You play a former yakuza member walking the streets of a cramped Japanese city district, getting into street brawls that use one of several fighting styles you can switch between mid-fight. Outside of combat there are dozens of odd side activities, from karaoke to batting cages to running a tiny arcade cabinet business. The main story is a serious crime drama, but it constantly interrupts itself with silly optional distractions.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Overall
Kiryu's origin story hits surprisingly hard emotionally, balanced against some of the silliest side content in gaming. That whiplash is exactly the charm.
Moment to moment
Switching between four fighting styles keeps street brawls fresh, and the game happily lets you wander off into karaoke or batting cages whenever the main story gets heavy.
Art and atmosphere
Kamurocho feels lived-in and dense, packed with neon signage and background chatter that sells its 90s setting convincingly.
Worth your time?
Dozens of substories and minigames pad the runtime well beyond the main plot. A great entry point for newcomers curious about the series.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You play Kiryu, a former yakuza member just released from prison after a decade, walking the neon-lit streets of a fictional Tokyo district called Kamurocho where you can wander into convenience stores, arcades, and back alleys at any time. Combat breaks out often, sometimes from the story and sometimes from random troublemakers on the street, and it is a brawler where you punch, grab, and throw enemies with simple button combos, building up a heat gauge that lets you trigger over the top finishing moves, like slamming someone into a vending machine. You can switch between a few different fighting stances mid-fight, one built for crowds, one for single tough opponents, which changes your moveset on the fly.
The main story follows Kiryu chasing down the truth behind a betrayal and a large sum of missing money, told through lengthy but well-acted cutscenes between combat sequences, but a huge amount of the game's actual content is optional side activities scattered around the city, karaoke, batting cages, a remote-control car racing arcade game, and dozens of short side stories you stumble into just by walking around. These substories range from silly to surprisingly touching and can take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour each, and completing enough of them earns you rewards that make the main story easier. The main story alone runs a solid fifteen to twenty hours, longer if you chase side content.
A typical session might be an hour of story missions followed by an hour of just wandering the district trying random activities, and that mix is really the appeal. What may frustrate newcomers is that combat is simpler than in the series' later games and some structural choices show the story's age. If you want a crime drama with a genuinely lived-in city to explore between fights, this is a great, self-contained place to start.