Um tempo atrás eu lembro de ter ouvido "Busca e Ação" como uma boa definição para o que entendemos como metroidvania, e Animal Well prova que realmente, ir de encontro com um level design não tão linear pode ser benéfico para a atmosfera do jogo.

Me senti perdido muitas vezes, mas a sagacidade entre os encontros e quadros de puzzle me seguraram por todo o tempo. Entretanto, ainda sinto que o jogo perde a mão em ter tantos coletáveis (que acabam sendo importantes para um "final verdadeiro" e um ARG mais pra frente) o que fez que me sentisse fora de uma conversa legal, mas que pedia demais pra eu participar.

No mais, como que o estrupício do VideogameDunkey botou as mãos em uma joia tão interessante quanto essa?

Another piece of art that uses its absurd, whiplashing setting to explore deeply cultural, philosophical and psychological themes.

The good thing is, it’s empathetic, it’s emotional, it’s deep and it works. This is one of those games that want you to think, and think it makes you do.

It is recent and thus it’s relevant, but its themes transcend time. It touches on themes like the cycle of oppression, revolution and forgiveness; striving to make its own point about how we should approach our everlasting societal problems.

It’s deeply political whilst maintaining an absurd science fiction post-apocalyptic setting. It shows the grand scheme of things, while focusing on its own major players, fleshing out their human aspects.

It’s a time-bending journey that creates parallels between generations; between real life and fiction. And it does so using very much familiar ingredients; yet it is thought-provoking in a way I’ve never witnessed before.

I lived in this game; the 12 hours it took to get through it felt like 100, and I mean that in a good way. The way it was able to explore so much in such a short amount of time is nothing short of a narrative masterpiece.

It really came out of nowhere, and hit me like a truck. I hope people are able to go past looks and lack of action gameplay and let themselves experience this. It really is deserving of a spot among the best of the best.

Um dragão não tem o luxo de morrer esquecido, e isso implica que Infinite Wealth é uma grande despedida, mas também é um grande recomeço, para ichiban, uma segunda chance para se provar como protagonista de Like a Dragon, para Kiryu, uma forma de se redimir com o seu passado.

Um dragão não tem o luxo de morrer esquecido e isso implica relembrar, relembrar toda essa jornada que vimos com Kiryu, mas não somente, mas de parar e refletir sobre ela. Ao ponto de que existe um capitulo inteiro baseado em passear, e relembrar, aproveitar um dia mesmo estando engolfado pela melancolia do fim (até então) eminente, no doce da nostalgia, mas aproveitar um dia, assim como disse Jiro Taniguchi em O Homem que Passeia.

Um dragão não tem o luxo de morrer esquecido, muito menos deve carregar seus fardos sozinho, o coração amolece, receber ajuda as vezes é um sinal de força, é não querer carregar o mundo inteiro sozinho.

No fim, um dragão lendário não tem o luxo de morrer esquecido, mas sim de recomeçar, e eu sinceramente só espero que ele esteja bem.

Infinite Wealth sofreu com varias criticas antes do lançamento por fazer Kiryu retornar, entretanto, para além da frase piegas, mas esse jogo é uma carta de amor para esse personagem, é uma grande oportunidade dada para aquele que sempre fez questão de se fazer sozinho para o bem dos outros ter a oportunidade de apreciar um companheirismo.

Infinite Wealth é lindo.

Disclaimer: I wanted to talk about a lot of things but for the sake of omitting spoilers I settled for a certain vagueness. Sorry not sorry. Also, I would easily give it 5 stars but I can’t in good conscience do that to a game that wants me to pay extra to access NG+. To whoever called this shot, a sincere go fuck yourself.


Fiction can impact people in many ways. By allowing them to empathize with others through characterizations that express humanity’s own flaws and hardships, or by presenting them with a story that can keep them on the edge of their seat, or simply by allowing them to experience something that can stimulate their senses in cool ways. For better or for worse, the eighth installment in SEGA’s ever-growing… i-don’t-even-know-how-to-describe-it crime drama franchise aims to check all of those boxes, much like its predecessors, and while they do achieve this with varying degrees of success in what is their most packed adventure yet (even surpassing their bloatum opus Yakuza 5), Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s greatest achievement is, much to my surprise, in how it is able to deliver its underlying message in an elegant yet emotionally impactful way.

Plot aside, there’s an insane amount of content here and that makes it one hell of a journey (I reached credits with 96 hours of game time), but the depth of the story’s own themes give that journey meaning.

With the days of the Yakuza reaching an end, both in game, out of game, and in real life, what better way to move forward the series that has for so long dealt with criminals, their struggles and how they affect innocent people than with atonement. The ending of Kiryu’s saga had him realize that conciliating his past as a criminal and his dream life as a father for a whole orphanage is nigh impossible, and thus leading him to be declared dead to everyone he knows. Infinite Wealth seeks not to revert that, but to make this sad conclusion into something positive, much more fitting for a series that has dealt at length with finding beauty in criminals.

It’s an interesting fact that this is an Ichiban game. He’s the one that leads 10 out of the 14 chapters in this story, he’s the one that protagonizes all of the game’s 52 substories (that are all hilarious and worth doing, save for the final six; they have him being sexually assaulted by different women and it’s played off as a joke), he’s the one that trains the game’s own fully playable Pokémon parody minigame story, and he’s the one that leads the game’s own fully playable Animal Crossing parody minigame story. Yes, these are both pretty in-depth things in this game and I can’t believe I am serious about this. And they can last some 30 hours combined. And they rock. Anyway, it’s interesting that it’s an Ichiban game, because for him, it’s another chapter in his story. A (very bloody) vacation, if you will. But for Kiryu, this is very much a grand finale. And a very grand one indeed, but I’ll leave it at that.

But what really had me thinking is that even though this is a true passing-of-the-torch moment, Kiryu’s influence doesn’t really change Ichiban all that much. The burden on his shoulders got heavier, sure, but he’s still the same ol Kasuga that we love. Kiryu, on the other hand, has a compelling arc very much impacted by his goofy friend. Even though he already has over 10 games to his name. I don’t know how they keep doing that.

It’s hard to delve deeper into how that is without spoiling the experience, but there are a lot of newfound circumstances behind all this that make it a very fresh take on a character that already had his whole damn life played out through these games.

The fact that they can make this whole-ass game set on a completely new location and then double down on what made the previous game special and triple down on what made that game’s predecessors special and tie it all with a bow into an almost cohesive story is very much something to be celebrated. With how large the scale of this title is, it’s impressive how they manage to make it make sense and tie loose ends; even if certain characters deserved more development and screen time, everything here is enough to deliver a powerful message about living and atoning for your past sins, about this Infinite Wealth that is life itself.