Welcome to our review of Yakuza: Like a dragon, probably one of the craziest games released this year!
Ichiban Kasuga, a low-ranking grunt of a low-ranking yakuza family in Tokyo, faces an 18-year prison sentence after taking the fall for a crime he didn’t commit. Never losing faith, he loyally serves his time and returns to society to discover that no one was waiting for him on the outside, and his clan has been destroyed by the man he respected most.
Ichiban sets out to discover the truth behind his family’s betrayal and take his life back, drawing a ragtag group of society’s outcasts to his side: Adachi, a rogue cop, Nanba, a homeless ex-nurse, and Saeko, a hostess on a mission. Together, they are drawn into a conflict brewing beneath the surface in Yokohama and must rise to become the heroes they never expected to be.
I honestly do not know where to begin my review as this game is so crazy and yet surprisingly addictive. In Full disclosure, this is only my second Yakuza game and I can safely say I am not missing anything storywise from previous games.
In Yakuza: Like a dragon, You start off at the bottom of the ladder. Ichiban services his clan well and is the personal aide to the bosses’ son Masato who is in a wheelchair. At first, obviously, there is the tutorial which teaches you how to move around, run, fight, learn how to use the map, take a taxi,…
One of the first things Ichiban had to do, was finding the toilet plunger, not even joking. After a little while, a few small missions later really, you are on your way to a Hostess bar where the son of your boss gives his girlfriend a very expensive watch.
Shortly after, you are in the toilet and you happen to overhear her talking to a man, confessing she is kind of afraid of the Yakuza you represent. Not surprisingly, you were not alone and it results in a heartbroken scene. The man did everything for the girl, even including experimental medication so he could temporarily walk again just to impress her.
As I am not a big fan of spoilers, I will stop right now to discuss the storyline in detail. In Full disclosure, this is around 2 hours into the game and already so many things happened and I haven’t even come to the main twist of the storyline yet. I will however leave this up to you to decide whether or not to buy the game and find out for yourself! Trust me when I say it is worthy of your time and the official description of the game did lift a big part of the veil already.
Up till now, the game has been a true action RPG. but anybody who has seen any of the trailers of this game knows this is not the case as the trailer is filled with many hectic action bits and pieces.
Filled with literally tons of mini-games, ranging from rhythm games to fighting, Yakuza: Like a Dragon has it all! And I really do recommend you try it out because this game is hilarious yes surprisingly mature due to its content. The foul language alone in this game was on a completely different level.
I must admit I had fun exploring this story yes I must also admit I am not a big fan of the fighting mechanics. I was often missing out on a block simply because I had no idea when the ideal moment to block was. Small annoyances like these were sadly present. Then again they do make the game more interesting as you really need to do proper health management, something I have mentioned in previous reviews that I really like.
Graphically, I have only played this game so far on Xbox One and not yet on the series X so I cannot say yet if the forward compatibility will deliver a true graphical update. I do expect it to be a lot prettier but only time will tell. Voice acting is among the best I’ve seen in a long time and I simply loved the Japanese audio. Even the foul language was translated properly and that will give you a few smirks every now and then. I mean seriously we are talking gangsters here!
In conclusion, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is in many ways a niche game due to its nature and content but delivers everything you’d expect from a AAA project! I can’t wait to play this on the next generation.
