THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON
I won’t lie, this was a struggle to weigh in how I feel overall. Yakuza: Like A Dragon, from the title alone, made its mission statement loud and clear. This is a mainline entry that represents the transition from seven prior games echoing Kiryu’s legacy to whatever uncharted territory lies ahead of Kasuga and his friends. Like Ichiban Kasuga himself, this game started from rock bottom and fought its way to the top with nothing but grit and beaming determination. I can’t knock down how well this did in winning Kasuga over for me as the new leading protagonist for the series. I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for him in the future, especially when I get around to Infinite Wealth soon enough.
I’ll start this easy by saying while I don’t consider it to be its equal, the storytelling on display here is genuinely on the caliber of Yakuza 0 in terms of the clean execution of its characters, emotions, and themes. I’m gonna be honest, I was hesitant at first. I thought it spent too long on what’s the first act, ranging around 10 chapters. Which felt like stretching out a conflict that wasn’t too interesting to dwell on. Then I found out there were only 5 chapters left, which surprised me because now I didn't know how we'd finish the rest of the story. I assumed at least 10 more were left from how everything was paced, since I was already aware this was the longest Yakuza/Like A Dragon before Infinite Wealth took that crown. It… still pulled itself together in those remaining chapters, very strongly I’ll add, but not without sudden forced grinding sessions that put an awkward half to the pacing. These are the major culprits for how this gained such a bloated playtime, and I think it only drags the game back since it felt like poor padding that took away from the exciting momentum the story was locking in late-game. There were also ties to the previous entries, some as certain boss fights which made me soyjack the hell out, and made for fun fan service. Although, looking at the current state of Yakuza/Like A Dragon because of this, it may have set a dangerous precedent for RGG’s direction when balancing the old and new. The last stretch definitely pulled everything the game tackles about self-value and connections into this beautiful emotional crescendo that I consider being quintessential to the series. Especially important for understanding what makes Ichiban a character worth getting emotionally invested in. If there was any doubt Ichiban couldn't stand side by side with Kiryu, those last hours shake them all away and prove he's more than worthy to pass the torch.
Moving beyond the main story for a bit, the side content, per usual, is loaded with so many fun distractions to waste away in. They really nailed the mini-games here, especially the newly added ones I spent a significant portion of my playthrough on. I’m pleased to say that the substories are also Yakuza 0 tier, each one feeling memorable, charming, and adding character for Yokohoma to feel like a home for people who had nowhere else to go but rock bottom. Yakuza 7 (to be technical) is refreshing because after experiencing entry after entry where the stakes started escalating when the conspiracy plots only got more complex, where emotional stakes could only get higher as characters experienced more hardships, this took everything back to basics. It’s no stretch to say that Yakuza 7 is pretty much a soft remake of the first Yakuza, with how much the story beats parallel each other. The protagonist sacrifices themselves to be convicted for an extended period. They come back to the world, only to be greeted by how much has changed since they first left it. There’s a mystery they have to uncover by tracking down their fatherly patriarch figure. They’re assisted by an aged, down-on-his-luck police officer and a hostess who plays some relevance to the plot. There’s a shadowy group in town who act as information brokers that have mass surveillance on what’s going on. The main antagonist is both a power-hungry politician who’s been puppeteering everything for his grand selfish gain and the brotherly figure to the main protagonist whose absence led them astray into a path hungering for power to affirm their self-worth. Ichiban even shares the same voice actor as Nishiki, which I feel has to be intentional casting for these parallels to hit harder. None of this feels like a shallow rehash but using familiar beats and tropes to recontexulize Ichiban’s journey and how much he’s similar yet different from Kiryu.
I’ll be frank, this is a hot take I guess? I don’t see many be harsh on this surprisingly. This is not great RPG design. It’s hard for me to be uber critical because I admire RGG quite a bit to understand this was a genuine attempt at stepping out of a 20-year comfort zone into a genre they’ve never fully dabbled in. Yakuza/Like A Dragon always had RPG elements since the beginning. They had random encounters, a leveling system where you increase stats and unlock moves, items you can buy that give you certain buffs in combat, weapons and accessories you can equip, and optional side quests reminiscent of ones you’d find in a Japanese-developed RPG you’ve played before. RPGs unquestionably inspired them, but like I said what they took were just elements. Something brought in to complement a core gameplay style they’ve locked in with for so many games, going through constant refinement and revisions. I wouldn’t call RGG games wholly ‘conventional’, if that makes sense, but with Yakuza 7 it’s clear there was an attempt at making a fully-fledged traditional turn-based RPG. Where they pushed the RPG elements already present in Yakuza/Like A Dragon to the forefront and built upon what was missing by pulling from various well-regarded games in the genre. It’s drawing from Shin Megami Tensei, especially with its subseries Persona, where you have menus as long as your arm, but it all came down to spamming three useful moves that drain MP. The Social Links-- I mean, the Drink Links give that inspiration dead away. It pulls from Final Fantasy V with the job system, but it doesn’t have the experimentation that game offers you freely. I don’t understand the thought process for giving you a handful of jobs that mechanically barely feel unique from each other. Going further, I also think for a game that feels designed to address the criticisms people stigmatized RPGs for, it incorporates archaic choices that first warranted that ire. Final Fantasy V lets you switch jobs and customize from the main menu right away, yet here, you need to travel to this one specific place in a large open map to do that. You can’t introduce a system made for flexible party customization and force players to go through so much backtracking to change it. Now, there’s certainly personality to the combat, I suspect taking inspiration from Mother’s trademark zany realism except with an RGG twist that felt perfect, but there’s so little underneath the hood. There’s no strategy needed to defeat most enemies, partly because it hinges on spamming moves and also because there’s hardly much of a real challenge that pushes you. Until certain boss fights near the latter half, I found everything to be incredibly breezy. I never had to focus on doing some extra grinding, optimizing my party, planning out my attacks, or approaching enemy encounters more carefully. What I found most strange is how they incorporated environmental attacks, where if a party member moves near an object they can pick it up and bash enemies with it. It’s easily the most interesting quirk brought to the table here because RGG is flexing on the Dragon Engine’s collision physics, but you have no control over a party member’s spatial positioning in a battle. It’s an illusion of movement seeing your party members aimlessly roam around, and you have to get lucky they move closeby to an object to do an environmental attack. Because of how they walk around freely on their own, with no input by the player, I encountered so many times when a party member had to run up to an enemy to attack but the pathfinding was so rough they either got stuck running to a wall until they almost magically teleported in front of the enemy or had to awkwardly walk and step over a railing to then switch to an attack animation. I thought it was charming in a jank way, but it became annoying later on because it exposed the weaknesses of a rough design here.
Yakuza 7 became a real test for me. I have my problems with the turn-based design and how the story was paced to fill out an arbitrary requirement to make the game feel ‘big’ because it’s an RPG, I guess. Yet the positives outweighed those staggering negatives, I ended up enjoying this very well, even if it didn’t cross as being one of my favorites of the series. If it wasn’t because RGG games are densely packed with so much content from substories, minigames, and whatever wild distraction you can spend hours on to distract yourself from the main game, this would’ve done even less for me. Like, I don’t blame people for being fine with the combat, it’s fun to watch and does the job serviceably. I think that’s what anyone needs when going into an RPG, but for me, I expected much more from someone who's played the games this is explicitly riffing from and sees a pale imitation. I find this worth criticizing because turn-based is what Yakuza/Like A Dragon is going to be from now on. This is the new foundation for a new protagonist with new stories waiting to be played. I’m not at all opposed to the vision RGG wants to cook with Kasuga, so I only hope this was massively reworked with the next mainline entry to get me fully on board. We all have to start somewhere, even if it is rock bottom.
I won’t lie, this was a struggle to weigh in how I feel overall. Yakuza: Like A Dragon, from the title alone, made its mission statement loud and clear. This is a mainline entry that represents the transition from seven prior games echoing Kiryu’s legacy to whatever uncharted territory lies ahead of Kasuga and his friends. Like Ichiban Kasuga himself, this game started from rock bottom and fought its way to the top with nothing but grit and beaming determination. I can’t knock down how well this did in winning Kasuga over for me as the new leading protagonist for the series. I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for him in the future, especially when I get around to Infinite Wealth soon enough.
I’ll start this easy by saying while I don’t consider it to be its equal, the storytelling on display here is genuinely on the caliber of Yakuza 0 in terms of the clean execution of its characters, emotions, and themes. I’m gonna be honest, I was hesitant at first. I thought it spent too long on what’s the first act, ranging around 10 chapters. Which felt like stretching out a conflict that wasn’t too interesting to dwell on. Then I found out there were only 5 chapters left, which surprised me because now I didn't know how we'd finish the rest of the story. I assumed at least 10 more were left from how everything was paced, since I was already aware this was the longest Yakuza/Like A Dragon before Infinite Wealth took that crown. It… still pulled itself together in those remaining chapters, very strongly I’ll add, but not without sudden forced grinding sessions that put an awkward half to the pacing. These are the major culprits for how this gained such a bloated playtime, and I think it only drags the game back since it felt like poor padding that took away from the exciting momentum the story was locking in late-game. There were also ties to the previous entries, some as certain boss fights which made me soyjack the hell out, and made for fun fan service. Although, looking at the current state of Yakuza/Like A Dragon because of this, it may have set a dangerous precedent for RGG’s direction when balancing the old and new. The last stretch definitely pulled everything the game tackles about self-value and connections into this beautiful emotional crescendo that I consider being quintessential to the series. Especially important for understanding what makes Ichiban a character worth getting emotionally invested in. If there was any doubt Ichiban couldn't stand side by side with Kiryu, those last hours shake them all away and prove he's more than worthy to pass the torch.
Moving beyond the main story for a bit, the side content, per usual, is loaded with so many fun distractions to waste away in. They really nailed the mini-games here, especially the newly added ones I spent a significant portion of my playthrough on. I’m pleased to say that the substories are also Yakuza 0 tier, each one feeling memorable, charming, and adding character for Yokohoma to feel like a home for people who had nowhere else to go but rock bottom. Yakuza 7 (to be technical) is refreshing because after experiencing entry after entry where the stakes started escalating when the conspiracy plots only got more complex, where emotional stakes could only get higher as characters experienced more hardships, this took everything back to basics. It’s no stretch to say that Yakuza 7 is pretty much a soft remake of the first Yakuza, with how much the story beats parallel each other. The protagonist sacrifices themselves to be convicted for an extended period. They come back to the world, only to be greeted by how much has changed since they first left it. There’s a mystery they have to uncover by tracking down their fatherly patriarch figure. They’re assisted by an aged, down-on-his-luck police officer and a hostess who plays some relevance to the plot. There’s a shadowy group in town who act as information brokers that have mass surveillance on what’s going on. The main antagonist is both a power-hungry politician who’s been puppeteering everything for his grand selfish gain and the brotherly figure to the main protagonist whose absence led them astray into a path hungering for power to affirm their self-worth. Ichiban even shares the same voice actor as Nishiki, which I feel has to be intentional casting for these parallels to hit harder. None of this feels like a shallow rehash but using familiar beats and tropes to recontexulize Ichiban’s journey and how much he’s similar yet different from Kiryu.
I’ll be frank, this is a hot take I guess? I don’t see many be harsh on this surprisingly. This is not great RPG design. It’s hard for me to be uber critical because I admire RGG quite a bit to understand this was a genuine attempt at stepping out of a 20-year comfort zone into a genre they’ve never fully dabbled in. Yakuza/Like A Dragon always had RPG elements since the beginning. They had random encounters, a leveling system where you increase stats and unlock moves, items you can buy that give you certain buffs in combat, weapons and accessories you can equip, and optional side quests reminiscent of ones you’d find in a Japanese-developed RPG you’ve played before. RPGs unquestionably inspired them, but like I said what they took were just elements. Something brought in to complement a core gameplay style they’ve locked in with for so many games, going through constant refinement and revisions. I wouldn’t call RGG games wholly ‘conventional’, if that makes sense, but with Yakuza 7 it’s clear there was an attempt at making a fully-fledged traditional turn-based RPG. Where they pushed the RPG elements already present in Yakuza/Like A Dragon to the forefront and built upon what was missing by pulling from various well-regarded games in the genre. It’s drawing from Shin Megami Tensei, especially with its subseries Persona, where you have menus as long as your arm, but it all came down to spamming three useful moves that drain MP. The Social Links-- I mean, the Drink Links give that inspiration dead away. It pulls from Final Fantasy V with the job system, but it doesn’t have the experimentation that game offers you freely. I don’t understand the thought process for giving you a handful of jobs that mechanically barely feel unique from each other. Going further, I also think for a game that feels designed to address the criticisms people stigmatized RPGs for, it incorporates archaic choices that first warranted that ire. Final Fantasy V lets you switch jobs and customize from the main menu right away, yet here, you need to travel to this one specific place in a large open map to do that. You can’t introduce a system made for flexible party customization and force players to go through so much backtracking to change it. Now, there’s certainly personality to the combat, I suspect taking inspiration from Mother’s trademark zany realism except with an RGG twist that felt perfect, but there’s so little underneath the hood. There’s no strategy needed to defeat most enemies, partly because it hinges on spamming moves and also because there’s hardly much of a real challenge that pushes you. Until certain boss fights near the latter half, I found everything to be incredibly breezy. I never had to focus on doing some extra grinding, optimizing my party, planning out my attacks, or approaching enemy encounters more carefully. What I found most strange is how they incorporated environmental attacks, where if a party member moves near an object they can pick it up and bash enemies with it. It’s easily the most interesting quirk brought to the table here because RGG is flexing on the Dragon Engine’s collision physics, but you have no control over a party member’s spatial positioning in a battle. It’s an illusion of movement seeing your party members aimlessly roam around, and you have to get lucky they move closeby to an object to do an environmental attack. Because of how they walk around freely on their own, with no input by the player, I encountered so many times when a party member had to run up to an enemy to attack but the pathfinding was so rough they either got stuck running to a wall until they almost magically teleported in front of the enemy or had to awkwardly walk and step over a railing to then switch to an attack animation. I thought it was charming in a jank way, but it became annoying later on because it exposed the weaknesses of a rough design here.
Yakuza 7 became a real test for me. I have my problems with the turn-based design and how the story was paced to fill out an arbitrary requirement to make the game feel ‘big’ because it’s an RPG, I guess. Yet the positives outweighed those staggering negatives, I ended up enjoying this very well, even if it didn’t cross as being one of my favorites of the series. If it wasn’t because RGG games are densely packed with so much content from substories, minigames, and whatever wild distraction you can spend hours on to distract yourself from the main game, this would’ve done even less for me. Like, I don’t blame people for being fine with the combat, it’s fun to watch and does the job serviceably. I think that’s what anyone needs when going into an RPG, but for me, I expected much more from someone who's played the games this is explicitly riffing from and sees a pale imitation. I find this worth criticizing because turn-based is what Yakuza/Like A Dragon is going to be from now on. This is the new foundation for a new protagonist with new stories waiting to be played. I’m not at all opposed to the vision RGG wants to cook with Kasuga, so I only hope this was massively reworked with the next mainline entry to get me fully on board. We all have to start somewhere, even if it is rock bottom.