Yakuza Kiwami 3 expansion adds Hell's Arena roguelite fight club

Pcgamer reports Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Dark Ties expansion for Yakuza Kiwami 3 adds Hell's Arena, a roguelite-style underground fight club hidden down a Kamurochō back street and starring Yakuza 3 villain Yoshitaka Mine.

The mode repurposes characters, environments and minigames from the series into randomized runs: Brawler Hell is a basic cage match, while Survival Hell sends you floor to floor against hordes under a constantly ticking timer and masked VIPs. Features highlighted in the preview include unlockable Survival Weapons mapped to the D-Pad, unlockable Mercenaries with their own stats and perks, findable Gospels that grant permanent stat boosts, random drops that refill uses or boost rewards, minibosses and optional treasure chests, multiple difficulty levels, and a shopkeeper who sells songs from other Sega games such as Persona and Virtua Fighter.

At a recent Sega preview the playable plot segment seemed to suggest Mine spends much of the expansion doing good deeds rather than villainy, though Survival Hell’s risk-reward loop is central: if you die you lose accrued money and treasure but can unlock shortcuts to continue. The previewer said they were humbled by the hardest difficulty—losing a run cost 5,659,300 yen they had spent to bring four sidekicks—and noted the mode is not set in Yakuza 3’s Okinawa map; the preview did not detail other ways to earn money across the expansion.

Key Topics

Culture, Ryu Ga Gotoku, Dark Ties, Hell's Arena, Yoshitaka Mine, Kamurocho