The Yakuza Remastered Collection - Review

Fans of Sega’s Yakuza series have certainly been spoilt the last few years as it seems like a new Yakuza game has been popping up every few months, the Yakuza Remastered Collection will have them feeling like all their Christmases have come at once. The Yakuza series of games have always felt like those weird and quirky uniquely Japanese style games that you would never expect to have success in the Western world but somehow the series has gained a healthy fanbase and a healthy following, with the first release Yakuza released back in 2006 on the PlayStation 2 spanning all the way through 8 main titles (one being a prequel) and several spin off games the series certainly does have a meaty chunk of content to play your way through.

For the remastered collection Sega has decided to give three of the more recent games in the series Yakuza 3,4 and 5 a polish and try to make them shine more than their original releases on the PS3. If you have never played the Yakuza series before the sheer amount of titles in the series can be overwhelming for somebody wanting to dip their toes into the waters of the Japanese mafia lifestyle however you need not fret as while some stories have overarching characters, each is basically a separate story in its own right and they can be played in any order, thus making this collection the perfect place to start if you have found yourself interested into jumping into the Yakuza world.

The main protagonist of the Yakuza series is Kazuma Kiryu and it is him you while play as for the bulk of your journey through the three titles in the remastered collection however you will get to control various other characters through game mechanics such as flashbacks. The storylines throughout the games in the collection are varied for example Yakuza 3 finds Kiryu tired of the violent gang lifestyle and tasks him with taking his daughter to Okinawa to start an orphanage, whilst in Yakuza 5 you will find Kiryu living life as a taxi driver trying to escape his Yakuza ties, but as is the norm for this series family drama always sees Kiryu having to enter back into the seedy Yakuza underworld in order to fix certain problems. The stories here in the Yakuza series are varied, the characters well written and there is enough text dialogue to fill up at least three very large city libraries.

The only thing I have always found jarring about the Yakuza series of games is the way they have a propensity to go from fully voiced cutscenes straight to a wall of text style of conversation where you have to press the X button after you read each page, if you have played the Yakuza series before and this has annoyed you then do not expect anything different from these remastered games, it would have been nice if they could of added full voice acting but with the amount of dialogue in each game it is understandable that they haven’t as it would’ve proved to be a monumental task. The games are also fully voiced in Japanese (I found the voice acting to be excellent) with English subtitles so if you don’t like reading then stay away as you will be doing a lot of it through this collection.

All 3 games in the collection are all running on their original engines as they are only remasters and not remakes but they do all run at a silky smooth 60 fps in 1080p which is a big step up from their original PS3 versions. Being a remastered collection I was expecting the graphics to be of uniform quality through the three games but unfortunately Yakuza 3 is easily the weakest of the bunch here and suffers from some very poor textures especially on the clothes of the main protagonists clothing and this proves jarring as this is who you will be looking at for the main part of the game, the other two games prove more successful in their remasters and while you won’t find the graphics up to the standards of modern day Triple A titles there are some stunning moments to be found here as you wander around the slick rain soaked streetscapes that reflect the surrounding neon lighting. Having the games remastered to play at 60 fps also helps to give them a more modern, smooth and polished look and certainly does add to making them more visually appealing to what could be a new generation of fans or for long time fans deciding to play through the series again.

There is a huge amount on offer here with each of the games in the collection offering hundreds of hours of main and side quest content as well as all of the quirky other activities that Yakuza fans have come to love such as playing retro Sega arcade games, singing karaoke and even driving taxis, whilst not being completely open world games there are always a bunch of quality side activities to do if you find yourself getting tired of following the main storyline.

Whilst this remastered collection doesn’t update any of the fighting or game mechanics or even the game engine itself there are enough improvements here to justify the games being released as a collection on the PS4. If you have never been a fan of the Yakuza series then this collection wont change that, but if you are someone that has been looking to explore the world of Yakuza for a while then this is the perfect place for you to jump in.