It looks fine - great, even - but it's definitely a cross-generation game and retains many of the sensibilities of the rest of the series like using voice acting for key scenes but not for lesser moments like side quests.
While this is a multi-platform current generation game, it's also got a timed exclusive next-generation release for Xbox Series X & S, but don't expect it to knock your socks off as a visual showcase. In other ways this is still unabashedly Yakuza. Combat is naturally less immediately exciting in a turn-based setting, but it looks dynamic, with animations and character models that are a joy to watch batter each other. A deeply Yakuza streak runs through combat too, however - a joy in these games was always ripping up bicycles or street signs from the sidewalk and using them to smash enemies' heads in, and this still happens - it's context-sensitive, with characters reacting to the world around them when you pick a move. So there's weapon upgrades, character growth and gear to worry about. It's dumb, and brilliant.Īll of the role-playing tropes come with this, of course. Another necks off booze and then burps on enemies, igniting the liquored fumes with a lighter. The absurdity is brilliant - so when you realize one party member's equivalent of fire-element 'magic' is to burn the enemy with her curling irons, you can't help but grin. By putting these elements into a 'realistic' setting, it all feels rather absurd, but that goes in both directions. These folks obviously grew up on Dragon Quest and have probably played through multiple entries Sega's other big JRPG, Persona, and this game seems to take much glee in taking tropes from those games and flipping them on their head. A summon usually summons a god, but here it might summon a crawfish you saved from being somebody's dinner to snip the enemy to death with its claws.įrom the moment you first enter combat in Like a Dragon it becomes clear that the team behind it are lovers of the genre. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, that same sort of move might be, y'know, the Ultimate Bondage Attack. Put it this way - in Final Fantasy, a character's ultimate Limit Break move might be called something like Renzokuken. Everything you'd imagine from this sort of combat system is present - there's regular attacks, defending, magic and skills, and even things like powerful summon monsters (of a sort) that come to your aid in battle. Yakuza gang members out on the street look like normal people, but as soon as their attention is gained and you transition into battle they take on slightly twisted forms of themselves.
Yakuza has always been over-the-top, and this switch to turn-based battles leans hard into that quirky streak. It's a bonkers idea - but it's incredible just how well it works. Where the other games were story-driven brawlers with distant relatives in the likes of Streets of Rage, this game's relatives are games such as Dragon Quest, Persona, and Phantasy Star. You see, Like a Dragon is a turn-based role-playing game. All of that is familiar - but the most different aspect of Like a Dragon is also the most common element of the game: combat. It features a wistfully realistic recreation of a slice of a Japanese city where the player tools around advancing a story of mob bosses, pride and honor while undertaking a gloriously eclectic range of side activities. Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a Yakuza game to its very core. Why just make another one of those? That's the question that's led to this weird, zany and brilliant mash-up of a game. After making six numbered entries in the series and a handful of spin-offs, it's probably fair to say the team behind it was getting a little bit bored. It's understandable why Yakuza: Like a Dragon is the way it is.
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