Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

8.8/10 – 56 hours

3/21/2024

Peak Yakuza that is best enjoyed when you take your time. Good ass game, and I’m so happy 🥺

When a game rewards you for being a seasoned fan of its series, there is no better feeling. It’s as if the developers reach out and thank you personally for the time you’ve spent with their work. Nowhere has this ever been clearer than with Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth; aka Yakuza 8. This game is MASSIVE and rounds up all the pluses (and a few minuses) of Yakuza history both in story and gameplay, and comes together to finally create a Yakuza game outside of 0 that I can confidently say is great all around. So much so that my “Big Game Protocol” is coming back to tackle this baby. Here are bullets describing my specific thoughts on the good and bad. I overall enjoyed this game a ton, and its shortcomings were a lot fewer and far between compared to past games, though still very much an issue.

First though, I wanna shout out the #1 (Ichiban!!!!!!! Get it???) factor that makes Infinite Wealth so much fun to play: goddamn quality of life! There are so many improvements and neat little additions that make this the most seamless Yakuza to date. First, the turn-based combat is the most fun it has ever been. You can now move freely in a defined radius during your turn, letting you take advantage of positional bonuses to your attacks, such as back attacks. Bonds and Drink Links now matter a shitload more too: you can unlock combo attacks between party members, attack downed enemies… it all comes together wonderfully to create a satisfying system

The intro is loooong, but has good exposition, and the characters are so strong I didn’t mind. I played this game for the story, after all, and I wanted to see how the party was doing. Seeing how they’ve grown and developed since 7 was such a joy to watch. The intro is fire too!
Bummer that there’s tons of padding even when you arrive in hawaii in ch 2
Could have found a way to introduce side content in a less intrusive narratively dissonant way. Dondoko Island takes a whole hour of gameplay until you can leave!! At least it was a fun side game. Still a common L that these games have.
Love new characters and the chances Ichiban has to show his experience, especially in front of Kiryu. Weird how he takes a back seat for a good portion of the game.
15-20 hours in, the game REALLY started to come together. No Yakuza game prior has clicked quite like this one, maybe 0 did too. When you ride your segway around a gorgeous and huge map littered with collectables to get, enemies to fight, shops to check out, secrets to explore, genuinely fun side content to distract you, all while vibing on your segway to some classic Sega tunes. It’s an absolutely incredible and unique experience. I couldn’t have been more happy with the general gameplay loop.
My goat minigame Karaoke is FANTASTIC in this game. Everyone gets new songs, and they’re all catchy and fun to play. Honolulu City Lights is incredible, Baka Darou is emotional, AWAKE is catchy. Let the composers cook!
The OST overall is very solid. Wong Tou battle, Barracuda Battle, job change room, 3 Jimas fight, the new Recieve You arrangement to name a few!
Honolulu is MASSIVE!! The best map in the series; there is no contest. Combining beautiful aesthetics with compelling expiration and mesmerizing immersion that portrays the city extremely well. The virtual tourism goes hard. There are whole ass shopping malls fully explorable as well as beautiful beachside roads and cute little alleyways with shops. Some areas look a lot like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, so I say the developers NAILED the vibes.
Minigames this time around are fun. Dondoko is fun though I don’t see myself finishing its questline. Crazy Delivery is a great homage to Crazy Taxi and is goofy like all Yakuza side games should be. Sujimon is quite fleshed out, though I never much cared for it so I largely ignored it. Overall, there’s a massive amount
Halfway through the game, Ichiban and Kiryu split up, and this is where the homage to our king Dragon of Dojima is in full swing. The cast treat Kiryu so well, and they unveil a more empathetic and lighthearted side of Kiryu, especially in the Drink Link support convos. The Life Links with Date are phenomenal too, helping Kiryu reunite with past characters, further exemplifying the continuity of Infinite Wealth. Kiryu also gets to learn how people truly feel of him, helping soothe his impostor syndrome from the past games’ events. It is absolutely incredible that Kiryu still has meaningful character development 9 games in, finally learning to abandon his trait of shouldering all burdens and running away from his past. Kiryu is forever the goat. I said it before: moving to JRPG style has bolstered this series to an absurd extent.
I will say the story suffers from Yakuza 5 syndrome, where the scope is so massive its easy for it to lose its way. There were many instances where I went “wait who is Ebina??” “When do we see Bryce? “Why are Lani and Akane sought after by Palekana? At least we knew why the Tojo wanted Haruka back in the day.” We don’t get many of these answers until the very end. I do love many of the new characters (Chitose, Tomizawa, and Yamai), but others like Eiji feel like they’re there just to make the plot move forward. The Daidoji faction suffers from this to an even worse degree.
Bryce orchestrates the whole game’s plot, but we barely see him, and his boss fight is a complete pushover.

ADDENDUM after beating the game

I will say they round out some of these characters well. Better than nothing. Eiji’s redemption with Ichiban’s help was an S-Tier scene. Chitose’s redemption pushes her to become my favorite new character (no not because of the feet you sick bastard).
Can we talk about the obsession with levels with this game? Since when did your stats matter less than levels in RPGs nowadays?? This game subscribes to this shitty school of thought and actively punishes you for skillfully navigating fights at low levels. Sure that forces you to take your time, but I’d rather do that by listening to the story or kicking back with a minigame, not GRINDING. This in turn ruins sections of the game, punishing you for being a mere 2-3 levels lower than a boss. God that giant squid was a miserable fight. Yes, there’s a giant squid fight in a Yakuza game. ??? Cool in theory but executed poorly.