Sega announced it’s bringing Yakuza 0, the most pivotal entry in the now-rechristened Like A Dragon series, to the Nintendo Switch 2.
It’s not a remaster, but Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut will include brand-new features for the already-packed action RPG with brawling mechanics.
New to Director’s Cut is the multiplayer mode Red Light Raid. As a team of four players, select a from a roster of 60 characters from the main story (including badass screen-chewing bosses as well as Sub Story goofballs) as you work together taking on missions.
These missions involve beating people up as you rake in the yen, and a boss awaits the team at the final stage. Money earned can be used to unlock new fighters or upgrade existing ones.
In addition, Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut will live up to the Director’s Cut moniker by adding extra scenes.
Also, this release will also be adding English and Chinese voiceovers. Extra dubbing options are commonplace for Like A Dragon games since Yakuza: Like A Dragon, but the series never had options for all three voice languages in past games (the original Yakuza 1 release in English has an English dub, but with no option to switch to Japanese).
In Yakuza 0, players switch between series regular protagonist Kazuma Kiryu and, making his playable debut, Goro Majima.
(It’s not until Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii where Majima reappears as a playable character)
The game explores the dual protagonists’ origin story set in 1980s bubble economy Japan. This is before the two Yakuza men became the stuff of legends. Two separate stories of how the Dragon Of Dojima and The Mad Dog Of Shimano came to be.
Yakuza 0 became a pivotal point of the series’ massive popularity in English-speaking regions. The serious storytelling is just as serious and hammy as it ever was, but when juxtaposed in the many, many indulgences that are the side activities and mini-games being offered here, Yakuza 0 became a classic.
This is the game where we first see Majima in an idol getup cheerfully singing while on rollerskates. And Kiryu getting the need for speed as he picks up pocket circuit racing as a hobby. And… uh, Mr. Libido.
This is also the game about serious crime drama but also has a real estate management mini-game and a cabaret manager mini-game. Because why not, it’s the age of excess just before the economic bubble popped, after all.
Yakuza 0 also introduced style-switching, allowing Kiryu and Majima access to four different movesets at the press of a d-pad, which made the brawling combat some of the sickest and slickest the series had seen at this point.
The Like A Dragon series haven’t established themselves on Nintendo platforms. But after last year’s release of Yakuza 1 on Switch, and this year’s release of Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut on Switch 2, maybe we can start expecting more Yakuza/Like A Dragon games coming to Nintendo’s platform in the future.
Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut is a launch title for the Switch 2. It will release on June 5.