Yakuza Remastered Collection review: relive three great games in remastered versions

Fans of the Yakuza saga are in luck. To face the seventh installment of the saga, which will change the genre style with amazing turn-based combat, we get a collection that few could imagine. Yakuza Remastered Collection will allow us to enjoy installments 3,4 and 5 with fully remastered graphics at 1080p and 60 frames per second for Sony's desktop console. We will have some extras to extend the life of the titles and we will have for hours and hours of enjoyment. Sit back in your Akeron chair and enjoy our analysis of Yakuza Remastered Collection.

A saga that has made and continues to make history

If you have already played the Yakuza saga you will know that it is one of the most underrated sagas in the history of video games. Thanks to this remastering and the future inclusion of all the series' installments in the Xbox Game Pass, this situation will gradually be alleviated. Its creator, Toshihiro Nagoshi (under the baton of a legendary company in the world of video games such as Sega) took certain elements of Shenmue and gave it his own personal touch. If Shenmue was a story aimed at a younger or less susceptible audience, Yakuza is geared towards a more adult audience, with a greater resistance to sensitivity

A bygone era is not always better

After the sixth installment, and while waiting to enjoy the seventh title in the series: Yakuza: Like a Dragon, we can relive the story of the protagonist Kiryu on our Playstation 4. We can play again or know the story for the first time in the same versions that surprised the world on Playstation and now arrive in this remastered collection at 1080p and 60fps. The three titles will come with new minigames and improvements in the translation, although we do not get the texts in Spanish (only in English). Sega already tried to bring a spin-off of the franchise (Judgment) translated into Spanish, so we would not be surprised to have future translations for the Yakuza saga games. In addition to everything mentioned above, content from the Japanese edition that did not make it to the PS3 version has also been rescued. And if any more incentive to buy it was missing, it will be the first time we can enjoy the fifth installment of Yakuza in its disc format.

Remaster and you will win

Although this remastered collection will not have a remake treatment with the Dragon Engine graphics engine, we are faced with a good job of remastering. The scenarios and the faces of the characters have aged well, but by not doing a remake of the animations, they are somewhat outdated for the times in which we live today. The combat has not aged too well either, but this situation gives us clues about the respect for the original works that Sega wanted to maintain with this collection

These three installments gave a twist to the saga and added areas such as Osaka and Okinawa, as playable areas, which will allow us to closely follow the development of Kiryu as a character, going through each and every one of its phases (from the most "badass" to the most "angelic"). In installments 4 and 5 of the series we are introduced to new characters and Masayoshi Yokoyama's script continues to remain superb over the years. As we mentioned at the beginning of our analysis of Yakuza Remastered Collection we will have hours and hours of playable content and cinematics with dialogues that will catch you

All the extras of the definitive Yakuza collection

In the remastering of these three titles have been included mini-games such as billas, darts, arcade, fishing, golf or baseball games. Mini-games such as Mahjong, Hanafuda or Shogi, which were eliminated when Yakuza 3 was released in the West, have been recovered

We will still be able to enjoy the famous karaoke and the lyrics of the songs have been translated. The gameplay of this mini-game is a sort of Guitar Hero

The collection includes an extra to find out what happened in the previous games, ideal if you have not played the installments prior to 3

The best

• Three video games in one
• An incredible saga now remastered and in physical format
• The extras and minigames that come with the collection

The worst thing

• They have not taken the step of making the translation into our language

We have made this analysis of Yakuza Remastered Collection thanks to a download code for Playstation 4 provided by Koch Media