One of the biggest success stories of the past decade has been the breakout popularity of the Yakuza franchise. The success of Yakuza 0 in the West spurred Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio to redouble their efforts on more timely localised releases, and eventually to also bring the series to PC and Xbox alongside PlayStation. Up until now Nintendo has been left out of the party, but with the Nintendo Switch 2 and Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut, they’re finally getting an invite.
Yakuza 0 is, as you can infer, a prequel. Set 17 years before the events of the original game – remade in Yakuza Kiwami – we get to see the origins of up-and-coming yakuza Kazuma Kiryu and his fledgeling rivalry with cabaret club manager Goro Majima in the tail end of the 1980s.
We got to play a chunk of the early story mode, starting in Chapter 3 just as Majima is on the search for a new headliner for his club, running around town, getting into scraps with both local thugs and an old man that’s insistent on training him in multiple styles of combat. Oh, and checking out the local arcades, of course.
RGG has sprinkled some new incidents and character backstories into the game to justify this Director’s Cut label, though we don’t really know how extensive they’ll be. What we did get to appreciate was the all-new English dub for the voiced cutscenes, which did a good job all round as a final localisation touch for this game – of course, the Japanese voice acting will remain a go-to for many, but English dubs make this game more accessible to a more casual audience.
Much more important is that the game looks and plays great on Nintendo Switch 2. This is an old game that honestly shouldn’t trouble the Switch 2 hardware, especially when docked, as we were capturing it, and it runs flawlessly from what we can see.
In fact, there’s the headroom here for RGG Studio to get a little bit silly, a bit whacky with their decade-old game, and chuck multiplayer into the mix.
The Red Light Raid mode is just about mad enough that it could actually be a brilliant little time sink. Teams of up to four players get to rampage through cramped close quarters combat against wave after wave of enemies. Each wave you face bounces you to another small arena in the streets, alleys and buildings of Kamarucho, and you’re fighting against the clock to defeat them all and make it to the next stage, building up to a boss fight.
It is rambunctious chaos, bordering on Musou levels of screen-filling action as you often find yourself battling against a dozen enemies or more within tight confines. Button mashing your way through is more than acceptable here, and you’re often pretty likely to at least hit someone most of the time. Some characters are more versatile than others, though. I unlocked and switched to the clown Red Lip Yamamoto and his slow, static sweeping scythe attacks make staying with the fast-pace of battle more of a challenge than sticking with Kiryu.
There’s some good twists here, such as how Kiryu and Majima have both been split out into their three separate fighting styles, meaning that they don’t have any advantages over the dozens of other unlockable characters. We’re in the meaningless money zone for unlocking those characters, with prices starting at ¥10 million, which you can easily earn from just a few successful wave clearances. You get the big bucks if you’re able to fully clear a mission, but the grind will probably start to set in as you upgrade characters to improve their stats.
Still, this could be a fun added diversion for people picking the game up on Nintendo Switch 2, and it’s great to see the Yakuza and Like a Dragon franchise start to make its way to Nintendo’s hybrid console. Yes, the games run great on Steam Deck and other PC handhelds, but those are still a very niche market when compared to the mass appeal of the Switch.
All in all, if you’ve played this game elsewhere already, there’s probably little incentive to pick this up again on Switch 2, but this is opening up a new audience for the franchise, and that’s always good to see.
