Things weren’t wanting good for Ichiban and buddies. A corrupt police officer and half a dozen of his cronies cornered us in a sleazy dive bar, and we had been horribly underleveled. With a single button faucet, the tables turned—or, extra precisely, exploded into a whole lot of items. I summoned Chitose “Buster” Holmes, a formidable henchwoman with spiked metallic balls hooked up to her fingers. She works for a hero supply firm, and proceeded to decimate the bar, pound the sheriff right down to dimension, and present me how good Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s battles may very well be. I wanted that reminder after a tough begin and a few confused storytelling.
Then got here the chaser: an intensely transferring scene that expertly wove difficult real-life matters with among the most considerate character growth in video gaming. (No spoilers.)
In lower than quarter-hour, developer Ryu Ga Gotoku (RGG) delivered a one-two punch that hammered out my wavering confidence in Infinite Wealth, and it didn’t falter once more. Despite getting off to a tough begin and having a number of experimental concepts that don’t fairly land as they need to, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is RGG Studio’s finest work thus far and an excellent RPG.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth opens 4 years after Yakuza: Like a Dragon, RGG’s first try at turn-based RPGs and the debut outing for our hero Ichiban Kasuga—and so much has modified. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, attraction born from awkward depth and ignorance characterize Ichiban, a 40-year-old man robbed of the possibility to cease being a younger grownup. That ardour stays in Infinite Wealth, however lived expertise, grief, and earnest conviction refine it into one thing extra highly effective and plausible.
He lastly grew up, in different phrases, and reached a degree of emotional maturity that even some real-life adults by no means handle to search out.
Meanwhile, Kazuma Kiryu, Infinite Wealth’s second protagonist and the hero of Yakuza 0 via Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, has all of the opportunites of an growing old particular person with no safety community and few alternatives for development. (That is to say, none.) It’s no secret that Kiryu is dying from most cancers in Infinite Wealth—Sega even made it a focus of the sport’s video promoting—however RGG makes use of it for greater than only a surprising plot twist and combines it with commentary on growing old in surprisingly delicate methods.
Infinite Wealth’s new setting in Hawaii is huge and exquisite, and it additionally appears like pointless change for the sake of change. One of the Like a Dragon (beforehand Yakuza) collection’ strongest factors is the way it makes use of centered tales as reflections of a cultural drawback, and whereas these situations are at all times rooted in Japanese society, the insights and classes from them are common. RGG used Yokohama in Yakuza 7 and Lost Judgment as a platform for analyzing social injustice. Hawaii simply appears like a vacationer lure, particularly in Infinite Wealth’s first half.
Okay, Ichiban is a vacationer there, so a vacationer’s perspective is smart. He was new to Yokohama in Yakuza: Like a Dragon as effectively, although, and that didn’t cease him from championing the homeless and different susceptible those that society ignored. Infinite Wealth is lacking the wealthy connection between individuals and place that normally provides Yakuza video games their identification, and hardly something that occurs in Hawaii couldn’t have occurred in Japan. I think the selection was partly an experimental one and partly thematic—experimental, to see how the collection would possibly operate in one other setting, and thematic, to emphasise the distinction between Infinite Wealth’s two halves.
While I don’t assume Hawaii provides a lot exterior of that distinction, RGG did make use of a special form of storytelling right here as a substitute, one which’s far more fascinating than a contemporary setting and elevates the collection to its highest level but. Rather than cultural contact factors, Infinite Wealth goes deep into connections between individuals—finally.
Infinite Wealth borrows Yakuza: Like a Dragon’s narrative construction for higher and worse. It begins with a false begin earlier than hurling Ichiban alone right into a harmful new setting with nothing to his identify. The broader narrative facilities on two MacGuffin hunts for roughly 10 hours, first as Ichiban appears to be like for his mom, Akane, after which as he tries monitoring down the one that stole his passport—and, by extension, any risk of him returning house.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon gave Ichiban a mission that formed his actions within the sport’s opening act. Infinite Wealth doesn’t have that form of construction, and the early chapters transfer, by some means, extra slowly than the earlier sport’s did. RGG’s distinctive character writing and Sega’s equally distinctive localization imply Infinite Wealth remains to be satisfying in these opening hours. It’s simply extra of a slice-of-life Yakuza visible novel than anything.
Everything modified close to on the finish of Infinite Wealth’s third chapter after a collection of scenes that helped coalesce all of the concepts I had about what level Infinite Wealth wished to make right into a stable imaginative and prescient.