Yakuza 0 Director's Cut Nintendo Switch 2 Review
I consider Yakuza 0 to be Sega's best game. Yes, even taking into account its massive portfolio across decades. Yakuza 0 is also one of my favorite games of all time. It was my gateway into this amazing franchise, and it made me fall in love with a fictional location and both Kiryu & Majima. Yakuza 0 is also a game I've played on every platform it has released on, imported to play in Japanese with the original licensed music, and one I was very excited to revisit on Nintendo Switch 2 through Yakuza 0 Director's Cut. I've been chipping away at this on Switch 2, revisiting older versions of the game to see what has changed, and more.
Revisiting Yakuza 0, about eight years after I first experienced it, left me conflicted for a few days, but I'm glad I let the game and my thoughts on it simmer before writing this review. In many ways, I think Yakuza 0 Director's Cut is excellent, but there are a few baffling decisions that add caveats to my recommendation for newcomers to the series.
If you're new to Yakuza 0 or the series as a whole, you're in for an absolute treat with Yakuza 0 Director's Cut. Even all these years later, I'm baffled at how much Sega and RGG Studio packed into this release. Looking back at my first playthrough when it was launching on PS4, I thought Yakuza 0 delivered multiple games' worth of content just in its mini-games, let alone the breadth of story content and substories available with both Kiryu and Majima and their multiple brawler fighting styles available.
Having already replayed it so many times and seen how both Kiryu and Majima have changed through the many games in the series, including spin-offs, I wondered if I'd still get the same joy revisiting Yakuza 0, and the answer is mostly yes. I say 'mostly' because I've grown tired of some of the annoying fetch quest mission design in the older Yakuza games, but the payoff is more than worth it, and that's what pushed me to keep playing.
Obviously, I don't remember every single moment given the size of the game (and because I don't usually watch every cut-scene on a replay), but I wanted to try and get as fresh of an experience as possible with Yakuza 0 Director's Cut. For this, I played the opening hours twice without skipping anything to sample both the English dub and the original Japanese voiceover option. I stuck to the latter for my main playthrough, though. I enjoyed seeing many of the moments I forgot about playing out again, but it has also been great seeing how much RGG Studio has taken the series forward with recent games, especially Judgment and Lost Judgment when it comes to the combat.
Yakuza 0 is structured in a very interesting way. While it initially feels like a crime drama action adventure RPG, you swap between protagonists regularly, see different sides of the narrative unfold, and discover the origin of two legendary characters. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth feels like the first game since Yakuza 0 to deliver that amount of content, and it frankly is too much for a single game, but I digress.
Yakuza 0 Director's Cut aims to be the definitive version of an all-time great, but it falls short in some ways. Even if we take the price out of the picture, the newly added story changes here are just baffling. They feel akin to something you'd see in the bonus disc of a Blu-ray movie release rather than in the actual film. The retcons in particular just left me scratching my head. I won't spoil them for those new to the game, but I'm afraid of what could potentially change in Director's Cut releases for Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Yakuza Kiwami, let alone thinking ahead to Yakuza 6. That aside, Yakuza 0 Director's Cut has the core of the narrative intact as far as I'm concerned, and it is a fantastic story throughout.
If you've already played Yakuza 0 through its PS4, Xbox One, or Steam releases and are wondering if Yakuza 0 Director's Cut is worth your time and money, the short answer is no. While I appreciate the ability to save anywhere, autosave, and original licensed music, it doesn't do anything else to justify the asking price, which is more than double what you'd pay on any other platform. I can't comment on the localization in other languages, but I can say that I found the English dub to be not as good as what we've seen Sega deliver with Judgment and Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
When it comes to the technical aspects of Yakuza 0 Director's Cut, I'm quite disappointed in the Nintendo Switch 2 release when played docked. It has crisp cut-scenes, but the gameplay doesn't look close to 4K. In fact it looks subnative even when played on my 1440p monitor with a lot of aliasing. Sega also opted not to address any of the UI issues in prior versions, so many of the UI elements are still 720p or just blurry. I was surprised that even the new Nintendo Switch 2 controller layout image used had blurry assets. One could argue that this never changed even in the PC and Xbox versions, but considering this is a new port after so many years and literally called "Director's Cut", I was hoping to see the few blemishes addressed.
On the performance side, I noticed some hitching while docked while running around exploring, and once during combat. The docked experience doesn't feel like a big step over the base PS4 or Xbox release, sadly, in image quality and general visuals. In fact, I could brute force better visuals on PC and have much less shimmering even on Steam Deck and ROG Ally.
Yakuza 0 Director's Cut played handheld is a whole other story. I found myself enjoying it a lot more. It is a bit softer than I expected in parts on the Nintendo Switch 2 screen, but everything holds up a lot better than it does docked, all things considered. It feels like the developer prioritized handheld over docked for Yakuza 0 Director's Cut.
As someone who has played Yakuza 0 on Steam Deck twice, I have no qualms in recommending Yakuza 0 Director's Cut on Switch 2 for a great handheld experience. While the PC version can easily hit 90-120fps on handhelds, Yakuza 0 Director's Cut on Switch 2 delivers a very good handheld experience. I also enjoyed playing it in tabletop mode, something I've been doing a lot more on Switch 2 with its larger Joy-Cons and the console actually having a good kickstand.
If you've followed the game's marketing, you're probably wondering about the new Red Light Raid mode. Before playing it, I expected it to either be like Clan Creator (Yakuza 6 and Yakuza Kiwami 2) or like a tacked-on multiplayer mode we saw in many PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 single-player games. It is quite a bit worse, sadly. Not only did I find the online dead for it soon after launch, but the mode itself is very boring. I would've much preferred the resources that went into this go into upgrading the game's assets or bringing in bonus costumes and other content. As someone who plays too much of most Yakuza mini-games and has spent more than a hundred hours just in the disco mini-game in Yakuza 0 since 2015, Red Light Raid might be my least favorite mini-game or bonus addition in a long time.
If you are someone who only owns Nintendo platforms or hasn't played Yakuza 0 before, this is an easy recommendation for handheld play. If you want to play on TV, I don't think the additions are worth more than double the asking price on other platforms, with no major visual upgrade. Even as someone who owns multiple versions of Yakuza 0 (more than what you see in the photo above), as I've been collecting different versions of the game, I found it hard, but eventually did buy a sealed Switch 2 copy for my collection at full price.
Yakuza 0 Director's Cut is a fantastic package for newcomers, and I'm very happy that the licensed music is finally available in the West. However, the baffling new cut-scenes and pointless new raid mode make this feel like Sega taking the series a few steps forward and a few steps back in different ways. For those who haven't played it before in any form and only own a Switch 2, I'm glad Yakuza 0 is finally on a Nintendo platform and with a better conversion than Yakuza Kiwami had on Switch, but it is a shame that there are caveats to what should've been the easiest win for Sega given how amazing Yakuza 0 was all those years ago.