Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
LIKE A DRAGON: INFINITE WE ALTH is a dizzyingly huge all-you-can-eat Yakuza buffet
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth feels indulgent in a way few games get to be. Enough drama to fill two normal Yakuza games, a Hawaiian city sparkling in the sun and an absurd lineup of minigames including resort management and creature taming. It’s impossible to go five minutes without it excitedly thrusting another glossy distraction in your face, even as stakes escalate. Honestly, it’s better than most vacations I’ve been on.
Most of Infinite Wealth’s issues come and go in the first 15 hours of its sprawling narrative as it tries to introduce a cast of dozens, the city of Yokohama, and give a crash course on current protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, former Yakuza grunt turned 40-something hero with a heart of gold.
As a longtime Yakuza player I felt more than a little bit of déjà vu while Infinite Wealth crawled its way through old gameplay mechanics, characters and locations. Despite some strong narrative beats early on, it does take a while for Infinite Wealth to ‘get good’, but I swear it’s worth the wait.
TROPICAL PUNCH
Like A Dragon’s metamorphosis into an RPG series feels complete here, shedding its Shenmue-esque brawler roots in favour of a fast-and-loose turn-based battle system with some timed hits, mashing on some rapid combos for extra damage, or in sync with a big impact for extra damage. Similarly, incoming attacks can be weakened if you tap the block button just before it lands, although enemy animations are often unpredictable enough to make this tricky.
Even with these light action elements, I never found it demanded too much thought on the default difficulty, but that’s fine. It captures that familiar messy, loose feel of classic Yakuza combat. That it helps keep fights fast and breezy feels all the more important considering the hundreds (potentially thousands) of street brawls you’ll be getting into.
It takes awhile for Infinite Wealth to ‘get good’, but it’s worth the wait
Combat works in a fundamentally similar way to the previous game, but now offers far more fine-grained control over brawls. Enemies no longer get to launch infuriating opportunity attacks out-of-turn, for starters. Better yet, you’re now free to reposition your characters before launching an attack, lining up angles and ideally slamming one street punk through three or four of his friends, leaving them all in a tangled, always-satisfying mook-pile.
