tells the story of Kiryu emerging from prison after serving ten years for a crime he didn’t commit.
Everything has changed by the time he returns to the real world and war has broken out between the yakuza families.
Kiwami launched on other platforms back in 2016, so rather than the story, people want to know what the Switch release is like.
The performance is good, even for a less powerful console like the Switch, and it runs at a mostly solid framerate.
There is some stuttering in handheld mode, particularly during exploration and combat, but this doesn’t last long.
The image quality is similar to that of the PS4 release, and is comparable to the other versions.
There are still some issues which show the age of the game.
Autosaves weren’t implemented in the original Kiwami release, but we expected to have them by 2024.
Our main issue is with the text size. It’s readable when you play on your TV, but in handheld it starts to get tricky quickly.
Yakuza Kiwami is the best starting point of one of gaming’s best series and it plays excellently on Switch.
If the Nintendo Switch is the only console you have access to, then this is a must-buy.
If you want to read more gaming reviews, check out our Sonic X Shadow Generations review.
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