Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Gaiden: Dark Ties look to revamp series’ slowest game

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio hosted their now annual RGG Summit event, where they announced new games and had the developers come on stage to discuss the nitty-gritty. While that’s all well and good to dive into, what were the meat and potatoes from this year’s event? Well, it’s now confirmed that we’re getting a remake of 2009’s Yakuza 3, set to launch February 12, 2026.

Yakuza 3 Kiwami will follow the pattern for the other remakes in the series, overhauling the original game to bring it up to current speed. Kiwami 1 took the original game and brought it up to where Yakuza 0 was in terms of tech. As Yakuza 6 was released right after, Kiwami 2 actually leapt forward and used a far newer engine of 6 versus the other games.

The trailer is incredibly dramatic, as to be expected. Lots of men shouting at each other, mysterious dudes in alleyways, and hints at the melodramatic violence that’ll ensue. It’ll also be joined by an additional mode, Dark Ties, which follows antagonist Yoshitaka Mine on his own adventures that happen during Yakuza 3.

New actors will also be stepping into a couple of roles. The Like a Dragon franchise will sometimes use actors’ faces, but this has routinely bitten them in the ass. Here, it seems more like it’s a logistics thing (I couldn’t find anything bad about the replaced actors). Go Hamazaki will now be played by Teruyuki Kagawa, and Show Kasamatsu will play Rikiya Shimabukuro.

According to Video Games Chronicle, Kagawa actually admitted to sexually harassing a woman in 2019, issuing an apology in 2022. All must be forgiven on that front, then, eh, Sega?

Yakuza Kiwami 3 looks to freshen up the 2009 PS3 game

The first Yakuza game on the PS3, released back in 2009, Yakuza 3 was a next-generation jump for the franchise. Imagine going from Yakuza 2 to 3; it’s a significant bit of advancement.

It takes the series in a slightly different direction after two games set within fictional Kamurocho and takes the main character, Kazuma Kiryu, to Okinawa as he runs an orphanage. With various political schemes, both criminal and official, all coming to a head, it’s up to Kiryu to save the day.

It’s also incredibly slow, working through the aftermath of the second game, as well as setting up so much new stuff. Like I said, Kiryu’s in an entirely new situation that needed a bit of hand-holding to push the player through the new status quo. It’s very slow, but once it does pick up the pace, it’s unrelenting – if you don’t get distracted. Hopefully, Kiwami 3 shuffles or condenses things a little, just to launch the player into the real juicy bits.

Throwbacks and moving forward for Like a Dragon

The Yakuza franchise has gone through a bit of a change over the last few years. Not only have they all but dropped the name from the main series, using a translation of its Japanese title, Like a Dragon, but it has become massively successful over here in the West. Yakuza 0 allowed for a semi-fresh start, with a prequel that no one really needed prior knowledge of the series to get invested in. In fact, it works as a great launching point for the rest of the series.

The rest of the RGG Summit was a lot of talking about the games, and not showing them off. That’s fine, though, because you kind of know what you’re getting with the Like a Dragon franchise at this point. Its biggest change came with Yakuza 7, where protagonist Kiryu was replaced with new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga (actually, he was in the mobile games first, but y’know, no one played Ryu ga Gotoku Online).

The game took on a more comedic tone and dumped the real-time combat for a turn-based battle system. Ichiban likes Dragon Quest, you see.

If you’ve never given the series a go before, it will almost definitely be on sale come the Steam Autumn sale, and if you’re on console, just keep your eyes peeled. Sega loves dropping the price on these games to ultra-low prices regularly.