'Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name' Review

"You're the most gorilla-ass looking Mother----- I've ever seen"

Finally, with perseverance and many hours playing minigames, I am lapping at the heels of Like a Dragon's forefront. With this spin-off inbetween-quel, I would finally be up to date enough in the franchise to enjoy the wonders of their most recently released entry. After getting through the gigantic Lost Judgement, of course. But Like a Dragon Gaiden did hold some nugget of interested to a series veteran like me that I wasn't quite expecting. Given the consequence of Infinite Wealth, and how I already know some of the ways that game treats itself as a series flashback, I wasn't expecting Gaiden to hold so much in the way of fan-service regarding the many adventures that Kiryu Kazama has travelled down. But what I ended up getting was such a neat jaunt through the long history of Kiryu that I ended up actually 100%-ing the entire game- which is not quite the undertaking it sounds considering this is the smallest Like a Dragon game by about half a game.

'Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name' exists to fill a gap in the void of time between Kiryu's supposed death in Yakuza 6 and his abrupt resurrection in the final act of 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon'- given us the details in where he was and how he played a part in the biggest world upset this franchise has ever undergone- the dissolution of the Yakuza. As such, you might think there would be a deficit of genuine stakes and tension the narrative could dig at, given that we know where all the important characters end up, but just like Yakuza always does this game introduces a whole host of new characters who, I guess are just supposed to be hidden in the background during the representative 'Yakuza 7' moments; so we can enjoy a whole new cast of people we come to somewhat respect and then fear for the lives of as the situation becomes more dire. Yippie!

First of I would like to commend RGG for giving me the option of picking Japanese audio whilst loading into the game, which saved me from the annoyed panic-quit I've ended up doing in every game since Yakuza 7, as I start the game all excitedly only to recoil in disgust at the English tonation of the first spoken words. Why is English the default language choice in a franchise starting Japanese characters taking place exclusively in Japan? Gods, it frustrates me! Of course, I would also like to offer a curious head tilt RGG's way for their brand new studio trailer intro that mimics the stylings of Marvel Studios in a way I find both cheesy and slightly endearing. But certainly a lot more cheesy. Remember when the 'Dark Universe' tried that? It foretold grim tidings.

Like a Dragon: Gaiden gives us Kiryu some time on from his hospital visit by sweaty politician-man-who-fakes-deaths. Now he is a lacent agent for the Daidoji faction- a secretive political faction that seem to be a mix between gadget powered secret agents and surveillance-state extra-judicial enforcers. They have Kiryu is a curious position wherein knowledge of his continued existence needs to be withheld for the potential international security threatening knowledge he gained at the end of Yakuza 6, but the man is too useful to just kill off and so they hold him vaguely hostage- preventing Kiryu from visiting Haruka and Haruto or any of the other kids at the Morning Glory Orphanage. Which naturally has Kiryu existing in something of a malaise, lacking his reason to be whilst being employed as a blunt instrument for the, somehow more political ambitious, Japanese CIA.

Most significantly from a moment-to-moment perspective, this means that Kiryu- renamed to Joryu- is now the proud owner of a brand-new combat style to compliment his classic brawling antics. The 'Agent' style seems like a set of attacks designed specifically to show off the capabilities of the modern Dragon Engine through the use of flashy and physics challenging gadgets. You shoot out glowing 'Spider Wire' that wraps around enemies allowing Kiryu to chuck them whatever direction they so please, sending anything in their path flying like a wrecking ball. Summon swarms of drones that encircle you in a protective field, or charge down your targeted enemy to keep them distracted. Or just blast your way around the battlefield with rocket boots that knock back anything in your path. They mostly turn screen fodder into putty to be moulded and taken apart at the player's discretion- and that's what makes the Agent class so very fun to use!

RGG actually put a lot of emphasis behind not only making this new style of play visually interesting, but also narratively significant for the way Kiryu gradually refines his mastery of the style by growing closer to the man who invented all the tools. They've also managed to hit a surprising amount of on-screen enemies at once, allowing the player to really go to town with the way they throw about badguys and upset physics objects without a classic Dragon Engine freakout ruining the cohesion of the scene. (RIP to that meme but god is it fun to blast through twenty enemies in a huddle using the rocket boots!) Also this might be the very first game in the franchise where you'll be approached by a giant hoard of thugs in the cutscene and actually face that exact number of guys in the gameplay. (Parity at last!)

My only real gripe with this class is simple- the activation of most all these tools are awkward. They all require a hold-down button prompt in order to set off, which can all too easily be overridden by a punch or kick or dodge if you are too close to an enemy. It makes it difficult to activate these seemingly precise crowd control tools when you're in a precision moment to benefit- requiring some brute forcing to get the effect you want now and then. Also, this is an odd one, but there's a single Agent Action where Kiryu performs a few judo-style limb pops on his opponent, with each pop accompanied by a rather distracting screen flash effect. This is the only agent heat action to display such an effect, which leads me to believe this aesthetic was originally designed to permate the entire style but they scrapped it after not liking how obnoxious the screen flashes were and forgot to remove the first one. Not really a game breaking issue, but just a curiosity I noticed.

In narrative, 'Like a Dragon: Gaiden' takes us up to events coinciding with 'Yakuza 7', and as such you can expect to see 'the new Kamarucho' Yokohama make some appearances, as well as sly (and not so subtle) references to the background events going on in that game. For example, did you know that Kiryu had a giant fight against a crew right outside of the homeless camp where Ichiban was being treated by Nanba after being shot? Of course, you didn't. This whole story is very much written in the 'Oh yeah, all this crazy stuff was actually happening right off screen' manner which veers on the edge of cute and overbearing fan servicing. I sort of wobble on the fence about it. On one hand, stuff like that example does make me roll me eyes- but on the other end, the finale of this game, which matches up neatly to it's sister scene in Yakuza 7, is genuinely badass and gratifying to experience. 

I do think, however, that Gaiden takes significant liberties with it's narrative in order to create some sort of plot for our iconic spiky haired godling to tackle outside of the struggle to end the Yakuza. Kiryu works hard to keep evidence of his existence secretive, which would be simple in any other Yakuza game where the man could literally bump into another character who literally worships the ground he walks on and not get recognised. (No, I'm still not over the fact that Akiyama didn't immediately know who Kiryu was when they met in that sewer in Yakuza 4!) In this game, however, literally every thug in the street can spot the man at a glance. It gets to a point where Kiryu has to employ Clark Kent hypnosis sunglasses just to get about public- as though the only six-foot man in Japan can hide behind a pair of slightly darkened shades!

Not too long into the story it becomes very clear what the real purpose of Gaiden's story is, however: to give us an excuse to revisit much of Kiryu's greatest hits. The Castle, probably my new favourite 'underground red district' area in the entire franchise, hosts an arena that treats us to recreations of the most significant moments in Yakuza history- re-enacted as exhibition matches that Joryu, amusingly, steps into. My favourite out of these being the recreation of the Yakuza 1 finale fight, where Joryu has to fight some one dressed up as Kiryu wielding a sword and a gun (for some insane reason) and seemingly using moves plucked right out of Sakamoto Ryoma's 'Wild Dancer' moveset. The fan service cuts deep in this one! 

Speaking of- goodness knows I all but fell out of my chair when I saw how the new big bad introduced to loom over Joryu's new narrative was none over than Nishitani III- grandson of the psychotic SOB I think we all remember from Yakuza 0. Talk about a call back! Nishitani was famously the crazed model upon which Majima based his own brand of insanity after noticing how effective it was in making people underestimate what was, at heart, a principled and oodly dependable man. Nishitani the 3rd strangle inherits less from his grandfather than Majima did. (Which I guess makes sense, seeing as he never met him.) His is a pretty boy narcissist with a sharp eye and a seemingly rare intellect. I almost wonder if he could have made into being one of the great Yakuza villains if he wasn't relegated to this spin-off title.

When he's not risking his life to change the course of the criminal underworld, Joryu spends his time interacting with the world with perhaps the best free-roam encouragement this franchise has come up with to date- the Akane Network. Akane, a new red-haired crass-witted character, runs a kind of underground informant network that ties to everyone in Sotenbori, the open world map for this game. As such, pretty much everything you do contributes to the expansion of her network, opening up new lucrative missions and the ability to buy bonuses from her store such as increased item drop rates and cash multipliers. RGG know how much players like to see progress bars increase, so by tying literally every open world activity to an overarching completion bar, they're pretty much chummed up the waters for all us open world freaks out here.

And with this revolution of how they decided to present the open world comes a revision to one of Yakuza's time honoured traditions: The Hostess club. As much as I would happily jump onto the very next Hostess club running minigame, I doubt we'll get another anytime soon. (although they did make an explicitly mention of Kiryu's time at Club Four Shine, because the fan train is never out of service!) What we do get, however, is a hostess club featuring- oh my god it's FMV! There's something so disconcerting about watching a live action video of Kson flirting at a camera which makes my skin shrivel beneath my bones- I have no idea who thought this was a good idea but frankly- I would have preferred the 3D models. (I believe Kei returns as a 3D model in Infinite Wealth. Thank god.)

Alongside the Hostess clubs we also get a return of Toy car track races! And they're just as hopelessly prone to inexplicable physics engine screw ups as ever! And there's... character customisation? That's right, Kiryu can be customised to your heart's content at the boutique, and of course RGG gave as Kuroda-san's iconic hat so I figured it only made sense for famous Yakuza Kiryu Kazama to go through the game disguised as famous voice actor of Kiryu Kazama: Takaya Kuroda! (They won't suspect a thing!) And the creme of the crop of side activities has to be the genuinely brilliant arena side quests- they had me hooked!

The new Joryu-clan meta game has the player gathering tough allies across the game world that can be employed to take part in group death matches in the arena, which are offered alongside your typical one-on-one and one-on-many style match-ups. These fights level with experience, grow closer to Joryu to expand the duration of their special abilities- the typical level of depth you'd expect from an RGG game. What blew my mind, however, was the discovery that every hireable character was actually playable. That's right, you can select almost any of the fights, from the groups ones to the solo bouts, and play as your gun-toting support character, or (if you have the DLC) any of the legendary Yakuza members plucked from the series such as Majima or Daigo! They have their own move-sets and special abilities as well- which is a crazy amount of effort to put into a mostly hidden feature in an optional game mode!

And when you're not winding away the hours grinding against some of the genuinely tough arena challenges, you can delve into the dozens of side stories that take you done familiar routes. Such as searching for blonde stick-up artists all attempting to cosplay as Ryuji Goda for some reason- as though the man is going to come back from the dead and return to Sotenbori not having aged a day- (actually, if Kiryu can do it- why not his golden other half?) Also, much to my shock, Kaito makes a surprise appearance! And I only spoil that reveal because I think I'll explode if I don't mention the frankly insane amount of times Kaito and Kiryu are compared to 'Gorillas'. It's this weird quirk of the new localisation team that took over from 'The Kaito Files' DLC for Lost Judgement- they want Kaito to seem as animalistic as possible and literally call him a Gorilla every chance they get. Not gonna lie, it makes me a little uncomfortable. Not sure what they were trying to get at, truth be told.

Given the squashed length of Gaiden, being only 5 chapters long, the plot doesn't quite unfold with the same grace as some of the full RGG games, and some characters with simply incredible write-up blurbs you might expect to be epic series stable characters, such as Shishido, never really get their chance to blossom. I would even say the narrative starts to get a bit rushed during the middle chapters, with Joryu getting shoved into the colosseum for one chapter, then pulled out again and then shoved back there within the space of a single chapter- you kind of end up more following objective markers than trailing along the breadcrumbs of the story. I actually think there might have been a cleaner way to do this, perhaps if RGG had committed more to either the Agent storyline or the Castle storyline, but mashing them both together in a runtime these condensed was simply a recipe for... a little bit of a mess.

That being said, as far as 'doing all the hits' is concerned, the team did not miss. You even get to have a brawl in Cabaret Grand in a bid to draw out Nishitani- it's just an absolute crime that you didn't get to battle the man himself there, in the same building that his grandfather duelled Majima within all those decades previously! Perhaps RGG allowed that 'fan service' mind to overright their clean storytelling duties, because the Kaito files proves they should have no trouble pulling off satisfying smaller narratives when they put their mind to it. (Then again, the Kaito files didn't have to bridge a gap between two major entries, now did it? Maybe the scale of the task was just a tad too overwhelming.)

Of course when it comes down to it, those moments of sheer drama, Like a Dragon always delivers. I had expected a bit more in the way of peril, and thus expected one of my new favourite side characters, Akane, to be at least in mortal danger at some point, if not killed off entirely! (Maybe playing Lost Judgement at the same time coloured my expectations a little. Kept expecting Soma to literally melt out of the shadows and ice someone!) But I guess when you're dealing with the Dragon of Dojima, peril never really enters the conversation, does it? Especially with his Agent powers. I'd wager to call this iteration of Kiryu the most 'in his prime' since Kiwami- which naturally makes the man something of a physical embodiment of the coming, unstoppable, force of change. We already know the Yakuza are going to end, Yakuza 7 already played out that plotpoint, Kiryu is simply the hammer to ensure it is neatly smashed to dust.

I cannot withhold my critique of the finale boss, who shares almost the exact same problem as the Aizawa final boss in Yakuza 5. ("What are you doing here?" "I'm not so sure myself!" Those words are burned into my memory!) This boss kind of feels like a rehash of that one, both in general motives and even in build. Although Gaiden's boss is significantly better placed in the narrative to make his convictions blaze in opposition to Kiryu's iron will, making that final fight classical symbolic of the core theme- putting behind the 'undying spirit of rebellion', like the hippies floating into the rat race after the swinging sixties- if Kiryu was there to punch the Beatles into submission. (Oh! I've got a great idea for the next spin-off!)

The spectacle of the fight itself? Epic. One of the very few four stage fights in this franchise that drags us all over a famous, but underexplored, location in the franchise- (that isn't Millennium Tower!) gives us a brutal meat wall meets meat wall style duel with dynamic stage transitions and one of my actually favourite 'dispatching' scenes in the franchise. (I don't want to think about the state of those kneecaps. Ouch!) Plus, I'll always award extra points to the kind of finale that brings so many of the old school crew back together. Always good to see Majima and Saejima fighting side by side! They even found time to give us a direct lead in to Infinite Wealth with a call back to literally the very first thing the player is told to do in the very first Yakuza game. (after beating up the alley thug, of course.) A game for the fans.

But if I may be permitted one final gripe- I was aghast to find out that this game was more than 80gb in total size, more than Lost Judgement! Which turned into straight perplexment when I saw that Infinite Wealth was less than 60gb! And only after finishing the game do I think I understand why. Gaiden comes with a two hour special demo for Infinite Wealth installed with the game, it's dragging around the baggage of Like a Dragon 8 and my hard-drive is forced to suffer for it's sin! I can't believe they hard-coded an entire demo into the game, what where RGG thinking? Not about condensing their game files, that's for sure!

Summary

For a side game, Like a Dragon Gaiden overperforms it's role sensationally- overstuffing the game with so much to do you'll forget what you're playing is essentially a sawn-off RGG title. Unfortunately the snub-nosed campaign does hurt the scope of the typically epic tales that RGG tells and the genuinely promising new characters they place within this new playset. (I hope we get to see more of these characters in games to come.) The new gameplay editions may have been as much tech showcases as they were gameplay additives, but I never got bored breaking opponents to pieces using them so I won't complain. (Plus it feels so good having a nimble style of Kiryu once again, I've missed feeling agile!) This may be a side title in the Ryu Ga Gotoku franchise, but the team did enough right to make it a worthwhile diversion to the core games. Heck, you might even tear up at little during the ending scenes. (I almost did!) Of course, the game gets my recommendation. And as far as grades go, I'll give this a B+. Another solid outing for the franchise that never seems to fall off. Which brings me one step closer to the front lines!