As a longtime fan of the collection, 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon got here as a little bit of a shock to my system. Enjoyable because it was, the sudden change to stop-start, turn-based JRPG assaults was a lot to get my head round after greater than a decade of having fun with the collection’ signature combo-based beat ‘em up motion – a bit like spending over 10 years getting actually good at thumb wrestling after which being requested to play chess. Fortunately its follow-up, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, considerably retools the fight system: it’s nonetheless turn-based, however the tactical decision-making launched by its predecessor is enhanced with extra versatile motion and proximity-based assaults that higher replicate the rough-and-tumble tactility of the standard Yakuza road fights. As a outcome, Infinite Wealth’s brawling feels extra like one of the best of each worlds, and its gorgeous new Hawaiian setting supplies the proper playground during which to unleash its superior fashion of smackdown.
Principal hero Ichiban Kasuga returns from Yakuza: Like a Dragon and stays the loveable human labrador that he was earlier than – unwaveringly upbeat regardless of how usually he’s crushed down – and this time he’s paired up with collection stalwart Kazuma Kiryu, who we discover in a extra reflective temper as a result of his current most cancers prognosis. This odd couple travels to Hawaii searching for the organic mom that Kasuga has by no means identified; nonetheless they quickly discover themselves caught in a compelling conspiracy involving a native spiritual sect and a number of crime syndicates. The following thriller shortly takes some dramatic twists and turns with out ever changing into as tangled as a few of the extra convoluted plots of the collection’ previous. Alongside the best way a variety of modern points like environmental mismanagement and the spreading of on-line misinformation are explored, and all of these themes combined collectively to provide me extra to chew on than a konbini bento field.
The core supporting forged from Yakuza: Like a Dragon are additionally alongside for the experience, joined by likable locals Eric Tomizawa and Chitose Fujinomiya, and there are some great scene-stealing villains to come across. That features a mob boss performed by a gruff-as-ever Danny Trejo, whose contract could or could not have stipulated that his character, Dwight Mendez, wields a pair of machetes. Even supposing a few of the lengthier dialog cutscenes took longer to wrap up than a cellphone name from my mother and father, by and enormous I discovered the writing in Infinite Wealth to be a few of the strongest within the collection up to now, whether or not it was through the heightened moments of significant drama or the various lowbrow bursts of comedian aid. As was the case with the gang’s earlier journey, I significantly loved the idle banter between them as I roamed the streets – whether or not they had been musing concerning the restricted battery lifetime of Sega’s Recreation Gear handheld or debating the variations in style between Japanese and Hawaiian soy sauce.
Marking the primary time that a Like a Dragon story has shifted past the shores of Japan, Infinite Wealth’s Hawaii doesn’t simply really feel like an invigorating new setting for the collection, however for video games generally. Usually the one video games set within the unique US island state contain working battleships in World Struggle II or steering sports activities vehicles round its shoreline highways, so it is good to play a sport that lets you slip on a pair of flip-flops and discover this fictionalised slice of paradise on foot – or on a zippy motorised Segway, if you happen to actually need to seem like a vacationer. I’m sadly not practically as acquainted with the true Honolulu as I’d wish to be, however maybe due to that I cherished roaming round Infinite Wealth’s surprisingly spacious setting, from its sandy shorelines to shiny purchasing malls, grabbing native delicacies like shave ice to replenish my well being and throwing a pleasant “Aloha” to everybody I handed with a faucet of a button.
That mentioned, the Honolulu map – which is so huge you can apparently match 9 Kamurochos inside it – isn’t the one location to discover in Infinite Wealth, and after spending the majority of the story’s first half serving to Kasuga’s search by means of the streets of Waikiki, Kiryu ultimately returns to Japan to try to unravel the thriller from a completely different angle. As a outcome, for a handful of the marketing campaign’s 14 chapters (totaling round 50 hours) you get to discover each the Yokohama and Kamurocho maps from earlier video games within the collection, every full with a distinctive set of substories and facet actions that see the gravely in poor health Kiryu reminisce about his many earlier adventures and make amends with a few of the survivors he’s left in his wake. The majority of those bucket record duties are non-compulsory, and if you happen to’re new to the collection you may not get a lot out of them past the token expertise factors for ticking them off, however I loved the chance to take a detour away from the streets of rage for a sentimental journey down reminiscence lane.
Surf and Turf Wars
Alongside the best way it turns into clear that whilst you can take a Like a Dragon sport out of Japan, you’ll be able to’t take the heaving hordes of weirdo enemy sorts out of a Like a Dragon sport. Even supposing the majority of Infinite Wealth takes place on US soil, I as soon as once more discovered myself indulging in common battles towards a whole lot of hilariously off-kilter assailants with pun-based names like Hungry Hungry Homeless and Imp Affected person, as if I used to be locked in an ongoing warfare with a gang of grown-up Rubbish Pail Youngsters. Nonetheless, this time round every freaky face-off feels much more vigorous and intuitive than the comparatively stilted scraps you get into throughout Yakuza: Like a Dragon, because of the added freedom to reposition every of your 4 workforce members inside a set motion arc initially of every flip.
This very intelligent change means you get to inflict bonus injury by shifting your character to assault an enemy up shut or from the rear, and you too can seize objects like bicycles and explosive barrels and crash them into crowds so as to share the struggling round. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon your workforce members would sometimes seize makeshift weapons mechanically, however right here you get to resolve precisely which object to make use of, and there are a lot extra to select from with explosive fuel canisters to select up and throw and even rocket launchers to wield.
What’s extra, because the bonds between every member of your celebration strengthens extra supporting strikes are unlocked to create highly effective chain reactions, to the purpose that you could deliberately knock an enemy in direction of one other workforce member and have them spike them face-first into the filth like they’re a human volleyball, or sweep kick an enemy off their ft and into the air and have one in all your teammates jump-kick them to the curb – not not like the XCOM-inspired workforce strikes from Marvel’s Midnight Suns and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope.
Controlling Kiryu presents the closest resemblance to the collection’ road preventing of outdated, since he’s in a position to change between three preventing stances: Brawler for balanced assaults; Rush, which supplies you two consecutive assaults per flip; and Beast for devastating grapple strikes. Moreover, Kiryu can also be in a position to steadily fill his trademark Warmth gauge which, when triggered, provides you full management of his motion for a temporary interval and lets you unleash a collection of easy but supremely satisfying button-based combos in real-time. Kiryu was my favorite character to make use of in Infinite Wealth by far, however even when he was absent from my celebration the fight remained significantly extra kinetic than it ever was in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. This sport delivers a riotous degree of chaos and carnage that makes its predecessor’s extra modest turn-taking appear virtually well mannered by comparability.
What’s extra, Infinite Wealth persistently provides fascinating wrinkles to every preventing area that pressured me to modify up my methods. One boss struggle in a flaming forest had me scrambling for smoldering logs to grab up and swing round so as to dish out extra savage burns than an insult comedian, whereas one other skirmish in a room stuffed with toxic fuel added a higher sense of urgency to every of my turns as I frantically hurried to finish the struggle earlier than my whole squad collapsed. In a single late-game battle aboard a tugboat I used to be in a position to deliberately knock enemies into the open maw of a nice white shark ready within the waters, then watch because the beast shook them round after which hurled them again into battle bleeding from a latticework of lacerations. Though there are actually some repetitive random encounters to be discovered within the streets, the majority of Infinite Wealth’s story mission encounters are gripping to play and intensely onerous to overlook.
Methods of the Commerce
The job system from Yakuza: Like a Dragon returns in Infinite Wealth, permitting you to change the category of every character to greatest swimsuit the make-up of your celebration. Final time round I attempted to have an Idol on my workforce always as a result of their invaluable help skills, and I continued with that safety-first technique in Infinite Wealth and located it simply as dependable right here. However in any other case, I discovered the brand new jobs to be significantly extra interesting than these of the earlier journey, and I loved shuffling them across the remaining members of my squad, whether or not it was Kasuga as a wetsuited Aquanaut Level Break-ing noses along with his surfboard assaults, Adachi as a katana-swinging Samurai, or newcomer Tomizawa dual-weilding a pair of pistols as a dusty Desperado. With every job class I added into the rotation, Infinite Wealth’s vibrant clashes began to really feel even much less like commonplace turn-based scraps and extra like fights that had damaged out at a cosplay competitors.
Some jobs I favoured for his or her sensible worth, equivalent to Heiress, which lets you lob completely different grenade sorts that inflict standing results on broad teams of enemies. Others, although, I selected purely primarily based on how entertaining they had been to make use of. I by no means knew how badly I needed to see Kiryu impersonate Bruce Lee till he was clad within the yellow Recreation of Dying jumpsuit and fly-kicking and high-pitch-squealing throughout my tv display because the nunchuck-wielding motion star. Every job expands with a rising variety of particular assaults as you degree them up, and virtually each one in all these are as damaging as they’re dazzling – I by no means acquired bored with throwing a frisbee to an enemy goon and watching their confused seems to be as they caught it… simply earlier than they had been set upon by a pack of exceptionally aggressive puppies to quickly nibble away at their well being bars, for instance.
Whereas there’s a tremendously expanded record of jobs to tackle, truly taking part in Infinite Wealth by no means appears like a chore. One among my largest gripes with Yakuza: Like a Dragon’s marketing campaign was that my progress stalled when irritating issue spikes in its latter half despatched me off to repeatedly grind for expertise factors for hours on finish so as to slowly improve the degrees of my celebration members. This form of stonewalling of story progress could be pretty commonplace within the JRPG style, however personally I’m not a fan of taking part in video games that really feel an excessive amount of like work – and neither, it appears, are the designers behind Infinite Wealth.
I’m comfortable to report that I bumped into no such roadblocks on this marketing campaign, and though the problem and depth in its marathon last chapter ramps up extra usually than an inside metropolis automobile park, I by no means encountered any overpowered bosses able to wiping out my workforce in a single blow or different low-cost tips. A number of the fiercest fights on the pointy finish of the story could have felt considerably attritional however by no means unfair, and I typically felt like I used to be at all times there (or thereabouts) in matching the facility degree of the enemies I used to be confronted by with out having to exit of my method to play catch up. It helps that you just’re usually given a heads up concerning the advisable degree in your squad members and equipment earlier than you head into every main battle sequence, so I by no means discovered myself inadvertently progressing past a level of no return and getting caught with my pants down. I simply caught loads of trenchcoat-clad creeps with their pants down as a substitute.
That mentioned, whereas I positively appreciated the extra gradual issue curve in Infinite Wealth and located it manageable as somebody who doesn’t play a lot of turn-based JRPGs, it does strike me as being a little odd that there aren’t any issue settings to talk of in your first playthrough of the story. Not like final yr’s Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Identify or different trendy JRPGs like Last Fantasy VII: Remake, there’s no method to throttle the problem up or down till you beat the story and unlock the tougher Arduous and Legend modes. Why lock the choice to extend the issue behind over probably 50 hours of gameplay? Even if you happen to cherished a sport that lengthy on the primary run, it’s a lot to ask to right away go once more.
Conversely, if you happen to’re discovering Infinite Wealth too powerful the primary time round, the absence of a simple mode means your solely choice is to grind by means of each of its two randomly generated dungeons so as to over-level your self to be extra resilient to enemy assaults, which appears equally impractical. On this period of improved accessibility, the dearth of issue choices in Infinite Wealth appears barely behind the occasions. Nonetheless, I suppose no less than Sega is not charging further for a simple mode, prefer it seemingly is with New Recreation+.
Kawaii Hawaii
It wouldn’t be a Like a Dragon journey if there wasn’t an unlimited quantity of supplemental content material to take pleasure in, and in that regard Infinite Wealth doesn’t disappoint. Yakuza: Like a Dragon’s Sujimon system, which principally allowed you to catch and catalogue peculiar males rather than pocket monsters, returns in Infinite Wealth – solely now it’s been tremendously expanded to incorporate numerous limited-time-only raids, coaching, and stadium battles. Tremendous Loopy Supply is an addictive arcade time assault minigame that’s successfully what would occur if a driver from Loopy Taxi hopped onto a DoorDash bike, and Sicko Mode duties you with photographing a collection of Speedo-clad musclemen who’re hiding in bushes and startling the native canines. However that’s not as simple because it sounds since you do it as you’re driving round a trolley circuit that hopefully doesn’t go inside a thousand ft of any native colleges. Every of those are enjoyable and intensely slick, and I’m not simply speaking concerning the child oil that’s dripping off the sickos.
However that’s not all – not by a lengthy shot. One of many extra in depth new facet actions in Infinite Wealth is Dondoko Island, which may presumably have been known as Animal Double-Crossing if Nintendo didn’t have such costly attorneys at its disposal. This separate resort island that you could journey to from the principle Honolulu space lets you reduce down timber, smash rocks, and filter trash luggage so as to collect assets, which might then be used to craft a staggering variety of furnishings and constructions used to beautify your individual house and surrounding areas of the island so as to lure new friends.
It’s also possible to fish, catch bugs, and fend off occasional assaults from pirates, and one of the best a part of all is that there’s no Tom Nook to repeatedly bust your balls concerning the bells you owe him. All of it works properly and appears surprisingly deep, and though my modest inside and exterior design expertise haven’t been sufficient to raise my island ranking past a one-star degree to date, I’m eager to take a position extra hours into it now that I’ve completed the principle story – if for no different purpose than the truth that Kasuga’s entertainingly manic crafting sequences make him appear much less like a carpenter and extra like a member of an F1 pit crew.
Whereas I felt that the substories in Like a Dragon Gaiden lacked a little bit of spark, it’s clear that developer Ryu Ga Gotuku Studio was saving its greatest materials for Infinite Wealth because it managed to pleasantly shock me on virtually each different road I explored. At one level I stumbled into serving as a stuntman on an motion film set, swerving on foot by means of high-speed site visitors and explosions like I used to be trapped inside probably the most frantic and fiery type of Frogger. Later I volunteered to be a contestant on a quirky escape room TV present, and needed to sneak by means of a shopping center answering trivia questions concerning the native space for bonus factors. That form of factor made for a stimulating change of tempo.
The very best half about all of it is that you just’re continually incomes expertise factors and unlocking new fight strikes and different helpful options, whether or not you’re preventing or not. You may get common dopamine hits by hitting dopes and meanies, however you too can unlock distinctive combo assaults to carry out along with your allies just by having a beer with them in between brawls – on the similar time gaining an perception into their backstories and higher fleshing out their characters.
Actually, virtually the whole lot in Infinite Wealth appears worthwhile in additional methods than one, and there’s a dizzying quantity of gratifying issues to do. It looks as if Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has put the whole lot however the kitchen sink into Infinite Wealth, however for all I do know there could be a large sink boss presumably named Drain Johnson lurking in one in all its dungeons, flanked by his offsiders Faucet-tain America and Farrah Faucet. I actually wouldn’t be stunned, particularly since at one level I very a lot did come up towards one unlikely boss within the type of an anthropomorphic cigarette. Defeating it was actually a new method to kick some butt.
Infinite Wealth additionally advantages from numerous minor design choices that mix to make for a extra seamless expertise, equivalent to the power to quick journey to cab ranks from any level on the map, or the choice to see which weapons are in inventory at every retailer at a look with out having to really go to them. I significantly like how teams of enemies on the planet function colour-coded symbols in order that you understand which of them to have interaction with and which to provide a broad berth with out discovering out the onerous approach. When you turn into too highly effective for sure enemy sorts you’ll be able to simply faucet the left set off to immediately wipe them out and snatch some money and XP, fairly than having to undergo the motions of losing time on a struggle that you just’re at all times going to win comfortably. There’s not fairly an Infinite Wealth of clever concepts like these, however there’s actually a wholesome surplus.