I’ve by no means met Ichiban Kasuga in my gaming life, however after lower than an hour with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, I’d declare my fervent and eternal need to guard that bundle of pixels with my very life. Ichiban, like Infinite Wealth, is a clumsy, stilted dork who can, at occasions, grate in your nerves together with his tediousness. However (and it is a large however), he’s infused with a degree of attraction that may forgive each different sin.
Infinite Wealth is the eighth entry within the Yakuza sequence and the second starring Ichiban Kasuga, a 40-year-old former felon whose chest you would crack open and discover a literal coronary heart manufactured from gold. Although I’m decently versed within the Yakuza sequence, having dabbled in Yakuza 0 and just a little little bit of Yakuza Kiwami, I missed out on the earlier sport that was our first introduction to Ichiban: Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Nevertheless, Infinite Wealth does an honest job of getting you in control when you didn’t play or just forgot the occasions of Like a Dragon.
In Infinite Wealth, we meet up with Ichiban a while after turning into the Hero of Yokohama. He now works on the native employment middle and is devoted to serving to ex-yakuza members discover gainful employment in a local weather the place legal guidelines prohibit ex-yakuza from taking part in society. Although it is a noble objective, it results in hassle for Ichiban, who, after shenanigans, heads to Hawaii to search out his long-lost mom, making buddies — who turn out to be celebration members — alongside the way in which.
When you’re new to Yakuza video games, right here’s a phrase of warning: Infinite Wealth will check the hell out of your endurance. This sport’s pacing is prison. For each 5 minutes that I used to be allowed to discover the richly constructed world stuffed with arcades and seashores and issues to struggle, expertise, or accumulate, I needed to sit by means of 20–half-hour’ price of story-critical (and thereby unskippable) cutscenes. Closing Fantasy XIII, with its preponderance of on-rails sections that prohibited any exploration, felt higher structured than this.
Nevertheless, the builders at Sega’s Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio appeared to know when gamers’ endurance would run out as a result of each time I thought of placing down the sport for good, it’d give me one thing so friggin’ ridiculous and enjoyable that I’d get looped proper again in. Regardless of my frustration with Infinite Wealth’s pacing, the sport unfolds fairly dang nicely as a result of it takes its time to cook dinner.
As a substitute of dumping all of what it has to supply throughout the earliest chapters, Infinite Wealth slowly introduces its new techniques in a method that doesn’t overwhelm the participant. I had the chance to marinate with the sport’s social media making-friends minigame together with the atrocious and exceedingly off-putting “courting app” minigame earlier than I gained entry to the Loopy Taxi-by-way-of-Uber-Eats minigame. I bought a while to have my enjoyable with that earlier than the sport threw a reasonably strong Yakuza-ified model of Pokémon (referred to as Sujimon, a monster battling sport full with raids and all!) at me. And it was a full 14 hours earlier than I bought to one of the extremely marketed elements of Infinite Wealth: the Animal Crossing-like Dodonko Island minigame. And that’s not all! Proper across the time I used to be launched to Dondonko Island, there was additionally a full-on dungeon crawler with successive ranges of more and more tough fight to play with.
Infinite Wealth is 9 totally different retail video games in a yakuza-tattooed trench coat manufactured from social commentary. I haven’t completed it but, having spent 25 hours to succeed in chapter six out of 14, however there’s a lot to see and do, I doubt I’ll end it this fiscal 12 months.
I really like what Infinite Wealth does with the standard turn-based RPG fight format. As a substitute of remaining in a static place such as you do in Persona or one of many turn-based Closing Fantasy video games, you’ll be able to transfer concerning the fight area in Infinite Wealth to set your self up for one of the best combos. My favourite is when you’ll be able to line enemies and allies up like bowling pins. A profitable assault will both hit your enemy into an ally that may set off a bonus assault otherwise you hit an enemy into one other enemy with the possibility to kill them each. It doesn’t work too usually — enemies appeared to have better skill to maneuver and place themselves than I did — however when it labored, it labored nicely.
Ichiban and his comrades have totally different jobs, every with totally different strengths, talents, and weapons to make use of. I haven’t felt that the job system is especially attention-grabbing or transformative — Ichiban’s Aquanaut job doesn’t really feel materially totally different than his Hero job, so there’s no level to switching — seemingly as a result of I haven’t had that a lot time with it. That is the place Infinite Wealth’s sluggish introduction of techniques works in opposition to it since you don’t get to alter your jobs or be taught new ones till chapter 5.
Regardless of that, fight itself is absurd in one of the simplest ways. Fights with thugs and gang members rework into struggles in opposition to monsters like creepy males wrapped up in sleeping baggage who assault you want a Caterpie however hit rather a lot more durable. Ichiban wields his hero sword with which he strikes down the depraved, however surely, it’s a very massive, industrial-strength vibrator. (I’m not kidding!) I respect how Infinite Wealth leans into its unseriousness as a result of practically each time one thing ridiculous or cool occurs both in fight or throughout a minigame, the sport turns off the UI and slows down essentially the most action-filled moments, supplying you with the chance to take one of the best screenshots.
When you work within the online game business, the primary handful of hours of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth ought to include a set off warning. Shortly after beginning the sport, Ichiban is summarily laid off regardless of being top-of-the-line employees his employment middle had ever seen. (Sound acquainted?) Ichiban’s getting fired is one among a number of “make-you-go-oof” moments all through the primary 20 hours of the sport that underscore the sport’s bigger emotional ethos.
Infinite Wealth takes a stark have a look at all the things from houselessness, to the impression of tourism on native communities, to what occurs when so-called social media “influencers” are allowed to go off gossip and rumor as investigative journalism. And it doesn’t really feel surface-level, both. The sport doesn’t level at a problem as if to say, “We’re acknowledging this drawback”; slightly Ichiban’s varied adventures repeatedly confront these points, like Hawaii’s epidemic of homelessness, for instance.
When Ichiban’s pockets will get stolen by an individual experiencing houselessness, after chasing him down, he doesn’t beat the man unconscious as punishment as a online game may mandate. As a substitute, Tomizawa, one among your celebration members and a Hawaii native, explains how the state has the fourth highest price of homelessness in the USA whereas additionally being the costliest state to stay in. All true.
It could actually really feel a bit whiplash-y to go from the high-highs of Sujimon battling to the lows of confronting our authorities’s seeming unwillingness to do one thing substantive for individuals with out housing whereas apparently having Infinite Wealth (see what I did there) for bailing out banks. However I respect that whereas the Yakuza sequence has at all times combined its message with absurdity, Infinite Wealth pushes even more durable on the social commentary that undergirds the sport’s wackier moments to remind the participant that although it is a goofy-ass sport, it has one thing to say, and it’s excessive time we truly begin listening.