YAKUZA: LIKE A DRAGON
Going on a Dragon Quest
Trash leisurely floats down a river long turned green. Homeless people sleep near its banks in blue tarpaulin tents. Cosmo Clock 21, Yokohama’s well-known Ferris wheel, seems far away. Welcome to Isezaki Ijincho, a red-light district modelled on a real-life counterpart in much the same way as Yakuza’s previous main setting, Kamurocho, was.
While a change of setting was sorely needed, the Yakuza franchise has undergone even more drastic changes for its seventh instalment. With Kazuma Kiryu’s story finished, a protagonist named Ichiban Kasuga takes the helm. The shaggy-haired ex-con seems loud and cheerful, far from an intimidating gangster. Even his first name seems to herald a new era (Ichiban is Japanese for “the first”). In Like A Dragon, you follow Ichiban at two different points in his life, first as a yakuza who takes the fall for one of his bosses and goes to jail, and then as an ex-con trying to rebuild his life in 2019 following his release. The biggest innovation, however, is certainly the change in combat systems. For the first time ever, Yakuza uses round-based combat rather than a fighting-game-inspired system.
LIFE’S A GAME
This is all thanks to Ichiban’s hyperactive imagination. He envisions himself as the hero in a JRPG, and so a regular drunk guy out for a fight turns into a man possessed, his burp in your face the equivalent of a classic poisonous breath attack. Of course, an RPG hero is nothing without his adventuring party, and in our hands-on demo (ahead of the game’s January 2020 Japanese release), Ichiban is joined by homeless man Namba, former policeman Adachi, and Saeko, a hostess. Whenever you run into a band of troublemakers it inevitably comes to blows, which is why you can now see clusters of enemies on your map at all times.
Once combat has been initiated, both your party and your enemies move around frequently, which makes taking turns feel less static. It also allows for situational attacks, such as Ichiban picking up a nearby traffic cone to use as a weapon or Adachi getting a free hit in on someone who just landed at his feet. Each party member uses standard melee attacks, while heat actions, Yakuza’s patented special attacks, now cost MP. Fans of the old Yakuza combat will likely miss the physicality of pressing a button and feeling the hit connect, but there’s still plenty of over-the-top violence, with enemies bouncing off the floor like ragdolls as always.
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
The demo also introduces the job system, via, er, a riveting quest in which Ichiban and friends go to the job centre. Meant to keep combat from getting repetitive, it allows you to change your characters’ job (essentially their class), which in turn changes their traits and attacks (not unlike the costume system in Final Fantasy X-2). For example, as a host Ichiban will spray enemies with champagne, whereas as a dancer he uses capoeira dance moves in his attacks. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio clearly had a lot of fun translating RPG systems to a realworld setting, including using friends both new and old as battle summons.
However, as with other parts of the franchise, the danger of combat becoming monotonous is very real, as is the typical RPG problem of having to grind in order to defeat bosses.
That said, Yakuza hasn’t lost any of its quintessential charm. There are plenty of sub-stories – one of them introduces Ichiban to Susumu Gondawara, the crime boss from Yakuza 2 with a penchant for wearing nappies – and, of course, minigames. You can find classics such as shogi and karaoke, but we had the most fun beating the competition in Dragon
Kart and racing other homeless men to collect trash. The new system won’t be for everyone, but Like A Dragon seems set to be become a fun exercise in combining new and old.
“FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, YAKUZA USES ROUNDBASED COMBAT.”