Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is going to big a big change for the popular Japanese crime drama series. Sure, the last mainline game already made the shift to a new lead character, new city and jumped from action adventure to tactical RPG gameplay, but Infinite Wealth will see the story take place outside of Japan for the first time, and promises to be the final chapter in Kiryu Kazuma’s story. Again.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is coming out across PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, Xbox One and PC on 26th January.
New protagonist Ichiban Kasuga and Yakuza stalwart Kazuma Kiryu will both be heading to Honolulu, Hawaii in Infinite Wealth. For Ichiban, it’s a journey to find his mother, Akane Kishida, while for the latter, he’s searching for Akane at the behest of the Daidoki faction. The two will team up, and no doubt bash a few heads in this shared quest.
Since Ichiban appeared on the scene in the last game – Yakuza: Like a Dragon – there’s been a major shift in combat style from real-time brawling to turn-based RPG battling. That will carry forward to Infinite Wealth, with a bunch of returning characters who can join your party and fight along your side against gangs of enemies. The jobs system will also return to give contrasting classes, but the stand out will be Kiryu’s “Dragon of Dojima” job. This gives him the ability to switch fighting styles, and to temporarily enter into real-time combat that calls back to the earlier games in the series.
Battling and following the central narrative will naturally be a big part of Infinite Wealth, but the series’ popularity comes in large part from the minigames that are littered through the bustling worlds that RGG create. Karaoke, Darts, and Mahjong will return, but there’s also a bunch of new ones including a Crazy Taxi-style Crazy Delivery, Pokémon-like Sujimon Battle and a Miss Match dating app.
There’s also the Happy Resort Dondoko, which see Ichiban grab the fin of a friendly dolphin and skim through the ocean to his very own holiday resort. This looks like a whole Animal Crossing-style world, allowing you to gather resources, craft, create ideal homes and get people to move in. You’ll then have to defend it from random raiding parties.
The Like a Dragon series has really gone from strength to strength through the last generation. Starting with the prequel Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami remake of the PS2 original, the popularity of the series has boomed in the West as more and more people savoured its quirky charms. These Western localisations and releases always lagged behind the Japanese release by over a year, but Infinite Wealth will be the first time that a main series game will have a simultaneous worldwide launch.
The irony to that time lag is that, by the time that Yakuza 0 was released in the West, Yakuza 6 had already made the major narrative decision to send Kiryu off into the sunset. Perhaps that’s why RGG brought their golden goose back for a cameo supporting role in Ichiban’s debut, and then to fill in the gap in Kiryu’s story with the spin-off The Man Who Erased His Name, and now to make him a more significant part of Infinite Wealth.
The writing is on the wall for Kiryu once more, though, with a a fatal disease that gives him an unknown amount of time left to live. As this seems likely to be Kiryu’s final final appearance in the franchise, expect there to be a lot of familiar faces and old allies popping up to pay their respects.
