Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut Review – Review

When I first played Yakuza 0 in 2017, I’d never heard of “Like A Dragon” or Kazuma Kiryu. By the following spring, I had finished every numbered game in the franchise to prepare myself for the release of Yakuza 6, having bought a PlayStation 3 with the specific purpose of catching up on this series. Eight years later, the game that altered my brain chemistry is a launch title for Nintendo’s brand new system standing among titans such as Hitman, Street Fighter, and Mario Kart World. Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut is the chance for a new generation of Yakuza fans to be born on Nintendo Switch 2—though it’s probably not worth it for existing fans to pick up a whole new console just to see the new content the Director’s Cut introduces.

Yakuza 0 is a prequel to the original Yakuza/Like A Dragon, and is set in Japan’s economic bubble in the 1980s. In Tokyo’s Kamurocho district, the criminal Tojo Clan has been scheming to amass wealth by buying up real estate for the Kamurocho Revitalization Project, but their plans have been stalled by an empty lot in the middle of the city whose owner is a mystery. Kazuma Kiryu—a young member of the clan’s Dojima Family—finds himself in the clan’s crosshairs as he’s framed for a murder that brings attention to the empty lot, and his loyalties are tested as he seeks to prove his innocence.

Meanwhile in Okasa’s Sotenbori district, a former Tojo Clan member by the name of Goro Majima is serving out his penance for failing the clan by acting as the manager of the prestigious Cabaret Grand. Desperate to be welcomed back into the fold, he accepts a mission to carry out an assassination in exchange for being reinstated into his old yakuza family. However, Majima soon discovers that the assignment is more complicated than he was led to believe, and he begins a search for answers to learn who exactly his mark is and why he isn’t the only one looking for them.

Although the latest numbered entries to the Like A Dragon franchise have pivoted towards being turn-based RPGs, Yakuza 0 is a traditional action brawler in line with Kiryu’s other solo adventures. Combat will have you performing combos against groups of enemies that won’t wait their turn to attack you. Kiryu and Majima can each swap between three distinct combat styles that radically change the way you can approach fights, with each style having its own advantages in the right situations. If you need to focus on evasion to keep yourself safe, you can make use of Kiryu’s Rush style to sacrifice power for speed. When you’re surrounded by a large group, you can switch to Beast style to throw wide swings that hit in an area around Kiryu. Once you’re ready to lay down the hurt on a single target, the Brawler style will give you the right balance of power and agility to handle tough opponents.

The writing in the Like A Dragon franchise is known for both the serious drama of its main story and the wacky hijinks of its side quests. In the main story, you’ll follow Kiryu and Majima through the twists and turns around the Tojo Clan’s Kamurocho Revitalization Plan, seeing events play out through cinematic cutscenes with motion captured performances that invoke the tropes and aesthetics of Japanese crime cinema. In the side quests you’ll meet a varied cast of oddballs and misfits who need help with one bizarre task or another. Maybe you’ll talk to a tech enthusiast who will excitedly show you a prototypical mobile phone the size of a suitcase. Perhaps you’ll meet a dominatrix who needs your help overcoming her shyness to please her clients. This series is famous for its ability to balance two wildly different tones to deliver drama and comedy at high quality in equal measure.

Another core appeal the Like A Dragon franchise is known for is the way it can serve as a form of virtual tourism. Kamurocho and Sotenbori are faithful recreations of the real life Kabukicho and Dotonbori in all but name, and series fans who visit Japan will often be surprised to realize they already know their way around those cities just from having played these games. The playable areas in Yakuza 0 are much smaller than your average open world game, but those areas are densely packed with activities, minigames, stores, and restaurants that not only bring the world to life, but also give you a hell of a checklist for 100% completion! You can play mahjong, call a telephone sex hotline, visit the batting cages, expand your real estate empire with the help of a chicken you met at the bowling alley, participate in an underground fight club, grab a drink at the bar, and finish the night with karaoke.

Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut was promised to feature brand new story content exclusive to the Switch 2, and while that is certainly true there’s a reason that we didn’t learn the scope of the new content before the game’s launch. Five new scenes have been added throughout the game adding up to a total of 25 minutes, and while I can’t say for sure if they were made specifically for the Director’s Cut or not, they feel an awful lot like deleted scenes that were deleted for a reason. I truly do not understand why we needed seven minutes worth of motion capture and voice acting to explain how a nameless character who appears twice at the beginning of the game faked his death, but we have that now.

The brand new game mode, Red Light Raid, is as bewildering as it is boring. This is a multiplayer mode where you play through a series of beat-em-up kill rooms for the sake of earning in-game cash to purchase characters and play through more kill rooms. The cast of playable characters is shockingly large but you’ll have to commit to purchasing a character before you can even see their moveset, which can lead to some serious disappointment. In my first time playing Red Light Raid I used up all of my cash to purchase the fan-favorite Kuze, a boss from the game’s story mode. I discovered the hard way that Kuze’s moveset is nowhere near as developed as Kiryu or Majima’s is in single player, and since I had spent all my cash I couldn’t try another character until I had played several full rounds of the game with Kuze.

It’s unlikely that you’ll play those several rounds though, since Red Light Raid is completely dead on arrival. I’ve tried loading into five rounds of the game, and I ended up in a lobby with real human players exactly once; one of those players was my friend who intentionally started matchmaking at the same time. I have never seen a single human player outside of that one round. It’s not like it matters though; in the course of writing these two paragraphs about Red Light Raid I’ve simply left the game running with three CPUs as I stand motionless the whole time, and the CPUs managed to get all the way to the boss of the stage without my help. Red Light Raid may have been a decent enough time waster if I could play it in local co-op with my roommates, but since it can only be played online I think it’s a pointless addition to the game.

From a technical standpoint, Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut is fine but nothing special. The game runs at 1080p and 60 frames per second, which is identical to the PlayStation 4 version. One advantage the Switch 2 has is that it runs cutscenes at 60fps as well as gameplay, but I actually think this is a downgrade since the animations were clearly not intended to be seen with such high fidelity. The PC version of Yakuza 0 included an option to limit cutscenes to their original 30fps while unlocking the framerate for gameplay, and I would’ve appreciated that option for the Switch 2 version as well. There’s also noticeable object pop-in while running around the cities that can be a little distracting, but it’s not the worst trade-off for the game running perfectly smooth at all times.

Yakuza 0 is one of my favorite video games, and everything I love about it is fully intact for the Director’s Cut. It’s the perfect introduction to the story of Kazuma Kiryu, and you can’t go wrong with using this version as your starting point. That said, the Director’s Cut is easily skippable for existing fans unless you’re invested in the brand new English dub or extra languages the game has been translated into. The changes made to the story by the new cutscenes make me believe this is a worse version of the game than the original PS4 release that I played, but that is by a very small amount. If you’re a Nintendo fan who’s been looking for your chance to get started with the Like A Dragon franchise, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for.