GAME CLEAR No. 152 -- Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020, Multiplatform)

Alternate title: Like a Dragon 7: Whereabouts of Light and Darkness (龍が如く7 光と闇の行方)
Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Publisher: SEGA
Clear Version: PS5
Clear Platform: PS5
Clear Date: 1/2/24

On the turning away

At long last.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon came out right around the time I first got into the Yakuza series. Despite assurances at the time that the game was a soft reboot for the series that was welcoming to newcomers, I was determined to play all of its predecessors before playing Like a Dragon 7, as it now feels more appropriate to call it. Now, all these hundreds of hours of games later, I’ve followed through on that and played that then-new game.

It’s every bit as good as I had been led to believe despite making two pretty significant gambles. Most evident just from its box art is that the series has parted ways with longtime, beloved protagonist Kazuma Kiryu in favor of newcomer Ichiban Kasuga. Second, the game eschews the long-established real-time brawler gameplay of its predecessors in favor of a turn-based RPG battle system. The good news is that Ichiban is every bit as lovable as Kiryu (and in enjoyably different ways) and the battle system is a great first hack at the thing.

Let’s start with Ichiban. It’s probably not a coincidence that he and Kiryu share some formative experiences. They’re both guys who had rough childhoods and ended up imprinting on father figures who happened to be yakuza. They subsequently joined those men’s families and then spent a significant number of years in prison for something someone else did as an act of sacrifice. When they got out, both discovered that the intervening years had not played out quite as they might have hoped for those they went to prison for in the first place.

After that, things naturally diverge a bit, but noticing those parallels was one of the little things that felt like a reward for having played all the previous titles. There were many more, and indeed the previous series continuity does matter somewhat significantly to the events of Like a Dragon 7, but I won’t get much more into that for the sake of not spoiling things.

So back to the battle system: it’s great. The game is in many ways a pastiche of RPGs. The battles are turn-based, but it’s heavily suggested that this is likely a hallucination presented by our unreliable narrator Ichiban. See, he’s a diehard Dragon Quest fan, so when he gets into fights, the regular people in front of him often morph into more deranged looking beasts, and his allies’ appearances change as well. A regular Don Quijote.

The attacks are all (somewhat) rooted in reality as well. For example, one of the early elemental attacks of the fire type involves taking a swig of an alcoholic beverage and spitting it over a lighter at an enemy. The Final Fantasy-esque “jobs” the various characters can assume are also literal occupations rooted in reality, such as foreman, barmaid, police officer, etc, and you swap between them by literally going to a job-placement center. It all adds up to be a very amusing and satisfying smashing of RPG elements into a completely ordinary and mundane setting.

And all of those elements of course carry you through an enjoyable crime drama that’s up there as one of the best plots in the series. As always, I’ll avoid diving too deep into the plot, but suffice it to say it does a great job of establishing Ichiban as the new protagonist and showing the kind of heart he has. While it may pull up from satisfyingly punching at some of the social issues and themes it touches on, it at least succeeded at the arguably more important task of relaunching the series.

I can’t speak highly enough of this game. If I didn’t feel compelled to get to Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name before the launch of Like a Dragon 8: Infinite Wealth later this month, I’d probably still be playing it. I definitely left behind some surely delightful side content, but so it goes. I suppose it will always be there if I decide to return to it.