A brief discussion of "Yakuza: Like a Dragon."

Ever since I adopted a slightly more professional way of doing things back in 2016, it's been a policy of mine that if a game is going to earn any spots on any of my end of the year lists, I have to review it so that there's context available if a reader wants it. Ultimately, I'm kind of surprised it took this long to reach the kind of situation that brings us here today. Good, bad, meh, none of these kinds of games are typically exempt from my reviewing rule, and usually when I pick up a game that I lose interest in before finishing, no aspect of it was going to end up on any of my lists, so I typically haven't had to go through the review process in those situations. With Yakuza: Like a Dragon, we have a game that I can say isn't bad, a game that definitely has aspects that are going to land spots on my lists, and unfortunately, a game that I've become so disinterested in that I don't want to pick it up ever again (especially when I have a bunch of superior games in my backlog that I need to get through). I don't believe that I always have to finish a game to be able to review it, but in this case, I lost interest so quickly that I can't, in good conscience, put a score on my experience. So instead, I'll just be doing this brief little discussion about my thoughts without putting a score, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon will (obviously) not be eligible for the big GOTY list. This will be messy and disjointed, but let's just get this over with.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon eschews series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu in favor of a new hero: Ichiban Kasuga. Ichiban can best be described as a big lovable idiot with a heart of gold, and he's a far better Kiryu stand-in than Judgment's protagonist, Yagami. At first the story revolves around the borderline familial relationship between Ichiban and his clan patriarch, Arakawa. Like all Yakuza stories, Like a Dragon's plot starts off with gripping highs that had me on the edge of my seat waiting to know what happened next. In order to repay a debt he feels he owes his patriarch, Ichiban takes the fall for a murder that his captain committed, and he spends practically a lifetime in prison for it. On the day of his release, however, Ichiban finds that Japan has changed since he was last a free man at the turn of the century. Yakuza alliances seem to have shifted, the law has become increasingly authoritarian, you can make phone calls with small electronic rectangles, and the patriarch he spent so many years in prison to repay a debt to seems to have no memory of him. It's all incredibly compelling stuff at first, but after the first big plot twist, things take a drastic turn. Suddenly the plot becomes less about compelling power struggles and more about evil nursing homes and the inner workings of Japanese bath houses. That could be compelling, but it's all poorly-paced and feels inconsequential after a while. Reviews have promised that the story reaches the ridiculous level of double crosses and hidden agendas we've come to expect from Yakuza titles later on in the game, but the story thus far in the post-prologue has pretty much bored me to tears. There have been some worthwhile moments, mainly the moments in which Ichiban completely owns one of the game's minor villains: a sniveling puritan asswipe who would call the cops on his own grandparents if he caught one of them speeding. But here's the thing: even though I want to either beat that villain up or give him a wedgie (depends on the day), villains such as that don't ever achieve 3-dimensional status. I've long said that a villain can work as a 1-dimensional Marvel character so long as I want them to lose, but in a series that has had villains like Daisaku Kuze from Yakuza 0, that lack of substance really stands out. Beyond that, few of the side stories I've come across have grabbed me either, though I haven't tried all that many of them out for reasons we're about to discuss.

I knew going into Like a Dragon that Ryu Ga Gotoku studios had changed the gameplay formula, so it isn't like I didn't know I was walking into a turn-based RPG this time around instead of the usual exciting brawler gameplay. And while it's true that switching to this formula has allowed the studio to express far more creative ideas than they're usually able to (your homeless companion having the ability to summon a horde of pidgeons with bread crumbs or spew alcoholic flames as special attacks is one set of examples that comes to mind), I eventually found that I just don't like it. The amusing in-game justification for this combat style (Ichiban plays far too much Dragon Quest, so he thinks that turn-based combat is how honorable heroes fight) is, as I just said, amusing, but it takes all the worst parts of this kind of gameplay and runs with them. Characters will say the exact same two lines of dialogue over and over and over every time you have them do anything. You'll frequently have to grind to be prepared for the next story beat, and the thugs you can fight to do this grinding offer so little experience and so little prize money that it's barely justifiable. And of course, battles last far longer than they would in other Yakuza titles. Beyond that, though, it's just boring as hell. As a big fan of both Pokemon and Persona 5, I'm not opposed to well done turn-based combat, but Yakuza: Like a Dragon doesn't do anything to make itself interesting in the long run. New moves can provide fun comedic moments, but because of this game's very nature as a turn-based RPG, they'll get repeated adnauseum to the point where they don't even register in your mind anymore. I mean, if you're the kind of person who is somehow capable of enjoying what I (have just now decided to) call "Nyquilware" games like Octopath Traveler, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of the gameplay here, but this is...really not a good representation of where turn-based combat ought to be in 2020. And this is made all the more frustrating by an issue that seems to have gotten worse and worse with each new Yakuza title after 0: the frequency of enemy encounters. In most Yakuza games, there'll be thugs everywhere wanting to fight you, and if they see you, you have to either fight them or run away from them for long enough without them catching up to you. This typically happens when you're on the way to do something that you actually want to do, and you'll have to take another route or waste time fighting easy-to-beat enemies. It's significantly worse in Like a Dragon, because you no longer have the option of outrunning enemy groups that notice you. If you're spotted, you're thrust immediately into combat. From there, you still have the option to run by holding a button down, but there's a chance that this will fail. And unlike previous titles, it isn't just "usually" when you're on your way to do something you actually want to do...it's "always" that. The enemies seem to spawn on every road and move around inhumanly, turning around and changing directions out of nowhere, sometimes seeing you through walls, sometimes not, etc. I wanted this to be a brief discussion but it seems I've gotten carried away, so TLDR: I really didn't end up liking the turn they took with combat, and I sincerely hope they never try anything like this again, because it's basically crap. 

If I had to point to one issue overall that I had with my time in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, I'd say it's the fact that it feels so soulless. The lack of interesting story and characters, the lack of interesting substories, the baby's first JRPG gameplay, nothing about this feels like it has heart. It has creativity and some excellent humor, sure, but no soul. I remember the moment when I first realized that that was the feeling I'd had throughout my time. It was the last night that I played this game, and it was the night where I realized the karaoke minigame was back (easily my favorite side activity from the main series). I barreled my way to the bar where I could do the minigame and rubbed my hands together gleefully...only to find the most phoned-in possible version of this activity. None of the performances were particularly good, and the newly-introduced songs I could have Ichiban sing...or should I say, the one newly-introduced song I could have Ichiban sing...was completely directionless and just felt like musical stream of consciousness. In the immense disappointment I felt in that moment, I realized that in spite of the many ways in which the developers shook things up, Like a Dragon as a whole felt just like the karaoke minigame: phoned in. Even the new city of Yokohama felt lacking in soul. Obviously no city is going to have the personality of Kamurocho over the course of a single game, but the secondary cities of Sotenbori and Onomichi in the past two mainline games had enough personality to be enjoyable anyway! I don't know, maybe it grows on a player as the game progresses, but not one part of the city I've explored so far has felt unique. I remember having to go to the Yokohama version of Chinatown for a story mission only to find that their Chinatown was a place I'd already been walking through without noticing anything that would indicate it was Chinatown. Compare that to the Chinatown area of Kamurocho. Hell, compare any part of this city to the Champion District or Theatre Square in Kamurocho! Those places become mental landmarks when you first see them. Where can the same be said in Yokohama? Like, I want to be clear here and specify that Yokohama isn't a bad setting, it's just vastly inferior to what we've already seen in Yakuza. That's really the overarching theme of my thoughts: Like a Dragon isn't bad, it's just nowhere near good enough. 

Normally I like to do a technical section, but I've already rambled too long in this article that was supposed to be a brief discussion. I think it would be easy to read all of this and think "you don't like it because it's different than what you're used to." I think it would be equally easy to see that I knew about the changes that were being made ahead of time and think "if you knew it was going to be different, why did you even try it?" Well it seemed like a pretty safe bet. The minds behind Yakuza are brilliant, and even if it wasn't going to be the exciting, fun gameplay I was used to, I believed that they could still pull off their magic in the story and characters and wacky side quests. But they didn't. Lately, the Yakuza games have been accused of becoming more than a little formulaic (I remember pointing out that they literally copy-pasted some of the minigame menus from earlier titles into Judgment), so even though this was going to be radically different, nobody could blame the devs for trying something new, and as a player, I thought that maybe a new direction could be a breath of fresh air. 

Well, they did try. They certainly did try.

And having now experienced the results, I sincerely hope they don't "try" again. 

So there, those are my thoughts on Yakuza: Like a Dragon: not bad, but not nearly good enough.