What’s next?

How do you make sequels meaningful? Japan’s game industry is a past master at this sort of thing, home as it is to some of the longest-running videogame series around, but its answer to this oldest of questions is often a conservative one. Sometimes, you make them bigger; if you’re lucky, they’ll be better. Often they’re just more of the same with some tinkering in the margins. This month’s Hype crop shows how, for all that Japanese game development has seen a welcome resurgence over the course of the current generation, it finds those old habits tough to kick.

That should not necessarily be seen as a bad thing: the reason sequels exist is because people want more of something they liked. And Nioh 2 (p36) is precisely that, a game that expands sensibly and smartly on the foundation of the wondrous original, adding to the formula without risking diluting it. It’s a concept taken to its absolute extreme by Persona 5 Royal (p48): Atlus knows it doesn’t even need to make a sequel, merely add some new characters and questionable fan service to separate its passionately loyal fans from their latest paycheque.

Yet when a company plays it too safe, it risks someone else swooping in. Temtem is not a Japanese game, at least in origin – its developers are based in Madrid. But its MMO spin on Pokémon is such a no-brainer of an idea that to play it is to wonder how The Pokémon Company has never made one of its own. Well, it’s never had to.

You might not expect the riskiest Japanese game featured this issue to be the seventh in a series, but in the above context Yakuza: Like A Dragon (p30) is dangerously brave. We are part of the problem here: we’d happily spend 50 hours in Kazuma Kiryu’s company every year until the sun explodes. But Sega has cast aside not only one of its most treasured characters, but dropped his replacement in a new city and a markedly different kind of game. That’s what we call meaningful.