Like a Dragon 8: Infinite Wealth is the best game (No story spoilers)

16 Mar, 2024

If there was one thing I was looking forward to going into 2024, it was the release of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name from late last year was a nice enough appetizer, but I think my favorite part of that game aside from its ending chapter was playing the included Infinite Wealth demo. This game just felt different. Bold. Ambitious. Ichiban Kasuga was going overseas to Honolulu and teaming up with not only brand new characters but the legendary Kazuma Kiryu himself.

I have now finished Infinite Wealth. I am still playing it because there is a lot I haven’t done, but I completed the main story.

The game lived up to my expectations in practically every way. I think it’s gotta be my new favorite Yakuza game.

This is my review with no story spoilers at all. I do spoil what minigames are in this game though. I’m gonna talk about all the story spoilers in my next post. Wooo!

Background

Infinite Wealth is the eighth mainline game in the Like a Dragon series—except Yakuza 0 exists, so it’s really the ninth. (The series is kind of like an array in programming in that sense).

(If you’re wondering why the series used to be called Yakuza but is now called Like a Dragon, well, Like a Dragon has always been the “true” name in that it’s a translation of the Japanese title of the series. I give a little bit of background on the whole series in my previous post).

Anyway.

Despite being the ninth game in the series, a fair number of people will think of Infinite Wealth as the second. This is because, after Yakuza: Like a Dragon (aka Yakuza 7), it’s the second game to star Ichiban Kasuga and the second in the series to be a full-on turn-based RPG.

Taking the frantic beat-um-up style combat out of Yakuza and replacing it with what you might consider its opposite sounds crazy, yet Ryu ga Gotoku studio proved they could make it work. I think much of what makes the combat in 7 fun from the get-go is simply its novelty. You’re still playing in a 3D environment, fighting enemies on a street in Tokyo, and you can still even pick up objects from the ground to use as weapons—but now you make your moves via a menu, and you can do special moves and heal and all that RPG stuff. Not a lot of video games have applied turn-based combat to a modern-day setting.

The more you play, the more various moves you’ll unlock (obviously). And the concepts behind many of these moves are insanely creative. You can summon a flock of pigeons to attack your enemies, for instance. But if the moves sound hilarious from the descriptions alone, just wait until you execute them and actually see the animations. The so-called Kiwami moves (Kiwami means extreme!) you’ll unlock at higher levels are especially hilarious. Crazy animations have long been a large part of turn-based combat’s appeal (even back in the SNES days), and the dev team went above and beyond for this game to make some unforgettable attacks.

I should mention that there is still an action element to this combat system, because many special moves will prompt you to press a button with correct timing for extra damage. And you can press a block button anytime an enemy attacks you—do it with good timing, and you’ll get reduced damage. It’s always satisfying to do, even if, ultimately, you can probably get by fine without it. Also, if an enemy is on the ground, you can have your next party member attack them quickly for extra damage. I do this all the time.

Now, I said the studio made turn-based combat work for Yakuza, but did they do a masterful job? No, there was plenty of room for improvement. It was their first try, after all. While I found Yakuza: Like a Dragon’s combat pretty fun for a while, it started to feel a bit stale before I reached the end of the main story.

Now let me caveat this by saying that even though I played through the game all the way twice, I am not someone who tries to dive super deep into systems. I play the game like an average person, I think. So maybe the combat has strengths I haven’t realized. That said, this is what my experience was.

The combat in Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a traditional turn-based system without much of a twist—well, the ability to pick up objects is a twist, but the effect that has on strategy is only mild. There are enemy weaknesses and resistances (fire, water, electricity—the usual stuff) you can attack for extra damage, though your own team doesn’t have weaknesses. There are buffs and debuffs as well as status ailments—standard RPG stuff. But in most situations, the best strategy is simply to just use the strongest attacks you have and don’t worry about the other stuff. Not that that doesn’t apply to other RPGs, of course.

So this wouldn’t necessarily be a big problem, but when the game starts putting you against bosses who have lots of health yet pose no real threat to your party as long as you sometimes heal, boy does it start to feel mindless.

I also feel like the job system doesn’t do much for the strategic aspect of the game either. There is so little variety in the type of actions you can do that changing jobs just feels like choosing different funny animations. And that definitely has value—I talked just a few paragraphs ago about how great the animations are in this game. It’s just, when you play a bunch of hours, the jobs stop being all that fun.

So those were basically my biggest problems with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. I was always open to turn-based combat, but I felt like there needed to be some more twists.

Also, it kind of took me out of the game when my guys got stuck on a part of the world. It didn’t happen too much, but still. Minor issue.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. That difficulty spike late in the game? Yeah, that was lame. Most of the game you can kind of just go through it taking on whatever they throw at you, but there is a point where you go to Osaka and they say, “Hey, here’s an optional training dungeon.” I said, “I don’t want to do that!” and went on to the next story segment, but then I soon found myself against bosses who were much higher level than me. So of course I went back and did the training anyway. Wasn’t a fan of that. I mean you can beat em under-leveled, but it’s gonna be tricky.

But I mean, most other aspects of the game were great. Yeah I think the story had too much exposition in a few places, but overall, it was one of the best in the series to me.

So Infinite Wealth had plenty to live up to and plenty to improve on as well. You could say the game had infinite potential.

………… yeah alright anyway let’s talk about it.

The Gameplay

Combat

Let’s get right into the big question: is the combat improved in Infinite Wealth?

There are a few big additions this time. First of all, you can move characters around. You know how grabbing items off the ground was a feature in 7, but one that kind of didn’t matter at all? It matters much more here, because you can move towards an item to get closer to it and pick it up. Being close to an enemy and performing a standard attack enables a “Proximity Bonus,” and if you happen to be behind an enemy, you can do a “Back Attack.” Even better, if you’re near an ally and their bond rank has gone up a bit, you can team up and attack an enemy together. None of these attacks cost any MP.

One of my favorite combat changes is how you can intentionally knock enemies into each other. This is another part of why you’ll want to move your characters around. Not only can you knock enemies into their buddies, you can also knock an enemy in the direction of an ally; naturally, your ally will follow up with an attack of their own.

Normal attacks can knock back enemies, but you’ll have skills labeled as “Knockback”guaranteed to do so as well. You’ll also notice another label: “Grapple.” Enemies can guard, but any skill with this property instantly breaks their guard so you can keep dealing maximum damage.

Then you have the Hype Meter. Every character has one as long as you’ve raised their bond level a bit. It charges gradually during battle, and once full, you can activate a strong, flashy attack at any time. They persist between battles, so you can save your attacks for just the right moment.

Poundmates has also been revamped. While some of these summons are just one-time attacks just like in the previous game, others will fight alongside you for several turns. This is a fun change, and once I had completed a significant amount of side content, I started using Poundmates often—much more frequently than I did in the last game.

Enemies can no longer stand in your way if you try to attack someone farther away, so you’ll no longer waste turns with that—that was always kind of annoying, and I like the increased flexibility allowed here. And you are far less likely to see a party member get stuck trying to run over to someone—though it still does happen on rare occasion. In such instances, they teleported over to the enemy before I got too impatient.

A lot of support skills are now area-of-effect instead of just affecting the entire party—in other words, if a party member is too far from where you cast the spell, it won’t reach them.

Even with all these little changes and new additions, I actually don’t think the combat has gotten a whole lot more strategic. But what it has gotten is… much more fun!!!

Knocking enemies into each other, punching through huge crowds, using the powerful Hype Meter attacks, doing combo attacks. It all just feels faster and much more chaotic. I thought the combat of 7 needed some twists, and Ryu ga Gotoku Studio delivered them in spades.

Oh, and there are some extra special things only Kiryu can do. Remember his different fighting styles from Yakuza 0 and Kiwami? Those are here in turn-based form. There’s more, too—but should I spoil it? Well, even though I already knew from playing the demo and seeing trailers what happens when Kiryu’s Hype Meter is full, when I finally unlocked it and used it for the first time, I felt so happy.

One last word on combat: the designs of the enemies you’ll face, just like last game, are surprising and hilarious. Despite almost all your enemies being humans, in Ichiban’s vision, they take all sorts of wacky shapes. They have some attacks that will certainly surprise you and make you laugh, too.

Jobs

Like combat, I wouldn’t say that the job system was fundamentally rethought by any means, but the devs added stuff on top of the foundation that simply makes it more fun. I mean, there are some absolutely crazy jobs in this game.

I think 7’s approach to jobs was to ask, “What are some jobs that exist in real life that we could use as RPG classes?” Which is brilliant, really. They got creative, with hilarious results. The idea that you could get jobs like Breakdancer or Night Queen by going to Hello Work is amazing.

The framing for how you obtain new jobs in Infinite Wealth is different, though. It works like this: as Ichiban and his friends do special activities in Hawaii by going to this tourism agency called Alo-Happy, he (or Chitose in some cases) gets an idea on a new way to fight (pretty much exactly like the Revelations in some previous titles, but without the blogging and woodcarving and all that). Some of the ideas are connected to the tourist activities by only the most bizarre of threads, which makes them even funnier and more surprising. There seem to be no real limiters on the possibilities for jobs this time, which is why some of them are totally wild and so much fun. I’m not even gonna spoil them. It’s funnier if you discover them for yourself.

Combined with the combat improvements, the new jobs did make me feel more satisfied with the job system overall compared to 7. Plus the Revelation cutscenes for unlocking the jobs are hilarious. I found out while playing Premium Adventure you can actually rewatch them by going back to Alo-Happy.

Dungeons & Story "Levels"

I didn’t really like dungeons in 7. There was the Yokohama underground which had pretty repetitive music that made me not like it much. And there were Sotenbori and Millennium Tower as well. If you were trying to grind XP, it was a repetitive experience. Well, I am happy to say that Infinite Wealth makes some huge changes for the better in this area.

For a pair of games that already have a lot in common with Persona, it’s only fitting that Infinite Wealth would add one more such element: procedurally-generated dungeons. That means that when you go to one of the new dungeons, each floor is going to be a little different every time, in its layout, the treasure you’ll find, and the enemies you’ll face.

The new Yokohama dungeon still has that music I dislike, but you can actually play music from the CDs you find instead, which is pretty dang cool.

Because of the element of slight unpredictability, dungeon-crawling in Infinite Wealth is infinitely more fun than in 7 (that’s an exaggeration but I wanted to say it). Plus, again, better combat just means every part of the game involving combat is going to be more fun.

Now combat, of course, happens out in town and in dungeons. But then there are those story sequences that I wouldn’t exactly call dungeons. They don’t really have a name so I’m just going to call them levels, I guess.

Remember the levels from the older Yakuza games? You’d run through hall after hall, beating up dozens of enemies, just knocking down everyone in your way until eventually you face a boss or two.

What’s crazy about Infinite Wealth is that I actually get that same feeling even though the combat is turn-based. How’d they do that? It seems like the enemy count is simply higher during these levels than in similar sequences in 7, though I’d have to go back to 7 to confirm that.

There is an important difference in how Infinite Wealth handles prepping you for these sections. Before you enter one, a message will pop up, giving you a recommendation for what level your party should be at. As long as you meet that, you will tear through normal enemies super quickly before facing a higher-level boss.

The fun here is not in prepping an expert strategy, it’s in selecting a powerful move and watching it knock down a bunch of dummies. That may seem a little strange for an RPG, but I think it was a great decision for this game. Yakuza was never the most technical action game when it had brawler combat, anyway, but it was a fun one, and likewise Infinite Wealth is not the most strategic turn-based RPG, but it sure is a fun one.

There are some encounters in this game at big story moments that are so incredibly exciting and memorable. It’s like that one huge brawl in 7 at that part where they announce the dissolution of the yakuza groups—times ten. Just crazy stuff I never would’ve imagined.

Exploration

Yakuza: Like a Dragon took place primarily in an area brand new to the series: the (fictional) Isezaki Ijincho district of Yokohama. It was bigger than any previous map, and it was a lot of fun to explore. Now Infinite Wealth brings another, even bigger locale for Ichiban to explore: Honolulu, Hawaii.

I didn’t realize just how big this place was until I ran across the classic Yakuza area Kamurocho again. Going from north to south there is a pretty quick run, but if you were to run from east to west in Honolulu? Shoot, that’d take a while.

That’s why the game gives you Segway-type-vehicles to ride pretty early on! You just press down on the D-pad to summon one. (In Lost Judgment, Yagami could ride a skateboard around Ijincho but I guess no one else is that cool).

And taking a taxi is easier than ever. In the last game, you had to use your in-game smartphone to summon one, but now you just click right on the stop you want to go directly from the map.

Honolulu in this game looks gorgeous. In the daytime, you’re surrounded by a vibrant blue sky. The whole area looks so warm and lively. Every so often, brief rainstorms occur, leaving puddles afterwards. You might even see a rainbow.

The game may not have a Rockstar Games level of realism—I kind of expected crowds to react a little more to the rain than they do, to be honest—but you gotta realize, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio has released five brand new Like a Dragon/Judgment games since the time Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption 2. To me, that’s better.

After running around in Japan for so many games, now that I’m running around in America, I’m amazed at how accurate things look. I’ve never been to Hawaii, of course, but what I can do is point at stuff and say, “Yep, that IS what a stop sign looks like! And that IS what an American house looks like!” I just really appreciate how they got the details of things so right.

As usual, Sega has deals with companies to include some real-life stores in the game, and yes, that includes in Hawaii. I’ve never been to a real ABC Store, because we don’t have them where I live, but I visited the ones in the game. And yeah, if I was gonna go to one of the nicer convenience stores, that is definitely what it would look like. You know, this is the type of product placement people actually enjoy because of the realism it adds.

Oh, and the mall? Wow, that looks so cool. And I like how the only arcade cabinets in the map are there. That’s pretty realistic. (You know. Because America has few arcades nowadays).

Of course, you have the beach as part of this map. You can swim in the ocean whenever you want, though you can’t look underwater. You can collect trash in certain spots, which you can exchange for items. You can also get hit by boats, which I find funny. So, there’s not exactly a ton of reasons to swim, but it just feels nice to do every now and then—plus you might want to see the characters in their swimsuits, right?

When you’re running across Honolulu, as usual, there are enemies just waiting to jump you. There are a lot of them, so if you want to get some experience, that’s easy to do, but they’re not too hard to evade, either. And yes, they are all voiced by American-sounding dudes. Some of their lines are pretty funny, not gonna lie.

Enemies’ danger levels are clearly marked now with icons above their heads. Purples out-level you by a significant margin. Reds are similar in level to you. And blues can be instantly KO’d. That’s right, a prompt will show up allowing you to finish the fight in just a couple seconds.

There are also tougher enemies that stay in particular spots, waiting to be challenged. Usually, there will be treasure behind them.

Now, Hawaii is overflowing with stuff to do. But you know what else is cool? Japan is still in the game too. Of course, the Japan maps are ones we’ve seen before, and they haven’t changed a whole lot, but even so, you’ll keep busy in them. I will talk about how you’ll keep busy in the next sections.

Sujimon

Yakuza: Like a Dragon introduced Sujimon. The myriad of weird enemies Ichiban sees are catalogued in the Sujidex. It’s like Pokemon. But in Infinite Wealth, they go much farther. You can now capture Sujimon and have battles against other Sujimon trainers. So now it’s really like Pokemon.

I mean, I’m not a big Pokemon fan, but even I can recognize that a lot of the music for this mode is pretty Pokemon-esque!

Sujimon are humans, of course, and Ichiban doesn’t have any magic balls that capture them, so how does he do it? Why, he gives them a present and convinces them, obviously. And then they become his buddies! Sort of.

To be honest, once Sujimon battles were introduced to me, I kind of just ignored them the rest of the game. Probably shouldn’t have, though, because stopping to battle the trainers you’ll see in Honolulu can be fun. And honestly, this activity got more and more fun the further I got into it.

As you’d expect if you’ve played really any Yakuza since 5, there is a whole storyline for this side activity where you have to beat a series of increasingly powerful and evil adversaries at said activity. It’s a great tradition, isn’t it?

With Sujimon, there are some elements to it which anyone who’s played a mobile phone RPG will immediately recognize. I mean, I don’t play many of those (not since they shut down School Idol Festival All Stars) but I know enough. First, there is a gachapon mechanic for getting more sujimon. You can use in-game money or tickets you find. You can also get sujimon by “catching” them like I mentioned earlier, or by winning sujimon battles. Then of course you can strengthen your sujimon with items and by having sujimon absorb duplicate sujimon (the tutorial for this is funny; make sure to read it).

Also, there are Sujimon Stops giving out useful items all around Honolulu, as well as limited-time raids that seem to constantly pop up. So it’s also kind of like Pokemon Go.

Raids, by the way, are opportunities to capture certain types of sujimon after beating them in combat. Normal combat, not sujimon battles.

One other cool thing about sujimon is that they can also help you on Dondoko Island with getting resources, and they can train and get stronger there too. So the two big side activities in this game are interwoven, which I don’t think previous games have attempted to this extent.

As for the actual Sujimon battles themselves: basically you have three versus three, with three backups per team, and you fling attacks at each other. It’s turn-based combat, with your turn arriving as soon as your MP recharges, so using cheaper attacks will give you turns more frequently—sujimon’s speed stats determine how quickly MP charges. Position also matters, as you do the most damage to the enemy right in front of you. Because of this, the sujimon in the center is able to attack all three opponents at once, while a sujimon on the left side will be unable to reach the opponent on the right side, but can hit the one in the center. Finally, in classic rock-paper-scissors fashion, certain types are strong against other types and thus do increased damage. So it’s not crazy complicated, but it has enough depth to be a pretty fun game!

I definitely underestimated Sujimon, probably because I’m not a big Pokemon fan. Turns out, it’s pretty good, and is another way this game will keep you coming back again and again.

Miss Match

In this minigame, Ichiban tries online dating. You create your profile and see who you match with. Then you start chatting and try to meet up with them IRL.

Do you remember the phone club minigame from Yakuza 0? This is kind of the modern version of that, except instead of shooter gameplay, you press the face buttons quickly to type messages (just like that other minigame in Yakuza 6 that I’m not gonna talk about right now). But it shares the hilarious over-the-top animations for simple actions! Kiryu in the 80s answering the phone, Kasuga in the present tapping on an app….

This game is funny, but unfortunately, anything in Yakuza games with live action videos—which are what you might see if you do well at the game—embarrasses me. So, although I want to win the game, I also don’t? Plus, the personalities of the women in the videos don’t even match what they say online!

Well, in a weird way, that’s only fair, because Ichiban is making literally everything up in his profile in order to get better matches. I mean he has no job, so you just pick one in your profile and remember to stick to it in the actual chat session. But you also pretty much invent a whole personality. It’s hilarious. Ichiban is being a sociopath just to talk to girls.

That seems kind of out-of-character—but then again, it’s definitely not the first time a Yakuza protagonist acted a little different in a minigame.

Crazy Delivery

I’m gonna be honest, I have not played the game Crazy Taxi. It’s a Sega classic. Maybe they should add the arcade version to the next Like a Dragon game.

Anyway though, this game is like that, I guess. Except you’re delivering food on a bike. And you gotta do cool flips to get money.

It’s a fun arcade-style game, kind of like Can Quest in the last game (which is also back in this game in Ijincho).

Dondoko Island

I watched the video where they revealed this, and part of me wonders if I should stop watching every single bit of news about the next game because the surprise I would’ve felt discovering this on my own would’ve been massive. Still, I was amazed just watching the trailer.

Dondoko Island is like Animal Crossing: New Horizons in that you customize an island with furniture you can craft yourself, and people come to visit it. Animal Crossing is also about talking to your neighbors, and this game doesn’t really emphasize that, but, you know, the comparison is still valid.

Dondoko Island is kind of the replacement for the business minigame in the last game. I got hooked on that game right away, but I ditched Dondoko Island to go back to the main story as soon as I could. Now that I’m done with the story, I’m back, and I’m enjoying this mode. It doesn’t have that addictive three-minute-per-round loop, but it’s a larger-scale experience you’ll probably end up playing for a longer time than the business mode. Your goal is to turn the totally trashed island into a luxurious five-star resort. And not only do you clean up literal trash, you also have to beat up invaders with a bat. It’s not even turn-based combat, or any kind of past Yakuza combat; you just wack em and dodge-roll to avoid damage. It’s very simple but surprisingly fun.

Unlike Animal Crossing, you make money when people come to visit your island. You’ll unlock more visitors through exploring and progressing the story in the main game, although you’ll want to upgrade your island before inviting those with expectations.

While this mode seemed like a bit of a chore initially, it got more and more fun the further I got. You can upgrade your house to make it bigger, you can get items that make obtaining resources much easier, and you unlock more and more cool stuff in DIY.

Which, funny thing about DIY: somehow Ichiban can create multistory buildings from a crafting bench. I don’t know why I didn’t see the humor in this at first; I guess I was too absorbed in the mechanics. But yeah, all the buildings are just re-used assets from the main game. Which I love. I always wanted my own Smile Burger on my own island (not to imply you can actually go inside it).

Visitors also have different types of items they like, so you’ll want variety. And you’ll need to build lodging as well. You start off providing just a little tent, which is enough to satisfy some visitors, but eventually you can build some real cozy places to stay.

As you keep playing, you clear trash off more and more of the island, so you can place more and more items. The sense of progression gets pretty satisfying.

I wasn’t totally sure about Dondoko Island at first, but it’s turned out to be a fun mode. You gotta play it if you want to get all the trophies, so I’m happy to say that it’s worth the time.

Sicko Snap

This game not only has Animal Crossing and Pokémon, but also Pokémon Snap?? Yes, it’s a game where you ride on a trolley and have to take pictures of… sickos. They’re really buff half-naked guys flexing, basically.

If that sounds funny, believe me, it is. It’s a simple, super fun minigame.

Aloha Links

In Honolulu, Ichiban is introduced to an app that somehow tracks when you say hi to people in real life. So then you can walk around Honolulu, pressing square to say hi to people.

It’s really just a simple way to encourage you to explore every corner of the map. There are a lot of people, too, and you can read little tidbits about each one you meet.

Cabaret Clubs

Cabaret clubs work pretty much the same way as the previous game. You choose a couple hostesses, order some food and drink, and you gain some amount of bond level with your friends as a result. I believe the only difference this time is there is a chance for a special skill to activate, which will of course yield far better results. Now, America doesn’t have cabaret clubs, but you can see pole dancers instead, and it works the same way. So yeah.

Vocational School

The part where you take a bunch of tests on random topics actually hasn’t changed at all, but it’s in Hawaii this time, so I’m putting it on the list!

Sub-Stories

I don’t really need to explain sub-stories. Once again, there are many quests you’ll have the chance to complete by wandering around the world. Some are funny. Some are touching. Many are both.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon had this one sub-story where you have to help this young tour guide girl remember info so her parents will be proud of her. There are a few sub-stories in this game that remind me of that one, where you have to remember stuff or solve a little puzzle. In the Infinite Wealth demo, you could actually play a couple. There’s one where you end up working at a restaurant and have to try to learn the names of Hawaiian cuisine.

There are also sub-stories that you could say have little minigames of their own. They happen to make controlling Kasuga’s movement way more difficult than normal, so that can be fun… or not.

I like the variety in these sub-stories. Of course, none of these challenges are all that involved, so don’t be intimidated.

The only thing I dislike about substories is that eventually, you run out of them (technically there are a few harder-to-find ones at the end of the list I still gotta do). But as I think back on all the ones I played…gosh, there were some great ones.

Memoirs of a Dragon

Kiryu remembers his past. If you’ve played previous Yakuza games, you will get a lot out of this. If you haven’t, well, you’ll learn some stuff about them, I guess.

That’s really all that needs to be said about that. Since I’ve been a fan of the series for a few years, I was really happy about this part of the game.

Social Time With Your Friends

Having a team is like the whole point of the Ichiban Kasuga games, and of course there’s a lot more to being a team than just fighting bad guys.

Drink Links, the series of one-on-one conversations with each party member at the bar, return from the previous game, with all-new stories.

Table Talks, where eating certain food at a restaurant triggers a conversation, also return. These are a lot of fun and can be really funny.

And around the city, you’ll also have the chance to hear Party Chats, where the party just has a fun little conversation about something. There are a lot of these.

All those were in the previous game. But there is a new feature that’s like a Party Chats but focusing on one specific party member. And when you trigger one of these conversations by going to a specific spot in the city, it’ll fill out a spot in that party member’s Bond Bingo. It’s all about getting to know your friends and their random interests. I really love this addition. Especially because I sure did want to get to know Chitose (more on that in a moment).

Oh and uh you can also go to a swimming pool with your friends for $500. Worth it.

The Story

Yakuza games are full of cutscenes. But unlike some video games, they are the type of cutscenes I very much look forward to. I love the stories in these games. Playing through the whole series a few years back was like watching every season of a great TV show for the first time; with each one I finished, I just immediately wanted to see what Kiryu and everyone would get up to next. I mean, even the parts that were less good were still a super fun ride.

I was especially excited for this game because at the end of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Ichiban Kasuga had a whole crew of allies at his side, and from promotional material, it seemed we’d definitely get to find out what all these folks were up to.

Also there was this new character named Chitose Fujinomiya, and she looked hot. Then I was shocked when I found out she was voiced by none other than Anju Inami. Inami is the voice of Chika Takami, the leader of Aqours! Yes it’s very important that I tell you this.

Anyway, without spoiling anything, having played through the whole story, I thought it was fantastic. Definitely in the upper tier of Yakuza/Like a Dragon stories right alongside 0 and 7. Which one is best? I dunno, maybe still 0? Answering that question is not really the point of this.

I will say, while I’m not sure which story is better overall, I think 8’s story was easier to follow and more consistently engaging than 7. There were moments in 7 where there’s too much explanation going on for too long (and Kasuga’s friends are just awkwardly listening in the background to stuff that doesn’t really pertain to them). I didn’t feel that at all in Infinite Wealth. There were still lengthy scenes full of exposition, but in most cases, they were providing answers to questions I was truly interested in, so I wasn’t bored at all. Actually, for most of the game, I struggled to even pull myself away from the story.

That’s not to say the pacing is perfect. There are some big slowdowns for sure. Chapter 12 in particular has you go through some little stories that seem disconnected from everything. I found it curious that they were required, and I imagine some players who never played Kiryu’s games will find these moments especially puzzling. That said, I personally enjoyed this chapter.

Of course, when I realized I was getting close to the end of the game, I started slowing down on purpose because I didn’t want the game to end. What I’m saying is, your sense of the pacing may vary from mine.

Anyway, when comparing 7 and 8, I feel like 8 was more consistent, but the highs of 7 might be better than the highs of 8. That said, the highs of 8 are still dang high.

There were some scenes in this game where I was in awe of everything. The drama. The performances. The intensity. It’s all done so well, carried by excellent animation and acting.

It’s kind of funny when you’re immersed in a gripping cutscene only for the game to suddenly switch to a battle where some people in your party might be wearing funny costumes.

I love Chitose not just because she’s hot and is voiced by someone I admire, but also because her characterization and the arc she has are super good! For most of the game, there’s this mystery about what her motivations truly are, and that’s a big part of what kept me glued to the story.

You also get this dude Eric Tomizawa who is great as well! Although I can’t seem to remember as much about him. HA. Seriously though, his biggest character arc kind of happens very early on, so it’s not as fresh in my mind. But yeah I like this dude.

A big question fans might have about this game is whether it was a good idea to bring Kiryu back into the story as a main character. I certainly had my doubts when it was first announced, after all. But I have to say that Kiryu’s part in this story is excellent. He stars in so many of the most emotional scenes in the game, and it’s amazing that such an iconic character can still have such a satisfying arc.

Now, Adachi, Nanba, and Saeko are of course very important in this story as well, to an extent, but it’s not “their” story per se. Saeko is, however, pretty central to Ichiban’s arc in this story.

Seonhee is playable this time, and Zhao and Joongi are back too, but outside of their “Drink Link” segments (which of course you’ll want to do), they don’t get big character moments in the story. Which I don’t have a problem with. This story had enough to juggle already.

Speaking of which—a lot of Yakuza games tend to end up with too many antagonists to the point where it gets hard to keep them straight. This is a problem Infinite Wealth avoids. There are a few betrayals, but the overall number of major villains is very small, and I can actually name them all off the top of my head. That said, while these guys sure are evil, it’s a little hard to surpass some of 7’s villains with how personal things got in that story.

After finishing this game, Ichiban Kasuga has got to be one of my favorite characters to ever exist in anything. He inspires me to believe in people. To see the good in them that they don’t even see themselves. Do people take advantage of his extreme earnestness? Oh yeah. But you can’t shake him. He will persist in his beliefs and will change lives as a result.

There’s plenty more I want to say about this story, but I gotta talk spoilers to do so. That’ll be in my next post.

Conclusion

I love this game and I think you should play it.

What I’ve been wanting to talk about for weeks is all the story spoilers. And I could have just written that first but it was like I felt compelled to do everything in its proper order and write my thoughts about the game in a non-spoiler way. But next post. It’s going down. I’m gonna talk about all the twists and turns and random funny stuff. I will try to have fun.

See you then.

PS. A Stupid Extra Section: Voice Languages

Maybe it’s stupid to even talk about this, but I want to anyway. You can play this game with Japanese or English voices. Some fourteen-year-old on the Internet is gonna get verrrrry offended if you play with English though!

Honestly, a game asking you at the beginning “What audio do you want?” is somewhat unusual. For fans who prefer the Japanese voices, it’s convenient, because then you don’t have to go into settings and change the default like usual.

Despite what random Internet people say, I think it’s realistic to assume that most English-speaking newcomers are gonna pick English audio without even thinking twice. And you know what? They will have a good time.

I have not played with the English audio, but I have listened to it on YouTube quite a bit. It’s solid acting.

That said, in my mind, the original cast is just how those characters are meant to sound. As fun as it is to hear my own language, I don’t want to miss out on the performances from the Japanese actors.

With Infinite Wealth, I think a couple of the English voices truly fit about as closely as you could ever hope for. Ichiban in particular gives off the exact right energy—that passion, that friendliness, that stupidity. All the things that make you say, yeah, that’s Ichiban.

There are some other voices which I think give off a very different impression in English from the Japanese version. I can’t really buy into the Kiryu voice being that of a 55-year-old legendary ex-yakuza. It lacks the gravitas. It also bugs me how Saeko’s English voice is a lot lower and seems a bit more sour than the Japanese voice—even though the acting itself is good. Seonhee sounds more casual than I’d expect.

This is really just nerdy nitpicking, though. These voices are close enough so that players certainly aren’t going to walk away with totally different impressions of the characters after going through the whole story.

Chitose is supposed to be a cool twenty-something woman, and yeah, that’s about what she sounds like in English. The direction for Tomi’s English voice is pretty interesting because he kind of has an accent. Tomi has a negative attitude about stuff and it’s played in an entertaining way here.

Anyway, yeah, overall it seems like they did a good job making the English version.

Except for the karaoke! I dunno what they’re doing there. The editing makes it sound super processed. Which is bad. Can we get a patch?

Ok bye. I don’t know why but when I was like 95% done with this post I walked away and didn’t come back for a few weeks. Don’t know why I did that. But now I’m just gonna send it. Wooo! See you next time.