Now is the best time to play the Yakuza series (on Xbox)

For almost a decade and a half, the Yakuza franchise was all but exclusive to Sony’s PlayStation consoles. Other than a Japan-only Wii U remaster of the first two games, every single mainline entry or spinoff was released solely on the PlayStation 2, PSP, PS3, or PS4.

Then Microsoft came along. Along with Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy, Yakuza has slowly become a flagship Japanese series for Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service. It all started under a year ago with the addition of Yakuza 0, and as of this week you can play almost every mainline Yakuza game on Game Pass.

Couple this with the fact that the next-gen version of Yakuza: Like A Dragon is still exclusive to Xbox Series consoles, with a PS5 version not set to arrive until March, and the improbable conclusion is clear: Xbox — including the PC branch of the ecosystem — is now the easiest and best way to get into the series.

What’s changed this week is the addition of three new mainline Yakuza games. Remastered versions of Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 are all now on Game Pass for Xbox and PC after getting a bundled PS4 release in 2019. (You can also buy the trio for $39.99.) These games originally all came out on the PS3, meaning they wouldn’t otherwise have been playable on modern systems through backwards compatibility.

These aren’t particularly impressive ports on a technical level. Like most other Yakuza games on the Xbox, they run at 1080p and 60fps with little apparent benefit for the more powerful Xbox consoles. But honestly, given the aging source material, that’s perfectly fine.

What matters is that you’ll be able to play almost the entire mainline Yakuza series for the price of a Game Pass subscription. And I definitely think you should do that, because this series is incredibly good. There’s really nothing like the way Yakuza blends brutal violence, goofy comedy, and incredible pathos in the context of a crime drama action RPG.

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