Yakuza: Like a Dragon Reviews

story has a good blend of seriousness and goofiness. turn-based combat mechanics are fun. 9/10

This is just the second game in the RGG franchise that I have the great pleasure of playing. And what a ride! I´m a sucker for these type of heart-warming, heart-wrenching, over-the-top serious, over-the-top silly games from Japan! Having finished this one I have to say that I really, REALLY liked Ichiban as a MC, I think he carries the franchise so well without being a Kyryu clone or living in his shadow. The RPG aspects were such a welcomed mechanic for me as well, as I tend to do well on those kind of games. I loved almost everything from the characters, to the optimistic setting, to the way the story develops and the minigames and the plethora of stuff you can distract yourself from the main story. All in all, I think this is a great addition to the franchise and I cannot wait to play every other entry, I have a lot of road to walk, but as Ichi would say: when you´re at rock bottom, the only way to go is up!

I liked it until I got to the part where it basically said "You need to grind this combat tower over and over until you're high enough level to go on". Some incredibly weak ass shit.

Infinite Wealth was a huge downgrade from this but was INFINITELY better in gameplay. I still prefer Yakuza 7 leagues over it in terms of story AND ACTUALLY HAVING NEW GAME PLUS NOT PAYWALLED.

Took me a minute but finally beat it! I love it, this is my first Yakuza game and now im invested to try the rest <3

The feature that made me most excited about this game ended up being the feature I liked the least. TURN-BASED COMBAT I'm a huge fan of TBS/TBC games, and I've played many games in this genre, including this year's most popular title, Clair Obscur Expeditions 33. However, the combat in this game is really boring and repetitive. There are QTE, but they feel completely unnecessary. STORY I really like the story, which teaches that not everything can be easily categorized as good or evil, using the term “grey zone” in the game. Plot execution is perfect. The background of Ijincho and the 18-year time skip in the yakuza world while MC is in prison. The only reason i keep playing this game.

This is the first Yakuza game I have played and I heard that zero is better and I will play that next but so far I have to say that this game became my favorite game of all time, the story, gameplay, mini games, humor, and characters are amazing and I can only recommend it,

Story started off great but the combat is so bad that it actually prevents me from getting into the narrative. The game constantly forces you to fight against copy and pasted enemies, and 70% of gameplay results to watching characters play same skill animations endlessly.

TLDR: 8/10 My investment in this series is heavily influencing this, if this was the first Yakuza game I'd ever played, I'd give it like a 6/10. As for why: The Combat: After the last 6 games keeping roughly the exact same combat system, I think it was a good choice to go for a jrpg system. The jrpg combat is mediocre at best, and in combat is heavily carried by the animations. It's a very unique system making the combat interact with the world. This system though, often shows it's cracks (characters just standing still, can't path around an object, long run ups towards an enemy before attacking) all these things lead to sluggish feeling combat, which in a 70 hour jrpg, is the last thing you could want. In my first 10 hours of Yakuza 8, I can definitively say that they've improved the combat significantly. But even with the combat improvements in 8, it's still Yakuza 7 combat at it's core and for that I can't give it much praise. But the combat isn't the reason I played this game anyway lmao, it's for the story and substories of course :D The Story: Because it was a jrpg with jrpg length story, this one got really involved and pretty deep into political themes. Overall, I'd say I was hooked on the story except for chapter 12, which is my biggest gripe with the game. The substories in this Yakuza were really good, also the minigames were on point. I probably spent 30 hours just doing the ichiban confectionery business management game. My biggest gripe (chapter 12 spoilers): [spoiler]MAJIMAAAAA[/spoiler] that stupid boss fight. When I first got to it, I was like level 35, so yep, I had to grind for ages to get to a level where my party didn't get 1 tapped (I think it was like level 65-70....). I don't know how RGG completely failed to scale the difficulty properly, because everything up till this point was a cakewalk, and everything after was as well!!! I'm also surprised they haven't patched it or tweaked it in any way after release (that I know of) because so many people online also say that it is such a difficulty spike. I really hope there aren't any stupid spikes in difficulty in 8... Anyway, thanks for reading my ramble ^_^

You ever buy a game and let it sit in your steam library for years and you finally decide to play it. This is me and dear god I made the mistake of not jumping in sooner. Great game for Jrpg fans and fans of Dragon Quest.