Rarely do I play games through their entirety nowadays, but sometimes something will just sink its teeth onto me and I'm not able to escape its grasps. Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon was one such title and I'm here to make a case that everyone should give it a shot... Almost everyone at least.
Whilst this is no doubt a very radical departure from the rest of the series, it honestly rejuvenates it. It gives Yakuza not only a new fresh of paint in the form of Kasuga Ichiban and Ijincho instead of Kamurocho (for most of the game), but it changes things entirely by grabbing all the existing conventions and flipping them on their head.
And I mean that, because I wouldn't say it throws any estabilishments out of the window but it toys around so much with Yakuza's old stale formula that it turns into something truly beautiful.
Whilst I did at first say that the turn based combat worried me a bit and I thought it would be too radical of a change, my worries were thrown to the trash after I realized I had been playing for 15 hours and had not felt bored for a single second... and also hadn't left my room in that time.
This thing is ADDICTING.
The combat is simple enough to be intuitive and complex enough to make you want to learn all of its intricacies, quirks and how to optimize it. It was one of the highlights of the game for me and seeing all the "oldschool" Yakuza fans dunk on it just makes me laugh.
Both styles are great and none is better, this is just as good as the beat em' up style that had been perfected back in the older titles.
Now the story... if you haven't played it, please do. But I won't spoil much here.
The game begins fairly inconspicuously, there are no real high stakes or anything great at play. There's certainly a sense of 極道, organized crime, business, honour. The usual yakuza tropes and then the protagonist is thrown into jail for a crime he did not commit, just like the protagonist of the first, Kiryu Kazuma.
After getting out of jail, Kasuga slowly but surely learns of everything going on around him thanks to the help of a ex-detective.
How the Tojo clan Kasuga swore allegiance to no longers exists and how the Omi have taken control of everything. After seeing all this happening and learning that his patriarch, Arakawa Masumi is now a high-ranking Omi officer, Kasuga starts out on his quest to find answers.
He promptly invades a meeting where his patriarch is at a old familiar place, and gets shot in the chest by Arakawa himself.
He then wakes up in a trashcan, after being treated by a homeless nurse and... Wait, yeah, you can see, this shit can get ridiculous.
He gets out of there with that nurse, gets into shenanigans around town, reunites with the ex-detective and the story just keeps kicking off and off and it's honestly quite amazing how everything flows together.
It's a total mix of serious, funny, new, old and some familiarity for long time fans.
My mad dog of Shimano, Majima is here <3
20 hours in and the stakes and everything else around you are already entirely different, another 20 hours and it takes on the usual JRPG concept of consistent escalation. But here's it's executed to a tee.
My verdict on this game is a complete total unconditional 10/10
If you've never played a Yakuza game before, this isn't the worst place to start. Just now that you'll miss out on some of the references and past events, however there's a large amount of new here to keep things interesting and approachable for newcomers.
My only criticism is the length. While 50 hours might be enough for most people, I feel like more could've been done in that time.
Of course there's a lot more end-game content, but some things could've been explored a bit better. That doesn't detract from the game's quality however and I feel that 50 hours is excellent for a game of this caliber and quality.
Good job, SEGA and Ryu ga Gotoku team.
Hopefully Yakuza 8 is as good. Now it's Kasuga and Kiryu together if the trailer isn't lying.
