RGG have managed this herculean task of working through an audience division of sorts – the previous game appealed far more to an RPG audience and injected new life into a franchise with a new protagonist. Unfortunately, the 7 previous mainline Yakuza games remain this impenetrable wall for a lot of people. They’re big games! It just so happens that in a period where we’re getting more and more must-play smash hits by the month, RGG made the bold play of concluding their previous characters story and building off their new one.

I’m somewhat of a casual Yakuza fan – I’ve played through Kiwami 1 and 2 and played most of 0 and Y:LAD, so to answer the dreaded ‘homework’ question that I’m sure people are pondering – you do not need to play any of Yakuza 0-6 to get something out of this. You’ll get MORE if you play through them (and Yakuza 0 is pretty great, I’d just play that regardless), but they’re not required reading. Yakuza: Like a Dragon is, I’d definitely play through that first.

Infinite Wealth is designed around deuteragonists Ichiban (Y:LAD) and Kiryu (Y0-6), in the same vein as Yakuza 0. By design there’s this sort of changing of the guard happening, not just in the context of the story but also through the gameplay via your split party, which I think is a really novel approach to tackle this sort of story. To some degree you wouldn’t be remiss to assume that some of the praise being lopped at Infinite Wealth isn’t to some extent carried over from past installments – it is. But make no mistake, on the topic of gameplay, Infinite Wealth might just be the best excecuted turn-based RPG ever made.

What RGG have done is they’ve taken their previous system from Y:LAD, a sort of cross between Chrono Trigger and Trails from Cold Steel (I guess), and it’s such a simple change but they’ve added some movement options. This scales up your combat opportunities significantly. No longer are you bound by where your middle aged dumbass ended up at the end of their previous turn. Now I can move around and make this line-based AOE hit everyone I want it to. Now I can move around and hit more party members with this heal. You can apply skills from other jobs to your current arsenal which incentivizes learning other jobs and experimentation. It never feels like you’re ever ‘behind’ because you changed jobs. It’s a really clever system.

This does have some minor caveats. As a result of giving the player more options, you end up with an ultimately easier game. Believe me, this is a welcome change – Y:LAD had one of the most absurd difficulty spikes I’ve ever seen in an RPG, we’re talking Gattuso in Tales of Vesperia, we’re talking Matador in SMT3, where the only solution is to slave away grinding in a tower. This game’s difficulty paradigm is significantly more manageable, so fans of being churned like butter might be a little disappointed here.

Lastly the story, without spoiling too much, it’s pretty fuckin poignant. There’s one specific twist in it, and they’re foreshadowing something, and I’m too stupid to figure out what it is, and it hits? I just fuckn walked to the kitchen and made tea, just thinking like… fuck me. I personally like interrogating twists like this and prodding at them and I’m gonna say it, I think this one’s pretty fuckin fantastic. It’s a beautifully concocted game. I assure you, one of the best RPGs ever made. Genuinely comparable to BG3. Significantly better than Y:LAD.

New Horizons is undoubtedly the biggest shock that the AC formula has ever been given, and while most of the changes were deliberate attempts at strengthening the long-term promise of Animal Crossing, the expense comes in the form of vibrancy, especially from the start.

The lack of a Main Street/City, or any attempt at filling in for it, makes this game feel barren when comparing it to New Leaf. Many mainstay NPCs (Shrunk, Harriet, Leif) have been essentially outsourced for things that either you can do from the start or things that other NPCs can double-up on. The game's progression is also languidly paced, leaving your island untouched for days on end while you're tasked with chopping wood and smacking rocks. There is an irony in how lonely it can get in a game about building a place for people to live. If I hadn't had friends playing this alongside me, I would've torn my hair out a week earlier.

And while all of these early-game problems pale in comparison to the time you can spend building out, I simply don't think New Horizons has the foundation to support this way of playing as it stands. It could gain something with time, as I'm sure Nintendo will give it the Splatoon/Smash treatment, but aside from the occasional QoL change, this game is currently a framework at best.

Despite being with the series since the Gamecube, I'm left feeling like this game was made for a completely different "kind" of Animal Crossing fan. If you're the type to uproot your towns and redecorate it from top to bottom, then this game is the 2nd Coming. Personally, I think I might begin "forgetting" to do my daily chores a little quicker than usual.

Almost a year after this game was released, I think this might be the most high-profile assassination of a beloved Nintendo IP since Skyward Sword's with Zelda. You could argue for some of the bullshit Metroid or Star Fox has gotten since then, but I didn't play those because it was too obvious. This one took a while to really get there, catalyzed only by the constant exposure to it since the pandemic started.

The issues I levied against it the first time have either been kept around or alleviated in some way, but the clear sign that my initial hunch was correct of this being a corpse of an Animal Crossing game is how atonal it ends up being? This game is the polar opposite of relaxing to me, it's like being told to Smile While You Work by your boss. By keeping these completely invisible marks of quality around while insisting that The World Is Yours (which, frankly, I don't want it to be) we have arrived at a game that lacks purpose but is also too weak for you to make one for yourself. So, if you're like me, you scramble to find anything worth doing.

And like, whatever, Animal Crossing games can and do eventually feel lifeless by the end of your time with them - what makes this game different? Well, being CONSTANTLY bombarded with screenshots and videos and anecdotes on social media about how this game has the power to connect people in ways only the masters at Nintendo could do... it certainly doesn't help. It was a struggle to care, but people's insistence that everything was fine minus some pesky QoL issues really drove it downwards for me. Though the obvious bends towards modern mobile/F2P design don't help this game's case, it doesn't get substantially better if you can keep your tools forever. It doesn't if you are able to buy multiple things from the catalog every day. What it needs is a fucking pulse.