Given the dearth of pleasant news this month, rest easy knowing Yakuza Kiwami is goddamn wonderful. 

It's a shame it took nearly 10 years for the Yakuza franchise to catch on the U.S. I attribute this in part to Sega's grand miscalculation that an expensive dub track for a game so steeped in Japanese culture would appeal to western audiences. While Mark Hamill as the impish (and murderous) Goro Majima made sense, the expense far outweighed the success. 

Thankfully, Yakuza has a second chance to impress you in Yazuka Kiwami, a remake of the PlayStation 2 original with less emphasis on westernizing and more on enhancing the lived-in and seedy nature of Kamurocho, the fictionalized version of Tokyo's redlight and entertainment district.

I tend to remember PS2 games looking and performing far better than they actually do. Yakuza is no exception. Before Sega sent over the code for Kiwami I poured over footage of the original. I forgot that Kamurocho was once a barren expanse of too-wide streets and muddy lifelessness punctuated by hazy streetfights. Not to mention the load times were notoriously lengthy. Fracturing my nostalgia for the original is certainly in Kiwami's favor. This is a proper remake of a game that launched a franchise and a film adaptation.

Kiwami feels much more like the PS3 games than a bold remake taking advantage of the PlayStation 4. Back when I entertained hope that the Wii U might turn into a worthwhile purchase, Sega released a combination port of Yakuza 1 and 2 in Japan. They weren't remasters and I'm suddenly quite glad they didn't localize that. If I thought the PS2 load times were abysmal, imagine what they might be on Wii U. 

My only real issue with how Kiwami looks is the increased detailing in skin textures. This has been an on and off issue with the Yakuza games since 3, with skin looking too glossy or entirely too realistic in uncomfortable ways. On my 4K television, every character save Majima is a pockmarked mess. Majima is entirely too snake-like to have normal qualities like enlarged pores.

In one odd scene where Kiryu meets with a down-on-his-luck cop assigned to organized crime, I noticed a blurry mass of gigantic pores on the sides of the man's neck that abruptly ended like an exposed mesh beneath his ear. I'd love to show you this but every time I attempted to take a screenshot it looked normal on most monitors. So I'm going to attribute this odd skin texture problem to my television. If you're not playing Kiwami on a 4K screen it probably won't bother you. 

So Kiwami looks better but the remake is also a response to how fans reacted to popular characters since its initial release. Kiwami features new cutscenes, new mini-games, and the fact that my favorite mad man is absolutely everywhere. With Majima Everywhere, the bat wielding fiend above is dedicated to helping Kiryu become a fearsome fighter. As you explore Kamurocho, Majima's tell-tale "Kazzy-chan" pierces the hum of city life like a siren. Trying to get a sandwich at Smile Burger? Majima wants to fight. Trying to get away from the Smile Burger to get more healing items? Majima will find your ass and want to fight. He's everywhere and he's a menace.

The only way to unlock skills in Kiryu's "beast" fighting style (his signature Dragon of Dojima style he uses throughout the franchise) is to fight Majima. You don't necessarily have to win, but getting to a point you can nets you more overall experience and gives you more insight into how Yakuza's combat works. Like Kiryu, Majima has various styles and each one requires a different tactic to beat. You can't use a sluggish crushing blow when Majima is pirouretting with knives. You're going to get caught every time you try. 

While I enjoy Majima popping up everywhere, he can be a problem. Over the course of 20 minutes I'd somehow managed to trigger him in two different cutscenes and several street battles outside a Smile Burger that is in an intersection with a Sega arcade. This area is a bit of a hike away from convenience stores so getting out required most of my healing items. That was when I learned Majima's demands that Kiryu fight him won't stop on the street. In a desperate attempt to eat a burger before he showed up again, Majima picked a fight with me inside the restaurant. Let a man eat a burger in peace!

New interactions with Majima also revealed a slight overzealous quality to Kiwami's new and improved localization. Majima often uses phrases in the subtitles that aren't common to 2005 Japan or anywhere for that matter, with the most notable being words like "hangry" peppered into his dialogue. Kiwami's localization is vastly better than the PS2 game but it is still a story set in the early 2000s, and the slang we use now doesn't fit the time period. It's easily over-looked and most instances I've found come from the "kiwami" content which adds approximately 30 minutes or so of new cutscenes. This is me looking for consistency others might not care about and I realize this.

It's exciting to live in a time where budget Yakuza games get physical releases. It's beyond satisfying to watch the series grow in popularity to the point Giant Bomb is committed to an ambitious playthrough of the entire series (starting from 0) and that we could get a localized remake in the U.S. I spent a great deal of time in the last 10 years fretting over 3, 4, and 5 ever getting released outside Japan and now I think that worry can finally subside.

Yakuza is good. It's Fist of the Northstar meets a gangster movie and if you can't find joy in that I don't know what to tell you. Exploring Kamurocho and drinking, eating, and fighting my way from one side to the other never gets boring, no matter that this is my 7th time through the city. If you never got around to playing Yakuza 1, Kiwami is a better experience and I hope leads to a proper remake of 2. Then, we can forget the days Kazuma Kiryu looked like a weird clay construct.

Sega provided a download code for this review. Yakuza Kiwami is out August 29th 2017 in the U.S.