Finished in 2024

A turning point in the series in both gameplay and cast, but i’m pleasantly surprised by how easy it was for me to get on board with the changes. Ichiban Kasuga is an amazingly fun, kindhearted and spirited loser protagonist who instantly won me over. I’ve got 73 hours into this game and i’ve grown really really attached to Ichiban and his band of misfits.

I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy the turn based combat as much, but I did enjoy the strategy aspect and the cooky skills and jobs. It keeps things fresh and the game is not as “grind-y” as other Yakuza installments (looking at you Ishin….)

Great game for veteran and new players!!

Very good game, I think people need to calm down on the gameplay change. I personally think that it needed it. I know they somewhat changed it in Yakuza 6 but it still feels like a copy and paste.

This gameplay kinda saved it for me and I love ichibans perspective on enemies and combat (Luffy inspired character btw, love that too)

The story and bosses were fun and the stuff on the side of course, they should always have that 6+ hour side story they also have in Yakuza 0,its incredibly fun.

I don't got anything else to say really but if you like the yakuza series you might or might not like this game. (Kinda sucks you gotta pay for karaoke songs)

Yakuza 7 is a wild ride. The gameplay, whilst ambitious in its job-hopping feature, is certainly flawed to an extent: its ridiculously spongey late-game enemies, awkward combat layout which makes targeting enemies needlessly difficult, and level spikes frustated me almost to the same degree as I enjoyed the combat system overall.

However, where this game shines is through both its storyline, with its rich characters and ever-changing political dynamic, and the 'balls-to-the-wall' philosophy it was obviously made with. Zany subplots, various minigames and hilariously over the top fanservice moments bring a level of charm to Like a Dragon you don't find in many other JRPGs. As a big Persona fan, I actually found Like a Dragon's characters to be far more relatable and interesting than your to be expected high school cast; and those fanservice moments are admittably awesome.

Story and characters are probably both 10/10s, whereas the gameplay is something more akin to a 7/10. Excited to play more of the series now.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon established one of my favorite characters from any piece of media. Yakuza: Like A Dragon has gameplay that I oftentimes straight-up didn’t like. Yakuza: Like A Dragon made me yelp in hype at least a dozen times at cutscenes of men in suits talking to each other. Yakuza: Like A Dragon is a messy spaghetti of oddball takes on traditional systems. Yakuza: Like A Dragon is eating an entire 50oz bag of skittles as you binge a soap opera.

I decided to dip into the Yakuza pool around the middle of last year and was astonished at how in my first 4 hours of playtime, I had done only about a half dozen battles. It was cutscene overload. This was a big adjustment in getting used to the Yakuza formula. As I keep pushing onward, I found myself not just accepting the onslaught of cutscenes, but craving them. If you can get over the initial hump, the plot’s hook is super strong. As much as it is a story highlighted by big, bombastic moments, the societal themes at play here are the most interesting to me.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon is a turn-based RPG and a pretty safe one at that. It’s got all the staples of your favorite old-school Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy but not as much moment-to-moment depth as I would have liked. A lot of the time I felt like battles in the early to mid game were too heavily influenced by how the enemies position themselves as everyone paces around waiting for you to input an action. There’s this mushy-ness to battles that runs against the strategic elements of classic JRPGs. As you progress, random encounters start to sometimes contain a sizable mob of enemies that slows battles to a crawl as you have to watch each grunt take their action every turn. Usually fights boil down to using either your best AoE or single-target move over and over again as you grind through a half-dozen monsters. The job system also disincentives you from changing the class of your characters because each job requires leveling up or else the character is borderline useless in combat. Around 30 hours in, I got to the point where I just wanted to steamroll everything so I looked up a build guide for the best team comp and just spammed a handful of OP moves. Nonetheless, Like A Dragon’s combat model is still able to generate tense moments every now and then, especially during boss fights. Be warned, I ran up against 3 pretty large difficulty spikes which each required a few hours of dedicated grinding. I was completing all the optional content I could so it’s not like I was mainlining or skipping random encounters or anything to put me behind the level curve. The spikes felt very deliberate.

Where Yakuza excels is in its all-you-can-eat buffet of wacky content. Every substory is a true delight with a great mix of comedic and heartful storylines. These always come with their own voice acting and crude cutscenes so each feels like an actual quest rather than a checklist-style activity that I’ve grown so tired of in recent open-world titles. The crazy cast of characters you learn about in the substories are just more odd than you can possibly imagine but I always ended up loving them by the end. The dialogue between Ichiban and these freaks is just soaked in empathy and understanding. They’re just so adorable. Of course there’s the minigames which are neat distractions from the main story but weren’t something I found myself sinking a lot of time into. The exception being the business sim minigame where I fell into a deep rabbithole of hiring children and animals and robots to run my empire of quirky businesses. You can tell the team had a blast making this content and that energy is incredibly infectious.

The most flavorful color of skittle here is the characters. In AAA games, I typically find it awfully hard to care about the characters. I think it comes down to writing. Yakuza’s characters don’t have crazy iconic looks or incredibly compelling acting but what they do have is genuine dialogue and captivating backstories. I don’t want to go too much into the details because I really think this lovable crew is worth experiencing on your own. Instead I want to talk about how they made me feel. Since moving across the country for work, I’ve really struggled with loneliness. Throughout my time in college, I grew close with a group of amazing folks that I hope are in my life forever in some way. Naturally, I miss them and think about them often. While Discord lets me stay connected, there’s just nothing compared to in-person interactions. The party in Yakuza: Like A Dragon truly felt like these types of friends. When I finished the game, there was a real sense of sadness as I had as I was saying goodbye to these characters. It was at that point I realized why I had latched onto them so deeply. In a way they had acted as my comfy, cozy, supportive friend group during a time when I needed that the most. Obviously these are just 3D models rendered to pixels on a screen so they aren’t a replacement for real human connections by any means but they still were able to provide a safe space for me to go to when I was really feeling low. The Survive Bar was my own virtual 3rd place to spend my time in whenever I felt like I needed some emulated friendship. It sounds sad but it’s the truth!

Yakuza: Like A Dragon is such a mixed bag but there’s a lot of good in that bag. It’s a rare case of a game with an absurd amount of content but it never feels bloated or “checklisty”. Every system and piece of content is here for a reason even if I didn’t click with some of it. For RGG’s first time making a JRPG, I think this is a ridiculously strong foundation for future titles and I’m so excited to experience Infinite Wealth when I get that Yakuza craving. If they make some key small corrections in their combat and progressions, I think we could be in for a refreshingly new tentpole series in the JRPG genre.

I took a three year break half way through this game, but I finally returned to it this month and saw the game through!

A major turning point for the series for not only changing the cast, but changing the style of combat from action to turn based. While not every aspect of the new turn based system felt fully realized in how the characters respond to the environment and enemies around them as they move, I’d still take this over the floaty input delay mess that was Yakuza 6 and some of the other Dragon Engine games before Gaiden finally cleaned things up.

While I don’t think the main story landed with me, I really was won over by Ichiban Kasuga. The guy is just such a delusional loser, but I couldn’t help but root for him all the way through.

Toda la vida los videojuegos de la franquicia Yakuza me interesaron mucho, y muchas veces intenté comenzar a jugar a mas de uno y de ellos solamente pude terminar el Yakuza 0 (juegazo btw). Esto es porque el sistema de combate nunca me termino de atrapar, lo sentía repetitivo y con muy poco desafío. Lo que realmente me volvía LOCO eran las historias, los personajes, el mundo, realmente estos juegos son CINE puro.

Cuando en el 2020 me enteré de que el próximo Yakuza iba a ser en estilo de RPG por turnos y encima introduciendo un nuevo personaje a la franquicia, cosa de no sufrir tanto la falta de conocimiento por no jugar los casi 6 juegos anteriores. Parecía que lo habían hecho para mi.

Realmente no puedo explicar lo INCREÍBLE que me pareció este juego, la historia como de costumbre es espectacular, y los temas ultra serios que toca, la manera en la que los resuelve, como las interacciones entre los personajes son super creíbles y podes empatizar muchisimo con cada uno.

Suena super cringe, pero en serio que este juego se plantea resolver los problemas del día a día afrontandolos como si fuera un old-school rpg, y eso me parece fantástico. La historia de superación de un tipo que desperdició toda su vida encerrado en una carcel, viendo como el mundo cambió y lo dejó a él atrás es precioso. (....y super relatable...estamos entrando casi al club de los 30 acá....)

Pongo este juego en mi top RPGs de toda la historia, juntito a FF7, Chrono Trigger y todos los demás. Realmente es así de bueno.

la música es una locura encima, estas peleando y te dan ganas de bailar nana