Last chance
Yakuza: Like a Dragon leaves on October 20: is it worth starting now?
- Critic score
- 85
- Player rating
- 4.5/5
- Main story
- 46.1 h
- Genre
- JRPG, Adventure, Action
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is also leaving the PS Plus catalog on October 20. The catch: it is a long game. Here is what you can reasonably see of it before then, and why even a few evenings are worth it.
Ichiban Kasuga is a low-level grunt in a low-level Tokyo yakuza family. Out of loyalty to his boss, he agrees to serve eighteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit. When he gets out, nobody is waiting, his clan is gone, and the man he admired most shoots him. He wakes up in Yokohama, broke, surrounded by homeless men.
It is the first main-series game from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio to drop real-time brawling for turn-based combat. The game turns that into a running joke: Ichiban, a Dragon Quest fan, sees the world as a role-playing game, and Yokohama's thugs transform before his eyes into RPG monsters. Jobs range from bodyguard to street musician, and attacks pull from the scenery, bicycles and road signs included.
Around the main story is everything the series is known for: dozens of absurd and often touching side stories, kart races, a business to grow, arcades with real SEGA games. And under the comedy, a genuine melodrama about loyalty and the family you choose.
To be honest: the story alone takes around forty hours, far more with the activities. You will not finish it in a week without giving it every evening. But the first chapters stand well on their own, and they are enough to tell whether the series is for you.
If it is, the good news is that the sequel, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, is in the catalog. And if you have already started Like a Dragon, now is the time to push through to the end before it leaves.