Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Yakuza: Like a Dragon Creates an Almost Perfect Combination

 Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Jan 102024
 

We’ve been waiting a while for this one, since I named Yakuza: Like a Dragon my favorite game I played last year in my New Year’s Eve post!

If you’ve been following my blog at all, you know I love the Yakuza series.

Ever since I played Yakuza 0 back in 2018 and found it to be an absolutely incredible game, up to my emotional experience with Yakuza 6 a few months ago, this franchise has risen up from one I never gave any mind at all to my second favorite video game series of all.

That brings us to Yakuza 7, titled Yakuza: Like a Dragon in the west, for which the developers made the bold decision to introduce a new protagonist and change the combat from action brawler combat to turn-based combat.

(To me, Yakuza was already an action JRPG series, but no one can deny it with Yakuza: Like a Dragon.)

I’ve seen enough series I love change their core gameplay dramatically to sympathize with fans who were displeased by this radical decision. On the other hand, that change usually goes in the opposite direction, so it almost brings a sense of balance. Plus, I just love turn-based RPGs.

Anyway, the point behind this rambling is that Yakuza: Like a Dragon feels in some ways like a match made in heaven for me. All the wonderful aspects of the Yakuza series I’ve grown to love, paired with my favorite genre? What could be better than that?

Yakuza: Like a Dragon follows new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, a former member of the Tojo Clan who finds himself in the Yokohama district Isezaki Ijincho after… things go rather badly for him. If you don’t know what happens from the trailers, I won’t spoil it here. He and his friends get mixed up involved in a widespread conspiracy, and high drama ensues as is typical for the series.

In the meantime, he also encounters the wacky and heartwarming substories that make the series shine so much, plenty of fun mini-games, a business management side activity that’s strangely addictive, and of course, fun references to Dragon Quest, which they got permission to mention by name.

You see, Ichiban is a huge fan of Dragon Quest, and that’s the in-game justification for the turn-based combat. He loves Dragon Quest so much that whenever he gets into a fight, he imagines it playing out like a turn-based RPG fight. It doesn’t end there, though. There are plenty of nods to Dragon Quest, as well as some to other series like Pokémon.

(And by a nod to Pokémon, I mean all enemies are classified as “Sujimon,” and you meet a professor who takes you to the Sujimon Center and asks you to fill out the Sujidex for him. You don’t get to build a team of Sujimon to battle with, though. …That’s in the sequel.)

They could have stopped at that and had it simply be a Yakuza game with turn-based combat and fun references, and I would have been happy. But by introducing a party system, they went above and beyond.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon has a party chat system. You know, like skits in Tales? That’s a feature I wish more games had, and I love it here. Some of the conversations are so funny! Meanwhile, there are also party conversations triggered by eating certain food at restaurants. Every party member has a social bond you can level up to advance their own mini stories by hanging out with them, too, and Ichiban also has personality stats that gate a handful of new things.

You unlock jobs for combat, as well, with some skills that carry over between jobs while others remain job-exclusive, which forces you to think about what you want your party composition to be. There are so many things I love in this game that I could gush about it all day.

Now, it isn’t perfect. They made the puzzling decision to have a combat system where position matters, yet give you no way to manually control your characters. All you can do is attack an enemy and hope your characters end up where you want them, or watch in dismay as a character gets stuck on a wall and runs against it until the game finally gives up and phases them in front of the enemy. A small degree of manual movement is being added to the sequel’s combat system, and I couldn’t be happier.

It also has a huge difficulty spike partway through. The game introduces an optional combat arena and strongly hints that you should use it – because the next boss fight pretty much assumes you have. I went up 10 levels and barely felt strong enough.

And the middle section of the story felt slow and meandering to me. I loved the first few chapters, and the last few chapters kicked up the excitement again, but the chapters in the middle just didn’t have that same emotional pull. Still, when it does pick up again, it does so with some of the most exciting moments imaginable.

Yakzua: Like a Dragon isn’t a perfect game, but it’s a game I loved from start to finish. Even in those slower moments, there were excellent substories and fun mini-games to hold my attention. The upcoming Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (aka Yakuza 8) looks like it’s made some big improvements, so I can’t wait to see what that game brings.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is Coming Out HOW Soon??

 Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Sep 202023
 

When we talked about Granblue Fantasy Relink coming out on February 1 and Persona 3 Reload on February 2, I commented on how Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth were also set for “early 2024.”

Then Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was announced for February 29, turning February into an insane month for JRPGs…

…and last night, at the RGG Summit, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth was confirmed for January 26, which is far earlier than I expected.

While the RGG Summit didn’t have any new surprise announcements, it did show a lengthy story trailer and a fun-filled gameplay trailer for Infinite Wealth, and all I could think while watching them is that this has the potential to be one of the best games ever.

The story trailer was emotional, with one shocking reveal that you’ve probably seen posted all across social media by distressed fans by now unless you’re good at avoiding spoilers, and the gameplay trailer looks like it’ll be so much fun.

I’ve been playing Yakuza: Like a Dragon now in the hopes of catching up ahead of Gaiden, and my one criticism of the combat so far is that your position matters but you can’t actually manually move your character. So the gameplay trailer confirming that you can move in combat in Infinite Wealth is all I needed to see. It’s actually the one thing I was hoping for from a combat reveal!

They showed so many mini-games that look fun, too. When Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth was first announced, they said it would be the largest game in the series so far, and I believe it after seeing these trailers.

In short, I’m excited, terrified (of the story), and desperately trying to figure out how to manage my backlog in early 2024!

Like a Dragon Gaiden is out on November 9, with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth to follow on January 26. Since they had no other surprise announcements, that just leaves me wondering what RGG Studio might have in store next… hopefully with a long enough break in between for us to catch our breaths.

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life – An Emotional Ride from Start to Finish

 Reviews, Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with:
Sep 112023
 

Over the weekend, I finished playing Yakuza 6: The Song of Life.

I feel like I’ve come full circle in some ways. I remember Yakuza 6 being advertised while I was a new fan having just gotten into the series with Yakuza 0. Having the whole series ahead of me was both daunting and exciting. It was wonderful to read previews of Yakuza 6 and know I was going to love this series. So it’s almost nostalgic to finally reach the game that was just coming out when I got started.

Immediately after the end of Yakuza 5, Kiryu is placed under arrest for dubious reasons. He decides to accept it, believing serving a sentence in prison will allow him to live a normal life once he gets out.

However, Haruka is now under scrutiny by the media, which is bringing unwanted attention to the orphanage, so she leaves in order to take the pressure off of them. When Kiryu gets out of prison a few years later, the group has lost contact with Haruka entirely, and so he heads out to investigate her disappearance.

The Yakuza series is sometimes compared to a soap opera, and Yakuza 6 is the most soap opera of them all. It has a much more personal and emotional story – but don’t misunderstand, it isn’t long before the personal plot ties into yakuza politics and the usual sorts of convoluted conspiracies. So many different factions come into play that I had trouble remembering who was associated with who, and one plot point made me look up additional context to understand the ramifications, but fortunately it lacks the sort of plot holes that bothered me in 4 and 5.

It’s one of the shorter games in the series due to having fewer substories than most, but it has several enjoyable side activities that I had a great time with, including one where you befriend cats around the city for a cat café, which is the cutest thing.

(I half-jokingly tweeted that it would be a 10/10 game if you could pet the cats, before learning that if you sit down in the café, a cat will eventually hop onto Kiryu’s lap to be petted.)

There’s also a spear-fishing mini-game that I’d love to see return someday. It’s basically a rail shooter where you take down as many fish as possible, including a dangerous boss fish at the end of each stage, and it was a lot of fun.

The only thing I really dislike about Yakuza 6 is its version of the hostess clubs. While the past few games used a system that felt as though you were participating in a conversation, 6 instead gives you a list of “cards,” each with a question, statement, request, etc. categorized under various conversation types. By chaining together the same conversation types, you get more points. It felt a bit more like a mini-game, but at the expense of being less like a realistic conversation than ever. As far as I could tell, there’s no way to see your progress toward the next rank, either. I stuck with it because each hostess had a substory, but even those were all very boring and bland compared to other substories. However, one hostess is canonically a Sephiroth fan, and conversations with her made it all worthwhile.

Overall, I loved my time with Yakuza 6. It has a personal, often emotional story with plenty of intense moments, enough humor to balance its darker moments, and a decent array of fun side content.

Next up for me is Yakuza: Like a Dragon, with just under two months to play it if I want to finish it in time for Gaiden! But whether I get to play Gaiden at launch or not, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to see where this story goes.

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