now playing — yakuza | like a dragon
played on playstation 5
Like I’ve said in previous reviews of Yakuza games, they are an unwavering constant. The city layouts are comfortingly familiar, the final showdown at millennium tower is a guarantee, you’re going to do wild goofy side quests, blow too much money at the casino, hit someone with a bicycle, and probably get confused about the plot. You may have your personal favorites, but all these games are in a pretty tight-grouping in terms of their quality…and that preference will largely reflect your own tastes.
For me, the more a Yakuza game focuses on the characters, over the plot, the more I tend to enjoy it. Therefore, the most focused ones tend to by my favorite. Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1/2, and 6, I think are absolutely the strongest games, with the crown going on Yakuza 6 as my favorite. I never liked switching between four protagonists like in 4/5, even if Akiyama and Saejima are great characters. Yakuza 6 succeeds because it’s so focused on Kiryu’s relationship with Haruka, the orphanage kids, and his immediate family. Once you delve too deeply into the convoluted plot twists, double-agents, twin brothers, and other soap-opera, almost “metal-gear” esque drama, it falls apart for me.
Yakuza 7 is a middle of the pack Yakuza game for me, in that I think it does many smart things to move the franchise forward, but still falls into pitfalls that the series cannot or will not get away from. It’s much better than Yakuza 3/4/5, but it’s not quite as strong as 0/1/2/6. I think the weakness here is again in stretching a game that should have been thirty hours, into almost fifty. The opening chapters are immensely compelling, with Ichiban and Nanba climbing their way out of the actual gutter, getting your party members, starting to make a name for yourself in Yokohama (where 90% of the game takes place). However there’s a large middle chunk, (I’d say chapters 5/6/7/8 where you’re running in circles and nothing you’re doing is super impactful to the overall plot. It’s all busy-work to pad the runtime before the bigger plot-pieces start to fall into place for the latter half of the game.
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It’s all part of a bigger issue that I’d largely put under the “pacing” category. This problem persists in how the side quests are dolled out as well — for instance all of these are located in Yokohama, but there are no side quests in Kamurocho or Sotenbori…I don’t think there needs to be NEW quests, just take some of the Yokohama ones and put them in the other locations so I have reason to spend time there. Even within Yokohama, the side quests are fairly well spread out at the beginning, and then you find a big park area that has like six or seven more side quests waiting for you…it all could have been spread out better in my opinion.
The biggest change to Like a Dragon is moving to a turn-based RPG combat system — I think this is largely a smart move, not because of the quality of the combat itself (it’s totally serviceable but nothing amazing), but because traditional party-based game structure serves the franchise much better than the brawler combat from yakuza 0–6. It allows you to spend more time with your buds, and focus on the relationships that are so core to these games, without the character switching featured in 4/5. Those games felt torn between two points. They want to have a longer game, and if it’s longer they don’t want to have you be Kiryu the entire time, so let’s switch it up by changing the hero. The problem is that taking away focus from Kiryu and the main story inevitably leads to a place where the player feels, “Why am I doing this? How does this connect to the main plot?”. Yakuza 7 unfortunately still has this main problem in some of the middle chapters, where it seems like entire plot-lines could have been cut and the conclusion of the game would have been largely the same. Again, this is something I felt was very strong about Yakuza 6…it was more condensed and focused.
The good news here is that the main cast of characters is incredibly strong, particularly your immediate party members like Saeko, Nanba, and Adachi. The story of the game is a bit of a mess, and yeah maybe the combat is a little too simple, but these characters are so fun to hang out with. People talk about the Yakuza 7 party members as being in the esteemed company of some of the most classic JRPG parties ever, and I think they are right. Just the idea of having a guy who’s class is, “Homeless Guy”, and he’s able to breathe fire and summon hordes of pigeons is great.
Each of these characters also have interesting backgrounds and side stories to be explored at the somewhat *Persona 5 esque* bar that you use as a hideout. Yakuza 7 is just a great game for “hangin’ with ur buds”, whether that’s at a maid-cafe, a cabaret club, karaoke, the movie theater or whatever. These are just great people to spend time with.
The move to turn-based traditional RPG systems I think also reinforces the incentives to do side-activities and explore all the systems available. Yakuza games are best when you “eat around the plate”, as no system is good enough on its own to support an entire game, let alone one that is more than fifty hours long. Doing the business mini-game is the only way you’re ever going to have enough cash to level up the lady who crafts your weapons and gear, which is the only way you’re going to pass the upper levels of the battle arena…so on and so forth. All the systems are interconnected in ways that encourage you to try everything and take it all in like one giant yakuza themed buffet of gameplay.
Overall I think Yakuza 7 makes a lot of very healthy changes to a franchise that was starting to become a little stale, and also falls into some pitfalls along the way that the series can’t get away from. I love Ichiban the new hero, and I think turn-based was the right move to shake things up, but this game could have been 15-hours shorter and been better for it.
