It was great to learn that Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut was coming to Nintendo Switch 2. After porting Yakuza 1 + 2 HD to Wii U as an experiment, a decade later, it appears that we’re at a turning point where SEGA’s iconic series is starting to make a home on Nintendo’s hardware. Yakuza Kiwami came to the original Nintendo Switch last October, its prequel comes to the portable home console’s successor in a matter of weeks, and I’m hopeful that this won’t be the end point.
In its approach to delivering a “Director’s Cut,” Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio hasn’t simply ported the game but has looked to enhance and expand upon what it had created before. The most considerable addition is in recruiting an extensive English voice cast, which must have been a significant undertaking to record every character’s lines, given how story-rich the experience is.
To hear that change in action, I spent an hour playing Chapter 3: A Gilded Cage for my preview session. It is here that we meet Goro Majima for the first time, who we discover is running the Cabaret Grand in Sotenbori, Osaka. I have been steadily working my way through the series – starting with the original Yakuza 0 on PlayStation 4, I am now up to Yakuza 5 – and I can admit that watching characters who I have only ever heard speak in Japanese suddenly have English voices was jarring at first.
Early impressions indicate that Matthew Mercer will once again give a commanding performance as Majima, though. As cutscenes unravelled as I met martial arts master Sometaro Komeki, snooped on rival business Club Odyssey, and bested local arms dealer Fei Hu, it has piqued my interest to revisit the game and hear how well the complete English voice cast lend their talents to Yakuza’s world.
If I needed more motivation to do so, then that is certainly stirred by the fact that this version adds new cutscenes that look to offer a “deeper insight into key incidents and character backstories.” I don’t think that I saw any in my play session, so it’s hard to predict how impactful these will be. French, Italian, German and Spanish subtitles are also now included, hopefully continuing to broaden the game’s accessibility to more players. There are other quality of life improvements too, as, like Yakuza Kiwami’s Nintendo Switch port, you can save your game wherever you like, rather than having to run to a phone booth.
Kamurocho’s neon-lit streets are no stranger to an all-out brawl. Kiryu Kazuma needs only to stroll to the nearest Poppo convenience store for a Bento Lunch Set before some goons attempt to swing a punch at him. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has leaned into this chaos, delivering the Red Light Raid multiplayer mode.
Challenged to overcome near-endless fistfights against hordes of enemies, this mode can be enjoyed with up to four players in either online or local multiplayer, or played solo. I teamed up with two others and, across three Nintendo Switch 2 consoles, we easily used a Lobby ID to group up in a room together before perusing the character select screen. If you don’t have a full complement of four players, worry not, as the game will ask whether you want to add randomly selected CPU-controlled teammates to bolster your numbers. You’re free to decline if you wish.
There are a whopping 60 playable characters to choose from, although they aren’t all unlocked from the start. The different fighting styles for Kiryu (Brawler, Rush and Beast) and Majima (Thug, Slugger and Breaker) are treated as separate characters, with others that you can choose including Taihei Association patriarch Hiroki Awano, Kenno Clan patriarch Daisaku Kuze, and a creepy clown called Red Lip Yamamoto who wields a scythe.
The gameplay loop here is that your hard-earned money rewarded from repeatedly tackling Red Light Raid mode’s six increasingly difficult Challenge Missions can be used to unlock new characters or level up those that you have access to. Strengthening your character by levelling up quickly proved to be important, as, after breezing our way through Challenge Mission 1, which is a brawling spree that leads to an eventual final boss battle in Dojima Family Headquarters, we jumped to Challenge Mission 3 and failed after a few stages.
With Challenge Mission 1 described as “a good warm up,” by Challenge Mission 6, you will be confronted with the strongest enemies that the game has to throw at you. The number of stages that you need to tackle also increases from 10 to 18 by that point, too. For many, there will be a time investment to conquer that, unless you have a group of friends who are way more skilled at Yakuza’s fisticuffs than me. Whoever you rally to your side, you’ll still have to complete each stage within a given time limit, scoop up items to restore your health (as if one player gets knocked out, it’s an instant failure), and unleash your Dragon Spirit to more easily topple tougher baddies.
Even with so much happening on-screen and wirelessly between multiple consoles, the game not only looks great but the frame rate held up on Nintendo Switch 2 against the unpredictable mayhem that we unleashed on the thugs that flooded the area. Its chapter-based structure and crazy substory-ridden world are also the perfect fit for Handheld Mode where Kamurocho shines on the console’s 1080p screen, letting players chip away at the game’s extensive content whenever they can squeeze in time to play.
Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut may not be an early technical showcase to demonstrate what the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware can achieve, but it is SEGA’s series at its best and an otherwise welcome addition to the console’s diverse launch line-up. What other game lets you knock out enemies by swinging a bicycle into them, haphazardly warble your way through karaoke, or have a financially savvy chicken called Nugget help run your real estate empire for you? That’s exactly why it’s well worth considering.
Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut will be released at retail and digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch 2 worldwide on 5 June 2025.
