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.
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.