Yakuza: Like a Dragon is, in many ways, just what this veteran saga needed. After years enjoying a complex story, unforgettable characters, a hilarious game formula and what is, without a doubt, one of the best and liveliest cities that we have ever explored in a video game, the time had come to make a clean slate to try something different.
From zero to Ichiban
Ichiban Kasuga was born on January 1 in a soapland in Kamurocho. That is, a brothel, for those who do not know Japanese laws. A hard childhood crosses his path with that of Masumi Arakawa, patriarch of the Arakawa Family of the Tojo Clan, who welcomes him into her womb and acts as a father figure to him. When a murder puts the future of the Family at risk, Ichiban accepts to bear the blame to return the favor, and spends 18 years in jail for a crime that he has not committed. However, after him things are very different. The Yakuza is in decline, the world of 2019 is very different from 2001, and loyalty does not have the value of yesteryear.
In search of answers, Kasuga ends up at the bottom, abandoned to his fate and about to die in a garbage dump in Isezaki Ijincho, in Yokohama. And from that point, there is only one possible way: to go further, to reach the top. As such, the story of Yakuza: Like a Dragon is one that bears certain parallels to Kiryu's own initial journey, but very soon diverges in notable ways. Ryu ga Gotoku Studio signs a masterful story from beginning to end, a complete circle around loyalty and family, the lust for power and hope when everything is lost, to the blind trust that everyone can achieve redemption .
It's one of the few glaring issues I've encountered in Yakuza Like a Dragon. He is not able to bear the intensity and quality in terms of story and script, after a first few hours of heart attack. There are many moments of boredom, bulky padding, and twists that just look for the excuse for the player to spin around. It is when the game picks up on the initial characters and the plot that really matters around Ichiban that they are re-won in full. But in those moments of less vividness it's time to take a breath and focus on the fighting, the multiple secondary content and the unique characteristics of this installment.
Promising ideas that need one more spin
Their combat is genius on paper, but frustrating at the controls. Especially when that dream attack does not hit the mark because one of your characters has gone looking for mushrooms and has to go all the way to the enemies - sometimes even getting stuck in objects -, thus facilitating that they have already scattered. Or when the turn system goes through the liner at the pace it was running and allows bosses to attack twice in a row making it impossible for you to spend a turn healing or preparing properly.
It is not the only stumbling block in the game. The pace of its progression, tied to spending huge amounts of money on equipment that most of the time you cannot afford - even doing secondary and completing mini-games - takes its toll towards the middle of the game.
The arrival of a boring labyrinth-shaped dungeon, full of corridors and clone rooms, becomes a difficult drink to pass that you are forced to go through during the story and that later transforms into a grinding pit in order to level up and get weapons. An option far from being attractive or fun.
One of the best Yakuza and a reboot of the saga
After everything I have told you, the truth is that I only have good words for a game that has been placed among my favorite Yakuza installments, as well as one of the best JRPGs of the modern era, which knows how to pay tribute to the classics but forging his own legend, something like what Ichiban does with Kiryu.
If you have never touched a Yakuza, this game is a perfect entry point, if you have pending games from the Kiryu saga you do not need to worry, if you are fans of the saga surely I will not have to say anything and if you miss I miss a good JRPG, of course Yakuza: Like a Dragon is.
Perhaps the players demand too much from Yakuza: Like a Dragon as it is one of the Optimized games that come out with Xbox Series X | S, but we should not stay on what it offers at a technical level, which complies very well, but on the elaborate experience, the multitude of hours and possibilities, as well as a plot that shows us once again that Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios are inimitable and masters at their thing.