The last quarter of this game is peak yakuza (My favourite final boss in the whole series and top 5 in gaming) but some of the stuff near the start-middle is quite disjointed. But when it picks up it does it really well. Surprisingly for a game made in 6 months it has some really great side content (mostly because I have shit attention span and liked the short encounters) with a really fun side story featuring 2 spin-off characters. The combat is a little janky but i still thought it was fun. I really liked the new agent style but I just wish it did more damage and worked better on bosses. I dislike how a lot of the dod style is charge up abilities as i feel they are kinda cheap and make it flow worse. overall a great game with some new interesting characters. Side note: the final villain has a really great motive which makes his boss fight even better.

Gameplay - 8/10
História - 8/10
direção - 8/10
Cabarés - 10/10
Os lek sem camisa no final - 40/10

Like a Dragon Gaiden is a spin-off of the mainline Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. Taking place alongside the events of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Gaiden brings back the old-school beat 'em up combat style and follows the series original protagonist Kazuma Kiryu after the events of Yakuza 6 when he disappeared from the world and signed a pact with the secret organization the "Daidoji faction". Now under the codename "Joryu" Kiryu operates as one of the Daidoji's secret agents from the shadows until a mysterious figure who seems to know Kiryu's past draws him out of hiding and into a whole new conflict.

Gaiden is the shortest Yakuza game taking me merely 30 hours (As according to the in-game time counter) to not only beat the game, but to 100% it and get the platinum trophy as well. However due to being so short it's also one of the most focused and tightly paced Yakuza games in the whole series featuring some of the best moments in the whole series including the best final boss and best antagonist as well with some great twists too.

Gaiden is also the best Kiryu has ever felt to play in the entire series running on the Dragon Engine and giving him 2 styles similar to Yagami in Judgment and feeling very fast, fluid and stylish. On top of his standard Yakuza style which incorporates many different moves from all Kiryu's past styles in previous games and serves as the heavy style to be used on one-on-one fights and bosses, Kiryu now has the Agent style which allows him to fight with advanced techniques he learned from the Daidoji based on martial arts from all over the world alongside various spy-like gadgets like a grappling gun, exploding cigarettes and even jet powered shoes the agent style is tons of fun and acts as the crowd control style Kiryu uses when up against waves of enemies.

Gaiden also brings back a fan favorite system from Yakuza 0 allowing you to purchase skills with money, but it combines that with a similar SP system that the Judgment games have as well. You earn SP by completing challenges and side missions for Sotenbori's jack-of-all-trades Akame. There's also gear and stat increases similar to Like a Dragon. In a way Gaiden acts as a jack-of-all-trades itself and combines parts of systems from all past Yakuza games. I also have to mention that I enjoy how most sub-stories have something to do with Kiryu's past.

While Gaiden may be the shortest Yakuza game it still has just as many side activities and mini-games to do like the classics such as pool, darts, karaoke, gambling, Majong, Shogi and even the return of the fan favorite...Pocket Circuit! There's also a colosseum where you can partake in both one-on-one battles and clan battles where you can fight with a group of NPC characters you recruit and the colosseum even lets you play as other characters besides Kiryu as well.

Overall Gaiden is a short, but fantastic companion piece to Yakuza 7 giving Kiryu even more development and a new side to his character as he works as a secret agent with no name while fleshing out his side of the events that happened in Yakuza 7. There are plenty of memorable sub-stories, side activities and good fan service moments for those who have experienced Kiryu's journey from the beginning and the combat is the best the mainline Yakuza series has ever felt. The antagonist and final boss, their motivations and the themes have so much depth to think about and I would easily count them among the series absolute best as well and even if we never get another Yakuza game in the classic beat 'em up style I can think of no more fitting way for it to go out than Gaiden's incredible finale.

After playing Infinite Wealth front-to-back, it was a bit jarring to play this game, but saying goodbye to the "bad guys" never felt so satisfying.

The Yakuza 6/Kiwami 2 combat system is back, with added tech gadgets and larger-scale battles. You've of course got the same familiar minigames, side stories, and RPG elements we've call come to know and love.

With Kiryu being a dead-man and all, you learn the means in which the Daidoji faction keep Kiryu in check. Of course, it's by threatening the people he loves the most. The uneasy alliance Hanawa and Kiryu form is probably still the strongest "new" bond established in the game. Everyone else (e.g: Akame, Tsuruno) quite transparently seem to manipulate him to further their own ends.

The game is rather short (8 hours), and was made begrudgingly longer by the mandatory sidequesting halfway through the story. Alas, the fact Kiryu can do all these good deeds and noble acts for over 20 years and can live undetected as Joryu really makes me think this was among the ligher salted entries in terms of character development and introspection. Again though, this is just the appetizer, and as a canonical spinoff, it gets a little more wiggle room than the mainline games to be lacking in this department.

The big bad Yakuza this time around are men of the hour - an old school yakuza who has a scarred chudface, and a licentious sexual deviant who competes with Epstein on the weirdo scale. Both proper, I guess, to drive home the need for the "death" of the Yakzua as an organization and as an ouroboros. It splices to right around the events of Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and leaves you on the footsteps of Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth's story.

Even an OK Yakuza game is a damn good time, so I'm giving this one a 4.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The curse of being a Yakuza

Gaiden has to be one of the best games in this series by far. Some people may be skeptical seeing me give this game the perfect 5/5, but the reason I gave this game the 5/5 isn't because of it's sheer replayability or huge amounts of content; it's because it does what it does for the series in the most perfect way.

Despite being only a 20 hour playthrough for a platinum trophy and lacking a lot of the side content we would see in other games like 5, 0, and IW, that lack of content is heavily outweighed by a masterpiece of a story that fits perfectly as the bridge of what happened in Kiryu's life from the events of 6 to 7.

There will be spoilers, and they'll be at the bottom when I talk about the story itself (they will also be marked!).

If you're thinking about buying this game, please play all the other games first, as this game jumps into the story assuming you know the events of pretty much every single game that has released prior. Before I dive into the details for the others that have played the game as well, I highly recommend buying Gaiden, especially if you catch it on sale.

Before we talk about story, let's talk about this game's combat:

The Agent Style is a brand new style that was added in for this game, somewhat bringing back the "stance switching" present in Kiwami and 0, though on a much smaller scale.

The Agent Style is pretty decent and the addition of gadgets is really fun. However, I still found myself reverting back to the original Dragon Style for most of the game, because the heat actions for this stance do a whopping amount of damage.

In addition, the stance switching isn't as intuitive or as smooth as Kiwami was. Instead of combo'ing and weaving different stances to maximize damage, you were mostly just sticking with a stance depending on what enemy you were facing.

What I also don't like about the gameplay is the modification to Quicksteps. They made it so quicksteps were locked behind R1, or the lock-on fighting stance, this made it awkward when dodging multiple enemies at once, as Kiryu would always be facing a certain direction. When Kiryu is locked on and fighting someone, the issue is that instead of getting the full sudden change of direction, Kiryu dodges AROUND the person that he is locking onto, which makes quickstepping very awkward and hard to use effectively. This meant most times against multiple enemies you had to over compensate by spamming multiple quicksteps, or by using the flying boots gadget in the Agent Style. This feels terrible because you're wasting time creating distance that you could be using to fight multiple enemies.

Despite the gameplay being lowkey gimmicky and lackluster, it was still enjoyable. It was still a Yakuza game, and even if you had some kind of gripe with the gameplay, the story more than makes up for it.

Story SPOILERS:

Oh boy oh boy where do I even begin. This is emotionally one of the best Like a Dragon games ever, dare I say, THE best. This game has us following the journey Kiry--sorry, Joryu and his antics in Osaka as an agent of the Daidoji faction, an alliance that has chosen to take Kiryu under their wing as one of their elite agents in favor of helping Kiryu fake his death in order to protect the kids at the Orphanage.

Every single time, Joryu has to put his life on the line for the Daidoji Faction, because if he doesn't the orphanage gets the kaboom, and Joryu can't bear to see his only family go kaboom like that.

I feel like this game has sort of become the pinnacle of what I like to call "The curse of being a Yakuza", because even when you finally decide to leave the Yakuza behind, the Yakuza will never leave you (in a threatening, binding kind of way).

However, what really makes this game great is the ending. Never in this entire series do we see this grown man shed ugly tears. This man shedding ugly tears almost made me want to shed ugly tears.

In order to truly understand the perfection of this scene, we need to look into what has happened to Kiryu in the past games.

Throughout the past 20-30 years, Kiryu has always been alone. Everybody that tried to accompany him has died trying. Shinji, Nishiki, Rikiya, each of these people have died as sworn brothers to Kiryu, with the only exception being the Hiroshima yakuza group from 6, since Kiryu essentially sacrificed his life for them to live. In fact, if you could ask Kiryu, he would probably say that Shinji, Nishiki, and Rikiya's deaths were all his fault.

Each game, Kiryu has always done things by himself, the only way he knows how to solve problems is with himself and his own fists, without the help of anyone else. This is a theme that is further exemplified and talked about in Infinite Wealth, where the Ichiban and the gang always talk about how Kiryu always tries to do things alone, and criticize Kiryu for not depending on his friends more.

Kiryu carries an unbelievable burden that stems from his kindness and compassion as a human, and it is this exact compassion that has led him to bite off more than he could chew. Kiryu wants to take on the entire world, when in reality, he can't.

Since Yakuza 3, Kiryu's purpose for existing was to live a normal life, with his normal daughter, in a normal orphanage. However, the curse of being a Yakuza always comes back to him, with Yakuza constantly threatening to attack the orphanage in order to get Kiryu to do what they want in exchange for safety.

In Gaiden, he's doing the exact same thing, but the difference is that he doesn't know if he really is protecting the orphanage by assisting the Daidoji faction for almost 3 years, since the Daidoji faction doesn't allow him to interact with anyone who may recognize him after his death.

So when Kiryu finally gets to learn about how his orphanage is doing after his disappearance and how they are still going strong, it makes perfect sense for Kiryu to break down in ugly tears.

Kiryu's unwavering compassion makes him susceptible to being helpless, but the truth is, you can't help everyone. He wasn't able to save Rikiya or Yumi, and he isn't even sure if the work he puts in by himself with the Daidoji clan is helping his orphanage stay afloat.

However, Kiryu is finally rewarded for all his hard work with a video of Taichi and Ayako, where Kiryu finally realizes his hard work--not just in the past 3 years-- has finally paid off.

The kids of Sunflower Orphanage are finally growing up well without him, and Haruto (despite having zero recollection of Kiryu as a person because he only interacted with him as a baby) is finally taking his first steps!

Imagine being Kiryu, all of your life, you worked hard to protect other people, failing countless of times again and again, with the people you wanted to protect dying in front of you, with nobody to blame but yourself. But after every single trial & tribulation, there has finally been a time where your compassion and obligation to protect the ones closest to you finally pays off, as you see the ones you obliged to protect finally grow up to become the version of you that you always wanted them to be.

Shit's just beautiful, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Conclusion:


This game is perfect for what it is. It serves its purpose in the series perfectly, and it shows us a side of Kiryu that we really needed.

The perfect part about this game is that Kiryu isn't perfect, and that's alright, because life isn't either. However, if we stick to our convictions to the day we die, we're sure to be blessed with something amazing very soon.

I love Like a Dragon, and I love Kiryu Kazuma.

5/5

(20 Hours played)

Gameplay: 8/10
História: 8/10
Gráficos: 8/10
Trilha sonora: 6/10
Arte visual: 6/10
Dificuldade 2/10

- Jogo incrível, meu primeiro Yakuza zerado foi o 7, que para mim é o melhor jogo que eu já joguei, então vim para esse aqui graças ao game pass, e meus amigos, que jogo

- Simplesmente incrível, gráficos lindos, apesar de não serem um ápice, o nível de detalhes e texturas é muito bom, junto com a história excelente e gameplay sólida, fazem esse jogo uma excelente experiência

- Esse é o segundo jogo da série que eu jogo, mas não é necessário jogar os mais antigos para entender esse, obviamente vai ser melhor para compreender tudo e até gostar mais, mas não é obrigatório, e eu adorei, principalmente porque a história se complementa muito com o próprio Yakuza 7, e também porque a história em si é boa, com personagens bem legais e um protagonista incrível ( ichiban ainda é melhor para mim) com um desfecho incrível e bem emocionante que fez eu chorar mesmo não conhecendo a história toda do protagonista por não ter jogado os outros jogos

- Em termos de gameplay também não peça, diferente do 7 que é um RPG de turno, esse aqui é simplesmente um beat' em UP que nem os jogos antigos, e o combate é muito bom, com dois estilos de lutas e até dispositivos para usar no combate, além de poder aprimorar eles

- E pra finalizar o mundo aberto do jogo é muito cativante assim como o 7, pequeno mas denso em atividade para fazer, e ativas legais para fazer, diferente de uns certos jogo ( Ubisoft? ) você pode desde jogar sinuca, jogar games antigos da Sega através de fliperama, sair em dates, joga shogi e muito mais, é incrível, fora as missões secundárias que boa parte é bem interessante diferente da maioria dos jogos de mundo aberto também

- Por fim o jogo é bem curto, dando pra zerar em umas 12/13 horas, é uma experiência curta porém muito boa e sólida

Pontos positivos:

- Gráficos
- História
- Mundo aberto cativante
- Gameplay

Pontos negativos:

- Fácil demais

bem curtinho pro padrão da franquia mas ainda assim esse jogo aqui é RECHEADISSIMO, seja pelo conteúdo secundário ótimo(mesmo que não tenha nenhuma atividade especialmente nova) ou pela história que entrega muito tanto na ação quanto no emocional. Esse jogo soa como uma grande celebração da saga do kiryu até agora, tendo referencias a todos os jogos principais da franquia até então. É impressionante como a cada nova entrada na franquia o RGG studio consegue fazer um capitulo final ainda mais foda, e o desse aqui não é diferente, o ato final desse jogo é simplesmente incrível, ver a culminação da história e da jornada do kiryu até aqui é muito lindo não tem como, é de chorar, genuinamente. Realmente adorei, mal posso esperar pra jogar o infinite wealth