What is a Yakuza game without yakuza? That’s the dilemma facing RGG Studio after the events of Yakuza: Like A Dragon, in which protagonist Ichiban Kasuga aided the dissolution of the warring Omi Alliance and Tojo Clan. Bad news for sellers of cheap suits, great news for cleaners paid to pick teeth from Kamurocho’s gutters. More noticeably, Yakuza was dropped from the series’ subsequent western titles. Its replacement, Like A Dragon, is both the series’ traditional Japanese label and the life philosophy by which all its heroes live (one which still hinges on cheap suits and shattered molars). But it also gives the creators a chance to interrogate an idea rarely explored in RPGs: what happens to heroes after they save the world?
Ichiban and his schlubby companions are no longer social pariahs, but neither have they reaped big rewards: our hero nurses an unrequited crush (a fluffed courtship is a glacially paced but beautifully observed opening set-piece), while Nanba and Adachi struggle to aid gangsters attempting to re-enter the workforce.
