Yakuza, or what it’s being called for now Like A Dragon, is pretty freaking awesome. Despite not having played every entry in the franchise and not being an omega fanboy, I would say it’s now one of my top ten video game franchises. Each game fizzles with personality, energy, and a butt load of content to keep players busy for hours upon hours without end. Sure there are some flaws to the Yakuza series like the reuse of assets, being able to tell what scenes received the most care or looked like they were made with fifthteen bucks, and the slight hint of burnout you feel by the end. However, these are meaningful games and no I am not joking. The tales they have to tell, the characters you meet, and realizing it’s about getting through life despite all it throws at you. Like A Dragon is beautiful and I’m so happy I fell in love with it. I’d say the one entry that holds a very close place to my heart is the seventh mainline entry. The one that completely changed up the series and got many non-Yakuza fans, including myself, into it. Yakuza: Like A Dragon, the first entry in the Yakuza franchise to do turn-based combat and be a full blown JRPG.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon is an interesting game. One that probably would have never been brought into existence if the developers chose to play it off. One year, Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio attempted to play an April Fools joke. Make a false advertisement for a turn-based Yakuza game and it would be exclusive to mobile. The idea sounded pretty stupid, but it turns out fans wanted a turn-based Yakuza. They liked the idea, and so Ryu Ga Gotoku decided to make a turn-based Yakuza. Besides, Kiryu’s story came to an end in Yakuza 6 and they were struggling to figure out where to take the series next. Best idea was to create a new protagonist, innovate the gameplay, and take the player to an extraordinary new location full of new conspiracies and tales. This is what led to Yakuza: Like A Dragon in 2019, or 2020 when it was released worldwide alongside its English dub. Yakuza: Like A Dragon is a masterpiece and my appreciation for this game has gone up highly with time. Is it perfect? No, I mean there’s a weird difficulty curve once you get to maybe around seventy-five percent through the story, and the final boss may require you to grind out one of the minigames to make it beatable. Nevertheless, it refuses to leave my head and its second to last ending scene is one of my favorite moments in gaming. One of very few video game scenes to make me feel sad and almost tear up from how impactful it was.
So I was pretty hyped when they announced a follow-up to Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Continuing the JRPG tradition of turn-based combat and leveling up, and taking place a few years after with Ichiban Kasuga serving as the main protagonist again. What makes it different this time around is that instead of one protagonist there are two of them. Kiryu, long running protagonist of the Yakuza series, returned and the writers planned to finish up his story in this new entry. The new game would eventually be named Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth and it stayed on radar up until it was released. It came out two months ago and reception for it has been booming. Not only the best selling game in the franchise, but also one of the fastest selling and highly acclaimed. Who would’ve thought IGN would give a Like A Dragon game a 9/10 score when every single time in the past they’d give them a 8 or 7. Part of the reason why I think Infinite Wealth has been so god damn successful is how Yakuza has finally blown up into the mainstream. How popularity rose with time and Sega has been doing whatever they can to get Yakuza out there. Whether that be releasing the games on every console or more advertisements. I’m really happy to see Yakuza get the praise it deserves, so is Infinite Wealth that good? Is it truly one of the best Yakuza games and does it outmatch the full swing batter up that was Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Yes, mostly.
For the last four weeks I’ve spent a majority of my game time playing Infinite Wealth. I dumped over 60 hours into the game, did a majority of the side quests, maxed out almost all of my party members’ bonds, and beat the game a few hours before I started writing this. I can confidently say that Infinite Wealth is a stellar game. It deserves the praise that it is getting and may be one of my favorite games of the year so far. So yes, I think it’s one of the best in the franchise. Would I say I like it more than Yakuza: Like A Dragon? Now that’s the interesting part. As a follow-up I think Infinite Wealth is great. It manages to improve a good handful of flaws the last game had in terms of gameplay. However, in some aspects I’d argue Like A Dragon was better, and this game may not have the long lasting impact Like A Dragon had going forward. I’m not trying to offer a retrospective of Infinite Wealth. I’m just saying this is a fantastic game that may bring up some problems for the series going forward. Anyways, today we’re talking about Infinite Wealth and why it deserves your attention. Let’s ride the waves to a whole new extraordinary adventure.
Story
This section will be spoiling the first few chapters of Infinite Wealth as well as summarize the end of the last game. It is to help some of you readers have a good enough understanding of what the premise is, but if you are planning to play it yourself then I’d suggest skipping to the next section. The game takes place three years after the events of Like A Dragon. The yakuza are no more and Ichiban Kasuga has been trying to pay respect to Masumi Arakawa, his family patriarch who turned out to be his biological father. Ichiban works for Hello Work and helps unemployed individuals find new jobs. Specifically, old yakuza who lost their livelihoods during the Great Dissolution, the event that rid Japan of the yakuza. Ichiban believes everyone deserves a second chance like him, so he helps these former yakuza members stray away from crime and do jobs that best fit their talents. Ichihas also managed to stay in good touch with his friends. Allies who helped him during his last journey, and whom he helped get out of their own ruts.
Occasionally they gather up at a bar and celebrate the day Ichiban saved all of Japan. One year Ichiban tries to propose to Saeko. A friend who he’s been having a crush on for a longtime. He is quietly rejected and hasn’t talked to her since. A year later he’s seen walking to work. People are giving him a weird eye, and his manager pulls him to another room. Rumors have been going around that Ichiban has been gathering former yakuza to form a new clan. The manager lets him go in the hope that it won’t bring bad news to the workplace. Ichiban then calls his friends Nanba and Adachi to see if they were affected by the situation, and they too have lost their jobs. They try to figure out what is going on and discover a V-tuber has been spreading false information. They are unable to control the situation at hand, but do notice a huge chunk of former yakuza has been gathering around Seiryu clan HQ. They gear up like old time and storm the place.
Waiting for them is Ebina, the new leader of the Seiryu, and it turns out he has been gathering up old yakuza for a good cause. Using them to help stowaway special items in a massive storage unit, he brought an old friend of Ichi to help. Sawashiro, the right hand man of Masumi Arakawa and captain of the former Arakawa family. He’s been let out of prison early and has a proposition for Ichiban. The woman Arakawa loved, Akane, is actually alive and she’s been last seen in Hawaii. Sawashiro knows this because he’s been there to see her himself, but never revealed it to anybody, even Arakawa. So he asks Ichi to fly overseas to Hawaii and meet his biological mother. Help give her peace and know her son is thriving. Ichiban packs his bag, brings a small capsule containing Arakawa’s ashes, and goes on vacation to Hawaii. All seemed well at first upon landing, but a whole load of terrible things happened to Ichiban during his first day.
The cabbie he got a ride from tried to mug Ichi, and the cabbie was part of a small yakuza gang who roam the streets of Hawaii. Ichi eventually gets to Akane’s house where the maid drugs him and steals his belongings. The maid leaves Ichi naked on the beach where he is then arrested for public indecency. The police in Hawaii also turn out to be corrupt and want to blame Ichi for a crime he didn’t commit. Ichi escapes and is then rescued by someone he thought he’d never see again. Kazuma Kiryu has returned and he’s on important business in Hawaii. I don’t know what happened in The Man Who Erased His Name, but basically Kiryu has joined the Daidoji faction and became a secret agent. He’s trying to find a woman, and that woman ends up being Akane. During their search they discover several gangs are looking for Akane. Things are getting bad, so Ichiban and Kiryu have to work together to find Akane. They are also joined by Tomizawa the cabbie who tried to mug Ichi, and Chitose the maid who drugged Ichi. They want to help too and redeem themselves for what they’ve done. Some old friends will also help too, but I don’t want to spoil too much. It’s a race against the clock, and Ichi will learn what is truly going on.
Gameplay
Much like the last mainline entry in Infinite Wealth, you waltz around the world, fight enemies, level up, obtain better gear, grow stronger, and pursue objectives or boss fights that push the plot forward. Combat is a pretty essential part to Infinite Wealth as with all Yakuza games. You may be wandering willy-nilly, but once you run into a group of enemies and fail to get out of range a fight begins. Each battle follows you, your allies, and foes taking turns. Landing blows, buffing each other, healing, and so on until either every enemy dies or the party leader is knocked out. You have numerous actions to choose from each turn. Basic attack, guard, use one of your skills, swap a party member out for someone else, or use an item. There’s a lot more strategy when it comes to battles and part of it is due to how you now have the ability to reposition you and your allies. You can move your characters around a small space when it’s their turn, and depending on where you put them this can lead to proximity bonuses. If you attack a foe close range you will deal more damage or have a higher chance of dealing a critical blow. Maybe you can position yourself to attack a foe from behind, and now there’s a knockback mechanic where you launch medium sized moves into other enemies to deal damage to both at the same time. If you are quick enough you can have characters deal bonus damage to enemies who are on the ground.
You want to vary the type of attacks you use against foes. Not because of what weapon types and elements they are weak to, but because sometimes they may raise their guard up and be immune to all sorts of damage. That’s why you may want to use grapple skills to break their guard, which can then deal bonus damage compared to using a grapple when they don’t have their guard up. Every character has their own quirks and classes. This is where I talk about build variety. Despite JRPGs not having as much build control like most RPGs they still give you a variety of options. After getting through the first few chapters you unlock Aloha Happy Tours. This place serves as a replacement for Hello Works and allows you to swap the job of your characters. Ichiban’s two default jobs are Freelancer and Hero. One focuses on dealing decent damage with fist, and the other uses a bat to use skills that hit multiple foes at once. Well what if you want to make Ichi a fully trained samurai? A surfer, dancer, gunslinger, or chef. You can even equip the same class to multiple characters provided you have the funds. Now some people may complain the jobs don’t always give a good idea of what type of build they offer, but that’s what makes Infinite Wealth so fun. Experimenting, figuring out what works, and forming a good party going forward.
Newest addition to Infinite Wealth has to be tag team abilities. There are two types, normal ones and the charged ones. Both of which are unlocked by leveling up the bonds with your allies. The normal ones allow your allies to attack downed foes without having to take a turn, knock a foe into another party member so they follow up with a close range attack, or maybe both of you can charge at them at once in one turn. It’s super helpful and can lead to some fun chain reactions with other team members. Then there’s the charge team ups. Everyone has an infinite symbol and this fills up overtime. When it’s full you can perform special team up skills. Dishing out tons of damage, or in the case of Kiryu wailing on foes without having to wait a turn. I want to discuss how Kiryu works for a bit. Compared to everyone else Kiryu has three fighting stances you can switch between easily. One allows you to break guards and toss foes about. Another allows you to attack twice, but does minimal damage unless you mash the attack button. Then there's the normal stance. If you get close enough to a foe with Kiryu you can boost his attack power with a well-time button press. Switching your stance often may even help against tougher opponents.
There are a total of three different cities to venture around in Infinite Wealth. Those being the old Kamurocho, Ijincho, and some place in Hawaii. These places have tons of side activities to do, and you can get lost easily doing them. Whether that be side quests, optional dungeons, arcades, minigames, a full on recreation of Pokemon, part-time hero quests, learning your allies’ interests, and much more. All of which can reward you with cash, experience points, and poundmates. Oh yeah, poundmates are characters you can summon during battles but they cost a fair amount of cash.You may want to take some time to mess around, because the strength of enemies will go up the more you progress and higher level enemies do not mess around. Besides that there’s nothing much else I have to say in terms of how the gameworks. Hopefully you can locate Akane, figure out why everybody wants to find her, and unravel the conspiracy lying beneath the surface.
Thoughts
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is an outstanding JRPG. Again, it’s one of the best entries in the series right behind Yakuza: Like A Dragon. There are a significant amount of improvements from the last game, and it’s one of the grandest Yakuza games to date. There’s three different cities to explore, one of which is the biggest map they made to date. The side content and the amount of hours you can clock in trying to complete everything. I’m actually surprised with how high the clear rate is for Infinite Wealth is with how long and stuffed the package is. This is a sixty or so hour long game and some chapters may leave you burned out. Yet it has a fifty percent clear or so clear rate amongst players who beat it, on PS5 at least, and that impresses me. For seventy US dollars you are absolutely getting your money’s worth. However, this is where we start getting a bit critical. I’m not going to lash out against Infinite Wealth. At the end of the day I loved it and can strongly recommend it to anyone even if they are not a Yakuza fan. Like I said at the start of this review though there are a couple problems. Flaws that may lead to future trouble.
First off is the combat and overall difficulty of the game. I think the combat is better overall and I like the mechanical changes. How you can reposition your party members easily and have a big slew of options to work with. Knock over, guard, back attack, team up attack, use a skill that can hit a group of enemies at once, ultimates, use environmental objects, etc. A lot of players had gripes with how shallow the turn-based combat in these games have been. Is it though? I will say mechanically it is a bit simple, but the game still goes out of its way to challenge players and make them think wisely during tough fights. Especially later bosses who will pile drive you if you do not come prepared or with the right equipment. Like A Dragon is one of few non-Souls RPGs I’ve played that doesn’t have difficulty settings. If something is too hard then either grind or hope you are wise enough to outsmart it. This may raise a problem with players. If you enjoy the story enough or just want to do it alone then sometimes you have to grind to a halt and duke it out with side quests or dungeons to stand a chance. Some sections will give you warnings of what level your party should be before moving on, and other times the game won’t and you run into a boss four levels higher than you. Leading to these weird difficulty spikes throughout.
There were times I kind of wanted to just move on, but I grinded it out and got good. I honestly prefer this choicemore compared to level scaling or changing the difficulty, because it feels really rewarding when you finally conquer that difficult boss. Build variety is still excellent and I like how more creative they got when it came to the different jobs. How most of them are related to Hawaii or stuff you’d do while on vacation. I forgot if the last game had it, but the guard timing when the enemy attacks you is fun although flawed. It allows you to reduce enemy attack damage if you time the guard button just before they hit, but it can be really finicky. Sometimes it won’t work, sometimes it does, and other times you are given a small window to react because enemies just lunge towards you immediately. The guard timing window is just small in general and I wish there was an option or item to just increase it a little bit. Maybe even have the option to just hold guard, but damage reduction is slightly less compared to a perfect block.
The side content in Infinite Wealth is great as with any other Yakuza game, but there are times I thought the game was too big for its own good. As in I engaged with most of it, but some of it I just kind of ignored because I didn’t want to waste time on it. For example, there’s a recreation of Pokemon in this game. You find different Sujimon as they are called, capture them, and then battle them in an underground arena. Sounds fun on paper, but I’m not one for monster hunting and trying to capture specific Sujimon. Another minigame is a full blown game entirely where they parody Animal Crossing. Build your own tropical resort and try to create a five star island. Impressive, but I don’t want to engage with it either. The problem with these two minigames is that while they flex off how much content Infinite Wealth has, if I wanted that kind of game I’d find another game that does it better. If I want a chillax game I’d play Stardew Valley, or go to play Cassette Beasts if I wanted a better monster capturing game. There’s my hero quests, timed Sujimon raids, bonding spots, memory locations, and all sorts of stuff on the map. To the point where it clogs the map screen whereas before I didn’t have this problem. Still, this stuff is very much really fun and I had a good time doing optional side quests and unlocking things.
Graphically this is the best looking Yakuza game to date, but it isn’t a far stretch. There are some points in the game where it’s easy to tell where they cut corners. Not as in the ruse of assets I’m fine with that. Content creator Raycevik once said if a game can reuse assets and get away with it then it was a smart move. When I say the game gets cheap at times I’d say it’s how scenes are shot. Some moments have smooth animation, dialogue, and lighting to them. Other times it is robotic, dead faced, or the lighting is all over the place. Speaking of which, the lighting got really annoying to look at after awhile especially in Hawaii. Like I don’t know what it is they did. I get Hawaii is sunny all the time, but the several reflective surfaces and bright colors gave me a huge headache after awhile. As if the programmers cranked it all the way, but didn’t look at how it would go to affect certain areas. It makes some scenes look really funny because it’s either the room is very dark or the character’s face is lit up to a point where it’s ready to burn off.
Finally let’s talk about the story which is the aspect I was most excited about for Infinite Wealth. The best way I can describe it is that it’s a beautiful mess. That is not to say the story is bad and that I didn’t enjoy it. I liked it quite a bit and it kept me engaged up until the end, as good stories should. However, there are a good handful of times I sat there and said “what” because the logic behind certain moments is bizarre. It’s revealed early on that Kiryu is dying of cancer and does not have a lot of time left to live. It’s really sad and this is used to build him for the rest of the story which we’ll get to. The way he gets cancer though is really weird. There are false rumors of Ichi forming his own yakuza gang, but the fact he was a V-tuber feels kinda weird to me. There’s a huge plot twist later on which I won’t spoil, but the way they build that character and connect them to one of the protagonists feels completely pulled out of their ass to me. Like the writers wanted something for drama and did it. How’s the core story overall? Oh, it's pretty good.
The journey to finding Akane feels a bit dragged at first. It’s this wild goose chase to discover her location and along the way you meet the several gangs of Hawaii, their leaders, and the new leaders of the Seiryu clan. It’s fun, exciting, and gets you hyped at the right time. It’s once you find Akane and Kiryu getting sent back to Japan that the story really gets rolling in my opinion. Kiryu’s story was one I thought would be good, but I ended up enjoying his side of the tale more by the end. How he’s trying to redeem himself for everything he’s done in the past. Make the last few moments of his life worth it, and pay respect to those who helped him in the past. Without spoiling too much you unlock side quests where Kiryu gets to see people he knew before. Hear what they thought of him before he allegedly died. It not only gives Kiryu peace, but it also lets him know he had a positive impact on their lives. He made their lives better through the sacrifices he made. His ending wraps his story up really well and it might hit some fans in the heart. So the story is good enough despite some plot points and elements not working well. That is why I said this game’s story is a beautiful mess. It has something to say but struggles doing so.
Now I did love this game overall, but why do I still love the last game before? It’s just how the last game was an innovator for the series, but what it had to say with its characters. There’s a few essay videos that explain it better than me, but Like A Dragon is a game about a man working his way up from rock bottom. Persevering through life despite all the evils and troubles it throws at hi,. There’s a reason why Ichiban Kasuga is one of my favorite protagonists. He’s dumb but he’s optimistic. He motivates people and tries to get them out of the trouble they are in. He doesn’t look down on others no matter where they come from or if they are poor. We see that in the last game with how he helps his allies and those being taken advantage of, and we see that here at the start of the game he's helping people get employed. He’s a good person not easily brought down. His first adventure was you learning about him, seeing him work his way out from rock bottom, find out where his old yakuza family went, and unravel a huge conspiracy. There were some well written politics here and there, and a message about how the poor are often looked down upon.
The poor consist of homeless people, individuals who live in low income areas, and immigrants. Like A Dragon even became a story about family & friends. How Ichi, through his kindness and hard work, formed meaningful relationships with people despite growing up poor. Then we meet a complete contrast to him. Someone who grew up wealthy, but surrounded himself in hate and loneliness. This then leads to something meaningful at the end where Ichi confronts someone he saw as a close family member. It’s heartbreaking and further reinforces the message that the game tries to teach. So what does Infinite Wealth try to say? Well half of it is a hunt for a woman that evolves into something else entirely, and the other half is a man seeking atonement. That half is good, but does it have the weight the last game had? Is this a plot people are going to look at five years from now? Will it be looked at well or be picked apart at what it fumbled at? The first game had a great, not perfect, but well put together story with good themes and topics. This one is good too, but not neatly put together. In some way I’m actually afraid if they decide to do another story surrounding Ichi because they’ve done everything they need to do with him.
So I've rambled on about Infinite Wealth for a long period of time now. Just want to offer every critical opinion I have since it’s such a long game with loads of things to talk about. I haven’t even scratched the surface of it yet. I could talk about how new game plus and harder difficulty options were sold as twenty dollar DLC, but I don’t want to waste anymore of your time. This is an amazing game and I hope it gets nominated for a good handful of awards by the end of the year. Yakuza is great and this whole game is a celebration for what RGG Studio have achieved over the years. I strongly recommend it and I’d be shocked if it doesn’t make my top ten at the end of 2024. In the end I give Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth a 9/10 for excellence at best.
