Yakuza: Like A Dragon
PC, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Kiryu who? It says much for the success of this remarkable reinvention that we don’t miss the Dragon Of Dojima half as much as we expected to. Some of the credit for that goes to lovably naïve new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, whose journey begins with a very Kiryu-esque sacrifice as he takes the fall for a murder, only to be devastatingly betrayed by his beloved patriarch when his lengthy prison stretch is over. But if Kasuga’s background is similar to his predecessor’s, he’s a totally different animal: his upper lip isn’t nearly so stiff, his heart as clearly visible on his sleeve as the shock of hair on his head. He’s also prone to letting his imagination run away with him, a childhood love of Dragon Quest convincing him he’s the hero in his own RPG. This manifests in a shift to turn-based party combat, where friends and enemies alike are transformed – and so, too, is the series itself.
We’re in Yokohama rather than Kamurocho for most of Like A Dragon’s 30-plus-hour story, though old habits die hard and the series can’t resist one more visit to its old stomping ground. The sprawling district of Ijincho is less densely packed (once you’ve earned a bit of scratch you’ll be getting taxis more often) yet you can’t walk far without alerting a group of thugs. But the numbers are a little more even this time: Kasuga’s cheerful, outgoing personality quickly sees him chum up with homeless former doctor Nanba, ex-cop-with-aconscience Adachi and steely hostess Saeko, all of whom are just as handy in a fight.
The messy realtime dust-ups of Yakuzas past wouldn’t ordinarily seem to translate well to a turnbased setup. And yet encounters somehow retain the spirit of spontaneity and dynamism, even though you’re selecting punches and kicks from a menu. Timed button presses let you boost damage or soften incoming blows, while your surroundings are still a key factor: you’ll kick bins at your opponents and pick up bikes as you rush toward your target, while before a battle starts you can kite alerted groups towards busy junctions before knocking them into oncoming traffic. Both allies and opponents move around automatically, as if sizing one another up before committing to an attack; though at first it seems a pity you can’t control your character’s position, it adds an element of randomness, especially to area-of-effect moves. That looseness feels truer to the chaotic nature of a street brawl than a standard JRPG battle, even if something as small as a sudden sidestep can scupper a carefully orchestrated strategy.
Not that you need to think about tactics too much, at least for the first half of the game. Like its namesake, Like A Dragon’s difficulty curve is relatively easygoing – certainly gentler than recruitable clerk Emi, who wields a mean boxcutter while throwing thumbtacks like tiny shuriken. Yet if the result seems to undermine the usefulness of buffs and debuffs, encouraging you to rely primarily on damage-dealing moves, the spectacle of special attacks is incentive enough to mix things up. A job system lets Nanba become a street musician, who can knock out a healing tune or use his guitar to clobber goons. You might cast Kasuga as a champagne-spraying host (the booze, as a pop-up gleefully informs us, leaves targets “shitfaced”) whose idea of a birthday surprise involves smashing cakes into people’s faces, or a chef who wields a variety of kitchen utensils. By the time we’ve retrained Saeko as an idol twirling a giant ice lolly called Bastard Soda – before summoning a crayfish to gouge the eyes of a particularly persistent thug – it’s evident that RGG Studio has seized the opportunity to lean into Yakuza’s wackier side. The same goes for the sub-stories, though more on those over the page.
It’s evident that RGG Studio has seized the opportunity to lean into Yakuza’s wackier side
It’s a good job the combat is entertaining, because there’s a lot of it. Like A Dragon isn’t as bad as some JRPGs in that regard, though there are occasions when it pushes its luck. Sure, an auto-battle option lets you quickly deal with low-level groups when you’re wandering between waypoints. But you won’t want to rely on the AI in more dangerous parts of the city, which includes a long trek through a concrete labyrinth below street level. Even when facing enemies like the brilliantly-named Purger Of Filth (a mop-toting janitor) and Pseudotrash (weirdos hopping about inside bin bags) the non-stop fighting grows tiresome. Yet unfortunately it’s also a place that hosts rare and valuable items should you fancy returning to grind through it for experience – and since you’ll need to rank up to make the most of the more esoteric jobs, you’ll probably need to return at least once.
Yet, as ever, you’re never short of distractions, which feed into upgrades, add to your cash reserves or supply you with valuable info. A Pokédex-like encyclopaedia encourages you to discover every enemy type, while alerting you to their weaknesses. There’s a littercollecting minigame where you can smash into fellow can-collectors to add their haul to your own pile, and a surprisingly robust go-karting aside. An in-game app, meanwhile, alerts you to people in need, whether they need you to deliver items or justice, while tracking your progress towards a staggering range of accomplishments.
As if you didn’t have enough to think about. Or, for that matter, to discuss: this is the chattiest Yakuza to date, with your party members regularly engaging you in idle small talk between encounters or speaking more candidly over drinks at a local bar. It’s here, as we sip a single malt with our pals, that we realise why Kiryu’s absence barely registers. Like A Dragon is a JRPG that’s at least as interested in its hero’s growth as a person as the incremental increase of his statistics – and a Yakuza game that retains all the humour and heart that made us fall for the series in the first place.