Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Kotaku Evaluation

Kazuma Kiryu has been hitting the cigs fairly onerous.

Don’t get me improper. After a protracted day of beating the everloving shit out of individuals, a stiff drink and some drags most likely go down actual good. And the protagonist of Sega’s long-running crime cleaning soap has by no means been one to draw back from a scrumptious vice, whether or not it’s consuming the whole Smile Burger menu in a single sitting, dropping a pair million yen to make small speak with a bosomy hostess, or guzzling a complete bottle of whisky for a mid-brawl energy enhance.

Smoking has all the time been a part of the feel of Yakuza’s romp by means of Japan’s legal underworld, usually deployed to nice impact in cutscenes and idle animations. However Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Title foregrounds Kiryu’s nicotine behavior to a higher extent than any earlier sport within the collection. After the opening sequence, he laments being unable to smoke within the automobile. Elsewhere, “going for a smoke” will often be essential to advance the story. Not like in earlier Yakuza video games, cigarettes at the moment are consumable items bought in comfort shops and given as presents. Should you run out, Kiryu will implore you to get some extra. Discovering a smoking space and lighting up will improve Kiryu’s warmth gauge, which permits him to execute extra highly effective assaults. Did I point out that he additionally will get “fight cigarettes” that act as mini-bombs throughout fights? Anyway, there’s a helluva lot of smoking on this sport.

The factor is, lighting up on a regular basis doesn’t make Kiryu appear edgy or cool anymore. Okay, fantastic. It does typically. However extra usually, his fixed smoking contributes to a broader sense of foreboding and anxious dread that’s in every single place in Gaiden, a compact, thrilling, and shifting sidequel that permits developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios to determine sky-high stakes for the following mainline installment of the collection, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth.  

A caged dragon

Gaiden particulars the legendary yakuza’s life within the shadows after faking his personal dying on the finish of 2016’s Yakuza 6. After discovering a decades-long conspiracy linking the federal government to the legal underworld, the Dragon of Dojima is compelled into serving the shadowy Daidoji faction—lest they retaliate by killing his family members on the Morning Glory orphanage in Okinawa.

Employed-muscle work isn’t particularly difficult for a brick shithouse like Kiryu, but it surely’s instantly clear that the final three or 4 years have taken loads out of him mentally. He’s like a caged tiger who largely spends his downtime “meditating” in a Buddhist temple—solely his meditation largely consists of reliving the worst moments of his life: when the individuals closest to him have died, or the final time he noticed his adopted daughter Haruka. (Regrets, he’s had just a few.) Faking your personal dying won’t appear so dangerous on paper, however Kiryu has discovered that being remoted from everybody and all the things you’ve ever cared about would possibly really be worse than dying.

The earlier Yakuza video games have been fairly approachable from a storytelling perspective—you possibly can decide up Yakuza Kiwami 2 or Yakuza 0 chilly and get a deal with of issues simply fantastic. However Gaiden is an exception to this rule. Occasions on this story run parallel to the occasions of 2020’s RPG outing Like A Dragon, whereas additionally calling again on to Yakuza 6. I performed each once they first got here out, however was slightly rusty on the twists and turns of every. Should you’re planning to play Gaiden, it’s possible you’ll wish to brush up on what occurred, as a result of it assumes a reasonably excessive degree of familiarity with the lore.

Gaiden primarily takes place in Osaka’s Sotenbori vice district, with some extra hijinks available in a small phase of Yokohama’s Ijincho (of Like A Dragon fame) and the wholly new Fortress space, which is a cargo ship in worldwide waters with a on line casino and a preventing colosseum. In Sotenbori, Kiryu falls in with Akame, a sharp-tongued gal who protects the homeless from predatory thugs and runs an underground info community.

The Akame Community missions are most likely the beefiest non-obligatory content material within the sport, and are divvied up as lengthier Requests and transient Help missions. The latter are extra pedestrian fare—deliver a man a bento field, assist a mum or dad discover a lacking child, give an unfortunate dude in a public bathroom some tissues to wipe with. Requests are much more rewarding, with loads of deep-cut throwbacks to iconic weirdos from Yakuza video games previous, and even an prolonged crossover with the Judgement collection.

The Fortress’s colosseum is a button-mashing adrenaline rush, although not significantly new for longtime collection followers. There are each particular person and group battles, and you may recruit different fighters to affix you for greater brawls. You can too purchase some fairly outlandish costumes for Kiryu to put on within the area—Majima and Ono Michio, anybody?—although I discovered myself saving cash for ability upgrades in my preliminary playthrough.

Fists of fury

Kiryu’s story takes place over 5 chapters, in comparison with 12-15 within the collection’ mainline choices. Meaning it’ll take you about 10 hours to beat, accounting for some average dabbling in sidequests. Plan to double that when you’re trying to end all of the side-stories and non-obligatory content material.

The minigames on provide in Gaiden are acquainted fare: golf, poker, mahjongg, darts, karaoke, and arcade video games. The hostess membership returns, although this time with live-action actors, which makes the interactions much more goofy. The women all have distinctive personalities and appears, and it’s onerous to not really feel slightly flutter in your chest once they bat their eyelashes at you and giggle oh-so saucily.

And not using a sleep-stealing time-sink like Yakuza 0’s actual property empire or Like A Dragon’s enterprise sim, preventing is much and away the most important factor of Gaiden’s gameplay—and fortunately, it’s terrific. Boss battles are dramatic and flashy in each potential means, and RGG hurls greater hordes of goons at Kiryu than ever earlier than. Transitions between preventing and exploration are additionally noticeably shorter than earlier video games, which makes entering into fast avenue tussles extra interesting than it has been up to now.

Every installment of the Yakuza collection has dealt with the Dragon of Dojima’s ability set slightly in a different way, and Gaiden isn’t any exception, streamlining Kiryu’s preventing skills into two kinds. Yakuza is his acquainted gradual and highly effective fight stance, with an emphasis on relentless combos and charged assaults. Agent fashion is a brand new addition that provides him a quartet of spy devices to play with, together with cigarette bombs, assault drones, and rocket footwear. One of the best of all is the Spider, which works like Peter Parker’s webs and binds up baddies for a short while, permitting Kiryu to fling them away or into different goons.

The ability tree is slightly complicated and weirdly organized, but it surely’s not a dealbreaker. (Why does each Yakuza sport have a singular, but annoying ability tree?) Throughout my playthrough, I plowed most of my cash into abilities and had little left over for facet content material. On reflection, many are overpriced and never particularly helpful—I most likely would have gotten extra enjoyment out of utilizing that cash elsewhere.

Whereas I initially inclined towards the normal Yakuza moveset—crushing dweebs within the face with a bicycle or an armchair really by no means will get previous—I discovered myself favoring Agent fashion because the problem ratcheted up. It provides nice crowd management for the numerous large mobs you’ll encounter, and the flexibility to zip out and in of the fray for fast combos makes it interesting for one-on-one showdowns with gradual, blade-wielding heavies.

Gaiden performs the acquainted hits in a compact bundle that’s a pleasant solution to wile away a wet weekend. Should you’ve left earlier video games within the collection unfinished as a result of hefty time funding required, it is a nice solution to get again into the swing of issues, even when all of the lore-dumping would possibly go away you feeling such as you’ve taken one too many bicycles to the pinnacle.

It’s not trying too good for ol’ Kiryu by the tip of Gaiden, however I’ve received my fingers crossed he will get the glad ending he deserves in his sundown years. Perhaps even a romantic associate in spite of everything these years of enjoying the lone wolf? Both means, I can’t wait to see what’s subsequent in Infinite Wealth. Let’s hope he cools it with the rattling smoking by then.