Yakuza Kiwami review — sometimes gangsters just wanna race toy cars

Though I’ve heard about Sega’s Yakuza series, I’d never played any of them. All I really knew about Yakuza Kiwami was that it’s a remake of the first game in the series, a kind of director’s cut edition with 30 minutes of additional cut scenes and a ton of extra side quests and minigames.

I went into it thinking that it would be some kind of Martin Scorsese-esque exploration of the criminal underworld: grim, gritty, and possibly gruesome. And then I discovered that our stoic hero, Kiryu Kazuma, is a gangster with a heart of gold and a love for racing miniature cars.