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When I saw the credits for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, I felt like I had gone through the emotional ringer. I was mentally exhausted. I think this is by design. Infinite Wealth is developer Ryu Ga Gotoku’s (RGG) most ambitious project by far: an epic story told across multiple characters and continents, including the conclusion of some nearly 20-year-old plot threads that leave at least one character, literally. and, for example, asleep in the streets. Some of this is the best work the developer has ever done, a new watermark for the series going forward. And one part is one of the worst in the study. Like everything in Infinite Wealth, it’s complicated.
Infinite Wealth picks up a few years after the events of Yakuza: Like a Dragon and continues the story of dual series protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, a former yakuza who has now worked to help rehabilitate other yakuza members into society by finding them jobs . . According to the laws of narrative, this goes horribly wrong, and it’s not long before Ichiban and his now-out-of-work friends find themselves back in the folds of the criminal underworld. After the dissolution of the nation’s two largest families, the Tojo Clan and the Omi Alliance, in the previous game, the Seiryu Clan reigns supreme in Yokohama’s Ijincho District. Not only is the group working on their own disbandment program and trying to employ the former yakuza, but they also have information on Ichiban’s missing mother, Akane. He just needs to go to Hawaii to find her.
Once in Hawaii, Ichiban quickly runs into his counterpart and former star of the show Kiryu Kazuma. Kiryu plays a much bigger role in this game than in Like a Dragon before it, especially since he is also a playable character. Playing Ichiban and Kiryu in the same game represents a kind of passing of the torch, and I love the time I got to spend with Kiryu. Now he is an old man with cancer and a few months to live. He’s coming to terms with his life, and endless wealth goes a long way to softening and humanizing him. I always felt that letting Kiryu live after the events of Yakuza 6, where he faked his death, was the wrong call. This game plays into that idea a lot, and while I’m not totally sold on where it’s going to end up, I really like the journey it takes to get there.
The two leads also give the cast a chance to expand and breathe. At one point in the story, Kiryu and a small team of characters from the previous game return to Japan, leaving the Ichiban with a cast of mostly new characters. The game jumps back and forth between the two, allowing tons of time to get to know everyone. I especially love newcomers Chitose and Tomizawa and didn’t skip a beat to learn more about the core cast.
Moving most of the game’s story to Hawaii allows RGG to unlock its narrative potential. No longer limited to just Japan, the study takes aim at common issues facing the U.S. today, including increased criticism of the treatment of sex workers and non-residents, something Japan examined in previous games . The corrupt American police state comes under particularly harsh criticism when we see how the police abuse their position to exploit ordinary citizens and foreigners and ignore their roles in society. The Yakuza/Like a Dragon series has always been political, and RGG has always been very opinionated. While the studio hasn’t always nailed the landing, Infinite Wealth reinforces how the studio insists on tackling these concepts. To see a studio tackling these issues maturely is incredibly refreshing.
That doesn’t mean this game isn’t still about the yakuza. Infinite Wealth is based on real-world laws against former members of Japanese crime families. It examines whether or not they are actually useful means of rehabilitation, while looking at the ways in which these groups can be easily exploited by those in power. Kiryu, as a character, fits this narrative hook very well. He is a criminal, after all; for all the good he has done, his past is full of darkness. Ichiban, too. What does it mean to reintegrate criminals into society, rehabilitate them, allow them to repent and offer them forgiveness? What does it mean to let these people live a normal life again, and will society ever allow that? Infinite Wealth’s best moments are when these questions are raised, and I’m constantly amazed at the empathy and nuance that RGG showed throughout the story.
But it takes some pretty spectacular stumbles on the way to that greatness. Much of Hawaii’s plot revolves around the religious cult Palekana, of which Akane is a member, and its lead character, Bryce Fairchild. For all the nuance and thought put into its real-world themes, the game’s depiction of cults and religious fanaticism is laughable at best and completely superfluous at worst. Bryce is definitely evil; it’s just that he’s evil in a shallow way. RGG has gone to great lengths to humanize its villains and give meaning to their actions, and the other antagonists in Infinite Wealth have plenty of interesting motives. But not Bryce. He’s just a bad guy. And that’s boring. The game is too quick to let go of Palekana’s story, including the characters he spent dozens of hours creating to focus on other issues. Almost like the game itself knows it’s not very good. It’s unfortunate because this plot is stacked with some of the series’ best moments.
Regrettable, too, is how this story is conveyed. As usual, Infinite Wealth features some of the best performances in the entire gaming industry, most of the time. Much of the Japanese talent behind the main cast is incredible, especially newcomers like Satoru Iguchi of King Gnu fame, who plays Tomizawa. His entire arc is wonderfully realized, touching and funny. On the other hand, other characters fall flat. For example, Bryce is written to be fluent in Japanese and English. His Japanese is great. His English sounds like someone reading the words phonetically in a different language. In fact, many of the American characters are clearly voiced by actors who struggle to deliver their English lines. Switching to English VO doesn’t help much either, as the main cast feels awful when contrasted with who they are as people, with the exception of maybe Danny Trejo’s character. The voice acting is full of weird choices like this that, depending on the character, can really take you out of the moment.
Fortunately, Infinite Wealth’s gameplay is often stellar in every way. As always, RGG’s open worlds are a joy to explore, and the three here – Kamurocho, Ijincho and Honolulu – are fantastic. Honolulu, in particular, has a completely different vibe than other RGG worlds, and I loved exploring its bright beaches, back streets, and luxury hotel districts. Taking Kiryu to the streets of Kamurocho is also wonderfully nostalgic, and Infinite Wealth wastes no time letting him reminisce and enjoy his old haunts. I spent a lot of time taking Kiryu to places in the old games, loving how much thought was put into how we would react.
You spend the vast majority of your time like you do in any other RGG game: beating the hell out of guys on the street. Infinite Wealth continues Like a Dragon’s shift to turn-based combat, and the updates here make for a surprisingly deep and engaging system. Including directional and combo attacks adds interesting layers to how you approach an enemy. Taking advantage of an enemy’s weakness and in turn having multiple members of your party dynamically attack the same enemy in a turn constantly feels great. And I was always excited to see what cheeky new animations I would see when I got new magic attacks.
Infinite Wealth’s job system (effectively how you change character classes and a throwback mechanic from the previous game) makes for a ton of interesting team lineups, and I really enjoyed experimenting and creating as complete a party as I could. power Upgrading your job level also allows you to import skills from other jobs, resulting in some really dynamic characters with various elemental attacks. That said, while I love the combat, leveling up in the game’s dungeon was a real chore at times: boring, monotonous, and took too long for its own good.
Your mileage will vary based on the game’s incredible amount of side content. Infinite Wealth surprised me with its sub-stories, which I’ve historically never really enjoyed in other games. Here, I found some really funny (there’s one about a dating app that’s cool) and well thought out. I also enjoyed many of the mini-games, such as the Crazy Taxi-inspired food delivery game and finding all the optional conversations and character links. However, I didn’t like the Animal Crossing-inspired island of Dondoko or the collecting and fighting games like Pokemon, which I found incredibly boring and complicated. Fortunately, they’re optional after their introduction, but that introduction stops the game so it can slowly explain all the different rules and mechanics. There are tons of other side activities that I didn’t even have time to touch, and I imagine there’s easily over 100 hours of gameplay for the most dedicated. Some of them are quite good. I just hope I never have to go back to Dondoko Island again.
Infinite wealth is a swing for the fences for RGG. At one point, the Yakuza series was a cult classic relegated to small fan bases outside of Japan. That changed in 2017, when Yakuza 0 finally hit the big time. When Yakuza: Like a Dragon came out in 2020, it was clear that RGG had a phenomenon on their hands. The result of this achievement is a massive game full of things to do and say. Sometimes, it’s too much. There’s a version of Infinite Wealth that leaves a lot on the clearinghouse floor and saves a lot of tedium. There were so many hours I wished this was the game I was playing.
And yet, I can’t help but be amazed at how long its impressive runtime is. It’s rare to see a triple-A video game have anything worthwhile to say about the need for criminal rehabilitation, the police state, and even nuclear annihilation. Somehow, this game has all these themes and clever (albeit somewhat surface-level) things to say about them. I’m amazed that his combat system seemed consistently new and fresh after 60 hours and that he was finding new ways to use it. That it gave me so much time with some of my favorite video game characters, allowing me to get to know them much more thoroughly than I ever had before, was just the icing on the cake.
In one of the final moments of Infinite Wealth, one of the characters collapses exhausted in the street, beaten by everything that had just happened before. While doing so, he looks satisfied and happy, even though nothing is going well for him at the time. In many ways, I felt exactly the same at the end of the game. I was tired. And yet, I was also ready to see what this crew would do next.
Source: gameinformer.com