Yakuza 4 Remastered

I came to Yakuza 4 Remastered right after finishing the third entry, and the contrast is hard to overstate. Where Yakuza 3 felt like a studio still finding its footing on new hardware, 4 arrives with a genuine structural idea and the execution to back it up. The premise is simple but bold for 2010: instead of following Kazuma Kiryu through another Tojo Clan crisis, the game splits into four separate mini-campaigns, each starring a different protagonist with their own chapters, combat style, and substories before they all converge in a shared finale. The four characters are the real draw. Shun Akiyama opens the game with a kick-heavy, fast-combo style that feels instantly comfortable for series veterans. Taiga Saejima is a slow, charge-based bruiser who can hoist motorcycles mid-fight, and whose early chapters are deliberately punishing because you never get enough open-world time to properly level his moveset. Masayoshi Tanimura is the parry specialist, a corrupt cop whose playstyle rewards patience over button-mashing. Then Kiryu shows up last, wearing his classic Dragon of Dojima style like a victory lap. Each character also gets character-specific minigames: Akiyama runs a hostess club, Tanimura assists fellow officers in street stops for cash, Saejima carves wooden statues to unlock new techniques. It is wonderfully strange. The substory count sits around 65, roughly 15 per character, and Kamurocho itself gets a vertical expansion for the first time, with new rooftop areas, underground sewers, and parking sections that genuinely change how the city feels to move through. Where the game stumbles is at the seams. Saejima's opening act is a gauntlet of scripted fights with almost no time to practice his style, which makes his early hours frustrating. The overarching plot holds together well through the individual chapters but goes increasingly sideways in the final act, piling on police corruption threads, triple agents, and callbacks to the very first PS2 game in ways that can feel like a conspiracy thriller eating itself. Some critics also pointed out that Kiryu's inclusion feels obligatory rather than narratively earned, as the three new leads fill the screen so capably that the legendary Dragon ends up feeling like a guest in his own franchise. On the remaster side, this is a bare-bones upgrade, 1080p and 60fps with an improved localization and a character model overhaul for Tanimura following a real-world casting change, but no major quality-of-life additions. The visuals are unmistakably PS3-era, though they hold up considerably better than Yakuza 3's did. For players on a series run, this is the point where the modern Yakuza identity clicks into place. The combat is faster and less spongy than its predecessor, the pacing is tighter, and having four distinct characters to inhabit stops the formula from going stale. New players can follow most of the story, but the remaster removed the recaps from the first three games, so some references will land flat without prior context. If you bounced off Yakuza 3 or are worried about franchise fatigue, 4 is the specific entry most likely to win you back.

Alex · Scout Team

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