Yakuza: Like a Dragon Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/15/2024)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku

Publisher: Sega

Genre(s): JRPG, Open World

Platforms: PS4, PC, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

Release Date: January 16, 2020

Guys, I took the coward’s way out. After being won over by the rightfully acclaimed Yakuza prequel, Yakuza 0, I said that I would journey through all of Kiryu’s adventures in Kamurocho in chronological order while anticipating their comparatively lackluster quality to the mobster’s origin story. However, proceeding with six whole games seemed rather daunting, and the assumed diminishing returns on the enjoyment factor while conquering the Kiryu half dozen didn’t provide a great sense of motivation. Therefore, I decided to instead divert my attention to a separate Yakuza property whose grass was equally as green as the Kiryu-oriented games were before they grew as old as their protagonist eventually did. Yakuza 7, or “Yakuza: Like a Dragon,” is the rebranded refurbishment that the series desperately needed, lest Sega’s crime-laden IP wilt away even further into an unrecoverable hospice. The series has officially sprouted a new seed from the decaying branches of the once-mighty Kiryu oak, and I’m happy to report that the seedling spawn is healthier than a garden-fed bovine on a prairie farm in Iowa. Come to think of it, Like a Dragon is surprisingly the precocious wunderkind. Despite the untested, amateur mechanics on display, Like a Dragon has garnered an astounding amount of acclaim. Hell, as part of the initiative to stray away from Kiryu’s long-standing saga, Sega has officially changed the name of the Yakuza series to “Like a Dragon” so it can encompass all ventures unrelated to Kiryu under one Japanese crime-focused IP umbrella. Considering that Judgment had already deviated from the bog standard beat ‘em gameplay in favor of a slower-paced detective story, why did the series decide to adopt the subtitle of its “seventh” entry as its new moniker? Because Yakuza (7): Like a Dragon is truly phenomenal, a testament to the fact that Sega’s need to reinvent the franchise was dire and that starting relatively anew always allows creativity to flourish.

Yakuza games tend to be rather lengthy, so one can imagine the lofty expanse of the narrative that occurs when it’s being arranged through the scope of the JRPG genre. The beginning exposition that introduces the scene and the conflict premise is prolonged to the duration of two whole chapters, with cutscenes so protracted that even Hideo Kojima might have taken an executive stance to cut them down if he were in charge. While I stated that Like a Dragon was like a reincarnation of the Yakuza franchise, the story beats of the conflict premise for Like a Dragon’s protagonist may indicate that nothing can truly be original. Stow away all of the lore exposition involving kabuki theater, an assassination at a Peking Duck restaurant, and a child being spared with the sacrifice of a Yakuza officer’s finger in your memory reserves for now. The focal point that drives the narrative forward is Ichiban Kasuga, an excitable, young Tojo Clan underling who was also adopted into the Tokyo organized crime syndicate due to being an orphan like the mainstay series protagonist we’re accustomed to. The tower of similarities between the two keeps stacking even higher when Ichiban suffers the same set of unfortunate circumstances as Kiriyu did when he was but a Yakuza rookie. Because Ichiban is a lowly plankton in a food chain of great white Yakuza sharks (and because he annoys the piss out of everyone), his family patriarch, Arakawa, proposes that he take a murder rap for lieutenant Sawashiro. Given his sense of loyalty for his crime family and his unbounded admiration for Arakawa, Ichiban turns himself in without so much as asking a single question. After serving 18 years in prison eating rice cakes off the radiator, Ichiban is released back into the public as a slightly greyer middle-aged man with a gaudy, eccentric perm that probably conducts as much static electricity as the Bride of Frankenstein’s vertical hairdo. Almost two decades spent away from the open range of society would be enough to perturb any ex-con, but the streets of Kamurocho are as foreign to Ichiban as an alien planet. No, this isn’t because everyone carries around pocket-sized computers, but because the Tojo Clan that he was eagerly waiting to return to has all but gone extinct. Kamurocho is now under the control of the Omi Alliance, the largest Yakuza organization originating from the Kansai region and the Tojo Clan’s archrivals. Ichiban encounters Arakawa to ask his former sensei about how a steadfast Kamurocho institution bellied up (and about his promise to treat him to Peking duck once he served his time), but Arakawa doesn’t acknowledge his presence. Collaborating with Adachi, an ex-cop turned taxi driver, Ichiban uses Adachi’s connections and knowledge of the Yakuza underground passageways to intercept a meeting that Arakawa is presently conducting. Ichiban believes that encountering his former boss in a more intimate setting will help clear up his hazy memory of him. Alas, all his persistence gets him is a steamy bullet to the chest, courtesy of the man he holds in such high esteem. As the screen fades to black and Ichiban’s fate hangs in the balance, the events leading up to this shocker of an introductory conclusion are very effective at exuding a sense of sympathy for our protagonist. Still, I argue that the cutscenes that don’t involve Ichiban in any capacity could’ve been shown at later instances in the narrative or omitted completely. As it is, they clog the duration of the first two chapters to an excruciatingly bloated degree.

After his intrusion, Ichiban isn’t hauled off by Arakawa’s subordinates into the Kamurocho harbor to serve as a free meal to the industrial waterfront’s various sea life. By some miracle, Ichiban survives the flaming hot sting of lead and is dumped onto a homeless camp one city over in Yokohama. Thanks to the medical assistance of a down-on-his-luck ex-nurse turned vagabond named Nanba, Ichiban makes a full recovery and is free to traverse through the streets of this unfamiliar setting. Specifically, the area of Yokohama that serves as Like a Dragon’s concrete playground is Isezaki Ijincho, the city’s nightlife-centric equivalent to Kamurocho. Love hotels and S&M clubs are lucrative places of commerce in the city’s red light district, poverty runs so rampant that shantytowns have been erected all over, and gangs of belligerent goons are always alert to bumrush unsuspecting civilians just for making eye contact with them, even if they’re looking at the backs of their heads. While the atmosphere of an electric land marked by debauchery and danger transfers over from the regular stomping grounds of Kamurocho, Ijincho differs greatly from the standpoint of urban planning. The neighborhoods of Ijincho forgo the tight grid-based design of Kamurocho’s outdoor corridors in favor of letting the pavement breathe a bit between intersecting streets. Aiding in the spaciousness of this new setting are larger pieces of infrastructure interspersed between the wall-to-wall buildings, ranging from the natural Sakura River that flows north in the western sector to the Jinnai Station in the center. Actually, Ijincho’s access point to Japan’s efficient public transportation subtly serves as the dividing line in the center between the two halves of Ijincho. I’m positive that I’m not the only one who noticed that half of Ijincho north of the Jinnai Station is far more opulent and more approachable with its parks, federal buildings, and swankier restaurants as opposed to the grimy aisles with dive bars and sex-centric entertainment on each side of every street in the southern district. Compare the snazzy tourist trap of Chinatown in the northeast to the vacant slum of Koreatown just below the train station, and you’ll see the contrast of Japanese gentrification at its most apparent. Black haze obscures any part of Ijincho that the player hasn’t visited yet on the map, so even visiting the northern half seems like a reward for progressing enough in the narrative past the filthy homeless camp that served as Ichiban’s spawn point. Still, no matter the general area, Ijincho is overall far more pleasant to traverse than Kamurocho because the sprawling expanse of the city pronounces the parameters of each neighborhood. Because the individual areas are broader and more defined, it allows the player to create a clearer mental image of the map’s overall layout. However, the wider breadth of Ijincho’s streets does allow for moving automobiles to act as obstacles in the foregrounds, and let’s just say that interacting with Ijincho’s domestic drivers might affirm some negative cultural stereotypes.

Besides their eerily similar origin stories, I don’t think that Ichiban shares much in common with Kiryu. One might think that they’d be kindred spirits given their shared unfortunate experience, but a connection based on grief always proves to be a shallow one. If I had to describe the contrast between the two Yakuza protagonists, I can’t think of a more fitting way to illustrate it than by comparing the different demeanors between a cat and a dog. Kiryu is naturally the furry feline in this analogy, hiding his good nature underneath an aloof, withdrawn exterior. Ichiban, on the other hand, exhibits so many traits of “man’s best friend” that it’s a wonder that Arakawa and the other Tojo executives didn’t throw him treats around the office or bat him on the nose with a newspaper when he was out of line. The expendable, frizzy-haired ex-Yakuza grunt never exudes any pretensions of acting hard-headed and collected like his crime connections would connote. Ichiban can’t help but be an overly optimistic doofus with an unbridled enthusiasm that makes him endearing to some and irritating to others. You’d think with his immature disposition that he’d been in the slammer since he was a child instead of 24. Even though his childlike tendencies and naivety might be unbecoming of a middle-aged adult man, his arrested development is not a hindrance in tackling the challenges of both surviving and succeeding on the feral streets of Ijincho. Ichiban’s lack of cynicism and self-doubt, which tends to be characteristic of a seasoned adult, gives him an inflated level of confidence. Match that with his unwavering streak of benevolence stemming from his adorable aspirations to “become a hero,” and Ichiban is an indomitable force for all that is good and wholesome. He’s a dog off its leash with the cognitive acuity of a human, which allows him to apply his relentless positivity to better society as any domesticated canine would do if they could. Still, when approaching people whom Ichiban deems as his “masters,” who are the higher-up Yakuza in this case, he conveys expressions of genuine devotion to them so resolute that Webster’s needs to conjure up a more appropriate synonym for loyalty that matches Ichiban’s intensity. That is why it’s heart-wrenching when Arakawa pulls the trigger on his Tojo Clan pup. Imagine if Fry from Futurama had shot Seymour if they managed to cross paths once again: people would’ve fucking revolted in disgust. I never had such a strong emotional reaction to witnessing any of Kiryu’s hardships, so I suppose Ichiban is more than a substantial replacement as the series’ narrative backbone. Who would’ve thought that positivity and friendliness would radiate more charisma than stern stoicism?

Ichiban’s dog-like characteristics also extend to Like a Dragon’s combat, for his perspective in which it is portrayed is likely how a dog sees people with their unrefined eyesight and limited mental capacities. Or, it’s the everlasting effect of playing too much Dragon’s Quest in their formative years. Above the changes in the protagonist and setting, the true radical departure from Yakuza’s defined characteristics that Like a Dragon adopts is turn-based combat instead of the tried and true beat ‘em up gameplay. One might argue that basing a JRPG around the modern, urban landscape of Yakuza is ill-fitting, but I’ve given so many examples of “domestic JRPGs” at this point that the evidence needed to make a rebuttal to this claim seems obvious. If the argument stems from the awkwardness of turn-based combat compromising on the urbane and intimidating aura that a series centered around gangsters is intended to exude, let’s not kid ourselves; the Yakuza series has always been a bit silly, and the sincerity of the rough, macho characters only adds to to comedic tone. That is why the visual of a thug politely waiting for his turn to crack Ichiban’s skull open with a lead pipe doesn’t strike me as off-putting in the slightest. Like Kamurocho, throngs of bellicose baddies walk the streets of Ijincho, darting their hostilities towards Ichiban in a flash. They might be the same types of delinquents, punks, and other urban rabble-rousers that exist in Kamurocho, but we’ll never know their true identities thanks to Ichiban’s warped perspective. Whether it’s his overactive imagination or spending time in solitary confinement for a sizable portion of his prison sentence made him develop onset schizophrenia, the wretches of Ijincho are depicted in an eclectic array of fashions. The only other man who seems to share Ichiban’s twisted perception of these malevolent men is a bald guy who brandishes a wicked scar. He refers to the hundreds of reprobates that roam the city as “Sujimon,” giving Ichiban a device that catalogs their information once he encounters them. Do I have to state which Nintendo JRPG series this feature is borrowing from? The weaknesses and resistances of the enemies can’t be committed to an easy formula like Pokemon, but the range of enemies is equally as diverse. The wacky ways in which Ichiban perceives these malcontents are too numerous to list, indicative of the sheer variety on display for the player to contend with. The player will still grow tired of the frequent encounters with these assholes just to gain a crumb of cash and experience, but that’s just a continuation of a series’ staple hiccup.

The variation of Like a Dragon’s turn-based combat certainly doesn’t stop with the types of enemies looking to batter Ichiban for his lunch money. There’s also the factor of Ichiban’s line of defense against these lowlives that the player will select in a menu when it’s their opportunity to strike. At first, Ichiban will only be able to execute a series of fairly flabby punches, with some modest special moves integrated into the mix that cost a meager amount of MP (magic points). Once Ichiban stumbles into the offices of Hello Work, the local career advisory institution, Ichiban’s set of combat skills grows exponentially. I was initially under the impression that this feature directed the player towards a specific minigame that netted them a respectable sum of yen upon its completion, but I couldn't have been more misled. Essentially, Ichiban’s “job” chosen here is equivalent to selecting a role-playing battle class. For instance, the musician job (that a job clinic would never assign to anyone as a prospective career in a million years), involves Ichiban clubbing enemies with his acoustic guitar, strumming some sick cords whose sonic waves deal serious damage, throwing his mixtape to enemies like a Venice Beach drifter, etc. Ichiban will blind foes with a giant, wooden pepper grinder as a chef, slap them with confectionary treats as a “host,” throw a crystal ball to enemies like they’re bowling pins as a fortuneteller, and perform a deadly windmill of spin kicks as a break dancer (which, again, is not a realistically viable career option). Each job also has a progress meter that is separate from Ichiban’s general level scaling, and earning enough experience after battles will unlock more effective moves with said job. The system of simply waltzing down to the Hello Work clinic and having them hand over a job posthaste to Ichiban seems so far-fetched that it's comical, especially since he’s a former Yakuza with a criminal record. Still, alternating between classes on a whim just by visiting Hello Work whenever it’s convenient ensures that the turn-based combat is unlikely to grow stale, and increasing the amount of skills available in battle through experience just adds more range to the exciting possibilities of combat.

Turn-based combat also adds another dimension of difficulty to Yakuza’s gameplay. I may be declaring this prematurely, as I’m basing this statement solely on Yakuza 0, but the series’ standard beat ‘em up gameplay rarely offers any non-optional challenges in its narrative. Oftentimes, when facing off against a narratively significant boss in Yakuza 0, the severity of the onslaught they inflicted on Kiryu wasn’t anything a few Staminan drinks couldn’t patch up. Somehow with the mechanical swap of turn-based combat, there were a few instances in the story that amounted to genuine roadblocks where I had to reload and reconsider my tactics to succeed. The methodical nature of turn-based combat forces the player to consider every decision they make carefully, ensuring that they can’t act hastily or mindlessly punch and kick their way to victory. The consequences of failing to be fastidious with a turn-based system also come with stricter penalties. When I said that the wastrels of Ijincho were roughing up Ichiban for his lunch money, I was only half kidding. If Ichiban falls from having too much damage inflicted on him, the game will fine the player half of the total amount of yen in their pockets, as per the traditions of JRPG penalties. Considering that the amount of money a Yakuza protagonist has coincides with his progress, every Zen piece is precious and should be preserved at all costs. Another piece of JRPG protocol that Like a Dragon follows is that Ichiban is the designated leader in battle, so the fight ends if Ichiban is knocked out, even if his party members are still standing. Really, the only way to stave off having Ichiban’s bank chopped in half like a magician’s assistant is to humor my one perpetual grievance with the JRPG genre: grinding. What makes the tedious, repetitious process all the more vexing in Like a Dragon is that common enemy encounters will only warrant chump change of experience. A more efficient way of grinding is by spelunking in Ijincho’s sewers, where the rarer, more ferocious “Sujimon” roam. The issue with this venture is that not only are the sewers a drab dungeon crawler area, but their labyrinthian designs, where the player is intended to burrow deeper away from the entrance, make the additional grinding process anything but a convenient detour. To my dismay, Like a Dragon isn’t immune to the typical experience level-based contingency that plagues so many titles in the genre, and some sections are grating as a result.

To ensure that Ichiban stays as his perky, man-child self in the heat of combat, the player must utilize the talents of his fellow party members. As the game progresses, Ichiban will gather up a ragtag of misfits who will all follow his lead, working under different sets of causes. The cynical and self-conscious disgraced ex-nurse Nanba initially collaborates with Ichiban to hoist himself out of the homeless rut he currently resides in. The affable, uncle-like Adachi was similarly told to step down from his position as a cop after acting insubordinate towards his commanding officer, who was wrapped up in a false-arrest conspiracy. The (canon) token female member of Ichiban’s crew is Saeko, who joins the boys after a mutual boss of theirs allegedly commits suicide. Unlike Ichiban’s other cohorts, she was not dishonorably discharged from her day job as a barmaid, but it’s unlikely she has glowing Yelp reviews because she’s not afraid to get confrontational with the more boorish, pervy patrons. Each of Ichiban’s partners come with their own “class” with its own distinctive menu of moves, but their skill sets are just as malleable as Ichiban’s once they visit Hello Work and change their “jobs.” I implore everyone to stick Saeko to the hostess job for the long run or to use her in steep situations. I can’t explain it, but the “sparkling cannon” move, where she shakes up a bottle of sparkling wine and sprays enemies with the bubbly and festive alcoholic liquid once it’s uncorked, dishes out an astounding amount of damage, while also afflicting an illness that counts as a status ailment. Is there a prevalent recessive gene across Asia that makes them allergic to grapes or carbonation? Are they all just lightweights? Anyways, besides sticking Saeko to a long term career (although I’m sure everyone will be curious to see what the “night queen” job entails for reasons that aren’t frowned upon), the fact that each one of Ichiban’s partners feature the vast potential of skills that he does soars the variety of gameplay options to the stratosphere.

If the player requires further assistance, Ichiban can use his newly acquired smartphone to call the “poundmates,” special offensive or defensive services that can be summoned to either deal damage to enemies or buff the party for a commission fee. Many of these helping hands are earned through completing the side stories, and they’re usually the more memorable and involved ones (saving a crawfish named Nancy from a hungry homeless man, resurrecting the career of a famed Korean actor, etc.) found around Ijincho. I didn’t think I’d be using the supplementary service all that often initially, but considering how few of Ichiban and his partner’s attacks deal damage to multiple foes at once, I ended up ringing the line for the poundmates more than a middle-aged white woman dials 911 on her neighbors. God bless you, Gary Buster Holmes. Ijincho doesn’t deserve you.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have made Ichiban’s partners sound as if they’re merely tools serving Ichiban to keep the man afloat in combat. They are all human beings, after all, with their own issues and stories that coincide with the struggles that life has thrown at them. Individual story arcs revolving around Ichiban’s partners take place at their designated watering hole, the Survive Bar, where Ichiban gives moral support and minor suggestions to the specific partner over a round of drinks. Once the partner confides in Ichiban five separate times, their “bond” will reach its maximum, allowing the partner to gain more experience in and out of battle, as well as unlocking new career options at Hello Work. Should it be any surprise that Sega has taken a decent helping of influence from Persona in molding Yakuza as a JRPG, considering that the company owns the rights to both franchises? The “social links” between Ichiban and his partners are a nice little nod to one of Persona’s patented life-simulator idiosyncrasies, but an even more overt instance of Like a Dragon borrowing Persona’s properties like a little sister taking her older sister’s clothes is Ichiban’s personality traits. Separate from his experience level in combat, similar to Persona, Ichiban must also be proactive in enhancing his non-physical attributes that mostly pertain to situations outside of combat. The six traits in question run the gamut of personhood, including passion, style, confidence, intelligence, kindness, and charisma. Completing a number of various tasks around Ijincho that vaguely correlate with a specific trait enhances each of them to a maximum of ten levels, and the unsavory adjectives that describe Ichiban’s lack of finesse with these qualities at the start become more glowing as the player sculpts Ichiban into a model human being. Once the player improves Ichiban’s personality to its limit, new career and even romantic options will be readily open to Ichiban. It’s an exciting prospect for the well-intentioned spastic, for sure. What exactly does the player need to do in order to turn Ichiban from a repugnant dud into an erudite, beguiling stud? Well, practically anything the game offers. Veteran Yakuza players will be more than familiar with the giant checklist that each Yakuza game implements in order to give players routine sparks of accomplishment by completing every conceivable aspect of the game in either small or large quantities. With the personality traits as another relevant, stackable progression point in Like a Dragon, the developers have wisely chosen to bridge the two together. Checking off any task on the board will result in one of Ichiban’s personality traits increasing slightly, with the rate of increase extending even more as the number needed to satisfy the task stacks higher. Because Yakuza’s progression is more free-flowing than the regimented day and night cycle of Persona, the player is given almost limitless time to hone Ichiban’s personality and sharpen him as a man of debonair sophistication far before the final chapter. While this does, however, ultimately verge into yet another aspect of grueling grinding, offering a tangible award for completing the most prevalent aspect of busywork the series exhibits makes the player more inclined to go the distance in completing this arbitrary list more than any game before it.

Whether or not they’re for the benefit of Ichiban’s personal growth, the minigames that Like a Dragon offers around town should at least inspire a modest sense of curiosity for most players. If they don’t, it’s because the minigames across the Yakuza series in previous titles have been spotty, to say the least. I’m still demanding a refund from whoever was running the underground catfight club in Yakuza 0, and that was thirty years prior to the events of Like a Dragon. Mahjong and Shogi are both still too cerebral for my feeble brain, and the batting cages still demand a high level of starting proficiency as if they’re under the pretense that the protagonist is training for the professional baseball league. While some returning minigames might not be all that stimulating (for me, at least), I was consistently floored by the new ones that Like a Dragon offered. The “Can Quest” minigame involves gathering a mass quantity of aluminum detritus along the shantytown block while riding a bike, which can be used as a currency to trade at a covert hobo market in exchange for health items, small amounts of yen, and meager pieces of armor. This system is intended to offer Ichiban an avenue to purchase goods and services at his most economically destitute, but I still continued to revisit this minigame once Ichiban climbed out of the homeless camp because collecting cans while crashing into competitors was genuinely a blast. To really boost Ichiban’s personality stats, he can sign up to take academic tests on a myriad of subjects at a vocational school. They mostly boil down to trivia questions, but trivia is one of my many fortes that I was glad I could flaunt to raise Ichiban’s stats. Watching old movies at a cinema is probably intended to make Ichiban more cultured, but the player spends most of the time in the theater fending off bipedal sheep wearing suits in a whack-a-mole button-pressing sequence so they don’t use their powers to make Ichiban start sawing logs in the middle of the film. I can’t tell if this scene is a clever externalization of falling asleep at inopportune times, or if it’s just another daffy indication of Ichiban’s questionable mental state. Possibly the most outrageous and mechanically intricate minigame that Like a Dragon debuts is Dragon Kart, a bona fide kart racer in the vein of Mario Kart. Don’t expect race tracks as extravagant or mechanics to be as refined as the kart series this minigame is modeled after. Still, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that something so uncharacteristic to the series like this is competent enough not only to be feasibly playable, but it's possibly the most thrilling minigame that the Yakuza series has ever devised. If Dragon Kart doesn’t evolve through subsequent Yakuza entries to the point of besting Mario Kart because the developers have scrapped it in favor of the Japanese card games or anything baseball-oriented, you’ve lost yourselves a valuable customer, Sega (I’ll probably just buy it anyway and sulk in solitude). The same goes for any of the aforementioned minigames I lauded, for it would be a shame to dispose of the strongest collective of new minigames the series has ever bestowed.

Of course, all Yakuza fans know that the most sizable piece of side content for any entry to the series is the optional business arc. Ichiban will come across a failing business called “Ichiban Confections,” and takes it upon himself to reinvigorate the struggling cookie/biscuit stand because sharing the same name as the company speaks destiny to him (and because he’s the most stand-up guy in Ijincho). Needless to say, a child operating a lemonade stand has more business acumen than Ichiban. This is why the professional guidance of company heiress Eri, her experienced grandmother, Tome, and the obligatory business involvement of poultry with mascot, Omelette, is imperative to the success of Ichiban Confections, with our intrepid hero serving as the heart and spirit of the operation. The goal that Ichiban must meet for the modest roadside attraction is to climb the ranks of the Ijincho corporation chain all the way to the tippy top, or at least that’s the ambitious stipulation given by the lender, the fabulously wealthy entrepreneur, Nick Ogata. Many of Yakuza’s businesses have befuddled players with their excessively stiff learning curves, but Ichiban Confections really takes the cake (no pun intended). Never in any previous capital venture has there been so many opportunities to sink the company to the sea floor, and without a proper explanation from the game on how to combat every issue that might lead to utter disaster. Essentially, the business has to meet three different quotas by the end of a financial period, which are net worth (the funds), employee morale, and overall sales, and then take part in a shareholder meeting where Ichiban and company have to deflect the complaints of three to five shareholders and pacify them. From my experience, one of these quotas will be neglected because funneling money into one contradicts the other. You need to drain the funds in order to upgrade the businesses and the employees, which will, in turn, lower the company’s net worth. All the while, most of the employees available at the start do not have the credentials to keep the businesses out of the red zone in every category. Once I learned to let the businesses roll in their shoddy shapes and put all my eggs in the shareholder basket, sufficiently combating their inevitable anger by mastering the mechanics of that portion led me to success. Soon, I took the Ijincho business circuit by storm. For those of you who aren’t as persistent with this stress-inducing side project and decide to let the cookie stand get devoured by the more profitable predators, I still recommend that you persevere through the anxiety. The profits earned through Ichiban Confections are the only substantial way to earn a high income, and turning the company into at least a contender in the rat race earns Eri as a secret partner. You’re telling me that you’re going to pass up a chance to have two hostesses unleashing “sparkling cannon” in all cardinal directions on the field? Ichiban’s party will become more feared than a guy with two flamethrowers in the Vietnamese jungle.

All optional content in Like a Dragon serves to augment the game and have the player be consistently entertained by the smattering of possibilities at their fingertips. Still, the player shouldn’t feel disappointed returning to progress the story once in a while, for Like a Dragon’s narrative is equally enthralling. What is initially established as a rags-to-riches story with Ichiban acclimating to life in a new city progressively turns into an Ijincho conspiracy that runs deeper than the gang could ever have imagined. The catalyst event for that continual arc happens when Ichiban and his crew find their employer, soapland operator Nonomiya, hung from the soapland’s ceiling in what looks like a suicide. However, a faint hearing of Chinese spoken during a phone call that took place right before his unexpected death leads the gang to investigate the tragic events under the suspicion of murder. Their investigation leads them into the inner workings of the Ijin Three, the trio of mafia factions operating in Ijincho: the endemic Yakuza family, the Seiryu Clan, Chinese Liumang, and the Korean Geomijul. Between their individual criminal schemes of social security fraud and a city-spanning surveillance system, one clandestine escapade that unites all three organizations is a counterfeiting operation that funds political protection against the invading forces of the Omi Alliance and other larger crime syndicates. Once the operation is blown wide open to the press and a coup occurs within the Liumang, Ijincho’s crime soil is ripe to be planted upon by Omi scavengers. Still, there’s the matter of how the waves of Omi Alliance termites can steal territory so easily. Back in the day, before Ichiban’s lengthy prison sentence, he was well acquainted with Arakawa’s son Masato, who was bound to a wheelchair due to having suffered from a collapsed lung as a newborn. He was presumed dead due to his debilitating handicap, but Ichiban is shocked beyond belief to learn that his old Tojo Clan ally is not only still alive, but has overcome his disability and became the governor of Tokyo (under a different name to elude his Yakuza upbringing). It would be a life-affirming success story, only if “Governor Ryo Aoki” weren’t still using his Yakuza connections to flood all of Japan with Omi Alliance influence while ousting anyone he deems as an obstacle or liability in the process. He’s also the reason Ichiban had to serve time in prison, not Sawashiro. Ultimately, what I’m trying to illustrate by summarizing the plot is how a new layer of the conspiracy is unraveled at every step of the story, reloading the sense of shock and intrigue to retain the player’s interest. Soon, the player will forget all about the alleged murder of the soapland owner because the bigger picture has blossomed and captured our attention far beyond what the initial starting point could’ve.

Eventually, the layers keep unraveling to the point where it hits an emotional, poignant core regarding Ichiban’s character. It turns out that Arakawa didn’t perceive Ichiban as a nuisance to be quelled from his presence. He meticulously shot Ichiban in a non-fatal area to have him travel to Ijincho using the trash circuit, a risky maneuver to use Ichiban in Ijincho to retaliate against his son’s political influence. Once Ichiban reconvenes with his former boss without him blowing a hole through his chest with a bullet, he and several other Omi executives make the shocking decision to dissolve the Omi Alliance. Once the decision is set in stone, Arakawa suspiciously ends up dead just like the soapland owner. We’re to believe that Aoki’s decision to kill his own father has made him an unrepentant beast who must be stopped at all costs, but a valuable piece of lore complicates this shocking action. Sawashiro confesses that Aoki is really his son that he abandoned as an irresponsible teenager, but Arakawa actually had a baby in the same set of lockers, and he took the wrong one. It’s heavily implied by Sawashiro that Ichiban is Arakawa’s lifeblood son, considering he shares the same unorthodox birth circumstances occurring around the same time. Not being blood-related to Arakawa doesn’t excuse Aoki’s disturbing decisions, but it does uncover a conversation about his character. Like Kiryu and Majima, Ichiban and Aoki represent character foils that can be compared and contrasted by their similar set of circumstances. For these two in particular, there’s a “nature versus nurture” argument at play. The source of Aoki’s domineering lust for power and control stems from feeling weak and helpless as a child due to his physical encumbrance, but who is to say that he still wouldn’t have been spoiled by special mob boss protection as a patriarch’s son anyway? The reason why Ichiban is so grateful for Arakawa and his Tojo Clan affiliates is that they were the ones who finally gave him a home and a place of belonging after being deprived of a basic human need for so long. Because the upbringings of the two could’ve swapped at a razor-thin margin of chance, who is to say that Ichiban couldn’t have become a megalomaniacal monster in a position of political power instead of the personable goofball he is today?

Awing at the convoluted plot and discussing the depth of the character relationships are common talking points on Like a Dragon’s narrative substance. However, what I gathered from Like a Dragon’s story was a biting commentary on modern sociopolitical affairs. I’ve neglected to mention Bleach Japan in the chaos of Ijincho’s conspiracy because they represent a distinct, analogous facet that reaches outside of Like a Dragon’s story. The organization's mission is to cleanse Japan of any “grey zones,” which involve any form of legal prostitution in the red light districts and any sex-oriented businesses that are turned a blind eye to by law enforcement. Using the example of brothel owner Hamako, people who are involved with this business are more kind and generous than Bleach Japan would ever give them credit for, for there’s more context behind their practices that allow them to be permissible. Still, this context doesn’t stop Bleach Japan from harassing Hamako and other sex work managers, namely protesting vociferously outside their places of business. For an organization that preaches an absolute good, they tend to use violence as a means of backlash against those who stand up to them, namely Ichiban and his crew. In reality, Bleach Japan acts as the face of Aoki’s political revolution, using the mirage of righteous progress to replace what was erased with something that benefits him, not society at large. Does anyone else see parallels between the attitudes of this fictional organization and a certain percentage of young people who feel obliged to squash anything they deem to be problematic? I don’t have to name names; if you’ve been alive and active on the internet over the past ten years, you’re aware of whom I’m referencing. It’s the most pervasive societal trend that occurred in the time of Ichiban’s prison sentence, and the game comments that giving common people this much political control is dangerous, since it's caused a seemingly impenetrable institution like the Yakuza to concede to their demands and fold like a pool towel. However, the game suggests that people who define their lives by all-encompassing, radical activism aren’t all smug, self-satisfied hypocrites, but are rather misguided pawns pulling the strings for political forces who don’t share their beliefs like they say. Kume, the gutless turd who serves as Bleach Japan’s figurehead, stabs Aoki to death once he learns that he’s not really a fighter for social justice, technically confronting the “bad guy” of the story, albeit in the most extreme way possible. It’s a devastating scene for Ichiban as his former Tojo Clan mate dies in his arms. However, the irony of this scene is so rich that it can be cut like butter, which caused me to burst out in hysterical laughter.

Once again, a Yakuza title has run me ragged. Still, like upon finishing Yakuza 0, it’s a gratifying kind of exhaustion felt after experiencing something magnificent. The Yakuza franchise intrepidly makes a radical diversion from their comfort zone of beat ‘em up combat and the continued narrative surrounding their mainstay protagonist to the unpaved territory of JRPG gameplay with another upstanding gentleman at the helm. For most franchises, they’d fumble in some aspects while attempting to rewrite so much of their foundation. Yet, Yakuza: Like a Dragon excels regardless because it retains some strong essentials to the franchise, such as its open-world free roaming, its bombastic sense of humor, and a gripping web of a crime story. The game does get bogged down with the muddy conventions of JRPG grinding at times, but the momentary upsets of this are not enough to weigh down every other glowing positive this game exhibits. I think Yakuza: Like a Dragon is of equally high quality to that of Yakuza 0, an amazing feat considering that a game with an untested mechanic is of the same prestige as the game that served as the apex point of Yakuza’s refinement. And you know what? I’ll probably come to appreciate Yakuza: Like a Dragon even more when I’m trudging through all of the Yakuza games leading up to it.

Yakuza 0 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/10/2024)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Yakuza 0

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku

Publisher: Sega

Genre(s): Open-World, Beat Em' Up

Platforms: PS4, PS3, PC, Xbox One

Release Date: March 12, 2015

I had no idea what to expect from Yakuza 0. Then again, I’d be willing to bet that a sizeable number of us yanks over in the Western hemisphere also couldn’t anticipate the content of Yakuza 0 when it shipped out overseas two years after its initial release in 2015. The long-running franchise already had an impressive tenure as one of Sega’s exemplary new IPs by the mid-2010s, created after their glorious reign as a console war contender tragically crumbled with the Dreamcast. However, Yakuza’s role in maintaining Sega’s relevance as a humble game developer seemed to only gain traction in their native Japan. This lack of international interest or awareness in Yakuza is probably the reason why it took two whole years for Sega to publish Yakuza 0 outside of Japan in the first place. In fact, Japanese gamers were so seasoned with the series at this point that it behooved Sega to craft a prequel story taking place before the sequential events detailed over the course of five Yakuza titles, hence the “zero” in the title that signifies its primeval placement in Yakuza’s chronology. While Yakuza veterans should ideally be intrigued in witnessing how the characters they’ve come to know (and love?) received their proverbial spots in their amateurish younger days, Yakuza 0 is also a serendipitous title to play for new players such as me to get acquainted with the franchise because the story events occur the earliest in the series timeline. However, plenty of Yakuza fans do not advise diving into the Yakuza series from the Yakuza 0 end despite its convenient, spoiler-free position in the series. There’s a reason why Yakuza 0 was the game that finally reverberated the series' notoriety around the globe, for it’s deemed to be the peak of the franchise in terms of narrative, gameplay, and character conceptualization. I will fully trust the reasoning behind the warnings of those with more experience than I do, but it’s far too late now. I don’t doubt that Yakuza 0 is the best game the series offers, for it is one of the most immersive and engaging video games I’ve played in recent memory.

Of course, one thing I naturally expected in Yakuza 0 with contextual clues from its title is that the game would involve the gilded Japanese crime organization in some capacity, so I could reasonably anticipate some gangster shit to be a-brewin'. The first instance of some mob activity in Yakuza 0 takes place on a brisk December evening in the Kamurocho prefecture of Tokyo in 1988, where the mainstay series protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu, is roughing up a civilian who did not pay his dues to the Dojima crime family of which he is affiliated. While we clearly witness that Kiryu only bruised this man to send a message, he then has to explain his actions when the man is found dead with a bullet hole in his head. When the newspapers stamp the man’s murder on the front pages and air its coverage on primetime television outlets with Kiryu pinned as the primary suspect, he ultimately steps down from his position as a grunt within the Yakuza as a preliminary caution to protect his guardian and incarcerated Tojo Clan captain, Shintaro Kazama. All the while, the higher-ups in the Dojima family are working tooth and nail to procure the rights to the coveted “empty lot” located in an unkempt Kamurocho back alley in the interest of bolstering the career of their family patriarch, Sohei Dojima. However, their primary obstacle in achieving this lucrative goal is local real estate magnate, Tetsu Tachibana, and the company of his namesake, who employs Kiryu in his firm to help clear his name of the murder in exchange for his insight and experience as a Yakuza member to use against them. One prevalent sentiment on Yakuza uttered aplenty before I played Yakuza 0 is that the series has a pension for silliness, even at the crux of its narrative regarding the heated acquisition involved with this dinky space that wouldn't even fill the perimeter of a state college dorm room. However, those who snicker at these dignified businessmen making such a big, billion-dollar fuss over a 500- square-foot slab of land have not seen The Sopranos. Potential properties relating to business ventures that seem minuscule from the outside looking in always seem to cause bickering and in-fighting within the mafia syndicate. The results of each civil war power struggle between the families over their capital resources tend to result in catastrophic consequences. If this source of conflict is substantial enough for what is widely considered to be the greatest television series of all time, then why would a mafia-oriented video game series that echoes the same themes be an exception to the rule?

Besides moonlighting as Tachibana’s new and valuable streetwise asset, severing ties from the Yakuza has granted Kiryu an abundance of free time. During the day and in the immediate after-hours of dusk, Kiryu is now free to frolic merrily in Kamurocho like Antoine Doinel through the streets of Paris. Actually, a more apt metaphor for Kiryu’s extensive leisure period is that he’s a turd crapped out from the Tojo Clan’s colon that is now free to swim in the toilet bowl that is Kamurocho. Given that Tokyo is the most populated city in the world, much less in Japan, I’m certain that a wide percentage of its prefectures are charming, safe, and exude that spectacle of city magic better than any metropolitan area in the world. However, one can imagine why an area modeled after Tokyo’s red-light district wouldn’t elicit the same sense of urban whimsy. While Kamurocho’s sleaze and prevailing Yakuza corruption aren’t exactly inviting to tourists who are already experiencing uneasy feelings of culture shock, those who seek a thrilling “city that never sleeps” type of atmosphere from their urban adventures will be satiated by Kamurocho’s tower-to-tower, luminescent neon glow with a full-scaled brightness five times the scale of Time Square in New York City. Kamurocho isn’t for the feeble, faint-of-heart city-goers feeling free enough to twirl themselves around and throw their hat up in the air with reckless abandon. One must constantly take a second glance in every direction to keep cautious of any salacious vagabonds soliciting their bodies or drunken thugs ready to steal your wallet once they’ve knocked you unconscious. One of the city’s more noteworthy residents is a street walker with the nickname “Mr. Shakedown,” a roided-out freak of nature who makes his living by acting as the adult equivalent of a schoolyard bully, frisking everyone for their paychecks instead of some meager lunch money. If he isn’t indicative of Kamurocho’s lawlessness, I don’t know what would serve as a better example. The aura of danger exuding around the entirety of Kamurocho will keep anyone with the will to survive on constant pins and needles. Still, a byproduct of one’s constant alertness is an acquired taste of exhilaration, which is what I always felt while darting around Kamurocho’s alleyways. However, all of Kamurocho’s energetic hustle and bustle is packed together like a can of sardines thanks to the grid-based city design, which makes the layout difficult to commit to memory.

Since Kiryu’s face is frozen to an ultra-serious, ice-cold stoicism, one would think the various vagrants in Kamurocho would give this man a wide berth. The belligerent man who demanded an apology from Kiryu after he accidentally brushed against him nearly turned to stone when Kiryu glared back at him with that sober, stern visage of his. Even though Kiryu carries the demeanor of someone who shan’t be fucked with, this somehow ESPECIALLY paints him as a target for assaults and harassments galore. Groups of delinquents, hooligans, goons, bikers, and every other classification or pejorative term for street gangs uttered by the men of Dragnet and Dirty Harry alike will bumrush Kiryu at the soonest peripheral glance, engaging in the combat portion of the game. It is here with this aspect of Yakuza 0’s gameplay that my preconceived notions that the series was another open-world game cut from the cloth of Grand Theft Auto were proven to be null and void. Instead, Yakuza is an example of a 3D evolution of the beat 'em up genre in the vein of something like River City Ransom. Once the group of street toughs closes in on Kiryu, a fight sequence commences between him and at least a trio of violent scumbags, with crowds of enthralled people accumulating around the scene as a circular ring of inescapability from these bouts. To continue minding Kiryu’s business, he must beat the everloving tar out of his assailants. While the weapons Kiryu can purchase are certainly potent, their ephemeral degradability forces Kiryu to fall back on his fists and kicks to defend himself, and his hand-to-hand combat is divided into three distinct styles. Brawler Style is a balanced martial art with average speed and damage, so it’s ideal for new players who need to acclimatize to the mechanics. Rush Style trades the offensive output of the brawler style for speed, with Kiryu delivering a fury of lightning-fast punches and kicks along with a swifter pace of dodge maneuverability. At the other end of the spectrum, the Beast Style sees Kiryu lumbering around the arena with the wide, upright stance of a pissed-off grizzly bear, brandishing critical heaps of damage to multiple enemies with a brutal clotheslining. I’m sure one will notice that each style also has a distinct and colorfully fiery aura that emanates over Kiryu in battle. This aesthetic flame signifies that Kiryu can execute a “heat move,” a cinematic sequence that dishes out massive amounts of damage to either a single enemy or a whole group. Kiryu can also pick up a blunt object off the street and incorporate it into this deadly super move. The most common miscellaneous items seem to be traffic cones, flag poles, and some poor bastard’s bicycle that Kiryu can completely shatter into pieces over an enemy. Some of these heat moves are situational, and some are inherent reflexes improvised by Kiryu in tight situations. Unlocking the others requires the additional tutelage of the person who inspired Kiryu’s use of each style when Kiryu funnels an exorbitant amount of money into the branching move pool for each style in the menu. The foreign, nomadic hedonist Bacchus will teach Kiryu the ways of the Brawler Style, the street hustler Kamoji for the Rush Style, and Miss Tatsu, the cutest bounty hunter in Tokyo, will have Kiryu reprimand those with outstanding loans using the Beast Style. As diverse as Kiryu’s battle potency is using a roulette of these three styles, the combat of Yakuza 0 admittedly boils down to a combination of two controller buttons along with the occasional grab. The encounters with these gangs are so frequent and trivial that the player is guaranteed to get sick of dealing with them, even avoiding saving save the skin of some defenseless dude writhing on the ground or a potential rape victim because of how the combat wears out its welcome. Still, the flashiness of the combat with the slapstick appeal of the heat moves will amuse the player for quite a while, and at least the mechanics for each of the fighting styles are all buttery smooth and responsive.

After putting these jokers in their place while they grovel for forgiveness, Kiryu can return to his normal trajectory. A salient, pink marker will be jotted on both the map and the radar signifying where Kiryu must travel to further the plot, which will usually involve a slew of lengthy cutscenes followed by a horde of enemies and or a boss with different situations depending on the current circumstances of the story. One of the only instances that leaves Kiryu directionless is the beginning of the second chapter, and the rare lack of a concise objective to dart towards is really a ploy from the developers to subtly highlight the optional substories. Upon walking about Kamurocho’s various places of interest or really any insignificant slice of any sidewalk, a cutscene will periodically ensue that sets up a predicament for one of Kamurocho’s less oppugnant denizens. Once Kiryu’s interest is piqued, he will talk to the person in order to gather more context on this person’s problem and decide whether or not he’d like to aid them in solving it. Technically, there is no tangible reward that comes with engaging with these substories, and they distractingly deviate from the main story by design. Still, any player who glosses over these minor slices of life around Kamurocho is doing themselves a major disservice because the substories are a riot. A few substories are conditional with fulfilling a friendship arc, coinciding with a meter that fills gradually with visitations. These include befriending a man who naively sells non-hallucinogenic cooking mushrooms on dingy street corners to a man with the title “Mr. Libido,” whose inexhaustible sex drive has to be fueled by some kind of photosynthetic process. Sixty substories may seem like an overwhelming amount of content to prolong the Yakuza 0 experience, but each minuscule window into the lives of Kamurocho’s average city dwellers expands the scope of the setting beyond the shallow parameters of a sinful playground wonderfully.

After all, arguably the core ethos of the open-world genre is to vicariously supplement reality with an extravaganza of activities. Even if the substories were left on the cutting room floor of the development, Yakuza 0 would still offer enough distractions from furthering the main plot for hours, even days, of playtime. Every facet of Yakuza 0 is compartmentalized into a comprehensive checklist. If the player is so inclined, they can order every menu item from a smattering of Kamurocho restaurants that restore Kiryu’s health, purchase mystery items from vending machines at random, and rent a room to watch a softcore porn videotape with a selection of thirty different girls. No, there is no interactive masturbation aspect to this sequence, as Kiryu's deep breath when the camera zooms in on a box of tissues when the video ends already breaks the sanctity of character-player interactivity as is. Still, all of these extracurricular outings are only the tip of Yakuza 0’s completionist iceberg, and a plethora of its non-linear diversions from the intended progression are indeed gamified. The amount of minigames featured in Yakuza 0 is so stacked that I’m not sure where to even begin with discussing them. For starters, classic arcade titles like Space Harrier and Out Run are fully playable in two different SEGA HI-TECHLAND arcade buildings, which means the developers have retreated to a blissful, nostalgic alternate universe where they held a monopoly on the video game industry. Other minigames that don’t involve the developers jerking off to their parent company's their glory days are dancing and karaoke, which both integrate rhythm game mechanics to effectively show off an unexpectedly flamboyant and expressive side of Kiryu. Mixing and matching the appropriate build to win the pocket circuit races is far more complicated than expected, and the pre-Tinder relic that is the telephone club sessions are as pulse-pounding as they probably were for anyone trying to get laid in real life back in the 1980s. As fun little larks these minigames are intended to be, one popular topic of discussion among Yakuza fans is which ones they despise. I definitely have my own selection. The batting cages instilled too strict of an error margin, and Shogi/Mahjong was too cerebral to be relegated to a minigame. Really, the notorious pick among the fans of which I’m echoing the contempt just as fervently are the catfights, betting on which scantily-clad tart will beat the other in a wrestling match. Considering that my luck was never in favor of any of the matchups I participated in despite always selecting the girl with the more promising stats, I’m fully convinced that this is one minigame where the odds are totally rigged against the player. I even disliked a number of minigames I mentioned beforehand, but grew to enjoy them as I became accustomed to their mechanics through practice. This learning curve that each minigame presents is a testament to their richness, something that typical minigames rather lack. Each minigame in Yakuza 0 (that isn’t RNG contingent) is impressive enough to hold its own as an individual game separated from the base game it's supporting.

One particular secondary piece of Yakuza 0 side content that I’d classify as a “macro game” is the overarching business side story. While Japan’s economy in the late 1980s was evidently booming to the point where any street commoner would burst with money like a yen pinata when Kiryu smacks them around, the finances gained from fighting were not sufficient enough to maximize his fighting prowess in the menu. To fully endow Kiryu, he must make enough money to qualify for the lofty “Forbes Under 30” bracket. Capitalizing on his new occupational venture as a real estate agent, Kiryu establishes his own subsidiary company with the experienced aid of an older man named Yamanoi. Besides raking in gonzo bucks, the primary objective behind this pursuit is to dethrone the “Five Billionaires” that have a stranglehold on each of Kamurocho’s remunerative enterprises (ie. leisure, electronics, pleasure, gambling, and media). In order to seize Kamurocho’s assets back into the hands of the public, Kiryu must negotiate an asking price for a business in a given area. Once the buildings are purchased, Kiryu siphons the shares from that area’s select billionaire and can finance every individual property to net a higher profit upon subsequent collection cycles. Upon gaining 60% of the shares in a billionaire’s district, they will challenge Kiryu to their forte minigame, and obtaining over 90% of shares results in an all-out brew-ha-ha with the billionaire and their goons for the official title of “area king.” As satisfying as eventually funneling in millions of dollars at the push of a button is, the rinse-and-repeat process of the collections is a rather tedious affair. All the interactivity involved with the collections amounts to a glorified waiting game where Kiryu has to kill ten to fifteen minutes before he can refresh the funds. I suggest completing “Real Estate Royale” in tandem with the substories and minigames, for they’ll provide enough of an entertaining distraction for the player while the cash flow seeps into Kiryu’s possession. Despite its monotonous gameplay, the business arc still isn’t dry and bogged down by complicated business jargon, so it doesn’t clash with the game’s vibrant and campy tone. Kiryu hires on a goddamned chicken as a manager, for fucks sake.

Between eighteen chapters, one would think they’d have plenty of time to complete everything in Kamurocho and still have enough time to sit around Kiryu’s apartment playing Altered Beast on the new Mega Drive game console (but not really). But alas, when chapter two closes with Tachibana panning his hand over a citywide energy blackout to signify he’s not one for the Yakuza to trifle with, chapter three does not begin with Kiryu waking up to a new day. Instead, the following chapter takes the player to a scene at a bourgeois pantheon of a cabaret club where one of the patrons is doing his damndest to ensure that he gets kicked out. The man is promptly ejected from the classy establishment by its manager, who deals with this unruly dickhead in a manner so professional that it receives a standing ovation from the civilized guests. Fans of the Yakuza franchise will recognize this debonair cyclops as Goro Majima, Kiryu’s series-spanning rival. However, Yakuza veterans still might have to squint, for they usually perceive Majima as the chaotic character foil to Kiryu’s moral broodingness: the Joker to his Batman, if you will. The earliest incarnation of Majima is relatively levelheaded, but he’s still no saint. Unlike Kiryu who resigned from the Yakuza, Majima was dishonorably discharged from the Shimano family after refusing to comply with a job where his oath brother, Saejima, massacred eighteen people and is now facing the death penalty for his killing spree. In addition to the torture the Shimano family inflicted on Majima for his defiance, he must serve out his punishment by acting as the manager of the Yakuza-owned Cabaret Grand in Osaka. Sagawa, the Omi Alliance patriarch overseeing Majima at The Grand, sabotages Majima at any instance he makes any leeway out of his unfortunate, purgatorial state of being like the right bastard he is. However, Sagawa suddenly decides to expedite Majima’s sentence to completion if he whacks someone named Makoto Makimura. A desperate Majima accepts the job without hesitation, except that he lets skepticism hinder acquiring his “get out of jail for free” card upon discovering that Makoto isn’t a hard, pipe-hittin’ motherfucker. SHE’S actually a sweet, defenseless blind girl who works as a masseuse. Nevertheless, she’s the target Sagawa wants to be ousted, and judging by how many Yakuza storm her place of work on the same mission as Majima, this girl evidently has more street cred than expected. To ensure that no one compromises his ticket back into the Yakuza, Majima takes Makoto and storms through the Yakuza blockade back to his apartment. As she clutches his leg crying in hysterical terror, Majima unsheathes his blade…as the screen turns to black to begin the next chapter. The thrilling events of chapter four were the point where my investment in Yakuza 0’s story skyrocketed, and I was genuinely disappointed to have the nail-biting climactic point halted by a cliffhanger. All I was concerned about throughout the following section with Kiryu was what decision Majima made!

Yes, as copious as Kiryu’s adventure in Kamurocho is, Yakuza 0 is a tale of two cities where the total content is doubled with the story of another playable protagonist. Yet, the dichotomy is anything but Dickensian. Sotenbori, the entertainment district of Osaka, oozes the same high-octane state of excess and debauchery as its Tokyo counterpart. Another hulking “Mr. Shakedown” figure roams Sotenbori coaxing everyone to hand over their 401k savings. This town’s “Mr. Libido'' is so horny that he is reduced to nothing but his underwear, as if his libidinousness is a raging fever he’ll never sweat off. Much of Sotenbori’s content mirrors that of Kamurocho, but the few distinctive aspects of Majima’s stomping grounds actually make it the favorable setting of the two. For one, Sotenbori’s architectural design is far more accessible. The ritzy district of the north and the narrow residential streets of the south divided by two bridges suspended over the river are vastly less of a chore to navigate and are much easier to map out mentally. The citizens of Sotenbori who aren’t clones of those from Kamurocho arguably make for more amusing substories as well. A few examples of Sotenbori tickling my funny bone include a brash, overbearing middle-aged woman known colloquially as “the obatarian,” who loudly accuses Majima of being a handsy pervert when he chides her for cutting in line at a takoyaki stand. Majima infiltrating a cult to find some woman’s daughter they’ve abducted ends with him rightfully beating its leader’s self-righteous ass into a pulp after stomaching his fabricated, hippy-dippy bullshit to enter their headquarters. His brainwashed followers attempting to treat his wounds with the pseudo-mystical practices he taught them while he breaks his cheerful facade trying to tell them he needs medical attention is comedic writing of its highest caliber. Yet, there are still substories that flip the tonal coin to melodrama just as effectively. The man presumed dead who can’t interact with his family in the park because of the fear that exposing his identity will provoke the wrath of the Yakuza he’s hiding from is truly a tragic story that will make the player feel as if someone started cutting onions around them. Truthfully, I procrastinated with progressing Yakuza 0’s story a little longer during Majima’s chapters so I could hang around Sotenbori a little longer.

Perhaps my apprehensiveness with swapping back to Kamurocho stemmed from Goro Majima himself and less from the city in which he resides? Did I gravitate towards Majima because his face wasn’t stuck at a perpetual scowl which made him naturally more charismatic, or is it because we share a monovision kinship that only so few share? A little from columns A and B, I suppose, but another admirable aspect regarding Majima is that his combat is a smidge more interesting. Instead of aping Kiryu’s trinity of fighting styles, Majima scrounges up three distinctive martial disciplines from muses around Sotenbori. Thug Style learned from the wise sensei Komeki is similar to that of Kiryu’s brawler style in stature, but it’s not afraid to implement some cheap and dirty maneuvers like poking at an enemy’s eyes when the going gets tough. Fei Hu, the weapons dealer who uses a Chinese restaurant as a front, teaches Majima how to use the tools of his (real) trade in combat with the Slugger Style, namely a metallic baseball bat permanently fused to Majima when using this technique. When Majima witnesses a troupe of break-dancing street performers led by Areshi in red, inspiration strikes to transcribe their rhythmic flailing as a fierce offensive maneuver. Somehow, it was a stroke of pure ingenuity. I can’t explain it, but the most unorthodox fighting style with odd flow and acceleration devastates groups of enemies and burly boss fights alike. Goro Majima is the real smooth criminal. In addition to his overall story and setting, Majima’s array of kicking ass is just more interesting than that of the franchise’s principal protagonist.

Majima’s optional business venture is yet another point added to his scoreboard. Given his stellar reputation as the manager at the gilded Cabaret Grand, Majima has enough prestige in Sotenbori’s biggest enterprise to go around. Majima sees a chance to bestow his cabaret business acuity when he witnesses a hapless cabaret club (a smaller version of a full cabaret. It’s confusing.) about to be squished by the slimy tomato that runs the rival Club Mars located around the corner. With his outstanding expertise in the field of classy adult activities, Majima single-handedly becomes the savior of Club Sunshine and their struggling employees, Youda and Yuki-Chan. Beyond quashing the competition that is directly threatening Club Sunshine’s existence, Majima’s cabaret arc extends to defeating the remaining “Five Stars” who own the other planetary/celestial body-themed cabaret clubs around Sotenbori. While Majima’s business seems similar to Kiryu’s because of its arc, the process isn’t simply Majima letting the girls and Youda do their magic and returning to the club to gather the cumulated finances earned. Running Club Sunshine is a legitimate minigame where Majima must proactively attend to the needs of each patron entering the club for the duration of three (in-game) minutes. Majima will need to match the patron’s preferences in regards to the ladies, which coincide with specific statistics like their charm, looks, or ability to talk a blue streak. Depending on the customer-employee compatibility, the guest will either be ecstatically enchanted and toss their money like birdseed. Or, they’ll be outraged, give the girl a harsh tongue-lashing, and leave in a huff. After a number of sessions converting the would-be patrons of the other clubs with Majima’s excellent service, each owner will respond to these transgressions with a cabaret club duel with all-or-nothing stakes. If Majima successfully earns more money and overall customer morale during these duels, the losing club will totally concede their business along with their BILLIONS of dollars in revenue. Club Sunshine will also absorb that club’s platinum hostess into their roster, which Majima can take aside and train by talking to them in a separate minigame. Majima might tease these beautiful girls a bit, but he never aggressively holds them by their hair and calls them a “buchiach” like other fictional mobsters who operate erotic establishments. I’ve been comparing the cabaret business portion to Kiryu’s real estate side project, but Club Sunshine is honestly the greatest minigame Yakuza 0 offers. I spent hours hiking to and from the Sugita Building out of obligation, but I gleefully sunk as much time into Club Sunshine almost purely from enjoyment. Have I inadvertently discovered my secret calling in life?

Despite the distance that spans three regions of Japan, Kamurocho and Sotenbori must somehow converge to validate extending the game’s length with content totally removed from where the game began. This isn’t The Godfather Part II, after all. In order to organically connect Kiryu and Majima’s stories, there first has to be differing degrees of shit hitting the fan for both of our heroes. For Kiryu, the Dojima family obviously becomes indignant upon discovering that Kiryu is actively working against their interests in acquiring the empty lot by fraternizing with their direct competitors. For his perceived double-crossing, the Yakuza mark Kiryu as the target of a city-spanning manhunt, burning down his apartment complex in an obtrusive effort to flush him out. Nishiki, Kiryu’s best friend, and Yakuza oath brother, is so concerned regarding how severe the Yakuza’s torture methods will be once they snatch Kiryu that he takes it upon himself to drive Kiryu out into the wilderness at night in an attempt to shoot him as a means of euthanization. Nishiki’s plan would’ve been more efficient if he told Kiryu to look into the woods and think about the rabbits, but I’ll excuse him for not being adept with classic American literature. Tachibana eventually buys Kiryu’s freedom, but Dojima’s three lieutenants are quite a headstrong bunch. Meanwhile, Majima’s moral compass intrudes and decides to instead house Makoto in a vacant warehouse away from the prying eyes of Sagawa and other Omi Alliance members. Only Makoto’s brawny boss, Wen Hai Lee, is a confidant to Majima’s clandestine affairs. However, seeing Makoto as the daughter he never had, Lee goes to drastic lengths to throw off the Yakuza’s scent to Makoto by staging the killing of another girl in Makoto’s clothing. Majima rejects this crazy scheme, but Lee’s plan is still executed by a psychotic Omi Alliance patriarch named Nishitani. Despite the extraneous efforts done to keep Makoto safe, all of it is compromised when one of Lee’s affiliates finks on him to the Yakuza, and Sagawa plants a car bomb that kills Lee and stops Majima and Makoto from escaping Sotenbori. Before Sagawa executes Majima for his duplicity, yet another man looking for Makoto intervenes and walks off with the girl into the sunset. While I wasn’t as gripped throughout the game’s middle sections as I was in chapter four, at least the stimulating momentum never slows to a crawl at any point afterward.

Besides being pushed beyond their comfort zone by troubling circumstances, unraveling each story’s secrets is really what builds a bridge between Kamurocho and Sotenbori. Tachibana drops a few contextual bombs on the player after the tenth chapter, namely, that Makoto Makimura is the legal proprietor of the empty lot upon unknowingly inheriting it from her grandfather’s passing. The reveal that is bound to be more of a shock is that she’s also Tachibana’s estranged younger sister and that he instituted his real estate corporation (with the help of Kazama in the interest of instilling an obstacle for Dojima procuring the lot) as a barricade preventing the savage Yakuza from harming his sister. His chairman, Mr. Jun Oda, was the “man with the bat tattoo” who sold his sister into sex slavery, an experience that traumatized her to the point of PTSD-addled blindness. That should give you an indication of how impenetrable he is as a roadblock. Once Sera from the Nikkyo Consortium passes her on to Kiryu after taking her from Majima, what would be a cheerful reunion between Tachibana and his sister is halted when Lao Gui, a notorious hitman on Dojima’s payroll and the actual culprit behind the murder Kiryu was framed for, corners Tachibana in the tight corridors of Little Asia. Unfortunately, Kuze’s torture techniques prove fatal for Kiryu’s new boss, and Makoto is tearfully reunited with her brother’s lifeless body. Now, cue Majima’s role in Yakuza 0’s climax as he fails to prevent Makoto from acting on any hasty decisions regarding her brother’s demise. To end her suffering and stop this whole charade, she attempts to sell the lot off to Dojima, but at the price of killing his three lieutenants for brutalizing Tachibana as the dire condition of her negotiation. Of course, Dojima doesn’t forfeit his men and has Lao Gui do away with Makoto with a single shot from his pistol. Makoto miraculously survives due to Japan’s advanced medical care, but this action is the final straw that inclines Kiryu and Majima to confront all the men responsible. Kiryu dukes it out with a newly promoted Captain Shibusawa on a yacht sailing out to sea while Majima faces off against sleazoid Awano and East Asia’s own professional boogeyman, Lao Gui, in the Dojima family headquarters. While all of this violence is ensuing, Sera manages to successfully purchase the lot from Makoto, leaving all the men involved in this whole charade with their tails in between their legs.

What tends to confuse the Yakuza fanbase is the resolution that follows all of this madness. Kiryu decides to rejoin the Dojima clan, while Majima dons his “mad dog of Shimano'' outfit, ushering in an unhinged era of his life familiar to all returning Yakuza fans. Kiryu’s reasons for reverting back to the ranks of the Yakuza are made clear over drinks with Nishiki at Serena, but Majima’s incentive for discarding his respectable persona is lost in the fog. I think these two young men have hit a pivotal point in both of their lives because of the empty lot ordeal and have externalized their experiences differently. They’ve both learned that the organized crime institution where they were both cogs is not an illustrious, venerated lifestyle: it’s a maelstrom of ego-oriented destruction where innocent blood is spilled daily and oathbound bonds mean nothing if it gets in the way of obtaining power and influence. They’ve both been played as fools by bad men, but utilize the lessons they’ve learned with dissimilar approaches. Kiryu has learned that Kamurocho is not balanced on a black-and-white spectrum where the Yakuza are the sole poison to an otherwise spotless society, so his goal is to improve the defective institution that will improve society. Where Kiryu comes out optimistic, Majima now sees things through a nihilistic lens. The Yakuza are now ugly and corrupt to Majima, but the traumatic thing that unscrewed a bolt in his brain was in their treatment of Makoto. To harm something as precious and innocent as Makoto is as sinful as killing a mockingbird, and the fact that Majima was the only man in the interest of protecting someone so lovely and pristine among his peers probably sent him over the edge. In his new outfit, he encounters Makoto with restored sight and asks her current boyfriend if he’ll protect her at all costs. He claims he will, but I don’t think Majima is easily convinced. He believes that honest, good people are a rare breed in this world, and there's no shortage of detestable ones. Since he was played for as a sap constantly as the moral minority, he figured, when in Rome. Kiryu and Majima are similar characters throughout Yakuza 0, but their attitudes expose their character foils at the end.

Yakuza 0 has left me completely exhausted. However, it’s not a state of pained fatigue. You know how it feels to come home after a full, rich day of frivolity? You cannot wait to rest your feet, yet a sense of satisfaction fills your eventual rest. A full, rich day consists of a myriad of actions and pastimes, and that is exactly what the open-world genre sought to emulate in its earliest form. Never have I played any other game in this genre that replicated the extent of the open-world ethos as closely as Yakuza 0 does. Kamurocho and Sotenbori offer so much in the realm of content, whether it be the minigames, substories, business undertakings, and all other facets of its gameplay that the player could potentially sink their teeth into, and time will pass on by without the player being aware of it. And to think that at the helm of all this optional merriment is a story so well written and engaging that calling Yakuza 0 "Japanese Sopranos" wouldn’t be inappropriate. I invested at least a hundred hours into Yakuza 0, more so than the average time to complete the main narrative's events, because I hadn't been this engrossed with a game's world, story, or characters to this extent in years. I realize that what I feel for Yakuza 0 is most likely the peak of elation the series offers and all other titles will not deliver on the same quality standard. Still, how could I not be at least a little curious about how the rest of the series pans out, considering that Yakuza 0 has hooked me like crack cocaine? I yearn to see a grizzled Kiryu in his later years, even if I can't expect to treat all the other titles like a fully-fledged immersion tank. Nothing in the franchise can be its prequel, and not many other open-world games can transcend it either.