Jet's Thoughts on Like a Dragon: Gaiden

My Thoughts on Like a Dragon: Gaiden After Beating the Game


That game was a blast

Note: My thoughts on this game is based off of my experience playing it through on the Professional difficulty. My opinions are subject to change once I cleared post game. Also, obligatory spoiler warning.


Honestly, this game is pretty good. I had a fantastic time playing it through from start to finish. I do have strong critique of the game but before getting into it. Let’s breakdown the positives.

Positives

-Character Customization

One of my favorite features in Gaiden is changing the looks of Kiryu’s outfit. Instead of his default agent suit, he can wear a 2 piece suit instead. As well as other options.

Also, you can set up 2 outfits. One to wear in the coliseum and the other to wear while in free roam.

Unfortunately, you can’t wear a mask in free roam. Which sucks because I really like the face mask plus silver eye contact I have Kiryu wear for his coliseum outfit. The sunglasses will do.

While it is not much(and I don’t expect this to return in the future RGG games), the simple feature of letting players changing Kiryu’s look is still amazing.


-Story

The story of Kiryu continues after Yakuza 6 and during Yakuza 7. At the end of Yakuza 6, Kiryu faked his own death to protect the kids at Morning Glory and Haruka. As well as because of a fixer who has so much information on Kiryu that he would’ve have to go to prison for a very long time.


What I do want to highlight is the flashbacks to the scenes in Yakuza 6 and 7. During chapter 1, Kiryu gets flashbacks to the final chapter of Yakuza 6 while meditating. He wins the fight against Tusneo Iwami(final boss of Yakuza 6), went in front of Haruka to protect her from a bullet, and peacefully “dies”.

Ever since then, Kiryu is no longer Kiryu. He’s just an agent with the Codename Joryu working with the Daidoji Faction. A “Yakuza” group that only linger in the shadows doing covert OPs. Real G-man type shit.

This game really shows another side of Kiryu. Well, more of his Y5 self in a new format. Kiryu in Y6 accepted how he faked his own death and seems to be happy about it. However in Gaiden, Kiryu have a lot of regrets. Besides missing Shintani Kazama and Yumi Sawamura, he misses the kids at Morning Glory Orphanage and Haruka. Don’t forget Haruka’s child, Haruto. Part of Kiryu wants to go back to the life he once had while the other part of him wants to keep the act of being a agent named Joryu.

In the end(after fighting against hordes of Omi Alliance members upset about its disbanding; including a family lieutenant), Kiryu decided to go on a vacation to Hawaii and leave Yumi’s engagement ring at the church where Yumi went to.

It would be important to note he did change his hair to be completely different than its iconic counterpart as well as it being gray. A sign that Kiryu is getting old.

The interaction between Kiryu and Hanawa at the end was very touching.


-New Characters

Theres a lot of new characters this game introduced. You have
-the Daidoji faction including Hanawa, multiple agents, the boss of the Daidoji faction, and the Head Priest

-Akame(who is basically just a female Florist of Sai but with rizz)

-Tsuruno and Shisido, Never before seen characters who were members of the Watase Family

-Homare Nishitani III, Patriarch of the Kijin Clan

Not to be confused with Homare Nishitani from Yakuza 0.

I do like how Theres a more memorable Nishitani in This Game.

For context, the original Homare Nishitani appears in Yakuza 0 during Majima’s story. He appears at the end of chapter 7, start of chapter 8, and end of chapter 11. Nishitani was a Side character really. Serving the role as to being another obstacle in Majima’s way of protecting Makoto Makimura. As well as giving Majima information about Makoto’s whereabouts.

In Yakuza 0, I didn’t find Nishitani too memorable. Apart from his personality being a parody of what Majima ended up as in Yakuza 1 and later and his death scene.

Here in Gaiden, Nishitani III is a lot More memorable than the original Nishitani in terms of story. Gameplay as well but partially for the wrong reasons when I get to the Negatives.


Negatives

-Combat

Oh man, the combat. It was nearly within my expectations. I was hoping it would be more like Kiwami 2 combat with LJ physics but it’s actually Yakuza 6’s combat with LJ physics.

For context, Kiwami 2 is built off of Yakuza 6’s combat. The main thing differentiating the 2 (in my eyes) is Kiryu’s combo speed. In Y6, he was a lot slower than in Kiwami 2.  LJ’s Physics is nearly identical to the other dragon engine games’ physics except with the difference where you can juggle enemies. You can do jugggles in Gaiden except I find it very impractical and useful in very specific cases.

Like that one special coliseum match that took me hours to beat.

So, how does Gaiden’s combat work?

Well, Kiryu has 2 fighting styles. Agent and Yakuza respectively.


Agent is a new style consisting of a moveset that kinda reminds me of Kuwana’s moveset but also it has gadgets. The gadgets being Hornet(drone), Spider(a web Kiryu shoots out from his suit collar), Firefly(a literal exploding cigarette), and Serpent(rocket powered shoes)
Thanks to Agent’s gadgets(and his EX moves which really reminds me of Crane’s moveset from JE and LJ), this style is really good for crowd control.


Yakuza is the traditional Dragon of Dojima Kiryu is well known for for years. This moveset consist of his classic light and heavy hits that are pretty self explanatory. Because of how it excels the most in raw damage from charge hits, this style is mainly useful for 1v1 encounters.

After explaining the combat, let’s look at the downsides of it.

-Sluggish Kiryu

The same issue with Yakuza 6 is here again. Arguably worse because there are no combo speed upgrades in Gaiden. Kiryu just feels slow when landing hits on the enemy and bosses even. It’s not a problem in chapter 1. However it gets really problematic in chapter 3 and onwards. Especially when dealing with Nishitani IiI with his fast agile moveset the original Nishitani used. And do not get me started in his fight where he always throw a flash bang before doing his Ultimate Attack. In his 2nd fight, he skipped his UA animation and killed me. Or with Shishido’s moveset where it’s not as bad as Nishitani III but, it’s only bad because of common jank with DE games where some hits make you stagger so hard that you can’t move for a few seconds.


This issue does extend to his styles as well. Style switching between Agent and Yakuza feels not as slow as style switching as Yakuza 0 but not as fast as Lost Judgment. Which is a double edged sword because Lost Judgment nailed style switching so well but I don’t want RGG making Kiryu a Yagami clone. Agent style is not too slow but it does feel like its combos just never end when I needed it to. Ending up with an awkward moment where I just deal light hits to the boss instead of doing light light light heavy. Yakuza style is entirely sluggish. An intentionally gimped version of the DoD style so it doesn’t end up being OP and make all of the other styles obsolete. His hits just takes forever to come out for both light and heavy so landing a good heavy hit at the right time is more of a risk with a questionable reward.

-Chaotic Mob Fights

I’m not talking about the coliseum ones. Just the main story ones. The mob fights in the main story is somewhere worse than in Yakuza 6.

For context, mob fights(fight where you have a bunch of weak enemies to deal with and a strong enemy occasionally) tend to be really chaotic in Yakuza 6. Chaotic you have a lot of enemies on the screen at once and it’s easy for any of them to kick objects toward you or even combo you for a few seconds. Also, the visual clutter from the ragdolls and furniture breaking gets really annoying.

The chapter 4 and finale mob fights are the biggest offenders of this. And do not get me started on the gun enemies because they hit extremely hard (without equipment).

Do not get me started in the finale mob fight at Omi HQ where you have to protect Watase. On professional difficulty, he just dies fast to gun enemies and there’s a few them placed around the arena. Not only that, there’s enemies targeting Watase as well.

No idea what the devs were thinking. They should be well aware teammates just die way too fast on higher difficulties. Plus on Normal, they’re not that great anyways. They’re just there to take agro.

You do have gadgets that can help with crowd control but I was only able to make use of Spider with swinging enemies around all of the place. Firefly could’ve been good if when I hold X(on my Xbox 360 controller), it charges up the cigarette instead of Kiryu awkwardly hitting the air. Serpent is not that great. It’s more annoying if anything. Drones(Hornet) don’t do much either

-Akame points

Akame points are a new brand of currency in Gaiden. Basically, it’s these fancy points you have to get to unlock upgrades (that already cost money). You get Akame points from completing a Request, Stroll and Patrol Mission, or a challenge from the activity log(which is basically a completion list).

I don’t find them that terrible after finding out how easy it is to earn them. However, I think this is just a rushed concept to slow players down from unlocking too many abilities early when just having the cash alone.

-No “Premium New Game” aka New Game Plus

Having no NG+ sucks.

For context, “Premium New Game” aka New Game Plus is a feature where you can replay the story again but keeping some elements from your original playthrough. Most notably: your cash, inventory, abilities learned and some others. New Game Plus have been a feature in the RGG games since Yakuza 2 for the PS2 back in 2006.

This feature being entirely absent in Gaiden. While I do agree with Gaiden being a short game(roughly 10 hours or be like me and take nearly 30 hours because of side content), the NG+ would ensure it’s replay value. I would love to replay the early game bosses again with decked out skills but that’s not possible in Gaiden unfortunately. At least on the PC version, there is a mod that makes all of the skills in that game free. So you can make a starter save. Without access to mods, this is not possible.

-Bugs

While I did have a great experience with Gaiden, there was some bugs I noticed. Most notably, bosses skipping their ultimate attack animation to immediately do their ultimate attack without warning.

For context, ultimate attacks are just mortal reversals from Lost Judgment. The enemy will start glowing red and when the player dodges the attack, they can mash the respective button to counter the attack and deal damage in the process. Each style has a different animation for doing a counter attack.

For example, Fake Kiryu during chapter 2 (with the Wild Dance moveset) kept doing his ultimate attack way too fast. He immediately skip his animation and launch the attack without giving me enough time to react to it. In the end, I take a huge amount of damage from the attack. Worst part is I was playing on Professional difficulty, where you take more damage from weapons(blades and firearms). So I die.

The same thing happened again during the Nishitani III fight in chapter 4. Except it was worse because he threw a flash bang right before doing the UA and then skipped his UA animation to immediately doing the attack and killing me in the process.

And this was on the V1.10 version of the game by the way.

-Misc.

This is just covering miscellaneous talking points

-Juggle Combos

Because of Gaiden having LJ physics, juggling the enemy is possible. However, it’s pretty much impractical and hard to set up like in the Kaito files DLC for Lost Judgment. Not too disappointed about that but at the same time, missed opportunity there.

-No ENG Dub Available at launch.

“Imagine wanting to play a Yakuza game in English.” Meanwhile, the ps2 classic called Yakuza has a ENG dub. I am little disappointed that Gaiden did not have a ENG dub at launch. I was looking forward to hear YongYea voicing Kiryu in Gaiden. The official Gaiden site did say a ENG dub will be available at a later date but, most people already played through the game by then. If they’re prioritizing dubbing Yakuza 8, then that makes sense but still.

-Gaiden having 6 months of development time


This was a report that I heard being shared. Reportedly, Like a Dragon: Gaiden only had 6 months of development. To people familiar with RGG, it’s not too bad. Considering that Gaiden was supposed to be DLC. However, outsiders have concerns that this game is another victim of issues that plague modern gaming. A franchise being commercially successful is prone to be milked pretty hard. Look at how Activision treats CoD and Rockstar treats GTA: Online.

Personally, I think game is fantastic despite its short development time. However, its shortcomings can be because of its short development time.


Overall, my view on the game is Mostly Positive. I am disappointed with the lack of combo speed modifiers and how Kiryu doesn’t flow as well as Yagami in LJ on DE. However, I did enjoy the bittersweet tone to the late part of Kiryu’s journey.

I’ll replay this game when the ENG dub becomes available.