Yakuza: Like a Dragon Review

Grinding at age Forty, huh? 

It has been absolutely years in the making, as I've followed along the franchise at an arms length desperately trying to catch up with the curve- but after a simply horrendous amount of tailing I am finally at a stage where I'm one integer game behind the latest Yakuza- and thus can soon enjoy the latest game along with every one el- oh wait, there's 'Like a Dragon Ishin'. And Judge-Eyes. And Lost Judge-eyes. And 'Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man who Erased his Name'. (Sometimes I hate how efficient RGG are at putting out new entries in this bloody brilliant franchise.) At the very least I can mark this as the big turning point of the franchise where Yakuza became Like a Dragon and where the main series followed up on the April's fools prank to actually become an RPG!

In actuality that was a joke sentiment by the developer. Yakuza 7 was planned to be a huge shift away from the action elements of the Kiryu Kazama saga long in advance, likely to herald in the new age of Ichiban Kasuga in a genuinely distinct fashion- they didn't just change the trajectory of the entire franchise based on the whims of a decent reaction to a proposed joke video. (It is slightly curious why that was an April Fools video at all, though- considering it was literally just an announcement for the next game hidden as a joke.) But one needs merely to play the game to see how intrinsically linked the switch to Turn Based RPG fit in with Kasuga's personality and history; making this one of those delicious moments of a truly diegetic game design swing.

After more than a decade playing with Kiryu Kazama, living the journey of the Dragon of Dojima, any proposition of change was bound to rustle feathers with long time fans and new fans who had just jumped aboard with Yakuza 0 with the franchise's sudden meteoric rise to international fame and relevancy. The man was the heart and soul of the Yakuza franchise, a steadfast moral centre of the crime world imposing his values of peerless chivalry through a tiger dropping fist he connected with the skulls of all comers. Street thugs, Triad bosses, Mob lords, other Yakuza legends, a guy he used to babysit once, some guy who got his crush pregnant, a blonde guy who's sister he had a crush on, this one self-piteous young guy with a major supercity complex and daddy issues, a couple of guys he was pretty sure were actually on his side but he just felt like beating up some fools that day anyway- oh, and the Takeshi of Takeshi's Castle fame. He punched a lot of people. And in doing so forged an unbreakable legacy.

Bringing in someone new was going to be a challenge of similarities and differences. What about the man will make him as endearing as Kiryu was? What about Ichiban will make him stand out as his own man? How will this new Turn-Based action effect the player's relationship with the action of the game and the presentation of the world space? How will the narrative of Yakuza be changed with a man at the helm who doesn't start off from the beginning as a legend? (I know that chronologically Kiryu isn't a Legend in Yakuza 0- but that game is a prequel- the original introduction to the character came with all the headscratching bells and whistles attached.) I hope to touch on most of these angles in my breakdown of exactly how I felt brushing up with the brand new face of the Yakuza franchise.

Early Game

'Yakuza: Like a Dragon' carries with it a uniquely cinematic quality that feels even a step beyond the usual ply of a Yakuza game. The story lays itself out in epic fashion, starting generations before the day of Kasuga laying out a story of smatterings of characters and burning mysteries that are left entirely to fester of the course of most of the game. There's this inescapable feeling that what RGG are shooting for is something epic feeling- so much grander then itself stretched across the entire history of the Yakuza franchise. And whilst we don't get the lengths of 'throwing a character in the background and pretending they were there the entire time' kind of tie-in, the lengths of time covered does inherently feed into this perception of an epic playing out before us.

And given the rise of the franchise in the years since 0's release- you can tell the massive effect that RGG's resources have had on both the scope of the stories they're telling and how they present them. You'll find fully voiced cutscenes, multiple forms of cutscene that are used stylistically instead of just for budget reasons (the 'slideshow still'- style cutscene returns, but exclusively as a tool to denote a flashback of a previously witnessed full motion scene.) Of course there's still the occasional stab of franchise typical quirk- such as the early scene of Kasuga and his boss Arakawa walking through what appears to be a 2D PNG of what I believe to be Ijincho, like this is the original Final Fantasy 7 or that Blade Runner game. (I'm picking at seams, though. The presentation is overall stellar.)

In a mirror of Kiryu's first outing, our journey begins with a prequel setting us in the world of good 'ol Kamurocho in the before days, giving us a time to grow accustomed both to Ichiban and the found family of the Arakawa group before his prolonged prison sentence. (No big spoiler there, it's literally in the trailer.) Here we are highlighted to just how distinct of a person Ichi is. He's so much more hot headed and impulsive when he gets ticked off, but he's also more personable and harder to bait. Kasuga knows how to disarm a situation using his charm, rather than the no-nonsense brute force attitude of Kiryu- and though Ichiban might be classically unlearned, there's a sly resourceful streetsmart streak that flares up in moments of need. Right from the beginning we can see that whilst Kiryu was this force of nature that the world moved around, Ichiban is more of a bug that the world moves over- which makes him all too easily underestimated.

And the morality of the man is of course his very first challenge put to us. This is the first time since 0 that we've actually seen a Yakuza do what they're supposed to be doing- extorting the public. Of course, through his debt collection Ichiban is able to showcase how crafty he is and the subversive nature he cleverly wields in order to remain true to his morals. Being a Yakuza is important to him, unlike with Kiryu who seemed so diametrically opposed to everything the Yakuza did it was a wonder why he ever joined them in the first place, but Ichiban isn't ever willing to compromise his own morality. Still the franchise treats the good-end of Yakuza like community workers more than criminals, but at least there's a bit of pull and give with Ichiban to make him less caustic to the Yakuza conceptuals.

And of course, as with any stellar prequel RGG put in the effort effectively laying out the characters and their relationships with such exacting precision you feel well acquainted with them all before the time skip. Boss Arakawa with his fatherly informality over his family members, a natural community leader who serves as an inspiration for a soap-house birthed orphan like Ichiban. Sawashiro the whip cracking hardhead who feels like the kind of guy who goes around carrying a block of wood on him at all time to collect subordinate's fingers everytime they take too long to fetch his morning coffee. And of course, the Young Master- Arakawa's wheelchair bound son Masato, a young man entrapped within his own 'weakness' and the disgrace of the crime family he is inescapably tied to by merit of his lineage. All strong depictions, all heavily foreshadowing the roles they'll play in the story to come. (And if you're familiar enough with the franchise by now- you probably know where two out of three of them end up after the first scene in which you meet them. Although personally, I did predict a Cyborg boss fight I didn't get, but I suspect that might have been RGG missing a trick rather than just a straight missed forecast.)   

Like a Dragon brings us to a new world space, the most detailed and expansive city location since Kamurocho and a breath of fresh air for a franchise that has reused that map since the beginning. Yokohama's Ijincho is a town with a pleasing mix of tight streets and open highways, seedy red light districts and classy cultural districts- it carries a touch of everything you want out of an explorable world space and ties it all down with classy diversity. Fitting for a narrative which is designed to take the audience through the dregs of the disregarded and overlooked. Sex workers, the homeless, all the downtrodden are peers to Ichiban, and this marks one of the only depictions in media I can think of where they are treated as genuine people struggling to pick themselves up whilst the ruling class uses them as scapegoats in their own grand schemes.

The theme of 'rising from rock bottom' is reflective of both the tone of the narrative and the events themselves, as Ichiban finds himself literally being discarded with the trash and living within the Ijincho homeless camp- scavenging under vending machines for scraps of Yen or collecting cans in a really fun little bike-racing minigame in order to recycle them for 'trade credits'. This presentation of consummate resolve underlines one of the key characteristic foils of Ichiban- his creativity and active imagination which allows the gangster to align his world views with his love of the resolute morality of video games. And not just any video games, but his favourite RPGs: The Dragon Quest franchise. Yes, they literally just name drop Dragon Quest, a Square Enix licence, in this Sega game. Often, in fact. Because that's just how important it is to Ichiban and the way he compartmentalises the world and his role within it.

Yes, 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon's switch to RPG gameplay is wonderfully diegetic with Ichiban's world view to the point where enemy spawns will literally transform into caricatures of themselves when fighting Ichiban to replicate the way that paper dolls get replaced with higher rendered models in old school JRPGs like Dragon Quest. When Ichiban is sent to the job centre in order to seek gainful employment- the game treats this like an RPG 'job system'; (The JRPG term for 'classes') allowing the player to take up a job as a 'Bodyguard' or a 'Host' and access a plethora of job specific moves as you level up in that profession. And just to make things even smoother, stat boost increases earned every 5 levels of a job are shared across all jobs- so the strongest character is actually someone who switches regularly and tries out every job. There are even some skills that pass between classes, allowing you to build actually diverse character builds in this franchise that just took on RPGs as a half-joke! Who would have thought?

Special moves are treated like delusions from Ichiban's overactive imagination, allowing them to be brilliantly creative flights of fancy, such as Ichiban calling down a laser from space or Namba firing spiralling torrents of fire breath to cover the entire area. This passes on to summons as well; (Or 'Poundmates' as they're rather curiously named) giving us series-typical silly moments such as a Crawfish death squad raining from the sky, a grown Yakuza boss in a diaper crying so loud it damages the enemies ears or Majima running down the face of a skyscraper throwing electric knives to the beat of 'Receive and Bite You'- his theme for Yakuza 4 which was so impeccably brilliant that I refuse to accept any appearance from Majima lacking it. This is the second time they've used it, I consider it his official theme now. Fight me.

Mid game

Being in a totally new environment with a brand new protagonist really gives Like a Dragon room to spread it's legs as the story develops, resetting the balance of power entirely by writing the series staple Tojo clan right off the script. Instead we're introduced to whole new factions with developed cultures and history's that no longer feel like side players to the big Yakuza clans as they would have done in past games- simply through merit of sharing space with the Tojo. The Ijin Three spread their own mysterious agenda across the middle length of the plot, giving stepping stone journeys on the way to the bigger conundrum in a manner we haven't seen done since Yakuza 5. And they were done particularly poorly in Yakuza 5 too, so I'm quite happy with Like a Dragon's performance of this trope.

It's in these middle parts that Like a Dragon starts to set a previously untouched precedent for the amount of referential humour the game can slide into it's play cycle. I mean we already have the classics, the arcades full to the brim with other SEGA products. (With Virtua Fighter 5 being available this time around. Although I did notice how it was also accessible in the prequel chapter despite it not technically being released during when that chapter is set! Count on me to be the detail's scout!) But I didn't think RGG was big enough to just bring up other studios. I already mentioned Dragon Quest, but what if I told you that RGG take aim at the biggest Japanese developers in the world, Nintendo! Even more so than they naturally do by telling stories about Nintendo's formerly biggest client base?

With all the new creative imagination enemies that Kasuga is dreaming up, the 'Sujimon' system is conjured to categorise and 'collect' information on them in order to fill up a 'Suji-dex'. (Yes, this entire system is stuffed silly with Pokemon references.) And then there's a fully functioning Kart racer called 'Dragon Kart' which serves as one of the game's overarching metagames! Oh yeah, not even Mario is safe from Yakuza's all consuming reference-spree: and whatsmore, RGG did a damn good job with the racing minigame too! At the very least they figured out how to give vehicles a reverse since the dark ages of Yakuza 5's Taxi minigame.

And then there's the other minigame of 'Ichiban's Confections'- wherein our boy is unceremoniously promoted to CEO of a struggling business he needs to whip back into shape through management of staff, appeasement of investors and careful investments. This marks yet another RGG totally original Minigame that they've positively smashed- because yes, it's a really fun little metagame to get lost in between major story beats. Not quite as good as the good old Hostess club, mind- but for what it's supposed to be depicting, the agonising process of managing a small scale company and gradually scaling up, they pulled wonders making that feel involved but enjoyable. And of course, it comes with an overarching metagame narrative about the evil cadre of Business people who want to squander your chances, which surprisingly is probably the weakest iteration of this trope the franchise has put together yet. There didn't even really seem to be a sweet message at the end like 'You have to remember how to love what you do' or 'don't lose sight of the little people'- it just sort of ends. A rare disappointment out of this game.

One of the newer editions to the franchise which I think has resulted in incredible benefits for the narrative is the party system because yes- this is a full RPG with party members. These span a vast array of characters, many of which you'd never have expected joining Ichiban on his underworld spanning adventures, and all of whom are provided fantastic opportunities to shine. Like a Dragon prominently features it's party and the bond they build alongside Ichiban as key aspects of the game's narrative and character progression. Just by doing anything in the open world, fighting, eating, Karaoke, performing the 'classic movies' video game in which you battle sheep-head demons to stay awake throughout the showing; (Like I said, this is a weird game) you earn and accumulate bond points. These unlock bond-conversations you can have back at the Hub 'The Survive Bar' which deepens your understanding of the cast and their personal motivations- enriching their place in the story alongside Ichiban.

RGG didn't have to go to these lengths, all of these characters already feature prominently enough within the narrative to be well rounded characters through the script, but these optional and considerably more intimate shared moments allow for even deeper connections to form. Touching on the roots of Adachi's guilt over his unfulfilled past in the police force, Seako's mother hen syndrome and how it frayed her relationship with her sister, Namba's professional disillusionment and the spiralling hole he's not even trying to climb out of. These are complex character moments that couldn't have naturally fit within the main narrative, but which enrich these characters into being so much more than the typical revolving door of side characters that we meet, and then subsequently lost track off from Yakuza game to game. They even gave a good go at justify the recycling of Joon-Gi Han's character model and I almost bought their reasonings. Almost.

Late game

By the twilight chapters, the narrative really begins to bear the fruit of the many seeds it planted- to a degree arguably unmatched since the days of Yakuza 0! Though I still hold the narrative of that game apart as the series' one masterpiece, there are so many clever plot developments and stake-heightening twists that I found myself positively enraptured with the direction events were progressing in. I think I've been yearning so long for that feeling of being pulled between several incredibly intelligent people playing a game of chess by massive proxy, and though you might call this a imitation of Yakuza 0's structure in that way- I positively love the effect it has on the weight and gravitas of events. Also, Kudos on 'Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon' for raising the stakes considerably without spinning off into lunacy like Yakuza 3 ended up doing. International gun smuggling conspiracies are yesterday's news, now it's about national puritanical campaigns and the unseen human cost of blind systemic 'bleaching'. Extremism is a catastrophe at any end of the spectrum.

Of course, as with any RPG it's in the later chapters that the game starts tightening it's belt and restricting that 'freedom to experiment' through genuine challenge, something the Yakuza franchise had trouble grasping in it's action age. Not so much nowadays, as the all classic 'grind' becomes a practical necessity. The original Kingdom Hearts was the game which pretty much wrote the book on how to do grinding right, directing players to a plethora of old locations and revisiting old challenge locations in a material hunt. 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon' is much the same as building your initial starting weapons into godly boss killers will require all manner of strange items- and a frankly extortionate amount of Yen in the later stages which is entirely unreasonable for minuscule amount of ways there are to make money in this game. (Grinding out the Business minigame for an hour just to waste it all on one upgrade really sucks.)

It is here that Yakuza 7 reveals it's late game grind markets- the all new Sotenbori arena and Kamurocho dungeon. Because yes, this game even has dungeons. (It is the Tokyo sewers, if you were wondering.) Grind allergic players will probably gall at the prospect of doing runs of these dungeons for either resources or to hit that one 'EXP bank' enemy for a free level or two, but as someone inbetween I really appreciate the forethought to provide a grinding experience that makes the player feel like they have to work in order to break those all-important damage limits, whilst providing the materials to streamline that process as much as possible without undermining it. That's the kind of consideration a clinical designer wouldn't think of, but a team of RPG lovers wouldn't ignore for the world. Which probably explains why RGG decided to go this path in the first place.

The end

The closing chapters of 'Yakuza 7' are perhaps some of the game's strongest from a character writing angle. They really highlight what makes Ichiban a legend entirely in his own making by highlighting an aspect of the character which would never have been a key deciding factor in a Kiryu driven narrative- his ingenuity. Restricting the omnipotence of the viewer in moments like these allow the impact of unravelling the ruse to naturally knock off the players socks along with the characters- and though that is an aspect of storytelling slowly being forgotten in the modern age- RGG still remember the classics. And let it not be overlooked that Ichiban has some incredible emotional confrontations at the height of the journey, the likes of which we never get out of the loveable stone wall which is Kiryu. I'll even confess that the game made me a little misty eyed in it's final post-credits moments- which only Yakuza 0 had managed before in this franchise!

'Like a Dragon' really does start to push the boundaries of difficulty in it's end and post game, however. Giving the final boss a one-hit kill move is a bit over the top when you're operating with one of the most annoying JRPG rules of all time. (if your partly leader goes down then it's game over) And the True Millennium Tower and Final True Millennium Tower require so much experience grinding in order to have a chance to do them that it really isn't worth it just to see the Amon storyline passing on to Ichiban. I mean I grinded to True Millennium on a whim, but when enemies are one shotting you with a basic attack in 'Final True', you really have to start asking yourself how much of a self-hating RPG purist you are. And in myself I found the answer to be- not fully.

Summary

I admit to being a little bit worried about how the great franchise hand-off from Kiryu to Ichiban would go in 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon', but it seems by worries were wholly unfounded because this is most engaged I've felt with this franchise since I started. Like an addict I know I've been chasing the high of my first experience ever since I first completed Yakuza 0, and though I've had some comparable blasts (Yakuza 4 is a banger even in it's age) I think it's only been now that I've finally slapped that same haze. Ichiban's journey made me smile, laugh, cheer and nearly cry- and if he will continue to be the face of this legendary franchise then I'm all for seeing where he goes next and what friends he'll make along the way! (As though I don't already know the answer to most of those questions given the sequel just came out.) Of course I recommend the game, it's a Yakuza game that is pretty much a given for me. (Unless it's Yakuza 3.) and my grade is pretty much a no-brainer too. Just like with 0, this is an easy A Grade game worthy of the attention not just of any Yakuza fan but of RPG games in general. And in fact, because I happen to be an RPG fan and this game did such a fantastic job leaning into the world of RPGs in it's narrative and presentation, I'm going to do a little bit of a bias bump. This is now going down as an A+ Grade on my arbitrary review scale- making this the top rated Yakuza game I've ever reviewed. Now if you don't mind, I need to get back to figuring out how in the hell 'Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man who Erased his name' has one third of the chapters that this game had but requires 30gb more room to install! Holy install size ballooning, Batman! 

It's only a real fight when you're up against someone so strong, you're screwed!

Like a Yakuza

 Say that again!

Ryū ga Gotoku, (or Yakuza) it's become a little bit of an obsession for me in the past year as you may have noticed, to the point where I'm finding myself thinking back on it almost weekly. It's already entered that state of fond recollection in my mind, with the rosy-haze of a nostalgic dream, and I've only just finished it a few months back. I even started picking over my thoughts on it during my Dark Souls time, and you have to have something darn interesting on your mind if it can cut into Dark Souls time. (Either that or you're procrastinating because you've just realised how stupid it was to mount a low-armour run now that you've made it to 'Ornstein and Smough'. I did beat them, but it took a long while.) I think it's safe to say that I'm absolutely enamoured with Yakuza 0 and consider it to be one of the most understated masterpieces of the last generation. Although it's surprising to me to say that, as understated as I consider it to currently be, that's nothing compared to the levels of obscurity the series apparently suffered under before 0. In fact, in many ways Yakuza 0 was the game which saved the entire franchise for the West, and it all comes down to the localisation.

I've spoken a bit about localisation before in my blog about 'Subs vs Dubs', but essentially it's the work that goes into making the content of the game understandable to overseas audiences who perhaps don't speak the native language of the game. Cyberpunk 2077's official Youtube has uploaded an extensive video going into their localisation efforts for Russian, (No, I don't know why they did that, they just did) so if you want a glimpse at the nitty gritty of these sorts of works then I recommend you watch that. But to summarise, localisation is about more than just translating the subtitles and calling it a day. Just as with translation there's a decent amount of interpretation and even remodelling of the text in order to strike a cord that matches the original with an entirely different audience. Essentially, I'm saying that there are times when a direct translation would elicit a different reaction over a complete restructuring or remodelling, and it's up to the localisation team to figure out where that sweet spot sits.

Inverse recently published an exhaustive article going into the way in which Yakuza 0 saved the series and even touching base with the localisation team to talk. (Which is a great read, by the way.) And I wanted to touch on my personal experience with some of the topics that they mention. For one, I absolutely understand the problem which the author highlights with the Yakuza franchise, "the lack of an easy elevator pitch". If I were to have anyone to recommend games to, I think the best I could do would be to say it's like Saints Row 2 but crazier and better. But even then the comparison is muddy and weak at best. How do you really get to selling a franchise that is as defined by it's wacky antics as by it's melodrama and even the odd bout of genuine emotion? It's like a great anime perfectly captured in game-form, only with somehow less gloating and more fighting. And as I struggle with these comparisons I start to see the issues that a marketing team would have marketing this game across the world where people haven't even heard of it.

According to the article, Sega themselves had reached a point where it was looking grim for the Western future of this franchise, people just weren't buying these localisations enough to justify their existence. And for my part I suspect there may be a few reasons behind this, but I feel they all link back to a central idea: a distinct lack of exposure. Take me, for instance, someone who's heavily invested in the gaming landscape, back when I was into gaming magazines I never read a single article pertaining to Yakuza excluding a single article which referenced it as an example of a fighting game. (Which, again, is a bad categorisation. Just because it's a game with fighting that does not make it a fighting game.) I genuinely had no clue what these games were about and my older brother had actually played some, he couldn't even really explain what they were to me. (But then again I was pretty young at the time, he probably just didn't want to.)

Nowadays the world has changed and Yakuza isn't just recognised in the West, but praised heavily; and rightly so. One man who apparently doesn't feel comfortable taking credit for that is Scott Strichart, who is the localisation producer as Sega, as he remarked "A good localization is not gonna win you points, but a bad localisation loses points." To which I have a direct response, at it would just so happen. You see Scott is right, and wrong. A decent localisation isn't going to stand out to anyone except those with interest in such things like me, but I am being absolutely honest with you that there were times during Yakuza 0 when I literally threw myself back in my chair and said "This localisation kicks ass!" No joke and I'm not pandering, that is the absolute truth. (I think I even mentioned it in my review, you can look it up for proof!)

Now I've endured all kinds of localisations and truly bad ones are usually a relic of the past. Past Yakuza games, for example, where context got kind of muddled and a bit of a reputation was developed for the translations being unfaithful. The team back then experimented with getting some big names for the english VO, including Mark Hamill, but its hard to really get into this inherently Japanese games when simple custom is ignored such as the way Kiryu seems introduce himself by his first name, Kazuma, wherever he goes. (That's not right.) In fact, that particular pet peeve still haunts me to this day, because the recently released Steam version of Persona 4 Golden does the exact same thing, even when I have the Japanese voice track on and can literally hear the voices saying the second name. (It's nitpicky but infuriating! "He did not say 'Yukiko', he said 'Amagi-chan'")

Yakuza 0 has no English VO, which means all the weight of the translation effort has to go into the phrasing of the English text and that is where this localisation team blew me away time and time again. What they managed to capture, more than anything else, was character; and when you're dealing with a cast as crazy as this one, character is everything! Let me feel that bitter pride pouring out of Kuze with every exchange, the sleaze oozing off of Awano's cocky drawl, the nigh-on-perverted mania seeping out of Nishitani's every delighted exhale. The pitch-perfect performances and diamond-strong writing prepares the dish, but it's the localisation team who delivered it without fail and completely intact, fresh off the stove. Thiers is work that can be easy to overlook, but if you've never noticed a localisation effort for it's quality before then I implore you: let Yakuza 0 be the first to show you a bona fide masterclass in the art.

Yakuza 0 was a great game, and it's success has pretty much single handily revived the Yakuza franchise over here. In it's wake 2 Yakuza games have been treated to full remakes in order to bring us Western fans up to speed, and we've even been treated to the release of 'Yakuza: like a Dragon' over hear with a full English voice track. (I mean, I'll ignore it for the Japanese track, but it's an option!) The next step is, of course, a simultaneous world wide release, but that's a big step to take that (given how 'Like a Dragon' just came out) Sega won't have to deal with for a while yet. But until then I can smile to myself in the knowledge that a spectacular game franchise that deserves it is steadily gaining the recognition that has been absent for oh so long. Maybe there is a little justice in this world.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Everybody was kung-fu fighting!

I wasn't lying last blog. I don't know how to open these anymore. We're looking at another blog regarding the Inside Xbox Event. Yeah. But at least this is one game that I can happily approach with smiles and expectations because yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am a fan of this franchise. For that reason I'm super excited to see 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon' coming to Xbox Series X and thus landing in the hands of so many more players. (Although, full disclouse, I'm only really invested for the localisation that this release promises, my Yakuza platform is PC.)  So before I've even looked at any footage for this game I already know that is hails from an oddball, intense and often epic franchise that has never managed to disappoint me so far. (So expectations are understandably high.)

Although I will start my delve into this game by actually addressing a point I've made in practically every single 'Inside Xbox reveal title so far', namely what this game does to deserve being showcased in a next-gen focused event. Previously we've had very few titles who boast a scope beyond that which the current gens can handle, and mostly just games that have resolutions just a tad above what the One and PlayStation 4 are currently comfortable with. It's a trend that certainly calls into question whether or not this jump to the next stage of development tech is really necessary at the present, but no where does that question blaze brighter than with the trailer for 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon'. And why is that? Well, because 'Like a Dragon' just looks like a Yakuza game, not bad but not exactly cutting edge tech either. Since time immemorial Yakuza games have been jumping through seemingly long redundant loopholes in order to make their games work, (The tiny play areas seem like a holdover from Playstation one) their strength comes from the gameplay and story, so why did anyone think this game was a headliner worth touting to the world about? It just doesn't make any sense...

That aside the trailer itself is pure Yakuza magic and makes me personally beyond excited to try this title out for myself. It's seems the story will follow a run-of-the-mill Yakuza grunt named Ichiban Kasuga as he is convinced to take a fall for his family. (That's 'criminal family', by the by.) However once he's out of prison he is only met with an attempt on his own life by the boss he willingly went to lockup for, and so the game will follow Ichiban's rise from the ashes to find out what happened and, I assume take his revenge. Now, for a Yakuza storyline this actually does seem rather by-the-numbers however the strength of these stories do come from the characters themselves and if that really is Majima I saw briefly in this trailer, then 'Like a Dragon' is going to have no shortage of them going around.

The rest of the trailer is filled to the brim with all that bizarre off the wall nonsense that we all love the Yakuza series for, only to the point where it might just eclipse anything they've done before. We've already seen that this entry wishes to evolve upon the series by adopting a party system, (is it still considered 'evolution' when every other Japanese game ever made has a party system?) which has given the team the opportunity for weird party skins and members, but this trailer pushed beyond that. We see power blasts of blue energy flying out of character's fists, wrecking balls, battle lobsters and even an orbital strike from space. (And I still don't know how much of that is typical exaggeration and how much I'm supposed to take seriously. I suppose the lobster is the former. Probably.)

From personal experience, I can attest that the Yakuza series manages to quite deftly manage the absurd with the impactful in quite a satisfying and enjoyable manner, something which I imagine this game will be no slouch at either. There's something about going through a vicious battle to the death and Yakuza bosses one moment and consorting with a half-naked lunatic who can't stop dancing the next moment which is so uniquely whimsical and, quite honestly, Japanese. That's the same sort of unmatched entertainment that I look to anime for and what I get out of some of my favourite Japanese games like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear and Xenoblade Chronicles. (Yep, I'm going so far as to compare Yakuza to those greats!) With the way that this series constructs itself there is something especially intense yet magical to it's execution that I simply can't get anywhere else. Think 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure' only without Hamon energy as a plot point. (Which by my reckoning is a 100% improvement.)

If there is one problem I must bring up, and yes it's an elaboration upon my earlier point, but does this game have to carry the shortcomings of it's predecessor? Ever since this series began it has pulled of this 'simulation-light' of the city space in which the game is set, and whilst it may have been sort of impressive in the first entry nowadays it seems a little lame. Every time you're between main story events, you'll find yourself in an instanced area of free roam that basically just serves as a staging ground for the game's many sidequests, and I feel like it could be just so much more. What would become of a game like this is work was put in to make that in-between world feel alive and consequential? I know that's my expectations for western game design values getting ahead of myself there but I like to think the concept of quality would be universal. (If nothing else it would make the story locations feel more immersive and less like the 'fight arenas' that they absolutely are.)

But I do know why it is that Microsoft lined this game up for it's Xbox Series X reveal, contrary to what I might have implied earlier. You see this wasn't their way of showing off 'the power of Series X' like it was for most of the other entries, no this was an attempting of boasting about the relationships that they've built since the last generation. At the start of Xbox one's lifecycle, there was still quite the perplexing divide between the western and eastern gaming world, a bridge that only Sony, with their natural connections, could bridge. It's this separation which helped keep many decent Japanese games as exclusives to Japan with the odd exception to the titles that Sony could drag up. (And they ended up being PlayStation exclusives anyway.) There was the 'Dragon Quest' franchise, the Persona games and even Yakuza. Microsoft have dedicated themselves to making up the slack in that regard, and they've already secured Yakuza 0 on the Xbox One. This was clearly their way of showing that the team haven't forgotten this new focus and that it's working for them to some degree. Personally, I'm currently unfazed. (Get me a PC version of Persona 5, then we'll talk.)

At the end of the day 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon' looks like more of the same, and that is absolutely fine by me, knowing the quality that entails. I don't really think such a title really had place being exhibited in this setting, especially in a trailer that seemed completely uninterested in showing off the headlining attraction, but I won't complain when it's something that I like. Of course, the other reason this game was shown-off was because it would be making use of Xbox Smart delivery, allowing folk to purchase the game on current gen and port it over to next gen at no additional cost, but that could have been accomplished with a tweet, guys. (That's what CDPR did with Cyberpunk. Although now I've thought about it, that tweet was in the place of another potential Cyberpunk trailer! Dammit, Microsoft, no matter how I twist this you've still done us dirty!) But hey, what do I know about console marketing anyway? I'm just the target audience...

What is a consumer entitled to?

No gods, only Man.

My name is not Andrew Ryan; but I'm still here to ask you a question: Are gamers not entitled to the game they paid for? That's the question that I want you to rattle about in your head for a little bit. Now you'll often hear the word 'entitled' chucked around as an insult quite a bit around the world of gaming, but if we disregard it's negative connotations and look at the literal definition and then think about it; why shouldn't folk be entitled to receive goods equal to the value that they paid for it? Well, if you find yourself on a marketing team and approached with the question than the rebuttal is easy; because value is subjective and it's often impossible to compare and contrast amid the myriad of purchaseables that dominate our world. But what if we pull back to a more nuanced approached and compare the value of what is offered in one game with what is offered by another; when does the discrepancy between them become egregious to the point where frustration is validated?

I find myself pondering this as we hear about the latest puddle to splash across gaming news relating to Sega's outstanding Yakuza franchise. Their latest title; 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon', is soon to release and it promises a reinvention of the tried and true formula indicative of the Yakuza license. Rather than an action adventure beat 'em up title, this game will adopt a JRPG stance which one could argue is a dime-a-dozen in Japan but to be fair I've never seen it done where every single party member is wearing a cheap suit. Amidst one of the many huge departures from the Yakuza formula that 'Like a Dragon' is instituting, one which has triggered the audience is the exclusion of the highest difficulty mode and a New Game + mode. Oh sorry, let me correct myself; the transplantation of the said modes outside of the base game and into DLC which SEGA then expect people to shell out for at a later date.

Now personally I don't usually get down with a New Game + mode, but difficulty modes are my jam so this does somewhat upset me. (And I am actually a fan of the franchise, so this will inconvenience me when I get around to it. I'm still on Yakuza 0, however, so that's probably going to be a while.) This news is slightly undercut by a few factors of course; one of them being the price. The DLC will only be $0.60 at launch, but that's only for a limited time after which it will receive a 10x price hike to $6.00. (What the heck, guys?) Then there is the fact that as the game is launching in Japan right now, this little trick is only being pulled there. Surely they wouldn't think this would fly in the West? The answer to that is "Of course they would" and this little experiment shouldn't even just be looked at as a trial run for the West but likely for every SEGA Yakuza game to follow. (Especially the one's that haven't been officially released with English translations yet.)

But if we circle back to the original question that I purposed, then we can address this from the angle of: Why should people be upset about this retroactive exclusion from the game? (We've no actual confirmation that this is a retroactive removal but come on, we aren't idiots here.) At what point does the contract between the developer and the consumer become sullied by the removal of features to the point at which we are being ripped off? For some folk, they could say that it comes from the moment this title starts pawning off features that earlier games offered for free; but then one could point out that the entire structure of this particular entry is vastly different to those earlier games, so you might say that the value of those modes has similarly shifted. Others still could rebut that it happens once content is knowingly cut from the final product, but the creators could argue that the package is full without this content, it's just a bonus. (To be clear, I'm playing devil's advocate with all of this, I'm just curious about how far this train of thought can stretch.)

In a way this is the same tug-of-war at the heart of every microtransaction argument between purchaser and provider. When the offered content is perceived as something so insignificantly minuscule that it could have been cobbled together in less than a week, it's hard for people to come to terms with the idea of having to pay for it. Add ontop of that the dilemma of pricing for such content and things become overly complicated. Take Anthem for example; in that game Bioware started off their content support by charging £15 for new skins on one's Javelin. So did that mean that this single skin was 1/4 as valuable as the entire base game? These are the sorts of equations that publishers invite by introducing such measures, and then discourage us from actually going through. This sort of mentality can be best summed up in Pete Hines' notoriously victim-playing Fallout 76 interview the other week. (You know; the one where he moronically claimed that people were picking on the game just because they hated Bethesda?) There he defended the much-chided Fallout 1st subscription by calling it false equivalence to compare the price of their service with the price of Netflix. Their offer was for sustained private servers (even then, still vastly overpriced) whilst Netflix is offering streaming to thousands of movies and TV. There's an argument to be had there, but maybe between people a little more down-to-earth than ol' Pete.

Taking things back to the concept of selling difficulty modes, 'Like a Dragon' isn't actually the first of it's kind to do that. If I take you all the way back to 2013, there was a bit of hubbub around a little game called 'Metro: Last Light' when they had the audacity to announce a Ranger mode alongside the release of the game. This pack would include exclusive access to the Ranger difficulty mode which was advertised as "The way Metro was meant to be played." As a huge fan of Metro I can actually attest to the fact that Metro is an experience that is indeed meant to be played in Ranger mode, wherein difficulty is ramped, resources are scarce and you have no HUD or tutorials to play with. In fact, when I first played Metro 2033 I went through the whole thing in Ranger mode. (PSA: Yes, that was as dumb of an idea as it sounds. I ended up getting stuck half way through because of gameplay mechanics that I didn't even know existed, such as using the lighter.)

The level of discourse from that event was much the same it was know; "why is Ranger Mode blocked off for this entry when it was part of the original game for free?" Again, the insult wasn't from the price of the content (which was minuscule) but rather from the audacity of having been asked to pay for something that many considered to be a part of the base package. A bulletpoint under the 'promised goods' that one expects to receive when they purchase the game. (It surely didn't help their case the Deep Silver went around claiming how essential the mode was to experience the game as designed) But at the end of the day without any genuine physical contract to the effect, all anyone could really argue was that they were 'entitled' to this mode; and that doesn't really sound too good in a debate, now does it?

When it's all said and done I don't believe there's an actual answer to this conundrum, as it would require the conjuring of a question that could be answered. The consumer is entitled to absolutely nothing beyond what they strictly pay for and if the providers decided to slice away at their original deal then what we are owed reduces in kind. So does that mean we should be contented when companies cut out game modes and charge us for the privilege? Of course not. As beyond the basic confines of legal entitlement lies the desire of what customers deserve, and if what is offered is undeserving of the consumer then it really is one's duty to let these companies know about it. So what is a consumer entitled to? Absolutely nothing. But what do we deserve? Exactly what we paid for and not a single difficulty mode less.