Note: This "review" will spoil a lot about Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, if you would like to not get spoiled, please click away.
I finished playing Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (aka: Yakuza 8) around a month ago and it was great! The characters were great, the turn-based gameplay was 100 times better than Yakuza 7.
What I like
Infinite Wealth improved a lot of things from Yakuza 7 and added some things that just made the game better.
- I really like Kiryu's part, reminiscing about the older games was great. And when the original Funk Goes On from the PS2 Yakuza played, I already knew that this was going to be Kiryu's true finale as not Gaiden nor Yakuza 6 really included this much fanservice.
- Like I said, the gameplay in this game is waaaaaay better, it at least involves some strategizing instead of choosing the skill with the highest damage. And I really like the fact that attacking normally is viable and it gives you MP, it's almost like the original games' Heat Mechanic.
- The Side Content in this game is insane, you get UberEats Crazy Taxi, Yakuza Animal Crossing, Taking photos of almost naked Men and better dungeons. I'm pretty sure this game rivals Yakuza 5 in terms of side content.
- Fast Travel in this game is great and it did make some trips less boring and tedious
- The Story, at least from Early to Mid Game is honestly great and makes me wish they didn't drop the ball with the End Game.
What I don't like
While there is a lot of things I don't like, none of them are deal breakers for me.
- Kiryu's part practically overshadows Ichiban's part, making Ichiban feel more like a side character than a main character. Everytime I finished a Kiryu chapter and went to Ichi's chapter, it made me want to go back to Kiryu's part more than Ichi's. It's weird since they did this in Yakuza 0, but way better by making each Protag's chapters action packed and matter to the story, compared to Infinite Wealth where Ichiban's sections after Kiryu's didn't really feel like they mattered as it mostly just went as We would find something out as Kiryu, switch to Ichiban and have to catch him up on what's happening. And sometimes it felt like the game would just repeat stuff already said like it was new information or at least felt like that.
- While I love the side content, I really hate the Points System they use and it's not like a couple of them do, it's literally all of them. To be honest, it really sapped the motivation to play the side content because I don't want to grind a minigame just to get enough points to get some mediocre amount money or a Music Disc. And you recieve the points based off how well you did and I don't want to be tryharding a minigame about taking photos of half naked Men for 2 hours to get 6k point, just to recieve $200.
- I didn't really like Donkodo Island (Yakuza Animal Crossing) being the main buisness, not that I don't like it, but I thought the previous game's buisness minigame was way more better and just less time consuming than Donkodo.
- To be honest, I didn't really understand the entire Nuclear Waste plot, it felt like the writers saw Chernobyl and just went with "Nuclear Power bad" and I don't know what to replace it with because it kind of a big part of the story and not easy to replace without rewriting massive parts of the story. As well as Bryce not having superpowers like some of the characters keep mentioning. Also, why did Ichiban take off his shirt? It didn't really make sense and it was kind of funny, they could've made him say something cool to really make the moment more epic.
- Zhao and Joon Gi join late, again.
- Ending kind of dropped the ball, I don't understand why Ichiban forgave Eiji after he literally kidnapped a child, teargassed him and his party and literally blackmailed Chitose into "exposing" Ichiban and his friends, causing them to lose their jobs. Apparently nothing happens to the villians and they also just, don't explain anything like when did Haruka find out? what happened to Sawashiro? Is he dead or alive? did the Daidoji let Kiryu go? And it just leaves these questions unanswsered nor does it hint to any answer.
- Also, Daidoji for being said to be this great and powerful faction just becomes this weak faction? And they stay like that until the final life link where as soon as Kiryu get within a 400 mile radius of Haruka, they bring out 10 armed men and begin attacking Kiryu and Date.
Music
Infinite Wealth does not stop with the bangers, like
- "The Four"
- "The Impregable Four"
- "The End of Denial"
- Recieve and Believe You
- Kooky
- Twin Machetes
This track plays for the Final Boss of the Game, Ebina and the reason why this track to me is unique is really hard to explain. Because it's similar to the other Rock tracks from other entries in the Series, like "Fly" from Yakuza 3 and "Deadly Struggle" from Yakuza Gaiden, except for it just feeling more melancholic and having this extreme sense of finality.
The End Of Denial really does well with this sense as not only does it include some 80s' synths, representing the beginning of Kiryu's story, but also it includes "Roar of the Dragon" from the ORIGINAL Yakuza on the PS2 at around 1:45
This hit me a lot harder since I played Yakuza 1 (w/ the Restored Patch) instead of Yakuza Kiwami, due to me forgetting buying to buy Yakuza Kiwami while buying Yakuza 0, 2-6.
So I had to emulate the game and play through Yakuza 1, while it was somewhat of a painful exprience going from the smooth combat in Yakuza 0 to the really slow and somewhat outdated combat system that gets outclassed by OG Yakuza 2's combat in every single way imaginable.
Either way, I listened to the Roar of the Dragon, and the original Funk goes On, so hearing them in this game/track really made glad about the fact I got Yakuza 1 PS2, no matter if I hated playing it at the time. (I don't now.)
Anyways, let me stop my ramblings and end this off here.
10/10 in gameplay + sidecontent, 8/10 in story, 10/10 in OST.