Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is already a franchise highlight, receiving the highest metascores the series has ever received.
04.01.2024 - 15:39 / ign.com
Kiryu Kazuma and Kasuga Ichiban are two sides of the same Like a Dragon coin. Their personalities could not be more different — Kiryu, a world-weary lone wolf, and Kasuga, a Dragon Quest-loving golden retriever — but they live by a similar code of ethics and share a similar past, both locked up for crimes they didn't commit to help out their yakuza families. It was a bummer that Kiryu didn't stick around longer when he came around in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. The two men would sure as hell have a lot to talk about.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth finally brings the two mainline protagonists together for an ultra-compelling and sprawling game that lives up to its subtitle. The three-and-a-half-ish hours I spent roaming Honolulu and Yokohama, sprucing up the trashed Dondoko Island, and battling a Megalodon-sized shark felt like a drop in the Pacific Ocean in terms of the game's scope. And that's just speaking to the gameplay. Having both Kasuga and Kiryu as playable protagonists place the story on a broad emotional spectrum that plays to the strengths of each character's worldview: Kasuga and his ridiculousness, Kiryu and his legacy of struggle. It's a great balance between the past and future of the Like a Dragon franchise.
Over in Honolulu, Kasuga and his pals are out searching for his mother once thought dead. The map here is something to behold. It's Ryu Ga Gotoku's biggest-ever area for the series, beautifully designed, and the amount of detail put into it is staggering to take in. More restaurants, shops, minigames, and substories are available, and locations to unlock bond conversations with Kasuga's teammates are now conveniently marked. A bigger map also means more transportation options. Aside from the taxi stands, trolley lines are all around Honolulu, which is a more relaxed option to take in the sights and have conversations with Kasuga's teammates. Lastly, Kasuga acquires a rechargeable Segway through an appropriately ridiculous substory, which is, of course, much faster than running around on foot, less rigid than the set locations of trolleys and cabs, and extremely goofy-looking. All around, a net positive.
Infinite Wealth also carries on the same turn-based combat as Yakuza: Like a Dragon. It either works for you or it doesn't — I'm in the former camp — and the studio has made definite improvements to that system so that I felt more engaged and had more ways to act strategically. It seems simple, but having a circle in which to move around gives a real advantage when it comes to actions like utilizing nearby objects as weapons or sneaking behind an enemy to perform a powerful back attack. The command interface has also been improved (and Persona-fied). Tag Team moves are no longer hidden in
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is already a franchise highlight, receiving the highest metascores the series has ever received.
There’s a new way to travel in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. While you can still pay taxis to get around Hawaii faster, you can also use a Segway-like device called the Street Surfer. This battery-powered standing travel device lets you zip around the streets, and you can mount it at any time. There’s just one downside. The battery life is limited and gets used up, so you’ll need to recharge at stations located all over the city. Using the Street Surfer is very simple and it can be summoned (or put away) at any time. You can even purchase higher capacity batteries from Hawaii Pawn Shops. The Street Surfer isn’t just limited to Hawaii either, you can use it when you travel back to Yokohama.
The best healing items in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth can be acquired right at the start of the game — the tricky part is just farming all the materials you’re going to need to make them. As soon as you arrive in Revolve bar in Little Japan, you’ll be able to bring ingredients to the owner to mix drinks and other healing items. These are by far the best healing items in the game, able to heal your entire party or heal both HP and MP at the same time.
Jobs are back in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth and they’re even more ridiculous. Instead of dressing up like Hosts and Idols your party can become fire dancers, hula girls or gun-wielding desperados. Some of the jobs are truly ridiculous, including a surfer that swings his board around like a club.
In Chapter 9 of Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the Tattoo Parlor lady will demand $10,000 USD before she gives you any information you need about your missing person. That’s a lot of cash, but it isn’t impossible. Returning to Hawaii in Chapter 9, the enemies are much tougher and cash is easier to come by. There are multiple ways to earn the money you need, but there are a few ways that are extremely easy.
is RGG Studio's latest entry into the formerly-known-as franchise, and it's probably the developer's most ambitious project yet. After just giving protagonist Ichiban Kasuga his start as the face of, his second adventure puts him side-by-side with the most iconic character the series has ever had — its former protagonist, Kiryu Kazuma. It's the kind of decision that could easily sink a promising hero, and to be honest, there are moments where the game threatens to do just that, barely containing the myth of Kiryu to allow Ichiban more space to grow.
Just a couple of days before the release of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, publisher Sega has released the game’s opening movie as a trailer. The trailer, which you can check out below, essentially acts as an opening credits sequence for the game.
Fans of the Like A Dragon series aren't happy about streamer Felix «xQc» Lengyel promoting Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. The latest Like A Dragon game will release on January 26, but xQc was able to play the game early for a sponsored stream.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth releases this coming week and takes the series' best boy protagonists to the new shores of Hawaii. It's one of our most anticipated games of 2024. There's a slight snag though: New Game+ mode, a staple of both the genre and the series, is this time locked away within the more expensive Deluxe and Ultimate Editions.
I learned so many intriguing things about Nightingale during my visit to Inflexion Games that it’d be impossible to unpack everything in one succinct article – so I won’t, but I will hopefully shed some light on its development process, setting, and gameplay loop. Nightingale isn’t necessarily the game you’d expect from seasoned ex-Bioware devs, but the years of experience behind its ideation is evident in what I saw in more than six hours of gameplay: a stylish take on a shared-world survival crafting game.
Official Xbox news website Xbox Wire has deleted a post that claimed the open beta for Final Fantasy 14 had gone live on Xbox.
I had only just played Persona 3 Portable in the last few years, so that hundred-hour saga felt relatively fresh in my mind going into my demo of Persona 3 Reload. I was excited to hang out with all my old pals, but a bit skeptical that it would be different enough to warrant the time investment all over again. In my playthrough that ran more than an hour, though, I didn't feel at all like Reload was covering the same ground, even if it basically is. The added gameplay elements, updated graphics, tweaked areas and social links compel me to sink another handful of months into getting to the bottom of Apathy Syndrome with the S.E.E.S. crew.