4.5/5 ★ – LCSnoogs's review of Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

The cast of characters is great. I enjoyed getting to know them. They all felt unique instead of played out character archetypes. Ichiban Kasuga is a good Yakuza lead. He wears his heart on his sleeve and is obsessed with Dragon Quest. It makes him fun and believable in the serious moments of the main story and the silly moments of the side quests. Yakuza successfully switched to turn-based RPG combat. Party members have jobs that represent everyday people seen on the streets of Ijincho such as hostesses, homeless people, construction workers, and break dancers. The attacks these jobs offer are funny, exaggerated versions of what these people would do. It feels very Yakuza. When attacking, the game will bring up QTE prompts for mashing the "X" button or pressing the "Y" button at the right time to do extra damage. This is also done when defending where the player can press "B" right as an enemy hits them to decrease the amount of damage taken. It all makes for an active, tense, and satisfying combat system. This games form of summons is a phone app called Poundmates that allows players to call characters they've met in side quests and pay them to come help in battles for one powerful attack or support ability. These can also get pretty silly too. The enemies are also representative of people seen in the streets of Ijincho. There are enemies like Yakuza, street punks, and thieves that would pose an obvious threat, but there are also weird ones like therapists, ministers, and garbage bag men. They have fittingly weird attacks too. It feels like the developers are having a lot of fun making this game, and it's refreshing for a JRPG. The bosses are tough, and they made me pay attention to my character builds and team composition. They feel like epic battles even though most of the time, I'm just fighting one man. My only issue is that some enemies are just damage sponges with a lot of HP and resistance to all attacks. Unlike bosses, they aren't challenging to fight and have a small move set. Fighting them just feels like a boring waste of time. Some missions have dungeons, but there's nothing much to them that's interesting. It's mainly just running from enemy encounter to enemy encounter to get to the boss at the end. The main story is good. It's long, but that's because they were putting in the work to make the later moments of the game feel earned. Ichiban's start is similar to Kiryu's. He takes the fall for a crime committed fellow Yakuza member and spends 18 years in prison for murder. When he gets out, he is betrayed by his old boss, shot, and left in the trash to die. He is rescued by a homeless community in Ijincho. From there he works his way to get back on his feet by looking for jobs and helping out the locals in the community who are being oppressed by the local gangs. The latter digs him deeper into the affairs of the three major gangs called the Ijincho three: the Japanese Seiryu Clan, the Chinese LIumang, and the Korean Geomijul. There are plenty of surprises as the story gets bigger going from tackling homeless and deportation issues to corrupt politicians in local and regional governments. The story was all told through cut scenes where good performances all around and full English voice acting. Some of these cut scenes felt dragged out though. I had plenty of times where my controller disconnected for being idle too long while I was watching some of these scenes. I have no idea where they would go next if they make a sequel because this game covers a lot of ground. The game does have some pacing issues. Most of the game was a smooth ride. I fought every enemy encounter I ran into and was sufficiently leveled for most dungeons by doing this, but there were a few moments of difficulty spikes that forced me to grind for hours to get my characters' levels up. There was a mission that had a recommended level, but for some reason, the game doesn't show a recommended level for all missions. This would have saved me some time butting my head against a boss that I wasn't strong enough to beat. There is also a moment in this game where I needed to raise 3,000,000 yen. I don't even think I had 100,000 yen at the time, and it took hours to get that money. These were all very memorable annoyances in the game that brought the experience down for me. To raise the 3,000,000 yen, there is a surprisingly deep minigame where Ichiban runs a company called Ichiban Confections. This company is failing as it recently went public. The daughter of the company's late original owner needs Ichiban's help making the company a success and raising the ranks. I needed to raise sales by managing employees (hiring, firing, and improving morale), managing property (buying, selling, upgrading, and assigning employees), purchasing commercial production and air time, making investments, and pleasing shareholders. It all felt intimidating at first, and it took a few sales periods to wrap my head around it. I became heavily invested in it, and it even has it's own hidden story inside of it including its own boss fights. The side quests can be hilarious or touching and sometimes both at the same time. They are worth doing, and I'm going to keep playing to see them all. Other than the standard side quests, there are also smaller quests that are apart of an app called Part-Time Hero. Once Ichiban is hired by the company, he can help out people in trouble by fighting off assailants or getting items they need for money or get paid by finding collectibles in the world requested by jobs posted. Standard side quests have multiple parts to them, but these Part-Time Hero jobs are one and done. They are good for some quick money. Ichiban has personality stats similar to the Persona series. They can be raised by doing side quests or bonding with party members. There's also a minigame involving taking vocational tests to raise personality stats. The tests have multiple choice trivia questions on a range of topics and have a time limit on answering them. I didn't know most of the questions and relied on Google or guessing for most of them. Raising these stats can be used for recruiting employees for Ichiban Confections and getting to know non-party member characters in the world. I didn't dig too deeply into this system. I raised my stats enough to talk to some characters in the world, but I found little initial pay off in doing so. To continue talking to them after the first time, I had to raise my stats more, but I didn't bother. I'll look into it more now that I've completed the main story.