"The bigger the Yakuza, the bigger and better the future they promise"
With grit and perseverance I've finally spent enough of my life energies to reach the very end of the Like a Dragon franchise, for now, and coincidentally enough it has also been a journey following the entire life trajectory of principal main character Kiryu Kazama on his journey through the crime, love, sacrifice and an unending search for redemption. (Redemption for what? It's unclear. Kiryu is the squeakiest clean Yakuza to ever exist, if anything he's doing an apology tour for literally every other criminal who has ever existed and isn't as moral as him.) We've seen Kiryu rise from a little pissant thug beating down a tardy debtor in an alley to a legendary mythical being who is still dismantling men in their peak physical fitness whilst pushing sixty through the sheer force of will power alone. But now, at long last, it seems that the Dragon can finally rest easy.
Infinite Wealth was always marketed to imply the end of Kiryu's journey, and that spectre of finality, in the form of sudden cancer, has been dangling over this game ever since. I've seen these as the twilight entries in the Like a Dragon franchise and fittingly enough both this and 'Gaiden: The Man who Erased his Name' have leant themselves heavily to the idea of being 'retrospective' entries looking back on the various characters that shaped the franchise throughout the years and giving us some needed closure on all of them. Although I must say this game did give me the strange sense that it was the middle entry in a trilogy for some strange reason, perhaps wherein finally Ichiban and co will go up against the Daidoji- but enough guessing at the future, let's finally wrap up all that has been.
From the get-go, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth brings the franchise out of Japan for the first time ever as far as I can recall- which means for the very first time we're entering a country that doesn't speak predominantly Japanese. And right off the bat that means we are treated to some of the frankly worst English dubbing ever known to this franchise- even the native English speakers, all four of them that exist in the cast, speak as though they aren't aware that the recording has already started and they're just reading their lines off a page. It's bad. And it gets worse when you come across the poor Japanese cast members that this game forced to speak in English despite their clear lack of proficiency. That's how you get characters who are native English speakers, like Tomi and Bryce, giving us gem line reads on the par of "Beautiful Eyes!"
And whilst we're on that note- I was absolutely stunned to realise that for some insane reason the Japanese dub isn't being treated as the main dub in this Japanese franchise. The team scored two famous actors for the cast in the form of Danny Trejo and Daniel Dae Kim but their talents only appear in the English dub. Even when these character's speak English (Okay, Kim's Ebina never speaks English by Trejo's Dwight sure does!) They prefer to bring someone else in- despite these line reads already existing as evidenced by the other dub! I cannot wrap my head around this insanity and it makes me wonder if I actually missed out playing this in it's native language, which I've never felt before in a Yakuza game!
But I digress. When you look past the performances and sometimes awful English line reads, what we have is an interesting continuation on Kasuga's story that promises off the bat to further expand on our hero's character. I had wondered how a follow-up story would progress Ichiban, given how that is an aspect that Like a Dragon had struggled with regarding Kiryu for several stories following Yakuza 2, but Lost Judgement relaxed my concerns that the current scenario team knew what they were doing to ensure that at the very least each outing landed with undeniable consequence. Given the springboard topics for Infinite Wealth- I felt justified in anticipation.
And what are those springboards? Kasuga going to Hawaii in order to meet with his mother, the same who sequestered him away as a baby and stuffed him in a coin locker before allegedly being caught and killed by the Yakuza- apparently alive and wanting to meet him finally. A decent hook for an emotional reunion, tempered by the surprisingly sobering motives of the game's second protagonist, Kiryu, who is struggling with advanced terminal cancer that is set to kill him in a few months, but is trying to complete one last mission before he's taken out. Both salient concepts, although I had more interest in what Ichiban would achieve emotionally, which is why I'm a little bit surprised on the otherside that it was largely Kiryu who stole the stage once again. (I guess this is why he only got a cameo in Yakuza 7.)
And what are those springboards? Kasuga going to Hawaii in order to meet with his mother, the same who sequestered him away as a baby and stuffed him in a coin locker before allegedly being caught and killed by the Yakuza- apparently alive and wanting to meet him finally. A decent hook for an emotional reunion, tempered by the surprisingly sobering motives of the game's second protagonist, Kiryu, who is struggling with advanced terminal cancer that is set to kill him in a few months, but is trying to complete one last mission before he's taken out. Both salient concepts, although I had more interest in what Ichiban would achieve emotionally, which is why I'm a little bit surprised on the otherside that it was largely Kiryu who stole the stage once again. (I guess this is why he only got a cameo in Yakuza 7.)
Picking up several years after the events of 7, Infinite Wealth deals with the realms of cancel culture and the effect of malleable public perception on the lives of the world around them- and on a much grander scale the concept of 'redemption' and the capacity to make up for your past wrongs- expounding on the idea of 'starting again' presented in Yakuza 7. In fact, the very title of 'Infinite Wealth' is more in reference for the capacity to redeem than it is for actual physical monetary gains, despite how ludicrously-loaded running Dondoko Island makes you. These ideals end up actually slotting much cleaner into Kiryu's 'end of the road' journey than in Ichiban's: "already made a fresh start and now just making the most of living up to my father's morals" arc.
Speaking of Ichiban, he finds himself roughly ousted out of his only real purpose in life, trying to help the former Yakuza of the Tojo/Omi alliance disband following 'The Great Dissolution', and it's in this disillusion that we are introduced to a whole new country and a new core cast including one of the most relatable everymen wracked with a sobering backstory in the franchise, Tomizawa, paired next to perhaps my favourite member of Ichiban's cast, the peppy and oft indiscernible Chitose Fujinomiya. Only two brand new additions to the core cast, but strong enough personalities that I demand we see more of them in the future. Especially Chitose, she is my new favourite character after Ichiban. (And Majima.)
As a grand return to the new RPG play systems introduced by 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon', Infinite Wealth does not present as stark a surprise once you get into the game. It does, however, improve on the base formula in order to create robust enough gameplay to be considered competitive to other modern JRPGs, all of which try to offer something unique. New to this game is the 'positioning' mechanic that allows players to freely move their character around a limited space before targeting and picking an action, as opposed to how it was back in Yakuza 7 where you just kind of had to make do with where the AI left you after the last turn. This feeds back into the gameplay systems wherein now tactical positioning is a fundamental part of the gameplay loop!
Before all that positing really meant was that sometimes you'd use an environmental item and if you ran past an NPC on your way to hit another they would interrupt and cancel your turn with a free action. Now they're removed interruptions (which I like considering their only utility in the first game was to punish the unattentive) and added 'back attack free crits' and 'bouncing chain attacks' to feed off the 'follow-up attacks' from the first game. You'll be placing your attacks in order to angle the knockback into another companion who'll score a free chain attack, landing that enemy in the perfect place for a free 'follow-up' action. Three attacks in a single attack turn is significant and you can bet that adds up in the late game when you start speccing out weapons for basic attack bonuses and crit damage boosts.
Enemies too have been buffed up to keep the player on their toes, sporting guard stances that resist knockback and auto-resist damage which require the player to start using new 'Grapple' skills in order to 'guard break'. It's just an intuitive little addendum to the gameplay arsenal that fleshes out the RPG to feel more active than 'stand around and select your action'. Although I will say that this new 'Guard Break' modifier appears to have been added only to new skills brought with the new jobs and haven't been baked into the legacy classes for Yakuza 7- which seems like a bit of an oversight given that they ported over pretty much every class from that game except for the DLC ones. Makes for odd moments of powerlessness in the late game.
One aspect of the new area of Like a Dragon that makes it so dear is the ever lovable character of Ichiban and his totally adorable cluelessness. After spending 15 years in jail he seems to have come out the other side not having aged a single day mentally and still operates with the absurdity of a somewhat dimwitted twenty-five year old. But in that immaturity is a frankness and a morality that is so enviable you'd have to be heartless not to route for the man. There are plenty of fictional characters that are written with that indefinable quirk to draw personalities to them, but Ichiban is one of the few with whom I understand it on more than the fictional level. He is the kind of person with a vision of the world so innocent and robust that you want to be true, for your own sake as much as for his.
I honestly respect RGG for not just sticking with the Great Dissolution status quo shift from Yakuza 7, but panning out it's consequences further than just the big fight at the end of Gaiden and 7. Those disaffected Yakuza, now legally banned from applying for a job or having a bank account for the next 5 years, are essentially being pushed into the gutter by society and being expected to starve out. Ichiban's arc has always revolved around the 'grey areas' of society, or the 'unfortunate ugly sides of society' that people like to pretend doesn't exist or lash out against. In many ways Ichiban is a representation of that world, always being torn down and left with nothing and being forced to start again in whatever scrappy way that he can. It's such a atypical glance at modern society that speaks to the admirable worldiness of RGG. Maybe the Yakuza brand started as something of a 'cool' and 'romantic' aesthetic with Kiryu, but under Ichiban there's a genuine reality and vulnerability undercutting everything I find enthralling.
Hawaii marks the very first time that the franchise has left the confines of Japan, although don't believe for a second that means they've given up on the core identity of the Yakuza franchise- virtual cultural tourism. Infinite Wealth will still have you touring up and down Aloha Beach, picking up cones of shaved ice to chow down on whilst enduring the odd brief squall overhead in what is this franchise's very first toe into dynamic weather- for what it's worth. Hawaii simply glitters on the modern RGG engine, and given the amount of time the game gives to the simple pleasure of gazing out at the sunset burning across the gentle beach waves- the team are very well aware of how far they have come graphically.
Of course, as with any RGG game that doesn't take place directly in a one-to-one recreation of a modern Japanese city- the setting does mean the studio get a bit wackier with their side activities to flesh out the open world fun. Rather than touch on local Hawaiian customs and cliches in their side games, (which are instead reserved for the 'Tours' system) RGG decided to seek inspiration from other properties. One such being Crazy Taxi which has been converted into 'Crazy Delivery'- a game wherein you speed across the street on an 'UberEats' analogy bike collecting food delivery icons floating along the street and performing huge leaps and tricks to keep up a combo as you deliver orders. Or there is the 'Pokemon Snap' analogy where you ride the slow touring trams around town with your camera out shooting pictures of the local pervert 'Sujimon' who parade around town in Speedos. Oh, and speaking of Sujimon- perhaps the biggest send-up the game does it to the world of Pokémon.
The 'Sujimon' concept existed as a joke-reference to Pokemon in the original- justifying the inclusion of a 'SujiDex' and operating as another extension of the team's love for RPG franchises being shown off on full display. This time around the idea has been expanded out to hilarious extremes- with Sujimon now representing an entire Pokemon-esque capture and battle metagame! That's right, you'll be tracking down and fighting creepy perverts, 'capturing them' by offering them gifts in a minigame more involved than Pokeball throwing has ever been, and then forming them into teams that you fight against other organised groups of Sujimon formed by other trainers in order to rank up your Sujimon league rating and eventually challenge 'the Discreet Four'. (The amount of puns makes my head hurt.)
Now don't get too excited, Sujimon fighting itself is incredibly rudimentary compared to even the most stripped back Pokemon games over the years- it's just about spamming the single attacks that each Sujimon has, occasionally matching opposing types and switching out Sujimon to your reserve team when necessary, and then charging up for a special attack that I always get screwed over by thanks to the spin wheel of 'effectiveness' tacked on there every time you pull a special. It's more the fact the team had the idea to do any of this in the first place that boggles the mind and yes- the Sujimon content can span the length of the entire campaign if you choose to engage with it. There's even a means to challenge bookmarks of your team against other players of the game through the other mega metagame Infinite Wealth heavily advertised, their grand Animal Crossing send-up: Dondoko Island.
Dondoko Island is perhaps one of the most effective time vacuums this franchise has ever concocted, baring in mind that 'creating Time Vacuums' is literally one of the core principals of their design philosophy. Dondoko presents a pretty much fully realised island resort building and management simulator with resource collection nodes that recharge every in-game day, an expansive crafting system that drops more structures than you could ever hope to fit on one island, an AFK farm and Sujimon training facility and an online Sujimon phantom-team battler and cross-island visits. It is damn near sickening how much effort went into expanding this one game mode. And you know what? The end product is really good so I guess it was worth it.
I lost perhaps half an entire day to Dondoko. Just that rhythmic pattern of doing all your daily activities in order to earn credits that you don't really need because you earn more than that just by keeping guests happy but you'll do it anyway because it's on the screen. Then the day and night cycle which keeps your days strict so you always go to bed thinking about what you want to do tomorrow. The loose franchise-typical metagame narrative that ropes you in with the veneer of a mystery that will inevitably evolve into a 'surprise' sob story regarding the main villains struggles because that is literally the pattern for all of these questlines. And, of course, the simply outrageous amounts of money I was making through Dondoko! The island is a drug. But I guess that was what the team were going for so... mission accomplished?
Of course, when you're done sinking your life into years of side content you'll eventually come back around to the main game where one of the biggest mysteries I had around this game finally becomes unravelled. Learning about the incoming new cast and the returning old cast, with the newly renamed 'Seonhee' to boot, I was rather naturally confused about how Infinite Wealth would balance all of them at the same time. How would you give them all opportunities to grow close as a party as well as to simply be present in the party! How many games give you so many more companions than you need to the point where you end up never using half of them? Too many! Well to my surprise, they thought of this. You see- Kiryu has his own set of chapters as Party leader!
That's right, we have a dual party set up with one team in Hawaii and one back in Japan, both following different threads of the same narrative as you jump back and forth between them. RGG don't always get the chance to tell their stories like this but whenever they do the team make it look effortless. Allowing individual narratives to blossom out and plant seeds that bare fruit at the climax when all the disparate parties, and various themes, come crashing together like a symbol clash. Plus I never had more than a single party member on the reserve bench so I never felt like I was leaving my team out of the action whenever I picked my party!
Having Kiryu lead his own section throughout the game allows the story to really focus in on a series retrospective as we conduct a 'where are they now' with pretty much anyone worth talking about throughout the franchise. We also get to have Kiryu go to many of the key locations throughout the years and give his modern perspective on events that shaped who he is, now recontextualised through a lens of maturity and a newer detachment. Given Kiryu's state of being throughout the game, his illness, there's a sobering sense of finality that never existed before. Even at the most dire circumstances, when Kiryu was up against the wall so badly he had to literally 'die' to save his family- you never felt like he was done. But seeing Kiryu ponder on the importance of the famous Kamuroucho archway that seemed to hang above him all these years, really hammers home the finality of it all. I almost choked up a little bit when Kiryu told Amon that they weren't going to meet again. (How sad is that?) Also, I have to shout out with the way their retrospective even found ways to reference Ishi and Kenzan by calling them 'vivid dreams'. Very coy.
Of course, the split between parties also allows us to go through the 'getting to know you' stage of relationships in this franchise all over again because Kiryu hangs out with Ichiban's old gang whilst he lives it up big with the new team. Actually some of my favourite moments of the game were seeing his gang who knew the important person Kiryu was and sort of marvelled at the legend whilst finding ways to be human around him. Brought best to life during the impromptu Karaoke night for which we got renditions of the two songs that best symbolise our boy- Baka Mitai and Judgement! Is there any better way to christen an old team into a new one with the Dragon himself at their head?
These new teams are put to the test with the specialised multi-tiered dungeons designed half to really put you to the endurance test and half to power level. These are long-form delves covered in boss battles and challenge fights which payout the most cash you'll find in the game, finally rewarding the core activity of the game, and give a more concentrated activity towards testing out Job builds, party makeup and making sure you're equipped for the challenges ahead. They also happen to house some of the game's strongest equipment at later levels, and are imbued with a random generator for rewards that incentivises repeat go-throughs. At the very least it makes for more fun grinding than that one dungeon floor with the XP hobos from Yakuza 7.
Part of what makes this new breed of Yakuza so interesting to me is that Ichiban has been treated with the breadth of intelligent care that a three-dimensional character deserves, rather than having that depth applied retroactively as the team tried to repeatedly with Kiryu. There's always so much more to learn about who Ichiban is, even with his core morals on display- and we get to see those unseen facets brought out by the supporting cast. This story in particular, focusing so heavily on family following the last game's late-story revelation, gives us several angles from which to view the concept. Chitose is largely estranged from her family and relishes in the divide, whilst Tomizawa had his family ripped away from him. Ichiban searches for his family even whilst regularly downplaying the importance of blood family, seeing his Boss as his father more for the person he was than for their likely blood connection.
It's actually surprisingly late into the game that you start unlocking the ultimate abilities of the two protagonists, being Ichiban's group special attack and Kiryu's 'Dragon Resurgence', which allows him to break out of turn-order and just go nuts on his targets. Resurgence in particular stands out so starkly, allowing Kiryu to host an incredible boss fight against the old legends of the franchise wherein he beats them to a pulp in turn based and then finishes them off in a special Resurgence showdown whilst enthralled in a special bizarre dimension flooded with their music. (Extra points for Majima getting 'Bite and Receive you' again!)
Ichiban's is once again just the most loveable spearhead for this franchise, and following his journey to discover his past honestly overshadows even the inevitable grand conspiracy plotline destined to come our way. His personal quest is so strong, in fact, that it creates something of a void in the narrative when it takes a backseat to that conspiracy. Unlike in the original where Ichiban's personal quest is tied so intrinsically to the perpetrators of Bleach Japan and Aoki- this time around Ichiban's quest is very much at odds with the overarching badguys, and he needs to face them in order to reach his personal actualisation. It's a totally valid way to tell the story, however when handled in a particular way it can somewhat feel like two disparate plot-threads struggling to win out over one another.
At the end of the game, those final few chapters, Ichiban fully wraps up his own personal quest and from then on just sort of glides through to the end of the story. Sure, he wants to unravel the evil schemes because it's the right thing to do- but a 'the right thing to do' plot doesn't really do justice to the brand that typically excels at propelling the struggles of the heart, the strife of relationship and the future of your immediate world into a single spearpoint of narrative focus. It's such a stark contrast that it almost feels desperate when in the very last act they introduce a totally rogue familial connection that, to be honest, doesn't even make sense when you stop and think about it. It sounds like the kind of thing you'd read in a medieval fantasy story- children being made out of necessity to appease an overbearing authoritarian father character- it just seems like a dumb way to try and gell the disparate pieces of plot motivation back into one.
Kiryu, on the otherhand, really does feel like he has something to prove in these final few chapters that seem to be the culmination of his journey not just throughout the game but maybe, in a small way, throughout his late franchise journeys as a whole. Faced with the sins of the Yakuza and the consequences of his legacy, Kiryu really is ready to just lay it all down and finally go to rest until the embers of it all starting again from scratch force him to put it back to rest. At the pinnacle Kiryu comes to terms with the very same lesson he taught Nishki all the way back in Yakuza 0 in the woods when they stood at gun's length from one another. Dying solves nothing, only the living can make amends. It's a moment made powerful specifically because we know the strength of the context behind it- coloured by Kiryu's long life of fighting roughly the same battle over and over again. He sees the chance to finally make an impact that sticks and he's fight to his last breath to make it happen. I wonder if it has the same effect on someone new to the franchise with the past two games- but I found it almost breath taking in the moment.
Of course, never one to be outdone, Ichiban does have his moment to shine right at the end of the game by merit of his sheer hopelessness. In a moment that I can only think is designed to compare with the simply incredible Like a Dragon 7 standoff against Aoki where Ichiban has to talk the man down from committing suicide- once more Ichiban gives us a chance to glimpse at the sheer magnitude of his near-inhuman compassion and the impact it has on the seemingly irredeemable. It is a powerful scene in it's own right, hampered for me by the way the main game kind of left Ichiban's tale to rot nearer the end chapters. But I got the chance to touch base with people at Comic Con and many of them found the scene enough to move them to tears so I'll confess- it's a great moment that works for some. 
Summary
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth might just be one of the biggest games the team have ever made, rivalled perhaps only by Lost Judgement. And it carries all the characteristics of an epic in it's scale, ambition, scope and bloat. There's so much genuine worthwhile side content, small and large, that it can almost overwhelming to consider it all- and every bit is imbued with a flurry of passion sparked by a desire to make this the biggest Like a Dragon ever made! From a 'Like a Dragon' universe Vtuber to the surprise return of Kiryu's Yakuza 0 styles, the novelty darts borrowed from Gaiden and the sly little Lost Judgement crossover snuck in there in the later chapters: there's so much loving detail snuck into every aspect of the game. In that desire to do absolutely everything, perhaps some of the most important aspects slipped a little bit- the main narrative is not as strong as it could have been in parts, but the rest of the package picks up the slack significantly. Summarising it all into a single grade is a toughy, especially following Lost Judgement which I consider to be the franchise at it's absolute best. But considering the package as a whole, and weighing the wanting against the over delivered, I find it impossible to give the game anything less than an A Grade, where it misses out on the plus simply for the fact the final dungeon in the game is held off as DLC- which is ridiculous for a dungeon that, light spoiler, doesn't even have a unique boss fight at the end! Infinite Wealth is Like a Dragon at peak- and of course earns my recommendation. However, I'd be lying if I didn't say that after all that, I'm a bit happy to be putting the franchise behind me for at least a year. I don't know what else they could possibly do with these games to be honest without slipping into 'overstuffed' territory. (Personally I'm hoping the next game will be another 'Judgement'.)
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