Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - Racclog #2
My time with the Like a Dragon series (previously known in the west as Yakuza) has been complicated. The tale of the Tojo Clan’s prolific, legendary fourth chairman Kazuma Kiryu has been wholly engrossing, enough to be pulling me through a series of games that I love and loathe equally, my current feelings for it at any given time decided by a coin flip. I like the gameplay well enough at best, but at its worst I wish Eternal Hot Pillow upon the developers for such things as endlessly blocking enemies, numerous awful final bosses, and whatever the hell Majima Everywhere was. “This series just isn’t for me,” I tell myself, moments before famous pacifist Kazuma Kiryu whips out a rocket launcher and blows a helicopter out of the sky on his 143rd trip up the Millennium Tower, and suddenly I’m in love again. (Well, at least, unless it’s Yakuza 6. A bunch of grown men sitting in a circle discussing a woman’s pregnancy and-slash-or abortion with said woman in a coma let alone not being present in the first place is not the series’ finest hour.)
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is no different, except it kinda is - if anything it’s the complete opposite. It’s the story where Infinite Wealth occasionally falters, while the gameplay has seen marked improvements from its predecessor to a point where it almost makes going back to it unthinkable. Almost. Infinite Wealth is not Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s strongest outing, but for the first time since Yakuza 0, I actually think about replaying it.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is no different, except it kinda is - if anything it’s the complete opposite. It’s the story where Infinite Wealth occasionally falters, while the gameplay has seen marked improvements from its predecessor to a point where it almost makes going back to it unthinkable. Almost. Infinite Wealth is not Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s strongest outing, but for the first time since Yakuza 0, I actually think about replaying it.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Year: 2024
Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Publisher: Sega
Platform: PC (also on PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S)
Genre: turn-based RPG
HLTB: 57 hours | My Playtime: 106 hours
If you’re not up to date: since Yakuza 7, the series - at least the main series, and not spin-offs Gaiden, Ishin!, the two Judgment games and the most recent and most ridiculously named entry, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii - has swapped out its real-time beat ‘em up gameplay in favor of a turn-based combat system. I don’t know how well this change has gone over with the fandom, but half the reason I started playing the series in the first place was because I was so enticed by the idea of a turn-based RPG in a modern-day setting, so while I do enjoy other games in the series, it should come as no surprise that my preference mostly leans towards these two games in particular.
By and large, they’re pretty good at it, too. Ditching Final Fantasy-style line dancing, combatants stare daggers at each other while pacing around a shared combat zone, in which positioning is an important factor. Certain attacks may knock enemies back into other enemies or a wall for extra damage, others have an area of effect that must be considered carefully for most efficient damage or healage. Infinite Wealth improves upon its predecessor by allowing the player to move characters around within a set distance on their turn, getting closer to other teammates to trigger combo attacks or, if the enemy is focused on someone else, getting a sneaky back attack.
There are some new additions such as tag team attacks and, when Kiryu is the party leader, filling a bar to briefly go into real-time combat mode, which aren’t huge additions (the latter is pretty funny though) but I always welcome combat options. Combat is bolstered heavily, however, by the returning job system from Yakuza 7, which has seen marked improvements. Previously, there were jobs that you would be stupid not to assign to your party members, but in Infinite Wealth, characters can inherit up to six skills from any other job they’ve poured experience into, encouraging experimentation with as many jobs as possible. So, sure, stick Saeko with the Idol job so you’ve got a healer, but also why not have her be a Night Queen for a bit so you can make her step on enemies? By the end of the game, all my male party members had poured a few levels into the Host job, because finishing off an emotionally-charged boss battle with a barrage of birthday cakes to the face was always amusing.
If I had criticisms, I’d say I wish there was more interactivity with the environment during battles. In a late-game fight, you can knock enemies into a zone which causes a giant shark to leap out and chew on them for extra damage, but up until that point, the only other way you can use the environment to your advantage is to knock enemies into walls (or maybe, get stuck on the scenery and cause you to miss, which is rare and even kinda funny but still happens). I assume it’s a time or budget thing, but I think incorporating the environment into battles more is the natural path for Like a Dragon 9 to take. Skills and status effects also aren’t super diverse and I’d love to see more variety but keeping it simple makes battles breezy, which I think benefits the game’s enormous runtime a lot.
And yeah, that runtime do be enormous. Gun through the main story and you might roll credits around the 40-50 hour mark, which is already a time sink, but you don’t play a Like a Dragon game just to beeline to the finish. These games thrive on their side content, and Infinite Wealth has some of the series’ best. Dondoko Island is a whole-ass Animal Crossing spoof that sees Kasuga help clean up and redevelop a resort island, and the player is free to place buildings and objects as they see fit while also gradually exploring the island more and partaking in brief flashes of real-time combat that are so watered down compared to the previous Yakuza games it’s comical (positive). I didn’t play a lot of this but I wouldn’t bat an eye if RGG Studio ripped this game mode out of the game and sold it standalone for $20 or something.
Less involved but still deeper than it has any right to be is Infinite Wealth’s Pokémon spoof, Sujimon. Kasuga is tasked with recruiting the degenerates of Hawaii and Yokohama and training them up to take on the Sujimon League, complete with several gym leaders and a champion. The battle system itself is a 3-on-3 turn-based thing with an energy bar and positioning tactics that would require more energy than I currently have to properly explain, but this is a surprisingly ever-present facet of the game, with gacha machines and Pokémon GO-style raids dotted across the map for you to do while you travel from A to B, as well as an unlockable job that lets you use your Sujimon in actual battles. I didn’t do a lot of this one either, but I did a fair bit, and I was sure as heck more interested in it than the cabaret management stuff from previous games, that’s for sure. Or that AR board game drivel in Judgment. Ugh.
If you've played Yakuza 7 already then you might roll your eyes at how it manages to work in obviously repurposed content from that game, such as the vocational school from Ijincho which just so happens to have opened up in O'ahu right as Kasuga's visiting, but that doesn't really make it any less enjoyable, even if it's familiar. Regardless, I can’t touch on all of Infinite Wealth’s optional content if I want to remain even remotely brief, but from the series staple Substories to randomized dungeons to Uber Eats-meets-Crazy Taxi, the game is swimming in stuff to do when you tire of the story, and I felt compelled to do as much of it as I could despite worries that I’d be stuck on it forever. Like a Dragon games have always been pretty lengthy, and I feared a 100-hour Like a Dragon game would disintegrate me, especially if I tried to do as much optional content as I could. Surprisingly, however, it wasn’t the side stuff that was knocking the wind out of me.
Yakuza 7 (it’s not actually called that but for the sake of avoiding confusion I’m not calling it Yakuza: Like a Dragon) had one of the series’ strongest narratives, and is perhaps even my favourite. Infinite Wealth’s by comparison is… good. It’s good! I enjoyed it. But it’s decidedly less focused, and good lord is it bloated.
I didn’t expect brevity, not when the game has you swapping between two protagonists every other chapter. Infinite Wealth continues to follow newcomer Kasuga Ichiban, former Tojo Clan grunt who spent 18 years in prison taking the fall for the captain of the Arakawa family, now working as - ick - a job provider, following the dissolution of the two major Yakuza clans at the end of Yakuza 7. An attempt at - once more, ick - cancellation from a Vtuber leads to events that send Kasuga on his way to O’ahu, Hawaii, in pursuit of his long lost mum. Naturally he stumbles into plans involving said long lost mum, as well as a little girl and some kinda cult. That’s already a fair bit to take into account before even considering that the game has you also play as Kiryu, who’s looking for Kasuga’s mum as well under orders from a secretive political association called the Daidoji Faction as a result of the events that occurred in Yakuza 6. Kiryu has cancer now though - surprisingly it’s from nuclear radiation on the job, and not from his comically excessive nicotine habit - and is ordered back to Yokohama with some of Kasuga’s friends to rest and maybe settle things before he kicks the bucket. Except of course he still gets involved with the main plot because of course he does, he’s Japan’s biggest disaster magnet.
As someone who’s played nearly every game in the series at this point, Kiryu’s parts of the game are great. It’s so satisfying seeing Kiryu get the closure he deserves, especially since Yakuza 6 was previously billed as the character’s final chapter but that was a good send-off for him in the same way I’m a good pick for the Sydney Roosters. As Kiryu you can find points of interest that’ll remind him of his past adventures, his friends, enemies, those he’s lost and so on, and these contribute to Kiryu becoming stronger in combat, which is such an interesting and involved way to do it - it makes exploring Yokohama and Kamurocho beneficial, and it ties into the idea of Kiryu’s friends, family and ideals being his strength, further evident by the side stories in which he sits in while his detective friend Date speaks with those from his past. It’s brilliant.
Kasuga’s side of the story is mostly pretty good too, and I do enjoy how they don’t give a rat’s ass about trying to hide the fact that it’s basically “we’ll beat you with the power of friendship, and also this Negan-ass bat I found.” Where it falters is around halfway through the game, the point where you begin to switch protagonists every chapter. While Kiryu's part of the story in Yokohama always feels like it's moving ahead, Kasuga's side starts to spin its wheels while events in Yokohama are happening, leading to some pretty eye-rolling padding in the form of defending particular people from different factions ad nauseam. It also doesn't appear to have a lot to say about some of its major themes of religion and cancel culture, the latter in particular really only being used to kick off the plot in one instance and drive it forward again a little later. Which is fine! Not every plot beat has to be brimming with insight or bring pause to the player for lengthy moments of reflection. But no one really suffers from the consequences of having their identities revealed online. It's a funny plot point, but it does come across a little bit like the series' "what if Homer had iPad" moment.
Infinite Wealth has me feeling a little conflicted. I thought the side content would make the game feel too bloated and get in the way of the main story, which is a feeling I sometimes express regarding previous Yakuza games. Yet it was the story that I felt dragged on, and when it's not quite as deep or profound as some previous games, I don't think the extra length is particularly warranted. Even so, the conclusion to Kiryu's story (at least, I assume it is) makes Infinite Wealth worth playing all on its own, and the improvements to the combat and the ridiculously in-depth minigames and side hustles mean anyone who gets hooked is going to be hooked for a damn long time. I enjoyed Infinite Wealth a lot, there was no doubt in my mind I would, but while I'm 110% certain Like a Dragon 9 is gonna be another chunky game, I hope RGG Studio perhaps consider the long lost art of brevity.
By and large, they’re pretty good at it, too. Ditching Final Fantasy-style line dancing, combatants stare daggers at each other while pacing around a shared combat zone, in which positioning is an important factor. Certain attacks may knock enemies back into other enemies or a wall for extra damage, others have an area of effect that must be considered carefully for most efficient damage or healage. Infinite Wealth improves upon its predecessor by allowing the player to move characters around within a set distance on their turn, getting closer to other teammates to trigger combo attacks or, if the enemy is focused on someone else, getting a sneaky back attack.
There are some new additions such as tag team attacks and, when Kiryu is the party leader, filling a bar to briefly go into real-time combat mode, which aren’t huge additions (the latter is pretty funny though) but I always welcome combat options. Combat is bolstered heavily, however, by the returning job system from Yakuza 7, which has seen marked improvements. Previously, there were jobs that you would be stupid not to assign to your party members, but in Infinite Wealth, characters can inherit up to six skills from any other job they’ve poured experience into, encouraging experimentation with as many jobs as possible. So, sure, stick Saeko with the Idol job so you’ve got a healer, but also why not have her be a Night Queen for a bit so you can make her step on enemies? By the end of the game, all my male party members had poured a few levels into the Host job, because finishing off an emotionally-charged boss battle with a barrage of birthday cakes to the face was always amusing.
If I had criticisms, I’d say I wish there was more interactivity with the environment during battles. In a late-game fight, you can knock enemies into a zone which causes a giant shark to leap out and chew on them for extra damage, but up until that point, the only other way you can use the environment to your advantage is to knock enemies into walls (or maybe, get stuck on the scenery and cause you to miss, which is rare and even kinda funny but still happens). I assume it’s a time or budget thing, but I think incorporating the environment into battles more is the natural path for Like a Dragon 9 to take. Skills and status effects also aren’t super diverse and I’d love to see more variety but keeping it simple makes battles breezy, which I think benefits the game’s enormous runtime a lot.
And yeah, that runtime do be enormous. Gun through the main story and you might roll credits around the 40-50 hour mark, which is already a time sink, but you don’t play a Like a Dragon game just to beeline to the finish. These games thrive on their side content, and Infinite Wealth has some of the series’ best. Dondoko Island is a whole-ass Animal Crossing spoof that sees Kasuga help clean up and redevelop a resort island, and the player is free to place buildings and objects as they see fit while also gradually exploring the island more and partaking in brief flashes of real-time combat that are so watered down compared to the previous Yakuza games it’s comical (positive). I didn’t play a lot of this but I wouldn’t bat an eye if RGG Studio ripped this game mode out of the game and sold it standalone for $20 or something.
Less involved but still deeper than it has any right to be is Infinite Wealth’s Pokémon spoof, Sujimon. Kasuga is tasked with recruiting the degenerates of Hawaii and Yokohama and training them up to take on the Sujimon League, complete with several gym leaders and a champion. The battle system itself is a 3-on-3 turn-based thing with an energy bar and positioning tactics that would require more energy than I currently have to properly explain, but this is a surprisingly ever-present facet of the game, with gacha machines and Pokémon GO-style raids dotted across the map for you to do while you travel from A to B, as well as an unlockable job that lets you use your Sujimon in actual battles. I didn’t do a lot of this one either, but I did a fair bit, and I was sure as heck more interested in it than the cabaret management stuff from previous games, that’s for sure. Or that AR board game drivel in Judgment. Ugh.
If you've played Yakuza 7 already then you might roll your eyes at how it manages to work in obviously repurposed content from that game, such as the vocational school from Ijincho which just so happens to have opened up in O'ahu right as Kasuga's visiting, but that doesn't really make it any less enjoyable, even if it's familiar. Regardless, I can’t touch on all of Infinite Wealth’s optional content if I want to remain even remotely brief, but from the series staple Substories to randomized dungeons to Uber Eats-meets-Crazy Taxi, the game is swimming in stuff to do when you tire of the story, and I felt compelled to do as much of it as I could despite worries that I’d be stuck on it forever. Like a Dragon games have always been pretty lengthy, and I feared a 100-hour Like a Dragon game would disintegrate me, especially if I tried to do as much optional content as I could. Surprisingly, however, it wasn’t the side stuff that was knocking the wind out of me.
Yakuza 7 (it’s not actually called that but for the sake of avoiding confusion I’m not calling it Yakuza: Like a Dragon) had one of the series’ strongest narratives, and is perhaps even my favourite. Infinite Wealth’s by comparison is… good. It’s good! I enjoyed it. But it’s decidedly less focused, and good lord is it bloated.
I didn’t expect brevity, not when the game has you swapping between two protagonists every other chapter. Infinite Wealth continues to follow newcomer Kasuga Ichiban, former Tojo Clan grunt who spent 18 years in prison taking the fall for the captain of the Arakawa family, now working as - ick - a job provider, following the dissolution of the two major Yakuza clans at the end of Yakuza 7. An attempt at - once more, ick - cancellation from a Vtuber leads to events that send Kasuga on his way to O’ahu, Hawaii, in pursuit of his long lost mum. Naturally he stumbles into plans involving said long lost mum, as well as a little girl and some kinda cult. That’s already a fair bit to take into account before even considering that the game has you also play as Kiryu, who’s looking for Kasuga’s mum as well under orders from a secretive political association called the Daidoji Faction as a result of the events that occurred in Yakuza 6. Kiryu has cancer now though - surprisingly it’s from nuclear radiation on the job, and not from his comically excessive nicotine habit - and is ordered back to Yokohama with some of Kasuga’s friends to rest and maybe settle things before he kicks the bucket. Except of course he still gets involved with the main plot because of course he does, he’s Japan’s biggest disaster magnet.
As someone who’s played nearly every game in the series at this point, Kiryu’s parts of the game are great. It’s so satisfying seeing Kiryu get the closure he deserves, especially since Yakuza 6 was previously billed as the character’s final chapter but that was a good send-off for him in the same way I’m a good pick for the Sydney Roosters. As Kiryu you can find points of interest that’ll remind him of his past adventures, his friends, enemies, those he’s lost and so on, and these contribute to Kiryu becoming stronger in combat, which is such an interesting and involved way to do it - it makes exploring Yokohama and Kamurocho beneficial, and it ties into the idea of Kiryu’s friends, family and ideals being his strength, further evident by the side stories in which he sits in while his detective friend Date speaks with those from his past. It’s brilliant.
Kasuga’s side of the story is mostly pretty good too, and I do enjoy how they don’t give a rat’s ass about trying to hide the fact that it’s basically “we’ll beat you with the power of friendship, and also this Negan-ass bat I found.” Where it falters is around halfway through the game, the point where you begin to switch protagonists every chapter. While Kiryu's part of the story in Yokohama always feels like it's moving ahead, Kasuga's side starts to spin its wheels while events in Yokohama are happening, leading to some pretty eye-rolling padding in the form of defending particular people from different factions ad nauseam. It also doesn't appear to have a lot to say about some of its major themes of religion and cancel culture, the latter in particular really only being used to kick off the plot in one instance and drive it forward again a little later. Which is fine! Not every plot beat has to be brimming with insight or bring pause to the player for lengthy moments of reflection. But no one really suffers from the consequences of having their identities revealed online. It's a funny plot point, but it does come across a little bit like the series' "what if Homer had iPad" moment.
Infinite Wealth has me feeling a little conflicted. I thought the side content would make the game feel too bloated and get in the way of the main story, which is a feeling I sometimes express regarding previous Yakuza games. Yet it was the story that I felt dragged on, and when it's not quite as deep or profound as some previous games, I don't think the extra length is particularly warranted. Even so, the conclusion to Kiryu's story (at least, I assume it is) makes Infinite Wealth worth playing all on its own, and the improvements to the combat and the ridiculously in-depth minigames and side hustles mean anyone who gets hooked is going to be hooked for a damn long time. I enjoyed Infinite Wealth a lot, there was no doubt in my mind I would, but while I'm 110% certain Like a Dragon 9 is gonna be another chunky game, I hope RGG Studio perhaps consider the long lost art of brevity.
PROS
- Endlessly likeable cast of characters
- Vast improvements to an already solid combat system
- Chunky and meaningful side content
- The conclusion to Kiryu's story is handled excellently
- That fucking birthday cake move
CONS
- Spins its wheels for far too long mid-game
- Not as deep as previous entries narrative-wise
- Missing environmental interactivity in combat
VERDICT: Kasuga continues to prove himself as a worthy successor to Kiryu as series protagonist, and Infinite Wealth is overall a more-than-worthy entry in the legendary series, despite pacing issues. I await the next in the series with unbridled eagerness - hopefully it's a dozen or two hours shorter, though.
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