Making friends and growing together is kinda my favorite — both in real life and videogames. So being able to spend a month doing that in a really excellent RPG is something I kinda wanna shout about from the rooftops. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is my first real foray into the Yakuza game series. I was expecting to enjoy it; just wasn’t expecting it to become one of my all-time favorite RPGs. Just, wow. These characters are so emotionally rich: well-worth spending time with.

Infinite Wealth’s combat dramatically improves everything about standard turn-based JRPG combat by adding just a dash of tactical awareness. Also the ultimate moves in this game are sometimes non-stop hilarity: especially when you can use “Essence of Extreme Bondage” on a Nicotine Lich. Honestly I was glad the final boss was too hard and I needed to go grind a bit and really make sure I had every detail of the systems pat.

I need to harp-on how emotionally intelligent this game is (despite how dumb Ichiban can be). There’s something deeply rewarding about goofy characters who just don’t give up on people even when they’re at their worst. I never saw a ton of the wealth the title talks about, but the heartfelt care was infinitely rewarding.

Playing this on the back of completing Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is probably not the optimum order to engage with the franchise, but having been forced to fill in the blanks required to recognise the poignancy of Kiryu's slow retirement, I knew it was finally time to understand the man and how he became not only the Dragon of Dojima but the Internet's best Daddy.

And while it didn't ask of me the same amount of waterworks Gaiden does, it manages to create one of the most emotionally captivating narratives I've ever played, whilst masterfully unravelling the mysteries across two different perspectives - something I've never seen achieved so confidently in a video game before.

Because this is a game of two halves, a coming-of-age of the Mad Dog of Shimano and the Dragon of Dojima. And I didn't realise or expect how invested or important Majima would be both to this game or to me personally.

Kiryu is his usual (as I've come to know him) self - stoic, proud, loyal, dignified. And these characteristics remain rewarding throughout the game - much like the Ichiban I fell in love with first, unable to turn his back on a friend or to abandon someone in need. But in this sense, Kiryu barely grows. Majima, on the other hand, was an unknown quantity to me, and getting to see this man suffer, grow, question himself and the principles he relies on, and ultimately evolve into the man he resembles in the original franchise entries was a captivating story even moreso than the mystery the two protagonists find themselves physically circling.

Mechanically, I don't even know if I play these games correctly - I cheese where possible and I rely on items to survive an encounter. But there's no denying these games manage to escalate the thrill of the fight as the game climaxes; the fighting is heavy, physical, and so are the bosses; and as you start to face bigger and bigger odds, and bigger and bigger foes, the weight of the player and character urgency is reflected in each punch. The more tired Kiryu and Majima get, the more tired I find myself, desperate to put down my fists whilst unable to pull myself away, climaxing in an euphoric sense of achievement when the game comes to close.

The biggest problem I had playing Yakuza 0 was of my own making - I sunk nearly half of my game time between Cabaret and Real Estate minigames, and only one of these I truly enjoyed, and by the time I started the story back up I blamed myself for having stopped, exhausted of time and effort.

But with what is ultimately a limited cast, I was invested in every inch. In supporting character deaths, in major character deaths, in sacrifice, in friendship, in circumstantial allies, in what it means to be a Yakuza. And while I played this game hoping to truly understand Kiryu, I left it realising this franchise is more than a person, it's a world so masterfully built and explored with characters so human and complex in a way that is agonisingly fresh to me - how did it take this long to fall in love with this franchise?

Like the four Yakuza games I have played before this, I finished Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth emotionally exhausted, but more than I had ever had been before.

I can't say with certainty to what extent those feelings are all positive, but the game juggles such a handful of emotions with such deft and nuance that you don't realise they're crashing out of your hands and all over you until the game is quite literally playing you out, a tear running down my face.

There's a weird mix at play here, thematically and literally; in spite of Kiryu getting an epilogue title to the old days of Yakuza in Gaiden, this game, really, is his send off. Where you might expect Ichiban to be central voice here, the narrative and gameplay are progressively stripped back from the future of the Yakuza to instead ask you to look back, and remember. And this is what Kiryu does, through the main story and through the unusually straight-faced substories, as you relive decades of Kiryu's life, focusing particularly on the impact he has made so poignantly on all of the people he has interacted with throughout his life, and those that didn't make it.

Ichiban, on the other hand, feels a little swindled. While Hawaii makes a refreshing change of pace and invites a new energy into the Like a Dragon formula, the hook that drives Ichiban out of Japan never truly feels realised, and as a player it's hard to feel emotionally invested in Ichiban's half of the dichotomy when Kiryu's asks so much more personally of you as a player and of the characters themselves.

But that's not to talk to the wider enjoyment this game brings as a game. Like all Yakuza games it lives and breaths in its scope and whimsy; like 0, this game features two significant minigame substories, and I found myself in a frenzy 100%ing them both and taking up nearly 50% of my playtime on these alone. In each mechanical area the game is the best this franchise has ever been - the combat and gameplay is refined, chunky, intelligent and charming; the substories are diverse and rewarding; the enemy design enters its most ambitious and bosses in particular will catch you off guard.

And as always, the writing remains in a league of its own. Every substory is moving or hilarious. The party is rounded and moving, but in particular the two new party members are so well performed and realised that it's hard to imagine a franchise without them. The inter-party dynamics and relation-building are energetic and sincere. And Ichiban continues to cement himself as infinitely lovable, endearing, and the perfect host to take over this franchise.

But while Kiryu calls Ichiban the future of the Yakuza, it isn't his time yet. Narratively, the balance of dual protagonists never truly lands as masterfully as it does in 0 - this is Kiryu's game, really - and it is slightly too ambitious in trying to smash together both the new and the old with both weighted so prominently. So the game is sometimes messy, and unfocused, but there's no doubting it's another fantastic entry in a franchise that barely misses.