Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s big message with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, purposefully not called Yakuza 7, is that the yakuza need to evolve – both the real and the virtual ones. Accordingly, Like a Dragon makes a break from its past in both its story and systems, ironically enough by referencing Dragon Quest, an RPG renowned for taking a staunchly traditionalist approach with its latest instalment.
Our new hero is Kasuga Ichiban, an expressive, kind-hearted doofus unlucky enough to have been born at a soapland, a massage parlour and the closest Japan gets to a brothel. Kasuga isn’t just a hero by his own designation, he’s inherently good to the point of naivety, which isn’t a good trait to have in his profession. In an echo of former Yakuza protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, his strong loyalty and belief in others lead him to go to prison for the patriarch of his yakuza family. When he gets out 18 years later, he’s greeted with a bullet to the chest and dumped in the fictional district of Isezaki Ijincho in nearby Yokohama.
Eventually Ichiban will get entangled with the three crime syndicates that control Ijincho, but it’s a long slog to that point. I can live with the long intro that’s customary for the Yakuza franchise at this point, where you barely move your character five steps before there’s another cut scene, but here you are in the double digit hours before the game has finished explaining every aspect of its new combat system, and it takes even longer before something akin to a plot begins to emerge.
