Welcome to The Backlog, a series in which we will take a look back at 12 games from 2020 that, in one way or another, had a lasting impact on the video game industry.
A yakuza-themed video game should be the easiest sell in the world for American gamers. There's plenty of proof that adding the mob, of any kind, to a game makes it, at the very least, interesting enough to check out. While the Grand Theft Auto series isn't massively successful only because of its mafia ties, they don't hurt the appeal. The Mafia series has been around for ages, and a new game is coming in that lineage this year. The Sopranos: Road to Respect was admittedly pretty bad, but we did have some fun streaming it on Defector's Twitch channel. The thrills of being a virtual gangster are well-documented, and for good reason.
With all that said, the Yakuza series took a very long time to catch fire in the English-speaking world. There are reasons for this. First of all, it is definitively not a GTA, But In Japan clone, and anyone going into the series expecting a crime sandbox will be disappointed from the start. These are slow burns, telling a relatively continuous story across many games, which is overwhelming to anyone not already steeped in the Yakuza lore. And finally, the games have been localized and remastered in English in a strange order, leading to the earlier games in the series playing more modernly than the ones that came after it in the original chronology.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon arrived in the States in January 2020, the first Yakuza game to release at the same time worldwide. While previous entries in the mainline series featured numbered entries, from one to six (and a prequel, appropriately titled Yakuza 0, that had been the previous high-mark in Western cultural penetration for the series), Like A Dragon eschewed its rightful 7 designation in order to begin anew. The game's departure from series title convention feels like a small thing to harp on, but it does a very specific job: It tells the player that this is a different kind of Yakuza game than the long-running series had ever put out before.
The most noticeable change that comes with Like A Dragon is that it is not an action game in the same way that its predecessors were. Instead, it's a turn-based role-playing game, taking a lot of cues from the original series' character building and applying it to a party of companions around main character Kasuga Ichiban. This departure from the solitary, fighter-style combat is mirrored in the story, which mostly abandons series protagonist Kiryu Kazuma and deuteragonist Majima Goro—among many, many other memorable characters, heroic and villainous and sometimes both at once—in order to move the action into the present day and focus (mostly) on a new set of characters.
In other words, Like A Dragon was a clean break from the series' traditions, without abandoning what makes it distinctly Yakuza. Take it from someone who has tried and failed to get into the full Yakuza series many times over, mostly due to the overwhelming amount of hours it would take to play the seven previous mainline games, Like A Dragon is perfectly structured as an accessible entry point, and perhaps that is why it outsold the rest of the series many times over. Why is this series so worth getting into, 20 years after its first game? And why did Like A Dragon succeed so thoroughly that Yakuza is now (rightfully) a mainstream video game series even in the West? Let's dig in.
What Is It?
As I said above, Like A Dragon has one defining characteristic, and it upends the series' long-entrenched gameplay formula. Gone are the button combos and beat-'em-up style fights, and in comes turn-based mania. I've long been more of a fan of the latter, so that was the first thing that caught my eye about Like A Dragon. It's surprising how well the turn-based system, and the party system, slides into the Yakuza series. There are outlandish skills and spells, sure, but they're grounded in the series mythology, and oftentimes quite ludicrous as a result. A typical "spellcaster" attack might look like commanding a flock of pigeons to attack enemies.
If that sounds silly, well, that's Yakuza. The series' longevity in narrative storytelling is its biggest calling card, weaving as it does individual stories into the overall tapestry of the yakuza experience in Japan from the late 1980s through the 2020s, but its silliness is the second most important feature, and maybe the bigger barrier to entry. Anyone expecting a serious story of mob life in Japan will get that, sure, but they'll also take their protagonists to the disco to have dance-offs, to karaoke bars to, well, sing karaoke, and encounter other frivolities that make up the full world of Yakuza.
Like A Dragon smartly keeps that vibe around, and is a rightful heir to the Yakuza legacy. Even though it sidelines Kiryu in favor of Ichiban as its main protagonist, Like A Dragon plays like a Yakuza game, looks like a Yakuza game, and feels like a Yakuza game. It even manages to tie into the main franchise storyline without confusing new players who are finally seeing what the hell Yakuza is all about.
What Went Right?
A lot, it turns out. The Yakuza series could have kept on trucking with its same formula and succeeded, but the risks that Like A Dragon takes pay off big time. The combat is more manageable than before, giving the player time to think about their actions rather than forcing them to remember how to dodge and what button combos do the most damage. It sets a more methodical pace for the game, luxuriating in hours of grinding and strategic gameplay.
Those hours will also be utilized to play the game's many side activities, and while every Yakuza game has had mini-games, Like A Dragon goes haywire, throwing in a variety of classic card games but also go-karts, managing property, and even taking tests to improve Ichiban's stats in a vocational school. I spent longer than I care to admit perfecting my golf swing in Like A Dragon, and perhaps even more in the quite ridiculous Survival Can Collection, in which Ichiban rides around a special bike collecting discarded cans to recycle in exchange for cash, all while fighting fellow can-hunters.
The story is also well-executed, if at times glacially slow. It hits a lot of the same tones and themes as previous Yakuza games—our protagonist goes to jail for a crime he didn't commit early on in the game—but the freshness of a new setting is exciting. Like Ichiban, the player is new to this new city and all of its charms, including an early side quest where he catches a public urinator in the act while making a lot of piss puns. There's a lot to discover in a game that's so different than what came before, and Like A Dragon makes that both rewarding and just plain fun.
What Went Wrong?
What went wrong with Like A Dragon is what goes wrong with every Yakuza game. The series is maybe only bested by Metal Gear Solid in terms of how long the player has no control over what's on screen, as cutscene upon cutscene rains down on their eyeballs. These games are slow by design, and Like A Dragon might be the most egregious about starting you off at a snail's pace, at least of the games I have played in the series. For a game that is implicitly marketed as an entryway into the Yakuza series, Like A Dragon might lose a big chunk of people before the game opens up, around chapter 5.
Elsewhere, the turn-based combat is fun and snappy, but it also comes with some annoyances regarding positioning—if, for example, you want to hit an enemy in the back of a group with a punch, you will be interrupted by his buddies on the way there—and also timing for extra power on certain moves. Whenever I had to press the Y button in the middle of a circle to get extra damage on one of my special punches, I just about punched myself, because the timing window is wildly inconsistent.
These are minor complaints, but both are such a part of the early hours that it's hard to say Like A Dragon is as good as it should be from the start. I also can safely say that, even though every Yakuza game is silly to a point, Like A Dragon is the silliest one, and sometimes that can actively hurt the dramatic moments the game wants to sell. That's just par for the course for the series, but I will say some of the narrative beats just didn't land for me amongst all the ridiculous, over-the-top buffoonery on display.
Were People Normal About This Game?
Yes and no. For the most part, reviews and general opinion was positive, verging on ecstatic, for Like A Dragon. The game was praised for its shift in combat, telling a new story, and for being accessible without dumping hundreds if not thousands of hours into previous games. The more measured opinions were critical of the game's stakes and quests, but for the most part, people were happy to play a different kind of Yakuza game.
I say "for the most part" because there was a vocal minority of series veterans who absolutely freaked the hell out over what Like A Dragon changed. The combat is the easiest point of reference here, and to some degree, I do understand complaining about a series shifting its core gameplay so drastically. This isn't a problem exclusive to Yakuza games, either; Final Fantasy fans lose their shit every time the series changes its combat system, especially with the most recent releases verging closer to "action" than "role-playing." But, given how well the turn-based combat is implemented, this can be chalked up to a difference of opinion.
The more confusing complaints are about the shift from Kiryu as the protagonist to Ichiban. I understand that Yakuza games have always centered around Kiryu, but the vitriol from some corners of the fanbase prior to Like A Dragon actually releasing centered on this radical shift. It's not even that radical, though, given that Kiryu does play a role in Like A Dragon, which is about as much as I can say without spoiling the story. This feels like it was a lot of complaining for no reason, and I'm concerned that more recent releases in the Like A Dragon line appear to have caved to these specific complaints.
What's Happened Since?
Speaking of, there have been three releases in the Like A Dragon line since the original. 2023's spin-off The Man Who Erased His Name is focused entirely on Kiryu, and abandons the turn-based combat for a return to the original beat-'em-up style of the series. 2024's Infinite Wealth brings back both Ichiban and the turn-based combat, but it also solidifies Kiryu as a fellow protagonist, lurching the series back into the past for more nostalgia. Finally, the recently released Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (yes, that is the title, and yes, it is as silly as the title makes it seems) brings back Goro, fully entombing the Like A Dragon subseries within the Yakuza lore.
Is Sega afraid to abandon characters that have made it so much money? Maybe! Like A Dragon felt like a revitalizing entry for the series, a way to move into the future with a different kind of game, but it feels like the series was too afraid to move on. What's strange to me is that, again, Like A Dragon sold so many copies—1.8 million worldwide as of 2023. For a variety of reasons, this was a wild success on a new path, and though Infinite Wealth sold a million copies in its first week, the spin-offs have been nowhere near as successful.
If this is the formula going forward for the series, where the main titles are taking the risks and telling new stories while the spin-offs focus on what Kiryu and Goro are doing with their time, then maybe that's okay for everyone involved. Oh, and before I forget, there is an Amazon live-action series offshoot. It's called Like a Dragon: Yakuza. It's not very good.
Is It Worth Playing In 2025?
This is a personal choice, given how engrossing and silly the Yakuza series can get. It's not for everyone; it wasn't for me for a long time. But if you get hooked on the Like A Dragon gateway drug, there's so much to discover, both in this game and in the series as a whole. For these reasons, Yakuza: Like A Dragon grades at a 8.9 on the Defector Replayability Ability Scale.
