Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is getting a day one patch to ensure sunny Okinawa looks less deep fried

Ahead of Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties’ release on February 11th, devs RGG Studio have announced plans to put out a day one patch to fix visual issues spotted the remade beat-em-up’s demo. Specifically, there’s a section of the game’s version of downtown Okinawa by a river which players have pointed out to be garishly oversaturated compared to the original Yakuza 3 and its previous remaster.

You can certainly see it in posts folks have compiled which put the two games’ riverside vistas alongside each other. I didn’t find it too off-putting when playing through the demo myself, though I had opted to tone the brightness down to compensate, which made a couple of night scenes a bit harder to make out. So, it’s good news RGG are planning to sort it out.

“Rest assured the graphical quality of the demo does not represent the final experience,” the studio wrote in a Tweeter post. “We plan to have a v1.11 patch available at launch which will address the lighting issue and other quality concerns in the full game. One specific example is the visual and lighting issues around the Kubochi River area in the Downtown Ryukyu area, which many of you have already pointed out.”

RGG added that the patch will “include not just fixes for the issues identified above, but many other improvements” and that the timing of its release might vary by platform. Here’s hoping its PC arrival isn’t left until last.

While they have now publicly acknowledged these lighting issues, RGG Studio have so far opted not to issue a response to a Yakuza fan petition calling on them to re-cast one of the game’s actor’s, Teriyuki Kagawa. The backlash against Kagawa’s casting stems from a 2022 report by Japanese magazine Shukan Shincho that the actor sexually harassed a female employee at a club in Tokyo’s Ginza district in 2019. You can read our feature on the situation here.