Today, I’m adding one more game to the list of games that have seen improvements when played on Nintendo Switch 2. Let’s have a look!

Yakuza Kiwami

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

The Nintendo Switch 2 is slowly building up its library of games in the Yakuza series, with 2025 bringing the console a new Director’s Cut of Yakuza 0, as well as ports of Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2, and in the case of Yakuza Kiwami, this is a game we already had on Nintendo Switch. This isn’t a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, however, players who have the digital version of the game in their Nintendo Switch library will get a discount on the Nintendo Switch 2 version, bringing it down from $30 to $10.

I should note that even though the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 versions of the games are different versions (again, this isn’t a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition game), there is an option to transfer file save data from the Nintendo Switch version of the game to the Nintendo Switch 2 version. However, this transfer is only one-way – you can’t transfer data from the Nintendo Switch 2 version back to the original Nintendo Switch version.

The Nintendo Switch 2 release of the game of course advertises performance improvements, but more than that you also get… additional language options here! Specifically, text language support for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian. While I’m sure this may mean a lot to those of us who don’t speak English… well, I speak English, so I’m going to move on to the graphics and performance.

There’s a very minor improvement in loading times – loading the game up takes 15 seconds on Nintendo Switch and only 11 on Nintendo Switch 2, and otherwise loading times seemed pretty comparable. Mostly the improvements you’re looking at here are to framerate and resolution.

In this case, both are improved dramatically, with smooth framerates and much nicer resolution that really makes the game look worlds better. While the game looked great on Nintendo Switch, this definitely looks more like the way the game was meant to be played all along.

In fact, it’s so much of an improvement that it starts to make it easier to see the flaws in the game – this is, after all, a 8 year-old release of a 19 year-old game. You’ll see some textures look blurry, there’s pop-in in places, and while the character models still look great, it’s now easier to see the places where textures or polygons were used maybe a bit more sparingly than they might be used in a modern game. Just to be clear, these are not new issues, it’s just much easier to notice them now that the resolution has been bumped up to more modern standards.

That said, this is still a game that looks amazing, with some incredible detail and wonderful character designs, and this is absolutely the best way to play this game on a Nintendo platform. If you’re looking to play the first game in the Yakuza series, this is a fine way to do so.

tl;dr – Yakuza Kiwami is an Action-RPG focusing on the criminal underworld of contemporary Tokyo, with an extremely detailed world that begs to be explored, and an excellent story with some excellent twists and turns. Unfortunately, the inconsistent combat and an extremely linear early game hinder this otherwise excellent experience. Still, if you can put up with its flaws, I still think this game is absolutely worth playing. It’s a mixed bag, but that mix is mostly very good.

Grade: B+

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I hope you enjoyed this latest Nintendo Switch 2 Difference Mini-Review, and found it to be helpful! Want to see all Nintendo Switch 2 Difference comparisons? Check out this page for links to every article where I’ve included these comparisons!

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