If you’ve ever played a Yakuza or Like a Dragon game, there are certain things you know by now – they feature several crime families and take at least a TV episode’s worth of time for exposition before you get to even touch the controller. In this regard, Infinite Wealth is the biggest culprit yet, with the new location Hawaii nowhere in sight for a good five hours. Instead, you learn about lead character Ichiban’s job at the local job centre and his lack of dating experience.
Eventually, the plot emerges. He’s to go to Hawaii and find his birth mother, a woman named Akane previously believed dead. For Ichiban, and for us as players, this is the first time outside of Japan, which is exciting in itself – discovering a new map and new attractions feels refreshing, and as usual there’s lots to do. Infinite Wealth immediately makes it clear that Hawaii is a paradise with a dark underbelly, which Ichiban gets to explore with an all-new party, which includes former protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. The streets are full of encounters, and where before, Ichiban’s imagination transformed random gangsters into sad versions of JRPG monsters, this time around, enemies mostly depict the kind of annoyance you can supposedly expect in the big city: surfer bros who attack you with beer showers, random hooligans trying out their capoeira on you. It’s a significant step back for enemy design.
The story’s actual antagonists, too, seem rather flat and hardly memorable. The only exception is Yamai, a sneering, oily-haired menace who is perpetually cold and always appears at the most inconvenient times. But while Infinite Wealth shows you Hawaiian slums and literal underground operations, it seems so enamoured with the idea of a holiday that between shopping trips and enjoying beach sunsets, the story never manages to build any tension. It clearly tries to sell the image that Hawaii is much worse than Japan, where even the crime is polite, organised and efficient, it’s just not clear to what point it makes the distinction. Things pick off at the halfway point, which lets you take control of Kiryu, who until this point seems to conveniently open doors and otherwise poses an unusually dramatic figure – even as a fan of Ichiban, I can’t help but think Infinite Wealth does Kiryu dirty, even as the series can’t seem to let him go.
The turn-based combat from the previous game hasn’t changed significantly, but the few tweaks it did receive make it an incredibly smooth, fun experience. It’s now easier to deliberately pick up items during a fight and use them, for example, and attacks can no longer be interrupted by random enemies. Infinite Wealth has also improved the system to hit several enemies with one attack and initiate follow-ups, which makes strategising much easier and the fights shorter overall. However, on the default difficulty, combat still feels a little easy – as in LAD, I almost never saw the need to use the Poundmates summoning system, and the fact that it’s a bit of a slog to make large sums of money in Hawaii is a further deterrent.
The job system is introduced so late that by the time you get around to trying out new fighting styles such as the aquanaut with his surfboard or the hula dancer, they just seem to exist to offer a bit of variety. By only letting you switch jobs at specific places, Infinite Wealth makes the job system even more unattractive, which is a shame, because witnessing your party attack enemies with a giant frozen tuna is definitely worthwhile.
I haven’t liked a collection of substories as much as I did this one since Yakuza 6. Not all of them inevitably end in a fight (there is a very cool one where Ichiban dodges cars on a highway on foot), and you get some good old heartstring tuggers as well as layered stories that send you all over the city. This time around, it feels as if they help you understand Ichiban better as a character – before, he would basically accept every mission because that’s what the “hero” is supposed to do, now he really bonds with the people he meets. The same is true for his bonds with his party. The city is full of character-specific conversations you can trigger to learn more about your new friends, who really grew on me as a result. LAD may have introduced Ichiban, but Infinite Wealth really helps him come into his own.
The mini-games, too, are once again fantastic. This time around, the game doesn’t linger too long on the karaoke or the emulated Sega arcade games that are of course part of the experience as usual – instead you can earn your keep as a delivery driver who gets tips for stunts, try your hand at a dating app, make criminals fight each other like Pokémon or spend hours playing a riff of Animal Crossing: New Horizons that lets you decorate an island with rusty bicycles and cabaret clubs.
Infinite Wealth takes a few curious steps backward, but it gets so much right and once again dedicates itself to goofiness with such aplomb that it’s impossible not to get swept up in it – a true vacation from the darkness and drama of yakuza life.
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is out 26 January; £59.99
