GOOOOOD ASSS GAME!!!!

but play everything else before you buy this one

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth aims to build upon the foundation set by Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and in some ways, it outdoes its predecessor. Ichiban and his party mostly retake center stage, and they're no less endearing here than back in 2020, accompanied by a few well fleshed-out newcomers. Kamurocho and Yokohama are still explorable, but the bulk of the game's action is set in Honolulu, one of the best cities the series has seen to date, a delightful and authentic but still warts-and-all depiction of Hawaii. Combat sees a number of relatively simple changes that make it much more dynamic and flexible. On other hand, while it's very nice to bring Kiryu back for yet another "one last time," this time tying up several outlying loose ends, he does overshadow Ichiban in the game's final act to the story's detriment. In addition, Ichiban's own substories rely a little too heavily on returning bit characters just so happening to be in Honolulu at the same time Ichiban is, and most of these characters are less endearing this time around.

Nonetheless, the series I insist on still calling Yakuza remains strong with this newest outing, and I hope Ryu Ga Gotuku Studio can continue to keep up the quality.

Tomizawaaaaa

Great game marred by one really dumb, expensive DLC decision.

i went from a jrpg to a pokemon simulator to animal crossing and now a gambling simulator. thanks sega

Let's get the reason for the negative review out first and foremost:

You cannot 100% this game by buying the game. It requires you to buy a $20 DLC to add, OF ALL THINGS, a New Game Plus mode which includes Legendary difficulty and a hard dungeon called "Big Swell". These things are required to be completed to 100% the game. I think it's incredibly scummy to lock off content that was CLEARLY done before the game was released to the public in a DLC and borderline corrupt to price it at such an absurd price.

Other than the extremely scummy DLC practices of the company behind the developers of Infinite Wealth, IW itself is a joy to play. It is a great love letter to the past games we have all fell in love with. The tactical combat once again returns again here and seems to be generally well-balanced (unless you have obscene amounts of money and just spam Poundmates). The variety of enemies is fun and their addition into the Pokemon-esque style minigame is awesome. Hawaii as a location is pretty interesting and they've added some interesting location-specific minigames to make it more "Hawaii-esque". The voice actors all knock it out of the park, whether you are EN or JP.

TL:DR --> I cannot recommend more the base game. However, this is marred by the DLC practices of the company behind the developers. Buy the base game on sale. If you must 100%, wait for the DLC to also go on sale.

Very enjoyable gameplay but sadly disappointing story and ending. I liked dondoko island minigame tho

more games need lovable 45 year old ex-yakuza as main characters

I can respect the time and effort that went into making this game.

Its not for me due to how much INFINITE amounts of FRUSTRATION it has in it such as barley keeping up with gear and stat scaling of enemys thru the game once the mid-late game happens.

Gear grinding and finding rare materials later on is h311.

It also is pretty much just lad 1 with more kiyru due to it being almost a retelling.

Combat is the only thing better about this one as well as a few other smaller things.

The gameplay is a direct improvement from Y:LAD in almost every way. They really nailed it this time around.

The story, however, feels like the beach episode of an anime you've been a fan of for years. It's not BAD, but it feels like it could have been a lot more, you know?

BIG UPSIDES (personally):
- Better combat
- Dual protagonists adds a lot of variety
- TONS of side content
- TONS of charming interactions between party members
- TONS of hours of content (like, really, this game is huge. Currently have ~175 hours without 100%ing it)
- There's just an entire Animal Crossing game in here for some reason lol

BIG DOWNSIDES (personally):
- Story is a bit of a letdown
- Side dungeons are randomly generated in the most boring way possible
- No super-hard postgame dungeon
- No incentive to get the best weapons
- New Game+ is $20

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

- One of the reasons I love the Yakuza series is because of the Japanese city environments. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed the areas that deviate from this (I loved the woodland village that Saejima stayed at in Yakuza 5), and Hawaii is no exception; they outdid themselves making it feel like you were truly romping around a beachside paradise. It felt very different than was expected from a Yakuza game (mainly in good ways), and I'm looking forward to other unexpected locations for the games to explore.

- No super hard postgame dungeon was a pretty big letdown for me; the True Millennium Tower dungeon in Y:LAD was so cool, being a super difficult test of your skills and how far you've come throughout the game. This game doesn't have anything like that. There's The Big Swell, a postgame dungeon/small storyline available in one of the DLCs, but despite how fun the character interactions were in that DLC (seriously, they made me literally laugh out loud at times), it's nowhere near the challenge I was craving. Granted, I did work to get the very best weapons in the game, which was really fun to do and I know most people wouldn't do this, but anything I used them on completely crumbled under their power. I wish there was something in the game that was challenging enough that you needed the best weapons to stand a chance.

- Spoilers for The Big Swell: All of the end-of-area bosses were so disappointing. It starts strong with the first one being a fight against all 3 of Sawashiro's fighting styles at once, but then they have you refight the final bosses of the game really early, and 2 of the 5 end-of-area bosses are the giant shark and the giant squid. The spectacle of those two fights is amazing, but that's all they are; gameplay-wise, they're a complete joke. Most Essence moves don't work on them, they can't be afflicted by status effects (which is a mechanic that most of the endgame weapons steer you towards, nullifying their effectiveness in what feels like an arbitrary way), they barely do any damage to your party, and the party positioning mechanic is entirely absent (along with any associated mechanics such as combo attacks, proximity bonuses, back attacks, area attacks, etc). The fact that the final fight of The Big Swell is the squid fight again is such a letdown challenge-wise that it left a sour taste in my mouth, especially because there wasn't much of a party interaction sequence after it.

- The Amon fight was also a big letdown. Sure, you're fighting a party of the Amon clan, and it's really cool that they can use tag team abilities like you, but you can beat them so much earlier than Yakuza games usually allow that it felt almost like a joke. I thought that there would be an actual tough-as-nails Amon fight near the end of the game, as is tradition, but I was left really disappointed and underwhelmed when I realized that this was supposed to be this game's Amon fight.

- About Yamai: This one is just me gushing about a character I liked, but it would have been so cool if Yamai became a party member. I know the whole theme of these games is "the power of friendship", but it would have been a fascinating change of pace to have a character on the team that was (at least initially) so contrary to that theme. I don't count this as a downside of his character or the game, and it probably would have been really difficult to design the game around a character like that, but it almost felt like things were heading towards him being added to the party. Oh well, like I said, this isn't a downside or anything. Just something I thought would've been really cool, since I liked his character writing and design so much.

- Kiryu and his past (and therefore our past since we've played these games for so long) get the respect they deserve. The Memoirs were a great way to appreciate the past games. I know it makes sense story-wise, but it's disappointing that Kiryu really only gets to talk to Akiyama without any BS like his secret identity getting in the way.

- I love how Kiryu's Rush, Brawler, and Beast styles completely change their attacks when improving Body, Soul, and Tech enough; each one becomes so much stronger and so much cooler.

- I am glad that missed character-unique armor can be bought from specific pawn shops once you beat the game. Makes Premium Adventure and a New Game+ playthrough less frustrating.

- The Sujimon content was very fun, but I wish it tied more into the rest of the game; once you complete all the Sujimon stuff, there's basically no reason to interact with anything Sujimon-related ever again. The Sujimancer Job is a nice exception to this.

- The randomly generated dungeons are so boring when it comes to the randomly-generated part that they might as well have just designed a few layouts and left it at that. The random generation adds so little that it feels like a proof-of-concept.