After spending R$350 ($70USD) and 3 months, I finally finished the latest installment in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise, and boy, it was a ride.
I don't think I've had this much fun in a game ever since Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon.
This was a phenomenal experience through and through and I'd like to share some of my experiences with it.
There will be light spoilers ahead, but I won't go too much in detail about the story.
Why the hell is Ichiban in Hawaii? To look for his mother, this much the trailer already reveals. Almost immediately after getting off the plane, he gets into trouble and shows up at the beach butt-naked. Gets arrested and then makes a run for it where he meets up with Kiryu who's there in a super secret mission and stuff and hijinks ensue!
The party grows as you play the game, traitors appear, heroes are made and well, it's just a bunch of plot twists, each cooler than the previous.
Hawaii's map is absolutely huge and I loved exploring it.
There's just so much to see and do.
So many random encounters, side-stories and weird oddities hide in this ginormous map (which looks a bit small in this photo, but it's 3x the size of Isezaki Ijincho from 7 and Lost Judgment).
Hawaii's crawling with gangs, religious zealots and weird freaks for you to battle. And now the sujimon mechanic is back, where when you fight an enemy they get added to the sujidex. The difference this time is you can convince enemies to join you to fight other sujimon, it really is a full fledged Pokémon copy with its own lore and story.
Talking about Hawaii and side content, now we have Dondoko island!
This is pretty much an Animal Crossing copy, where you build out your island, catch critters, and receive visitors.
It's actually pretty well made. You basically build out your island by cleaning the pollution that "pirates" leave there so you can get living space, add tents for tourists and attractions to level up your island.
It's really really addicting.
And some people have made some incredible islands.
I won't even bother showing my island because the place is a dump. But eventually I'll get it to look better.
Alongside Hawaii, Isezaki Ijincho and Kamurocho are back. There's not much to do in Kamurocho throughout the game besides at the very end, and Ijincho is where you'll spend a lot of time with Kiryu.
It's nice seeing Ijincho again but this time through a new perspective.
As the trailer says, Kiryu now has cancer and probably won't live for much longer. So as you explore Ijincho and Kamurocho you'll get the "memoirs of a dragon" where Kiryu reminisces about his life and you gather up memories in a sort of "book of memories."
Makoto Date, his long time detective friend is also there in Ijincho to help him out to relive his old days, as far away as possible since he is "The Man Who Erased His Name" and can't really be seen by the public (even though the game just kinda says fuck it to this halfway through, you'll know what I mean if you play it.)
Of course since this is Yakuza, lots of silliness ensue, like fighting giant sharks, giant squids and weird dudes who hang out atop of trees.
But just like any other Yakuza game, the weirdness does not distract from the excellent storywriting and serious undertones that the game has. It's a perfect combination of the two things and I love it.
Overall, I'll rate this game a solid 9.5/10.
If the story were only a little bit better and felt a little bit less rushed, it would've been a 10. But there's so much to do and see that I can call this one a masterpiece and I can't wait to see where RGG Studios will take the franchise next, likely without Kiryu.
It was well worth the wait and the money I spent on it.
A great game. It was one of the most anticipated for me this year. I played it a few months ago and I share this last opinion, it was worth the money and time. Although I admit that I didn't expect an ending like the one it had, I thought they would give a complete closure to Kiryu's story, but instead they left me wanting to know what will happen in the next game 😅.