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2024 Preview: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth will lei out the series’ future
The game’s Hawaiian setting promises an interesting change of tone
In recent years, the Like a Dragon series has seen a massive leap in terms of its importance to Sega in the West.
For years, the series – known previously as Yakuza on our shores – has enjoyed something of a cult following, a sort of underground franchise that was described by some as a spiritual successor to the Shenmue games, due to the attention to detail in its open-world areas. Not many knew about it in the early days, but those who did fell in love with it.
The series’ popularity has only continued to grow in the 18 years since the first Yazkua’s release, and now it stands proud as one of Sega’s most important series, not only in its native Japan but also in the West. What was once a secret gem shared among those in the know is now a well-known franchise whose qualities are far more well-known.
Nowhere has this been more clear than the release dates of each entry over the years. In the past, mainline Yakuza games got Japanese releases long before they were localised here, but that gap has been slowly shrinking. There was an enormous three-year gap between Yakuza 5’s 2012 release in Japan and its eventual 2015 release in the West, for example. For Yakuza 0 that dropped to two years, then a year and a half for Yakuza 6.
The synergy between Japan and the West continued to grow with the last main entry in the series, Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Not only was the release gap reduced to 10 months, the introduction of the Like a Dragon name – a translation of the Ryu Ga Gotoku name the series has always had in Japan – also indicated a desire from Sega to drop ‘Yakuza’ to align things more closely with the Japanese branding.
Finally, after accomplishing it in recent years with spin-offs Lost Judgment, Like a Dragon: Ishin and Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Sega is set to finally achieve full parity with the main Like a Dragon series, with the next game Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth marking the first ever day-and-date worldwide release for a main entry.
It helps that the game offers a unique premise. Its predecessor, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, took a bold step by leaving the series’ usual setting of Tokyo’s fictional Kamurocho district and setting it in Yokohama instead, and now Infinite Wealth plans to take things in a far less expected direction by splitting the game’s locales between Yokohama and Hawaii.
The latter will provide a very interesting change of tone for the series, and it’s going to be fascinating to see if Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio can replicate the same surgical attention to detail that it does for its Tokyo and Yokohama environments, in a city like Honolulu which has a rather different culture.
The setting isn’t the only big change planned for the series. In recent months Sega has been talking up Dondoko Island, the game’s new Animal Crossing-style subgame. Set to be unlocked partway through the campaign and independent of the main story, Dondoko Island has the potential to be worth the price of entry alone as players gather materials on the island by fishing or clearing trash, purchase or craft furniture, and customise their own home.
Other new features – in a series that wasn’t short of them in the first place – include a Crazy Taxi-inspired food delivery game called Food Delivery, a dating app called Miss Match and a Pokémon knock-off called Sujimon Battle. It already seems certain that, as in previous Yakuza / Like a Dragon games, there’s potential here for players to spend hundreds of hours on side games that have nothing to do with the main narrative.
We’re also curious to see how the continued evolution of the series’ retro Sega games will play out. The recently released Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name kicked things up a gear by adding two arcade games that used the Sega Model 3 board – Fighting Vipers 2 and, in its first ever home port, Daytona USA 2 (renamed Sega Racing Classic 2).
This marked the first time Sega had ever emulated its Model 3 board, and we already know there’s two more coming to Infinite Wealth – Sega Bass Fishing and beat ‘em up Spikeout (another game that’s never received a home port). Could we see more rarely released gems from Sega’s past also making an appearance? We’re keeping our fingers crossed for Emergency Call Ambulance or a proper arcade-quality port of Sega Rally 2.
Either way, we won’t have long to wait to see everything Infinite Wealth has to offer, since it’s currently down for release on January 26, 2024. And yes, that’s worldwide.
Read more 2024 game previews:
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Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5)
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Xbox)
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