"They say you're some legendary Yakuza, but for me, that just doesn't fit the bill. The Kiryu I know? He loves good booze and karaoke, and he throws a hell of a punch. He's also a friend like no other. You're carryin' way too much on your own. And why bother, when you've got us? Isn't that what friends are for?"

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is the 8th mainline title in the Like a Dragon (formerly known as Yakuza) series and a direct sequel to both 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon and 2023's Like a Dragon: Gaiden - The Man Who Erased His Name so it's strongly advised you at least play those games before Infinite Wealth, but to get the full experience I would say it's best to play all mainline Yakuza games first.

Following both Ichiban and Kiryu as co-protagonists taking place in the franchise's first ever overseas setting of Honolulu Hawaii (Which is also the series largest location to date being 3X bigger than Kamurocho) in addition to series staple locations across Japan like the Isezaki Ijincho district of Yokohama and the Kamurocho district of Tokyo in a globetrotting adventure to help Ichiban reunite with his mother while Kiryu comes to terms with his mortality and looks for a purpose and reason to keep on living. It wouldn't be incorrect to say Infinite Wealth is both the longest and most ambitious Yakuza narrative to date, but that's not without its problems.

I think at times the narrative gets a bit too over-convoluted since there are so many different plot points and narrative threads introduced and some feel less fleshed out than others by the end of the game and most of the antagonists were weaker than previous ones in the series as well, but despite all this Infinite Wealth just like Gaiden felt like a big love letter to the fans and the franchise and has some of the best and strongest moments in the whole series. Combine this massive love letter to the franchise's history with strong overarching themes of redemption, learning how to rely on your friends and not shoulder everything by yourself and finding a reason to keep on living alongside social commentary on the dangers of social media virality and the homelessness epidemic and even for its flaws you still have an incredibly strong narrative.

However where the game truly excels is the cast of characters and all their individual smaller arcs. It's not an exaggeration when I say by the time I finished Infinite Wealth this cast of characters had become one of my all time favorites among all the video games I've played. Between the walk-and-talks, the table-talks, the bingo-bond and all their individual Drink Links there are so many interactions between the characters that make them feel more realistic and the friendship they share all the more believable even just walking around town hearing them have casual conversations together and learning small details about them like how Zhao is addicted to mobile gacha games or how Tomizawa reads a Quantum Mechanics book to fall asleep because it's so boring to him. All these little details you learn about the characters really give them so much more personality and make them that much more relatable and human.

Now nicknamed the "Live Command RPG" Battle System the combat is another aspect where Infinite Wealth excels at which improved upon the foundation that Yakuza 7 built in every way imaginable. So many small quality of life improvements have made one of the best turn-based combat systems even better like being able to move your party members freely in combat without taking up a turn or how if you position your characters properly you can attack your enemies in the back for extra damage, do combo attacks with your friends and use items on the battlefield as weapons, there's also a new "Hype Meter" which lets Ichiban or Kiryu do tag team attacks with their friends alongside Ichiban's special ultimate tag team attack which is a party wide attack that expends everyone's Hype Meter. Kiryu can also use his Hype Meter to go into "Dragon Resurgence" mode and break out of the turn based combat for a few seconds allowing you to control him in a simplified version of the beat 'em up style of past Yakuza games. Combine all this alongside the in-depth job system (Which now lets you inherit more skills from different jobs easier), the Poundmates summons and all the over-the-top special moves and you have both one of the most flashy and stylish turn-based combat systems I've ever experienced in a game, but also one of the most in-depth, detailed, diverse and varied combat systems as well.

Much like its predecessor Infinite Wealth also gives Ichiban Persona-like personality stats (Style, Charisma, Confidence, Intellect etc) to upgrade by completing various in-game challenges, but this system has also been improved because now these stats also make some of Ichiban's attacks stronger as they also get stronger, the same goes for Kiryu's more simplified Soul, Body and Tech which help to strengthen his individual fighting styles so you always have incentive to increase these stats since they actively help you in combat.

What would a Yakuza game be without side content? And Infinite Wealth easily has both the most and some of the best since Yakuza 5 as well. You've got all the staples like various Sega arcade games, darts, karaoke (featuring a few new songs as well), various gambling games like Mahjong, Blackjack, Poker plus Shogi, Bingolf and many other smaller activities to keep one distracted, but there's also the Pac-Man-like Can Quest mini-game from Yakuza 7 brought back alongside a new Crazy Taxi-style fast food delivery mini-game and two massive 10+ hour long storylines tied to a wacky Animal Crossing resort building management game with Dondoko Island and a Pokemon parody (Complete with Gyms and everything) in the Sujimon League. That's not even counting all the various sub-story side quests that range from wacky and comedic to heartwarming or feely and Infinite Wealth has some of the best in the series (Special shout-out to the "Let It Snow" sub-story for making me cry). Also all of Kiryu's "Life Links" sub stories which deal with his past will really pull on your heartstrings as well especially if you've experienced Kiryu's journey since the beginning. There's certainly no shortage of meaningful side content to keep you entertained for hours upon hours even beyond the 50+ hour main story campaign, it's easy to sink 100+ hours into Infinite Wealth and still not even complete all that it has to offer. Infinite Wealth? More like Infinite Content.

While it's true that the main narrative can sometimes stumble over the weight of its own ambition and there are some plot points that don't get nearly as fleshed out as others, there's still plenty to love and appreciate in Infinite Wealth between its deep narrative themes and social commentary to its unabashed love and celebration of the franchise's history alongside one of the most diverse, fun and enjoyable turn-based combat systems developed to date, an unforgettable cast of characters and an almost near infinite amount of side content to explore makes Infinite Wealth not only one of the best games in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise, but one of the best games of 2024 and an RPG that no RPG fan will want to miss out on.

"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 up there." - Kasuga Ichiban

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to play a Persona game with a cast of characters that are all middle-aged misfits and losers who are led by a 42 year-old homeless gamer with undiagnosed schizophrenia and the personality of Luffy from One Piece? Well boy do I have a game for you...

Featuring a whole new cast of characters, a new setting, a new protagonist and even a new battle system replacing the iconic beat-em up gameplay of old for turn-based J-RPG tactics, Like a Dragon truly feels like a fresh new beginning for the Yakuza series, but at the same time a natural evolution of the series formula as well because let's be honest, past Yakuza games were just J-RPGs with beat 'em up combat.

Like a Dragon follows the tale of Kasuga Ichiban, an ex-yakuza who hits rock bottom after a tragic betrayal. Homeless and struggling to survive, Ichiban goes on a personal quest to become the hero he always dreamt he could be and uncover the truth about his betrayal. Ichiban's story is a deep and personal adventure full of incredibly strong emotional moments and easily one of the best stories the Yakuza series has to offer in general.

I really appreciate how the early game does its best to make you feel powerless and homeless to the point of even finding 500 yen under a vending machine feels like a big event that should be celebrated and that gives such a massive sense of progression in the later game when you have millions of yen and the best gear possible. Also something I adore about Like a Dragon's story and something that sets it apart from other RPGs is how it makes even the most mundane things like just getting a job feel exciting and adventurous essentially turning real life itself into an adventure which is very fitting for a character like Ichiban.

Speaking of Ichiban a lot of people will be wondering how he stands up to Kiryu and all I can say is that after being the main protagonist of the series for 7 games Kazuma Kiryu leaves some big shoes to fill and Ichiban doesn't fill them, but that's ok because Kiryu and Ichiban are two completely different characters and the game itself does it's best to get this point across. Ichiban doesn't need to fill Kiryu's shoes or take up his legacy because Ichiban is Ichiban and here's what Ichiban is, a homeless 42 year-old delusional chuunibyou who thinks life is like a video game and has the personality of a teenage anime protagonist. He's hotheaded, overly optimistic to a fault, somewhat naive and would do anything for his friends but all these traits are exactly WHY he's so endearing and what makes him such an easy protagonist to root for, the world would be a better place if we were all a little bit more like Ichiban. Also Kazuhiro Nakaya's absolutely incredible voice acting performance really helps bring Ichiban to life as a character as well.

Yakuza games of the past primarily focused on Kiryu's life and his struggles and while Yakuza 7 does the same for Ichiban it's also an RPG with a full cast of characters that follow Ichiban from beginning to end and the game does everything in its power to flesh out Ichiban's fellow party members and companions just as well as him making the sense of camaraderie they all share feel that much more real and believable. Ichiban can build up bonds with his party members simply by teaming up with them on the battlefield or by spending downtime with them at the party's hideout the Survive Bar. Some of Ichiban's party members include a fellow homeless man, an ex-detective turned alcoholic driving instructor and a barmaid. Every party member has a Persona-like social link storyline called a "Drink Link" that you can experience. These in-depth stories help give tons of depth and flesh out Ichiban's party members a lot, but even doing smaller activities like walking around town or going to eat at a restaurant will trigger party conversations and interactions that remind me of the skits from the Tales Of series and even simple things like characters talking about their favorite foods or favorite movies together really give them tons of personality and make them feel more real and relatable.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review Like a Dragon is unlike any other Yakuza game before it being entirely turn-based and speaking as someone who has been playing J-RPGs for 20+ years of my life I think Like a Dragon has one of the most engaging and enjoyable turn-based combat systems I've ever experienced and one of the reasons why I say that is due to how dynamic the combat is thanks to the world around you constantly moving and your characters being able to use their surroundings as weapons in combat from picking up a bike they cross paths with as they go to attack an enemy to knocking an enemy into the road and letting traffic do the rest, there's no shortage of ways to handle combat situations. I also have to mention that the game is turn-based simply because that's the way Ichiban views the world when he gets into a fight due to his obsession with Dragon Quest and I think that's just another incredibly endearing aspect of his character and for a series known for its ludonarrative dissonance that's an incredibly clever way to explain the game mechanics and make them harmonize with the world of the game itself.

Naturally it's no surprise that Like a Dragon features an old school job system akin to classic Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest itself since that's Ichiban's favorite game, but what makes the job system of this game stand out is how over-the-top and silly it is. Most normal RPGs would have mages and warriors, but in Like a Dragon we get classes like "Homeless Guy" who can throw beans at enemies to summon pigeons to attack or Chef's who throw silverware or Host's who spray champagne among many other classes. The attack animations are just so over-the-top and silly that they give the game so much charm, but I think where this is most evident is in the Final Fantasy-like summons called "Poundmates" where Ichiban uses his cellphone to order some back up and the summons include a crawfish that can poison your enemies, a soup kitchen worker who can replenish your mana or a giant Yakuza dressed like a baby who's cry defeans your enemies among many others, getting a new summon was always a treat just to witness the wacky hijinks that would happen when activating it.

Yakuza games are known for their mini-games and side activities and Like a Dragon is no exception to this rule. Like a Dragon has series staples like karaoke (Featuring a few new songs which are great btw), Sega arcade games like Virtua Fighter, golf bingo and batting cages, but also new things like a Mario Kart styled racing game, a Pac-Man-like can collecting game and a massive business management simulator that is long enough and has enough depth to it that it could be its own standalone game. Another defining aspect of the Yakuza series has always been the sub-stories and like most games in the series Like a Dragon also features over 50 sub-stories (which act as the side-quests of the game) that help flesh out the world and its inhabitants even more and give extra depth to Ichiban as a character by going through these various stories and helping the people of the city around him.

Speaking of the world-building there's tons of references to past Yakuza games both in sub-stories and just in the main game too, plenty of returning characters as well and that's the one downside to the game because it's hard to recommend to people without them having played the past games as well, but that just comes with the territory of any long-running, interconnected series unfortunately.

From its Persona-like social links to it's Dragon Quest job system, Final Fantasy styled summons and Tales Of character interactions Like a Dragon is a J-RPG that's about J-RPGs. It's a beautiful love letter to my favorite genre of games wrapped up in an inspiring and emotional tale about a man who always chooses to look at the bright side of life no matter how dark things may seem. It has a charming and well written cast of memorable characters, deep and immersive world-building, tons of side content to get lost in for hours and one of the most fun, over-the-top and engaging turn based combat systems I've ever had the joy of experiencing. Simply put, Like a Dragon is nothing short of a genre defining and life changing masterpiece that will stick with me for the rest of my life and if you love J-RPGs as much as me you'd be a fool to miss out on this game.

I'm writing this review barely an hour after having Infinite Wealth. Normally I'd wait a bit and let it sit in my mind as I try to pick it apart, and I know I'll realise that the edges are rougher, I know that...but right now I want my memory of this to remain as untainted as possible. I know that sometime in the future I'll look at this review with tainted eyes, cringing at my self but I want to write this right now so I can look back and see that I genuinely loved this game deeply.

It took nine whole games to get here, and I'm at the end of it with my emotions being a complete mess. It takes so much hard work to sell a character, much less the same one around eight times over, and each time I've fallen in love deeply with Kiryu Kazuma all over again.

"They all treat you as if you're some hero. If we ended up just like you...the illusions of the yakuza life would be stronger than ever."

Piece by piece for eight whole games, we've been building up the legend of the Dragon of Dojima alongside him. Every admiration thrown towards Kiryu doesn't feel like just cheap talk, it feels earned because you yourself earned it.

Infinite Wealth isn't an erasure of every misstep this franchise has taken, it doesn't hide it but instead puts it on full display, it shows just how much you have impacted the world around you for so long to the point where at the end of Kiryu's life, the only question that remains was "Was it worth it? Was it a life worth living?"

It's hard having the courage to do something. It's even harder to be the one to give that courage to others but this common trait, this link that runs deeper than the dragons on their backs, is exactly why Infinite Wealth isn't just talk. You've seen that exact event take place time and time again, and now all that remains is the end of Yakuza as you know it. It asks you to be brave and head towards an unfamiliar future, and let the burdens of the past be a weight on your shoulders no more.

I wish I had something more meaningful to say, and in the future I probably will, but I want a record of my feelings as they are now. A public if not embarrassing declaration of my utmost love for this entry in the series, guess I'm taking a page out of Ichiban's book in doing this. Not that it matters, I think we can all benefit by being a bit more like Ichiban Kasuga.

Chained Echoes is a pizza with too many toppings

First: I enjoyed Chained Echoes. It's an incredibly well-made, polished product considering the small team. The battle system feels good, the systems are balanced to prevent a need for level-grinding, and it didn't start to drag until I started pursuing the optional superboss stuff in the endgame. If this came out five years ago, I'd probably be singing its praises.

The dev has echoed a common sentiment with many of these retro-inspired indie games, which is that they want to recreate how those games are in your memories - how they made you feel - rather than how they actually were. If Chained Echoes succeeds in this, it's only partially, because it reminded me of other games constantly.

It's got a pretty standard JRPG narrative, but I have nothing inherently against that (unlike G4). The cast is full of the broad archetypes you might expect - hesitant hero, rebellious princess, self-interested thief - doing the sorts of things you might expect. Monsters roam the countryside, the empire controls dangerous magic, and the Pope's inquisitors make cryptic statements to each other about Gods' true intention. I think there's plenty of room for another retro-inspired indie JRPG out there, but there might be such a thing as too inspired.

Literally from the moment I hit New Game up until the middle of the end credits, I found myself thinking, "Oh, this is just that thing from that other thing." It reads almost like an extended X-meets-Y marketing copy: WHAT IF... the plot from Xenogears, the party dynamics from FFVI, the geopolitics of the Ivalice Alliance, the event scripting from Chrono Trigger, the Giant of Babil from FFIV, the Mana Fortress from Secret of Mana, the final act from FFVII, the introductory missions from Wild ARMs, the Yevon church from FFX, the home base from Skies of Arcadia, plus a special mixture of secret herbs and spices... were all in the same game?? Any individual identity Chained Echoes has is subsumed by slavish adherence to its inspirations.

To clarify, I definitely wouldn't say any of this is plagiarism or anything, and they usually aren't tiresome "hey, remember X?" direct references. It's that the whole thing feels like like every Squaresoft RPG from the 1990s was pureed in a blender and poured into a SNES-shaped mold, kitbashed into some kind of Franken-game.

Sometimes, I take my mother to a chain restaurant called "Pieology", which is basically an assembly-line style (Subway, Chipotle, etc) fast food place for pizza. She puts every single topping she likes on the same pizza without considering why you might use a specific ingredient. If you separately enjoy parmesan, ricotta, mozzarella, pineapple, corn, cherry tomatoes, basil, garlic, cilantro, artichokes, olives, peppers... putting all of them together should be even better, right?

But you get something underbaked. It tastes like everything and thus tastes like nothing in particular. It's still recognizably pizza, and you like the pizza genre as a whole... but "it's pizza!" feels like the only intention behind it.

For example, Chained Echoes has mecha, which stand out next to the usual JRPG airship fare in its otherwise Ivalicean setting. Xenogears has mecha. But Xenogears (for all its faults) also has a sci-fi plot about the intersection of man, god, and machine; mecha are a deliberate narrative device to buoy those themes. Why does Chained Echoes have mecha? Because mecha were in Xenogears.

It's that feeling, every 20 minutes, for 35 hours.

I genuinely believe there isn't anything inherently wrong with being an imitative work. Something like Signalis wears its aesthetic inspirations on its sleeve, but makes use of them for its own thematic goals. Crystal Project is transparently a FFV-style job system battle simulator that doesn't pretend to have any lofty narrative ambitions. And Chained Echoes is a perfectly good indie JRPG... but I wish it were a bit more than that.

Red Dead Redemption 2 took years to be made
Baldur's Gate 3 took at least 4 years to make
The Titanic Movie took over an year
YOU had 9 months to be made

Like a Dragon Gaiden took 6 months, and yet it is better than rdr2, bg3, titanic and you! Long live RGG

I was writing a much longer review for this but my web browser decided to crash on my ass while I was 5 paragraphs in and I don't feel like writing all of that again, so you'll get my less-structured (albeit still long) bullet points version instead. Keep in mind that as of writing, I've got the standard ending in Pikmin 4 after about 14 hours of playtime. The standard ending feels like a complete nothing burger but hey, there's credits and a results screen so it still counts. :)

I consider myself to be a fan of the series, having loved Pikmin 1 and 2 as a kid, but it's been a while since I've played any of them. My thoughts on this game are subject to change as I tackle the post-game content.

Anyway onto the bullet points:

. This has got to be one of the nicest looking games I've played on the Switch. Although a bit sterile in atmosphere compared to previous entries, The lighting really brings everything to life. The performance is pretty good throughout too.

. If Pikmin 3 was Pikmin 1 2, then Pikmin 4 is Pikmin 2 2. Although there is a focus on time management (or "dandori" as the game insistently calls it), you can explore at your own pace mostly, and much of your time will be spent in caves or doing side activities. This is more akin to my personal preference, and I could easily see Pikmin 4 being the new template for the series going forward.

. Oatchi is adorable and overpowered, almost gamebreakingly so, but I think there is still some semblance of risk vs reward to riding around on Oatchi. He does become more palatable if you don't upgrade him too much early on and treat him more as like a "super pikmin" within your squad.

. Speaking of risk vs reward, I like the decision to make the raw material act as both a construction resource and a shop currency. It incentivises you to make sure you still have enough material for your expeditions, having to approach the upgrade and item "shop" more sparingly than you would otherwise.

. Many people have complained about the rigid three pikmin type requirement and auto-configurations but I don't mind it personally. I don't necessarily think it's a "better" way of doing things but it does allow for areas to be more tightly designed around specific pikmin types and mechanics, and ensures that the player has to actually respect the gimmicks. This is especially true in the caves where you can only go in with a specific type of Pikmin.

. The biggest problem with Pikmin 4 has got to be its constant tutorialisation of just about everything. Even 10 hours into my playthrough, gameplay was still being interrupted regularly for Collin or Shepherd to chip in with dialogue, explaining something new to the player that they could have almost certainly figured out for themselves. I get that this is a babby game so some kind of hand-holding is to be expected, but this is just way too much. Pikmin 4 doesn't let you discover anything by yourself and that definitely hurt the experience by the end.

. On the topic of hand-holding I should also mention the time-rewinds. I don't actually hate these personally, but I do think they should have been a more limited resource, or otherwise have some kind of penalty to using them too much.

. Auto-targeting has been brought up by many other critical reviews. Yes, it kinda sucks that you can't switch it off, but I don't think it's the end of the world. It's only a big problem when it gets in the way of your Dandori aspirations if anything.

. The Dandori battles and challenges are great diversions, but the night expeditions are pretty disappointing. You can only use overpowered glow pikmin during them and the expeditions boil down to what is basically a pretty simplistic tower defence minigame. Meh.

. The other major issue is that while Pikmin 4 is not an open-world game, it definitely has the progression structure of one. Your time in this game is defined by a very transparent gameplay loop of checklist missions, objective progress bars and areas scattered across the map with different side activities. Nintendo has been very guilty of this kind of blatant gameplay loop-driven design recently. The new Zelda games are guilty of it, Mario Odyssey was guilty of it, Smash Ultimate's World of light was guilty of it. Hell, even the laser-focused Metroid Dread was pretty subjected to it and now Pikmin is next on the pecking order.

My problem fundamentally is that this kind of design gets repetitive pretty quickly, and there's rarely anything done to genuinely shake things up, leaving the experience feeling competent, good, but ultimately artifical.

On the whole Pikmin 4 is quite a hard game to rate. I've settled on a 3.5 star rating for now because although I do consider this to be a good new direction for the series and something quite special, it's hard to ignore that there's a lot of flaws holding it back. I wish Nintendo were more confident in both their players and their own game design principles, then we could start seeing truly fantastic stuff from them again.

EDIT: I got to the actual ending. The post-game content is indeed better like some people are saying. Olimar's Shipwreck Tale felt like the only time where the game isn't constantly holding your hand and the final cave dungeon goes hard af. I'm still sticking with my 3.5 star rating though.

Kinda mid and does nothing that different from Kurohyou 1 but easily the best soundtrack in the series and that's saying a lot given the competition.

When the singer said
硬き拳にぎり 夢のリング上がりに
血と汗が物語るぜ 下手な口の変わりに
叩き込むぜ 明日を変える闘志燃える我が身
腹を決めた先に見える光 俺を高みに
何があろうが負けない この言葉曲げない
不完全じゃ止めない 決してサジは投げない
我武者羅な馬鹿野郎が無我夢中で掴むチャンスを
鼻で笑うボケ 今に見とけ I really felt that