Yakuza: Like A Dragon is the 8th game in the Yakuza series. While the last 7 Yakuza games (and the spin-off game Judgment) have been brawlers, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has gone in a new direction with Like A Dragon, creating a fantastic and engaging JRPG, filled with all the heart the Yakuza series is known for.
Once I dove into Yakuza 0, I immediately fell in love with the series. After I finished 0, I jumped straight into Yakuza Kiwami (a remake of the original game), then on the recommendation of a friend I skipped forward to Yakuza 6 and Like A Dragon.
Like A Dragon moves away from the series’ enduring long running protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu, and introduces Ichiban Kasuga, a young Tojo yakuza in the Arakawa Family. Kasuaga was born in a bathhouse and raised without ever knowing his parents. A troublemaker, his life was saved as teen by Masumi Arakawa, the clan’s patriarch. This brought Kasuga into the yakuza, and in time Arakawa became something of a father figure to him.
When a shooting threatens the Arakawa Family, Kasuga is asked to take the fall in the place of his captain. After spending 18 years in prison to protect his clan, Kasuga is betrayed by his patriarch and left for dead in Isezaki Ijincho. Unlike previous games, which focused on a conflict between the Tojo and Omi Alliance in Kamarucho, most of Like A Dragon focuses on the conflicts of this new setting, and a brittle truce between the competing criminal organizations that call it home.
Despite the change in setting and genre, a lot of the mainstays of the Yakuza series appear in Like A Dragon. One of the most endearing parts of the series are the many “sub-stories,” side quests that range from goofy to dramatic to horny to heartbreaking. These side stories are what gives Yakuza its unique feeling. One moment you might be helping a yakuza gang that loves dressing as babies, the next you might be helping a little girl raise money for her brother’s life saving surgery. Seeing how your character reacts to these different stories, always eager to help people in need, really gives him life and shows you the type of person he is.
Because of the change in main mechanic from brawler to JRPG, there are some interesting new features as well. As you move through the game, you recruit new characters to be a part of your party. Each of these characters has a unique story associated with them, with story beats gated behind a relationship meter. Eating at restaurants, playing minigames, and winning battles increases these relationship meters and allows you to progress through their individual stories and unlock unique and powerful battle abilities. These relationship stories help not just to show who your party is, but who Kasuga is as he reacts to their troubles.
The combat itself is fairly standard JRPG turn-based combat. There’s an auto-mode if you don’t feel like inputting commands, but in either manual or auto mode the game keeps you active with inputs for skill attacks, and the ability to reduce damage by making inputs when being attacked. While the combat in many JRPGs lately has left me feeling bored and impatient, I think this more active turn-based combat kept Like A Dragon engaging.
However, there were a few points in the game that had me feeling a little less than enthusiastic about playing. At a couple points, you have to make your way through “dungeons” (levels full of enemies where you can’t save except at checkpoints). These dungeons were visually uninteresting and often felt like filler. I would have much rather fought through another thoughtfully designed building or arena rather than slog my way through twisting identical concrete hallways.
There’s also a major boss fight near the end of the game where the boss has a one-hit KO move, and if he uses it on Kasuga it’s an instant game over. This led me to discover that the way to avoid this is to have leveled a specific job for Kasuga to unlock a character ability that prevents one-hit KOs. Learning this, I ended up having to back out of the mission to a previous save (which meant I would later have to fight my way all the way back up to the boss), then grind for hours to get this ability so I could finish the game. The most efficient way to grind, unfortunately, was in the uninteresting dungeons. If it hadn’t been so close to the end of the game, I may have taken a break from the game for a month or so out of frustration.
This one-hit KO mechanic, placed right near the end of the game, felt like it was punishing me for not choosing the “right” job for Kasuga. The job system is something I really loved experimenting and playing with for much of the game, and now it suddenly felt weaponized against me in a way that hurt the experience and ground the pacing to a halt.
Despite this, I did really enjoy finishing the game. It tells an emotional story about family, identity, and the corruption that comes with power. The acting was great - Kasuaga in particular, voiced by Kazuhiro Nakaya, was incredibly well performed. There’s a scene near the end where Kasuga is sort of sob-screaming, and it’s hard to imagine how that would have landed with any other performance.
Like A Dragon, even with its major mechanical change, even with its change of setting, captures so much of what I love about the Yakuza series. While being a pulpy crime story, Like A Dragon is full of heart. Ichiban Kasuga, desperate to be a real version of the video game heroes he played growing up, always wants to fight for what’s right and the people he cares about, at any cost. He’s a very different character from Kazuma Kiryu, but in this way he feels like a wonderful replacement as the franchise’s future face.