My gaming life can now be cleanly split into two sections: the period before I had heard the phrase “Daddy Rank”, and the period after it.
It’s one of the key features of Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties that Sega was kind enough to show me at a fancy gyoza-joint-turned-preview space in London this week, and in the days since, I haven’t stopped muttering it to myself whenever I do a small piece of housework.
Kiryu’s Daddy Rank is the bread and butter of Kiwami 3’s new ‘Life at Morning Glory’ side content — an expansion on the 2009 original’s opening locale, where the ex-Tojo Clan tough guy swaps his knuckledusters for a pair of marigolds and cracks on with some chores around his self-made orphanage.
Yakuza is a series renowned for its constant flip-flopping between serious and silly, dark and delightful, and it always plays best to me when it leans into the latter of the two camps and embraces the brooding protagonist’s softer side. Life at Morning Glory is about exactly that.
What’s the story, Morning Glory?
The children need help with a series of tasks, and it’s up to the Daddy of Dojima (as I will now insist on calling him) to come to the rescue.
In my preview, I sped through a multiple-choice questionnaire to assist young Ayako with her science homework, followed the lines of a sewing minigame to knock up a new dustcloth for Taichi, farmed and planted crops in the garden, then chopped, mixed, and scum-skimmed them into a curry for Koji’s dinner.
At the end of each task, Kiryu holds up his handiwork (a test paper/piece of fabric/steaming plate) and smiles directly into the camera in much the same way that your avatar might in Animal Crossing: New Horizons after catching a fish. In the game world, this is all a process of improving Kiryu’s bond with each child and working out where he stands as a father figure; in the real world, it’s a chance to play some super sweet minigames, then smile as a big green Daddy Rank bar ticks up the screen with each success.
The preview was hosted entirely on PS5, but I can’t wait to take this silly little side mission on the go with me on Switch 2. It’s just a taxi ride away from the open streets of Ryukyu and Kamurocho, too, so you just know that I’m going to be putting off all the brutal murders, clan wars, and shady deals to beat my stitching record back on the beaches of Okinawa.
From Daddy to Baddy
While I’m on the open streets, let’s touch on some Baddie Battles. No, much like Daddy Rank, I’m not making this up. In another of Kiwami 3’s fresh storylines, Kiryu becomes the surprise chairman of the Haisai Girls, an all-female biker gang that’s engaged in a turf war with the larger-than-life Tokyo Night Terrors.
A lot of this ‘Bad Boy Dragon’ gameplay circulates around massive squad battles between the two teams, where you can put either Kiryu’s classic Dragon of Dojima fighting style or the snappy new weapon-focused Ryukyu style to the test. It’s also about team management. You can save people in peril on the streets of Okinawa and recruit them to your biker squad, each bringing their own skills to the baddie lineup — be that powerful attacks, rallying cries or healing abilities. Then, before diving into a head-to-head against another clan, you choose which characters will make up your squad, balancing their quirks to suit the situation.
In short, it’s the crew recruitment system from Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii transposed onto a biker gang, but that’s no bad thing! I was informed that you can also customise Kiryu and his crew with snazzy uniforms, bike designs and banners, but I never got to see these tools in the preview — which is probably for the best, because I can guarantee that it would have gobbled up all my time.
When I wasn’t recruiting baddies, the streets of Downtown Ryukyu were expectedly packed with distractions — karaoke, arcades, golf, bowling, you know the drill. There’s also side missions galore, bounties to be hunted, and the chance to head back over to Morning Glory and stay on top of that aforementioned Daddy Rank. I’m not obsessed, I promise.
It all looks and plays wonderfully on PS5, and given how impressed I’ve been by the three Yakuza titles available on Switch 2 already (gosh, Sega really has been churning them out, huh?), I’d be surprised if this entry is any different. Yakuza 3 is often viewed as one of the lesser titles in the series, so seeing the whole affair brought to RGG’s slick Dragon Engine with some nips, tucks, and new fighting styles, pushes this one excitingly close to the territory of being an entirely new game rather than a standard remake.
Tying things up
Oh yes, speaking of an “entirely new game”, I should probably touch on Dark Ties, too. This came right at the end of my preview, and I’ve left it to the end here, too, because it felt like the addition I already knew the most about. Sega has been showcasing this prologue story starring the base game’s antagonist, Yoshitaka Mine, for a good few months now (our sister site, Push Square, went hands-on with it back in September), and, shockingly, it feels like more Yakuza.
Mine’s athletic moveset is a lot of fun — a special attack that lets you jump kick off one opponent’s chest, flinging yourself into an aerial attack on another, is a particular highlight — and the underground Hell’s Arena fight club gave me a good chance to see it in action.
Other than that, it was business as usual on the streets of Kamurocho. The Kanda Damage Control side content peppered the open world with tasks for me to complete and up my ‘Kanda Rank’ in the process (it’s all ‘Ranks’ in this game) by improving Tsuyoshi Kanda’s street cred, but it all felt very Yakuza-y otherwise. This is no criticism, mind you; it’s always great to have more hot content to dive into.
I left the preview with a belly full of gyoza and the words ‘Daddy Rank’ still playing on my mind. From what I’ve seen, this feels like the biggest step up for a ‘Kiwami’ remake so far, packed with new content, combat styles, and with an entirely new story bolted onto the side.
Does it all still feel a little overwhelming? Of course it does! But come on, we wouldn’t have Yakuza any other way.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties launches on Switch 2 on 12th February 2026.
Will you be catching up with Kiryu and co. next month? Let us know in the comments.
