I'm disappointed with this game. I was open to new characters in the franchise since Kiryu's journey (seemingly)
came to an end. However, aside from Ichiban who's great and actually a pretty loveable dork and a great contrast to Kiryu, the other characters are not really memorable. Like many other people, 0 was my first Yakuza game and my favorite in the franchise. I played all the other games and fell in love with the series as a result. So when they announced Yakuza 7 I was really excited but also concerned, because of the decision to change the combat to a turn-based system. The previous games were all amazing to play in its beat em up format, so I thought changing to turn-based will make the game play just like every other JRPG out there. And well..I was right.

The combat itself is your totally standard JRPG turn-based combat. Tactics and strategies are all well and good, but most JRPGs as well as LAD don't require them. Both turn-based combat and real time combat can be executed well or badly and both have advantages and disadvantages designers must consider when making their game. It really depends on how good the turn-based system is. Well designed turn based combat gives players direct access to the strategic elements of combat. For example, I love me some good SRPGs like Fire Emblem, but LAD and other JRPGs just happen to have a very bland and generic system implemented that require no strategy/tactics whatsoever.

The turn-based fighting system can be a change for the first few hours in the game, then it gets insanely slow and monotonous. What REALLY frustrated me was the grinding.
Previous Yakuza games didn't need this cheap way to make the game "last longer" while you need to go through hundreds of fights to farm exp points and level up the characters. What I usually most immerse in is the story. Unfortunately, to get through the story, you have to grind through thousands of boring encounters and repetitive fights. The turn-based combat is just not very engaging and most fights are without any challenge. The game is also very unbalanced. I just don't have the time and patience for a game that purposely wastes my time.

LAD seems slightly more campy and overacted, which is not a bad thing considering it's a completely new saga featuring new characters. It's also pretty fitting for a main character like Ichiban. For the Kiryu games, however, I prefer the balance of keeping overacted and cartoonish aspects in the substories and general side content of the game (which I always adore), while the main story remains serious and tense. So I'm curious how LAD 8 will handle this.

Overall, I'm not a huge fan of the JRPG mechanics. The story starts strong but goes off the rails very early on and gets really slow and boring. I don't think LAD is necessarily a bad game, but its not a good Yakuza game neither. I really wish this had been a spin-off instead.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a flawed game. I was often frustrated with its combat and story pacing. It all too often confirmed my fears about the new direction RGG Studios wanted to take this series in. I can't exactly blame them for trying something so drastically different, as this was at the time the 8th main line Yakuza game. After all the trials and struggles of Kazuma Kiryu, it was definitly time to move on. And despite all the issues I had with Like a Dragon, they actually did the impossible once again and rose up to the challenge to deliver one of the best games I have ever played.

And it's all build on the shoulders of its new main character: Ichiban Kasuga. He is in many ways similar to the series main boy Kiryu. An orphan raised on the rough streets of Tokyo, getting taken in by an enigmatic father figure with deep ties to the Japanese underworld. And while they are so similar in upbringing and the morals they stand for, along with the color of their suits literary being inverted, RGG immediately shows you the difference between them all in their introduction. In the PS2 original and Kiwami, Kyrui's intro is quiet. We follow him as he makes understated treats for a money collection job, confident, professional. Ichiban is also introduced during a job collection Money for the Yakuza. Unlike Kyrui, he is not threatening, nor is he a professional as we see him desperately chase some low life through the streets of Kamurocho before throwing himself off a balcony screaming and flattening his target with a body slam. This is Ichiban Kasuga. He's loud, he's easily excitable and above all else: Fully dedicated to whatever job he's doing for the people he considers family. Ichiban won me over hard. Throughout all the stories funniest and also the darkest moments, and this story gets fucking dark, Ichiban is here to push you along with his borderline retarded optimism. The story came together incredibly satisfying, gave me chills on multiple occasions, and the ending almost broke me. Is the pacing all over the place ? Yes, sometimes I was tearing my hair out when it decided to move along at the pace of a melting Iceberg, but just like many games in this very series, the payoff is 100% worth it. Ichibans speech at the end especially was incredible and Kazuhiro Nakaya, his Japanese voice actor, deserves all the awards in the world for what I think is one of the best performances I have seen in basically anything. I absolutely don't want to spoil anything in case you haven't played it yet, so I'm just going to move on to the gameplay and fully recommend Yakuza Like a Dragon on the strengths of the story alone.

The gameplay was a mixed bag. I don't think they flawlessly managed to transition from action combat into a turn-based rpg. I would best describe it as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle because despite the many options you have with the new job system, it mostly comes down to choosing between three basics options. Either targeting single enemies, doing large AOI attacks or keeping on top of your parties health. Enemies only ever become a problem whenever they heavily out level you, and even that was only an issue during one particular boss fight where the game basically kicks your ass and tells you to fuck off. Go grind, you scrub. It was certainly appropriate considering who I was fighting, but it didn't make it any less annoying that the story basically was put on pause in order for me to grind in the game's boring as fuck dungeons. And that might be my biggest personal issue with Like a Dragon. The side content seems to have been a major priority during the development. Admittedly, it's the best and most fun side content, Yakuza has ever had. Every side story and mini-game you could think of his here. From an entire management sim, a full on Mario Kart clone and even the entire arcade version of Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown. It's all great and all, but be aware that you will basically be forced to do some of those side quests at some point in the story. As one of the many people who like to play Yakuza by mainlining the story and then slowly enjoying the side content in Premium Adventure, that certainly was a roadblock I had to overcome in order to have a fun.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon still was an incredible game for me, and I'm now fully onboard with whatever insanity Infinity Wealth looks to be. RGG Studios continues to be the GOAT in an industrie that decided to increasingly suck ass, and I can not recommend enough that you get into this incredible series. RGG I love you all but also fuck you for teaching me what a coin locker baby is. That scene will probably not leave me for a while, as well as the eyeball scene. That was just fucking gross, man.

Once you're at rock bottom, the only place to go is up.

A few days after I lost access to the game on PS+, it went on a sale, it's like fate wanted me to finish it. This was my first venture into the Like a Dragon series, after a long time of being relatively interested on it, a result of its exponentially increasing online presence as a franchise.

Like a Dragon is a very strong story about honor, respect, and most importantly, finding your own worth in the world, with Ichiban Kasuga being at the center of it. He values those features on a person so much that it leads him to take the guilt for a crime he didnt commit, which is as much as I can say about the story without getting into implied spoilers.
This serves to kickstart an amazing RPG that balances both serious, thought provoking and very emotional moments with silly laid back side content, one moment you find yourself being wrapped into a big conspiracy and the next one you are singing on a Karaoke or participating in Go kart races.

The game plays as you would expect any turn based game to play like, if you have played one, you have played them all. However in this game part of the fun of the turn based experience comes from setting up job combos in your party that allow you to minmax the shit out of everything. On top of that, you cant just brute force your way through everything by spamming attacks, you have to rely on as many tools (buffs, debuffs, ailments) as you can use to get through the toughest encounters, which is something I appreciate a lot when its done in this genre because it helps to prevent it from getting stale.

The worst thing I could nitpick about the game overall is that from chapter 12 onwards it starts relying on increasing the level gap between you and the enemies too often, which could have used some more thought to spike the difficulty if they really wanted to, but in the end, it was for a very good reason

As an afterthought, I would like to talk about how I decided to get into it, which was actually quite funny. It all started when I saw the trailer for Infinite Wealth that reveals that Kiryu has cancer and, for some reason, hearing that this character I knew nothing about (except how popular and beloved he is) was gonna have to deal with that in the next mainline game, made me feel like it was about time I caught up before the game released so I could see his story through. While theres no way I can play an entire franchise of long ass games in one month, at least I wanted to play those who precede IW first, that being Yakuza Like a Dragon, and Gaiden (which I hope to get to play sooner than later).

And so, with you as a witness, random user in Backloggd reading this, I make it one of my 2024 goals to play through these series, because I absolutely understand what the fuss is all about now, and I wish I had sooner.

JOGASSO DA PORRA. tudo nele transborda um charme absurdo. é genuinamente a melhor entrada da franquia em muito do que se propõe a fazer, as atividades secundárias, o elenco principal e secundário, a trilha sonora, tudo é lindo. o combate um pouco falho e o grind basicamente obrigatório em algumas partes são os únicos pontos de que eu reclamaria mas continuei amando o jogo incondicionalmente. Whether you like him or dont like him there's nothing you can do about it because hes number 1, Whether you like him... or dont like him there's nothing you can do about it because hes number 1

been a yakuza fan since i was fifteen years old and holy fucking shit it still hits the same if not more. even with all the nostalgia and memories this could honestly be my favorite yakuza game ever and that's saying a lot
this game switches from "HOLY SHIT HOMELESS PEOPLE ARE SO COOL" into serious real yakuza shit into the most tragic and perfect writing ever all on a rotation RGG STUDIOS HOW DO YOU MAKE IT LOOK SO EASYYYY NO ONE DOES IT LIKE YOU
i am on board with EVERYTHING that changed. party and turn based system ? peak and easily better than all the combat systems of its predecessors. the way they turned this into turn based was so fucking genius and way more fun
one of my all time favorite series delivers again i'm so fucking happy i decided to circle around and continue the series 6 years after catching up
in just one game and the start of the "second arc" it shoots up to atleast top2 rgg games THANK YOU RGG
not gonna waste much time im jumping immediately on judgement and lost judgement so i can continue this series

While a dramatic departure from the rest of the Yakuza series in terms of gameplay, almost everything else about Yakuza 7 is the franchise at its absolute peak. It’s not only one of, if not the best entries in the franchise, but it’s also one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. It’s tremendously addicting in just about every regard, once I started playing it, I had such a difficult time putting it down.

The story is very well told, and I think it’s up there with some of RGG Studios’ best work. The new protagonist, Ichiban, is not only my new favorite Yakuza protagonist, but one of my favorite video game characters of all time. It is impossible to not get swept up into the flames of his kindness, passion and charisma. While I absolutely adore and idolize Kiryu, and he was my favorite character in the series until this point, I was absolutely won over by Ichiban and his grueling journey of losing everything and then crawling his way to the top. I enjoyed the rest of the cast quite a bit as well, but I did find that they all take a backseat to Ichi as far as their involvement in the story goes. This isn’t really a bad thing, just noticeable. Thanks to the Bond system, you do get a chance to learn more about them and get involved with their personal stories on the side. I just prefer it when the party members of a JRPG are more involved with the overall story.

Whether or not you’ll enjoy the combat will hinge entirely on how you feel about JRPGs. If you actively despise turn-based combat, there’s admittedly not much here that will get you to reconsider your feelings for it as it’s mostly pretty standard. Skill attacks require you to either mash a button or press a button at a specific time similar to the Heat actions of old but otherwise it plays like a traditional turn-based JRPG. My only complaint when it comes to the combat is that if the protagonist, Ichiban dies then your game is immediately over, and I absolutely despise it when JRPGs do that. It just makes no sense when you have party members or items that can bring other party members back to life. Normally it's not a huge issue, I rarely found it happening to me, but later in the game there are bosses and certain enemies who have either instant kill attacks, or attacks that can kill a party member if they weren’t at full health already and it's when Ichiban dies during moments like this that make this design choice absolutely infuriating.

My only other complaint about the game is how the game handles enemy encounters. Enemies in the overworld have a wide and far range of vision, especially compared to previous Yakuza games. This makes it easy for them to spot you and difficult as well as annoying to avoid them. I also can’t tell you how many times I’ve defeated a squad of enemies on my way to a destination, only to watch another 5 or 6 dudes literally materialize right in front of me and I’m forced to fight them as well. At the very least, they completely vanish from the map if you successfully run away, but this was still annoying to deal with, especially in Sotenbori, where the streets are so narrow that it's almost impossible to avoid enemy encounters altogether.

Everything else about the game is absolutely top notch. The game has an abundance of different mechanics and systems that all feed back into one another and make for a title that feels like it's constantly rewarding you. This is primarily what makes the game so addicting. I couldn’t put this game down when I started it. I was thoroughly engaged and entertained from beginning to end. Fantastic game.

A tenacious and beseeching defense for childlike creativity and the necessity of cherishing wonder in growth. In typical RGG fashion, Like A Dragon attempts to favorably honor the yakuza as an institution, and this time around with a charming new face for fans to get reattached to. Perhaps this job is done too quickly with how strikingly likable Ichiban is, and proof of this is found when we understand his place in all of this. He is not even a decade younger than Kiryu, yet his exuberance and excursion from rock bottom redeems him from feeling aged. Like A Dragon questions the very essence of torch passing while also reminding us how wisdom in the yakuza (and most organizations) is experiential. Ichiban is anything but young in society but evokes a spirit that rejects denotations often associated with a quadragenarian. This is what makes Ichiban so unique and worth rooting for against his adversaries.

It also subverts the typical rise in narrative RPGs as Ichiban has no concern of being at the top to bask in his own glory. His growth from nadir results in newfound solace in the ordinary. Sure, there is a power-of-friendship aura looming around your party, but that’s what Ichiban’s course is all about, and you’d be hard-pressed in denying me of that value morally. Plus, if we are scaling power in this ultimately ludicrous series in terms of defying human strength, then you should be able to get by with realizing Ichiban can force a stalemate with the power giants of previous entries after bountiful training. Even then, the most irrational fight ends up being the most challenging and will not hold your hand if under-levelled. Your inability to simply coast by later fights without preparation is a stark difference from other Yakuza games and that’s a minor difficulty spike that I do commend RGG for implementing.

And yes, our ‘hero’ is an everyday hero. Optimistic, specific, and caring. Empathy worth matching with Kiryu. Bless you, fans of RGG games, where your empathic accuracy is attributed to every human character, except for Kume, who represents a contemporary kind of evil. An emotional and stirring climax comes across as a desperate plea from Ichiban himself at an all-time high for vulnerability of not just this game, but all Yakuza games before it.

It’s not peak fiction, but you can see it from here.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon — referred to as Yakuza 7 from here on — was pitched to me by a couple of friends as one of the greatest games ever made. That’s a tough sell, largely because I’m a miserable dickhead who seriously (don’t laugh!) writes about video games. Putting forth anything as being one of the best is a fucking gamble, because you’re not playing with good odds. There are a lot of works out there, and only a couple get to be the best. It tends to make it hurt worse when, almost inevitably, it’s not actually one of the best; you get your hopes up, and then the work doesn’t live up to the inflated goals you set for it, and then you’re left feeling disappointed.

Luckily, though, that’s not the case here. I don’t think Yakuza 7 is as good as I was told it was, but it’s certainly still pretty good. Great, even! There are some pacing and writing issues that drag it down, but what’s here is legitimately impressive. I don’t really care for RPGs as a genre, and I especially don’t care for games that ask for thirty to forty hours of my time, so the fact that this is still scoring as high as it is may as well be a sign of the end times. The four horsemen are a yakuza, an ex-nurse, an office worker, and a triad boss.

It’s immensely funny that, in an era where the largest development studios are playing it as safe as they possibly can, RGG Studios decided that Yakuza is no longer an action game. It’s such a ridiculous fucking idea. Some positive reception to an April Fool’s joke was all they needed to go all-in on this? What the fuck? You aren’t supposed to make games like this. And yet, they did; and yet, it works. It works really well, actually. There’s a bit of a problem that AoE skills are absurdly good compared to their single-target little brothers; obviously the single-target skills are king in boss fights, but those are pretty far and few between. Autobattling still takes a while and uses up precious items, and low-level mooks don't run away even when you've got a massive numbers advantage over them; most of the street fights are little more than time wasters, ultimately. Expect to spend the majority of the endgame running away from random encounters simply because they don't pay out in resources more than they take.

Ichiban is a wonderful character, and it's frankly no surprise that many people have latched onto him as hard as they have. Most of the cast is strong, really. I certainly wasn't expecting this to handle social issues as well as it did. It's more than a little hamfisted at times — discussions about "gray zones" and "bleaching white" tend to lean on wordplay a bit too heavily — but it's a pretty solid takedown of blind idealism. Bleach Japan's goals sound, from the outset, to be pretty reasonable. It's only once you dig in and find out what they're actually working towards that it becomes apparent that they're interested solely in enforcing laws, not in ensuring that people benefit from the law. Sure, women being forced to turn to sex work is bad. Homeless people not being able to find a safe spot to sleep is bad. Yakuza gangsters shouldn't be running the streets. The solution, though, is not to deport them, arrest them, and incite a gang war in the hopes they all kill themselves off, respectively. The gray zones are astronomically far from perfect, but blindly adhering to already-oppressive laws serves only to worsen the problem. It's rare to find a work with a positive view on criminal activity that isn't individualistic "fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want" id slop, but rather calls into question the legitimacy of the laws being broken.

I do have a problem with the writing in that it feels mean, sometimes. It happens often enough to be noticeable, and it clashes hard with a lot of what's written elsewhere. Nanba, for example, never really stops being a "homeless guy", even after he manages to get two(!!!) different houses that he stays in. The game just keeps reminding you how bad he smells, because he's homeless: he can debuff enemies because he stinks; he can breathe fire because his breath is just that potent; he can revive allies because none of them want him to give them CPR. It's weird. I don't really feel a sense of malice here, because the game is otherwise pretty fair to homeless people — certainly more than most, as low of a bar as that is. It's more like the game needs a smack upside the head and for someone to tell it that it's not being funny. I feel like it'd smarten up pretty quick.

Yakuza 7 has a bit of a habit. It’s definitely not a good habit, but I’m a little hesitant to call it a bad habit. Yakuza 7 just really loves killing off characters. Whenever a character’s arc comes to a close, they just get merked. The Geomijul goon who shakes down the bar owners? Shot to death. Arakawa? Shot to death. Hoshino? Shot to death. Ogasawara? Probably shot to death. Characters just start dropping like flies the second that they’ve served their narrative purpose. I guess I can understand it, considering that this is ultimately a game about organized crime — nobody walks away from Goodfellas wondering what was up with all of the indiscriminate murder — but it makes it a little difficult to stomach the feel-good ending that follows in the wake of such a bloodbath. Yakuza as a franchise is kind of renowned for being over the top, so this might just be a case of me going to a steakhouse and complaining that they don’t have enough vegetarian options, but I think there’s a bit too much melo in this melodrama.

Where it really came to a head for me was in the final stretch of cutscenes — as good a place as any for it to come to a head, I suppose. After going through a lengthy boss sequence, and then a second boss sequence, and then a third boss sequence, Ichiban finally manages to corner his young master. Masato pulls a gun, points it at Ichiban, and then points it at himself; his life as he knows it is over, and all of his hard work has been pulled out from under him, and he sees no reason to go on. Ichiban, who’s spent the entire game desperately trying to make this fucking stupid asshole see the light, breaks down in tears. He tells Masato that he would have done anything for him, that Masato needs to start over, that he believes Masato can turn a new leaf and be a better person. He caps it off with the line “please don’t make me watch my brother die”, which is so insanely good that I’m getting choked up again writing it out. It’s a phenomenal sequence. It’s written really well, it’s paced really well, and it works. It works better than any single moment in the preceding thirty hours.

Masato then gets stabbed by a lackey and bleeds out. Ichiban punctuates the moment with a slow-motion “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”. I roll my eyes because the game is now being stupid. Take it down a notch. You had something really good going, with the whole “choosing to be a better person after spending twenty years fucking up” angle. You don’t need to spoil it by going full soap opera, pretending like you’re gonna kill off the character after all of that. Just roll these obviously fake credits, and show us the scene where Masato is out of the hospital, and — oh, no, you actually killed him off. Jesus. Really? What a waste. I can’t really articulate why this complete bloodbath bothers me so much if not for the fact that it all feels at odds with the fact that this is supposed to be a happy ending. I guess when you’ve got a franchise that’s been running for this long without the universe being reset, it does you well to just kill off as many named characters as you can; people who play the next game won’t be asking where the old characters are if they know that they’re all turning into compost.

A severe difficulty spike right near the end also necessitates a good dose of grinding to get to a point where you can (un)comfortably clear it, which doesn't help the pacing much. You're more-or-less forced to complete the battle arena at least once, and then subsequently forced into the Kamurocho sewers to farm Invested Vagabonds. It's certainly not as egregious as some other RPGs when it comes to how much grinding you're expected to do, but it's still a hefty ask for a game that's already about thirty hours when you're going straight down the critical path. Add in the obscene amount of substories and minigames — some of which are great, some of which very much aren't — and this is a long game. I was definitely starting to lose patience with it by the end.

It's not perfect, but it's not far from it. There's a lot here to love. I think if this had ended somewhere around the halfway point, I wouldn't have a single bad thing to say. The first ten or so hours of Yakuza 7 are masterful, and the remaining minimum twenty are only pretty solid. It's easy to be a lot worse than this.

Don't piss me off. I'm close to leveling up and you look like just enough XP.

𝗔 𝗬𝗔𝗞𝗨𝗭𝗔 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗔𝗚𝗘!

If you think about it, there really was no better choice than Ichiban Kasuga to replace Kiryu Kazuma, was there? Sure you could point to previous protagonists such as Akiyama or Saejima to take over the lead, and that’s not a bad idea by any means it’s just…the fact that it is someone like Ichiban that makes a lot of sense. The very prospect of filling in the boots of the DRAGON OF DOJIMA himself with a new protagonist is daunting from a development perspective, and downright scary from the player perspective. Which is why I’m so happy that Yakuza: Like a Dragon is as good as it is, that for every hole I can poke into this game’s mechanics or narrative, there’s a moment that makes me fall in love with it all over again.

So much of the praise I see lobbied towards this game’s narrative stems from a view that it’s scathing in its critique of the establishment, where in place of the typical JRPG “fight god” final boss, the god is the arm of the government itself. It’s certainly not a wrong view, but I think it’s misleading. Personally, I don’t find the critiques it delivers super meaningful, I think it buckles under it’s own weight in that regard and struggles in it’s representation of them but that’s really never been the focus for me. I’m not ignorant of the flaws of this game, I think the last two party members are embarrassingly underdeveloped, the turn-based combat also leaves a lot to be desired (although this replay was done with the Like a Brawler mod) and there’s also some of the traditional Yakuza plot devices which I don’t like…but despite all that I rarely find myself thinking of the negatives because the positives far outweigh them.

To me, Yakuza 7 is an innately human story, surprisingly intimate with it’s world in a way few other games in the series are. Like I said, it’s the original Yakuza, repackaged and rewritten for the new age and it’s that guiding philosophy of looking to the past while embracing the future works. It’s Kiryu and Nishiki all over again but not with the somber badass attitude of the original, Y7 is much more interested in exploring how meaningful even a single relationship can be. Even to people who have betrayed you, even to people who have hurt you, if you can find the strength within yourself to forgive them then why not, right? Nobody wants to lose people whom we hold dear, even if they do wrong there’s a strong capacity for good in everybody and Ichiban Kasuga is a man who will take those chances, who will take those odds. The Koi has become one with Dragon, and it will keep moving forward, holding the ones it loves close. It’s a rejection of Kiryu and Nishiki’s solitude, and a celebration of the bonds we hold dear.

𝗞𝗘𝗘𝗣 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗡𝗚, 𝗜𝗖𝗛𝗜.

“Once you’re at rock bottom, the only way forward is up. But the bottom doesn’t have to be all dark and gloomy. If you can stand and look up, you’ll see the light of hope there.”

I can't write a proper review to this since the moment that i'm writing this, i have finished the game so yeah. Taking a proper break from Yakuza for 8 months, it just geniuely feels worth it. A new battle system and a new protagonist, everything really goes fresh from start to end and finishing the chapter over and over and having a ton of fun by doing the sidestories just really had me with the fun of my life and on the end of my seat with endings of each one, the cast is just perfect everything goes to well to me and none of the interactions feels forced and geniuely had my laughs with the active voice.

RGG really did it for me and i can't wait to start the Judgment Duology and experience the final 2 Nagoshi games.

I enjoyed this game a lot. I finished it before I made an account here but now that I'm playing Gaiden, I realise I still have a lot of things I want to say about it.

Let's start off with the elephant in the room. Maybe it came from playing the 7 previous titles back to back within two years, but I'm quite surprised to now find myself being much more engaged with the new turn based combat in yakuza than the old action combat. For RGGs first attempt, it's a little rough around the edges, but for everything new and crazy that it does for the genre (that I have seen), it's nothing short of outstanding. It's not the most balanced, but for a casual playthrough it'll do, since in my experience, the previous entries were never balanced anyway (It was either just right or a complete cake walk based on how much side content you did). I didn't appreciate the random level spike that forces you to grind, and most "dungeons" were not interesting scenery wise. They have room to improve these things as the series goes forward.
The most commendable part of this is I don't think the combat could be nearly as enjoyable if RGG didn't decide to take a risk and fully embrace the thing that has given this series it's identity: the silly.

Yakuza has always hit that perfect blend of "serious crime game" and "wtf?". Or has it? Yes I think it always has, but we've had so many of those at this point now. What's the harm in trying something different and just going balls out on the wtf? If it doesn't work then you have a formula to fall back on, but here it does work, so so well. Classes and special moves, enemy designs, items, everything you see in the core gameplay is absolutely even more over the top ridiculous and feels like such a breath of fresh air from the same "smashing a head against the wall" heat move or the same x-x-x-y combo that we've seen previously. And the key thing that holds all these things together so well is... a complete dumbass of a protagonist.

Seeing this universe through the eyes of a Dragon Quest nerd has to be one of the most genius ways to turn this franchise on it's head. Ichiban is just a lovable dude who somehow makes his way through the modern yakuza world despite barely having the pre-requisites to do so, and you can't help but cheer him on every step of the way thanks to his charisma, no matter how weird things get.

I will admit that despite my praise for the new direction and protagonist, my biggest disappointment in this game comes from what this does for the game's main story. I don't think it's bad but just a bit... uninteresting? I won't go into detail but my favourite things about it were the bonds that Ichi makes, the journey he goes through, and the lessons he learns (all of this is great). Other than that, everything I enjoyed in other Yakuza plots felt undercooked here, and I think part of it is due to the new tone. I think most of the villains aren't memorable at all since they show up very irregularly; the pacing is really off and some chapters are very focused on new characters, feeling fairly separate from the main plot. Sometimes the party members feel like they were stuck into parts of the story for the sake of tagging along into the gameplay, in classic JRPG fashion it all comes down to the power of friendship in the end. However I understand that this is a give and take with respect to making the new direction work at all, and it is my hope that with the characters now introduced, and a wildly new setting in infinite wealth, it will feel more like the gameplay is built around the story rather than the other way around.

On to side content, this is by far the best I've seen from the series and one of this game's biggest strengths in my opinion. The substory writing is top tier and there's plenty of new minigames that don't actually feel like a waste of time thanks to the links with RPG mechanics. And the main business minigame doesn't completely suck (huge win)! It could partly be due to me taking my biggest break from the series between 6 and this, but this was the most I've enjoyed, felt rewarded and felt compelled to do as much side content as possible in the series. Not to mention that the new setting of Yokohama is insane compared to anything seen prior in terms of sheer size.

I'm not a huge fan of the music direction the series is taking with all the dubstep, EDM, etc. But I can't deny that it fits the tone of the game pretty well and I do like some of the tracks.

So yeah, the TL;DR is I think this was an incredible step forward for the franchise just by virtue of being different. It's rough in some areas (Story didn't hit me as hard as others in the series but had it's moments and overall enjoyable) but it's an impressive first try and I'm very very excited for Infinite Wealth.

"Once you’re at rock bottom, the only way forward is up. But the bottom doesn’t have to be all dark and gloomy. If you can stand and look up, you’ll see the light of hope there"

Yakuza: Like A Dragon não é apenas um Yakuza de turno, ele é um JRPG em cada característica de sua essência. Se você é fã desse gênero, aproveite essa experiencia mágica.

Uma das maiores homenagens a um gênero de videogame que já vi, a maneira que o Ichiban é e referencia um herói de RPG, a construção das dungeons, os Drinks Links (tal qual os Social Links de Persona), sistema de classes como Final Fantasy antigos, a Sujidex, e outros. Ele é tão inteligente como homenagem que ele referencia não apenas no humor, mas na própria progressão, o Ichiban vive uma jornada do herói, seus maiores inimigos controlam o poder de maneira metafórica ao gênero, e muitas outras simbologias, da qual esse jogo é rico.
Sua narrativa é TÃO RICA, apesar de sua primeira metade não ser tão engajante quanto a do 0, eu admiro a progressão e escala dos acontecimentos, tudo tem seu devido tempo de desenvolvimento, com um ótimo pacing. A politica geral de Yokohama com a "guerra fria" dos grupos que a lideram, e toda a discussão de membro na sociedade são muito boas, e PRINCIPALMENTE seu climax, a simbologia dos armários e das duas metades, eu chorei... E o que carrega muito dessa experiencia são seus personagens, incríveis tanto individualmente, com um crescimento tanto no plot principal quanto nos DL, quanto em grupo, a interação geral é tão divertida, humana, que te faz sentir falta ao terminar.
E claro, uma das gameplays mais divertidas de seu meio, visualmente maluco e único vindo das loucuras do Ichiban, e na jogabilidade misturando tantas mecânicas diferentes, a movimentação tal qual um tático, interativo tal qual um action, e características gerais antigas e atuais, como classes, golpes em conjunto, e tudo isso ainda mantendo a personalidade da franquia em cada característica. Tem um excelente balanceamento, desafiador e renovador sempre que necessário.

No fim, uma das experiencias mais valiosas que já tive com o gênero e videogame no geral, Like a Dragon está no meu coração.

"Once you’re at rock bottom, the only way forward is up.
But the bottom doesn’t have to be all dark and gloomy.
If you can stand and look up, you’ll see the light of hope there."

Esse que foi o game escolhido pela RGG pra um soft reboot na série, trazendo um novo protagonista e mudando assim seu nome no ocidente para "Like a Dragon", determinando uma nova era para a franquia.

Após 15 anos acompanhando a história do Dragão de Dojima é difícil acreditar que teríamos um novo protagonista a altura, mas felizmente Ichiban não deixa a desejar em nenhum aspecto.

Passando o bastão (literalmente ), de lenda para herói, Ichiban Kasuga é um personagem repleto de muito carisma, bom humor e personalidade. Diferentemente de Kiryu que serve de inspiração por ser uma potência inalcançável, Ichiban é aquele protagonista no qual nos identificamos. Um sonhador, o herói viciado em Dragon Quest que junto de seus amigos combatem a vilania de Isezaki Ijincho; com seus trabalhos remunerados é claro.

Falando em combater, diferenciando-se drasticamente de seus antecessores, o game segue utilizando de combates por turno como mecânica de batalha. Aqui também não temos mais posturas e sim empregos, denominados "ocupações". O game é extremamente autêntico no quesito classes, ridiculamente divertido, e foi aqui que vi pela primeira vez em um turn based com botões de interação (como defender ou fortificar o golpe) em meio ao combate. Agora você também não está mais sozinho! O nosso herói conta com a ajuda de sua trupe, que aumenta com o desenrolar da história, sendo a party composta por 4 membros (Ichiban e mais 3) . Apesar de polêmico e arriscado, penso que foi uma mudança saudável para a série, pois define um novo começo para a franquia e facilita a entrada de novos jogadores, principalmente se esse for um amante de JRPG.

Apesar de tais mudanças, o game se mantém fiel às raízes da franquia. A narrativa segue sendo novelão clássico da franquia, com tramas sobre violência, política e desigualdade social, assim como incontáveis reviravoltas. A história é contada de forma lenta, sendo até meio maçante em certos momentos, mas a reta final é faz tudo valer a pena.

A exploração continua excelente também, com alguns minigames novos como:
Corrida das latas - onde você compete com outros catadores de latas para trocar por recompensas;
Dragon Kart - sem mais autoramas! agora você pode correr de verdade em disputa de karts estilo Mario Kart mesmo;
Confeitaria do Ichiban - esse que junto do famigerado minigame do cabaret, se tornou um dos meus favoritos da franquia. Nele você gerencia empresas, isso mesmo, você é simplesmente um CEO onde seu objetivo é gerar lucros e vencer batalhas argumentativas contra acionistas;
Cinema Gaivota - nesse você precisa lutar contra o sono enquanto assiste filmes chatos, apertando os botões que aparecem na tela para acabar com os homens carneiros, mas cuidado, não ataque o homem galinha ele é gente boa!
Exame de proficiência Ounabara - como se não bastasse estudar na vida real, pq não nos jogos de video game também? afinal você precisa aprimorar os status de personalidade do protagonista (copia barata de Persona, shame)

Além desses e outros minigames, acrescentaram métodos de aumentar o relacionamento com seus membros de party. O evento parceiros de copo, onde você troca ideia com seus companheiros enquanto conhece mais sobre a história deles. E claro, eventos de romance também estão presentes.

É importante ressaltar que Like a Dragon é o primeiro da franquia Yakuza a receber uma tradução completa em português! Gratidão eterna, SEGA.

Bom, eu poderia me estender ainda mais pq esse game é incrível, mas vou apenas finalizar com esse convite;

Venha se tornar um caçador Sujimon também, temos que pegar!

The word "deconstruction" gets thrown around a lot these days. Formally defined as "questioning traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality", it's often used to describe works that seek to criticize a specific genre. I disagree with this use of the word, but less because of the "what" and more because of the "why". I believe deconstruction should be used not only to criticise media, but to use that media's pieces to build something new.

An excellent example of this is one of my favorite films: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's 2007 action-comedy masterpiece Hot Fuzz. It deconstructs both the contemporary American cop flick and the traditional detective story by flipping classic tropes on their heads. However, all of this is done not out of criticism, but as a way to both pay tribute to those genres and highlight their potential.

In that sense, yes, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a deconstruction of the JRPG. Rather than a teenager killing God, you're a 40-year-old man trying to find a job. But the game is still very much a JRPG: It has all the classic mechanical trappings, numerous references to other games, including multiple explicit mentions of Dragon Quest (and people still compare it to Persona), and yes, it relies on the tried-and-true trope of the power of friendship.

That last one is a major criticism of JRPG's I've seen from certain online sources, and I feel Like a Dragon does everything in its power to embrace it. Everything from the combat to the substories to the summons to the incredibly complex management minigame revolves around helping others. There's a major mechanic that involves spending time with your friends and helping them work out their personal issues (alright, it's a little like Persona). A lot of the strongest attacks in the game involve working with your other party members.

But more than anything else, Yakuza: Like a Dragon embraces the theme of friendship through its story, especially through its protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga. He's someone who spent most of his life at "rock bottom", and gets dragged through the mud on a regular basis, often by powers much greater than him. But he gets out through a power even greater than that: the people he can count on. Everyone who supports him, from his party members to the most insignificant NPC, makes his journey just a little bit easier. Even in his darkest times, Ichiban can still bounce back to his infectious optimism thanks in no small part to the support he gives to and recieves from the people around him.

Of course, the game still isn't perfect. While it's an amazing first attempt at a JRPG, you can also tell it's a first attempt. Dungeons are a slog and sometimes combat is too (you didn't have to borrow everything from Dragon Quest, guys). Job systems are fun, but the lack of ability mixing combined with not being able to switch on the fly means there's very little reason to experiment. Also, there are some pretty nasty difficulty spikes near the very end. I get why they're there, but I would've appreciated a little warning.

Despite all my criticisms, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is still an excellent game with a wonderful story and the best deconstruction ever made of the JRPG. Suck it, Undertale.

It’s hard to believe that this is the first JRPG entry in an action beat-em-up franchise with 7 previous entries, but now it’s hard to imagine anything else. The Yakuza series just works so well as a turn-based RPG and while the combat isn’t perfect, this game's wackiness and absurdity makes up for it. I mean what other game can I attack someone with a fucking laser from outer space?

But as goofy as this game gets, it’s never afraid to get personal and make you care about these amazing characters. I just absolutely adore this cast and Ichiban is the perfect protagonist. Ichiban had some pretty big fucking shoes to fill and he is on the same level, if not better, than Kiryu. Which just makes me even more excited for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth coming later this month. They will be unstoppable.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (also commonly known as Yakuza 7) is easily at its best when it covers the simple, endearing, and legitimately heartfelt themes of family and friendship, Ichiban's personal life story, and his relationships with his closest relatives, like Jo Sawashiro, Masumi and Masato Arakawa, and hell I'd say Ichi himself is one of my favorite RGG protags alongside idk Yagami, Kaito, or Shinada, albeit he's a bit too hyperactive for my tastes, and relies a bit too much on "quirky gamer references" (futaba sakura moment) and that keeps him a bit lower than these three.

But, it's easily at its worst when it does the usual conventional but needlessly convoluted and arguably ridiculous Yakuza plots we've all come to know which starts happening around chapter 7, when more and more stuff starts getting revealed, like the counterfeit money schemes, the betrayals, the needless withholding of information (looking at YOU Seonhee lmfao), the unnecessary deaths, the stupid yakuza world politics, clan wars, ridiculously huge criminal plots, and of course fucking Mirror Face, the plot device of all plot devices :skull:

Other than that, I'd say a majority of the protagonists and antagonists except Ichiban himself, his closest relatives. and the very first members of your party, those being Adachi and Nanba, aren't really all that deep or fleshed out in the long run (a few of them being Ishioda, Eri, and god forbid Seonhee, as she has practically zero personality besides being "great value" Ada Wong with a K-pop filter slapped on top), and the Drink Links (Social Links in RGG language) don't do enough to amend the issue (except for Han's which contains very crucial lore about his character), and the RPG gameplay is pretty barebones compared to the other big JRPG games out, like Persona, Dragon Quest, or even the earlier Final Fantasy titles, but it still feels like there's effort put into the whole package; as it's still relatively fun, and requires quite a bit of thought and strategy put into it (excluding some boss fights which are just spamming your best moves until they die) That, and I can excuse a lot of it, seeing as it's still their first turn-based RPG game, so they'll most definitely polish it up in Yakuza 8.

I think my standards were always gonna be too high since this game was the whole reason I wanted to play the series but sadly didn’t really enjoy this as much yakuza 2-5, 0, or judgment. Still good though, Ichi is a wonderful protag and the gameplay loop is fun enough for what it is. I think if LAD 8 irons out the pacing issues as well as a couple of other things then it has the potential to be the best in the series. Good base for the series going forward even if I’m not as big on it as I wanted to be.