Yakuza - Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth thoughts

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Yakuza 8) Thoughts

There's a lot to say about this game. There's just so much going on. Particularly since Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7, or LaD). The game overall takes place mainly in one area, Hawaii, until about the halfway point and it opens up two other locations based on prior games. As a follow-up to LaD, it basically functions the same way, but with way more of everything on top of LaD's existing systems.

-Battle gameplay-
Battle gameplay-wise, the game functions the same, outside of improvements. In 7, when your turn for the current active character playing, you had to attack where the game sets the character at the turn start. What's cool about 8 is that you have a certain active moving distance on turn start, that allows you line up multi-enemy ranged attacks better. And this movement expands as you level up over time. That's combo attacks if you're next to other party members, and additional attacks based on character links you've completed. Character links, or drink links, are a setting when bond levels with individual characters level up every 10 levels. The bond level is indicated by a heart next to the EXP and job level up meters. So there are 3 meters for leveling up for each character. So there is a job class system, as per Y7. While Y7 was more routed in real world situations, so the job systems were more based on real jobs, like foreman, host, or even silly jobs like idol or musician. Y8 has more silly jobs relating to Hawaii, American, and Japan. So some jobs are Samurai, Kunoichi, Pyrodancer (kind of like a Hula Hoop dancer with fire), Desperado, Housekeeper, Night Queen. Some jobs return like Host, Breaker, and Idol. And a couple jobs are gender specific.

When you play Y7 or Y8. I feel like eventually you want to figure out a strong AoE attack or couple of mid-range AoE attacks to start wiping out minor mobs quicker. Particularly when leveling up or farming. And this game has a few attacks. Depending on your builds, you can get one good attack in. Weapon crafting has been modified slightly to be less grindy. You don't need as many materials and you can only upgrade weapons. No armor upgrades this time around. And the weapons don't require a lot of materials or money, only a set amount that aren't as hard to obtain. There are upgrade materials to bring weapons from +1 to +50, where it appears to cap out for every weapon. This simply raises it's attack and magic stats. Some weapon crafting adds new abilities like burn, or lightning element to a weapon. While these weapons don't have top attack and magic stats, the elemental and status effects/debuffs that are added are often way more useful.

On top of everything else they've added and modified, each character can unlock an ultimate ability beyond their 2 job-based class ultimate abilities. These abilities are co-op attacks with the protagonist and is unique to their personality. Chitose is ballet related. Zhao is cooking related. And on top of that, each protagonist (there are two main protagonists) gains their own special ability. Both of which is unique to themselves.

At the end of the day, the turn-based gameplay is very satisfying. I didn't find the game too difficult overall. But I did tend to over-leveled as I was constantly doing side content. Of which, this entry has just so much of.

One thing I forgot to mention were the "summons" in this game. So this is basically the same as Y7, but some minor changes. Summons in this game are introduced as "Poundmates," a comical version that alludes to calling someone to spend time with you. But Ichiban calls Poundmates mid-battle and selects a Poundmate to visit to help out. You gain most of your Poundmates through the side-stories or main story. So Lucy makes a return from 7, your pet crawfish. As well as an action movie director from a side-story that triggers movies explosions at enemies. In the end, the summons are fairly comical, which is pretty much the same style of humor the side-stories go for.

A second last thing I forgot, is they added a function when you're overleveled and when you enter a battle. You can press L2 and it'll auto-wipe out the enemies. This is useful for grinding money, job class points, or when getting new characters.

-World Gameplay-
There's just so much to cover. Y7 and Y8, function as an open-world turn-based RPG. The open world part, being similar to a sandbox title like Grand Theft Auto or Saint's Row. Except you don't drive anywhere. You can take taxis to speed up mobility. And in this game they provide you a machine that's similar to a Segway that is quicker than running speed.

So there are a lot of things to do:

Sugimon and Sugimon Battles

Sugimon were introduced with the Sugimon professor in Y7. It functioned as a parody to Pokemon and all enemies you would register in your Sugidex. It returns here with a full blown mini-Pokemon like game with lead challengers called the Discreet Four. Battles aren't as developed as Pokemon, but it's a 3 on 3 battle typically with 3 in your reserve and each Sugimon has a normal attack and a special attack. There's Sugimon gatcha machines around town to fill up your Sugidex, there's Legendary Kiwami Sugimon, there's a Sugimon stadium to battle and get points to trade for items, and there's even an exclusive Sugimancer job class for Ichiban. Sugimon trainers are littered over Hawaii and Sugimon raids pop-up constantly.

Dondoko Island

Basically a mid-tier or even full-blown Animal Crossing clone implemented into Y8. You clean up trash, gather materials, build objects, buildings, expand the house they've given you. The two main differences are there is an enemy gang that you have to battle randomly as they will randomly appear on the map and at the beginning of each day. And the other difference is the main goal for this subplot is to build up the island to it's former glory as a 5 star resort island, all the way from zero star. At the point of 1 or 2 stars, you start having visitors that enjoy the island and spend money. Each star adds more people to help you and more systems to add to the gameplay loop. It's fairly time-consuming, but like all of Yakuza's fleshed out subgames, it's still fun. I sped through the main scenario of Dondoko Island in one go, in about 15 hours, but you can easily spend 20-30 on it trying to complete it's base scenario. Plus it never ends. You can customize your island perfectly, your house perfectly, and invite around 30 tourists at a time.

Aloha Links

Aloha Links are pretty basic. Basically, the game tells you everyone is friendly in Hawaii and gives you a hand signal and a button to great people with "hello" or "aloha." There are 200 people that you can greet but they are completely random as you roam around town. And you can greet them multiple times to increase their aloha link meter. Sometimes you'll either need to give them a food item, or rescue them from gangs or bullies to increase the meter over time. I'm about to clock in almost 100 hours and don't have every aloha link, meaning I haven't said hi to all the people on the aloha link catalogue.

Honk-honk bonuses

So there are very small references to Dragon Quest in Y7 and Y8. When Ichiban grabs the bat, he explains how he played Dragon Quest growing up and he always imagined himself as a hero. This creates his base job class as "Hero." And that's how he imagines all enemies to be anything but normal when in combat. Honk-honk in Dragon Quest is not elaborated on. But it's alluded it's a sexual activity. Basically there are 10 or so honk-honk characters around town and they will give you honk-honk for $100-1000 and increase your personality stats.

Kamelop Fortunes

At some point early in the story you wind up at a Shrine in Little Japan and meet Kamelop again. He's a shrine mascot and asks you to pick up fortunes he dropped around town. Fortunes have 4 different types of luck, with Best Fortunes granting the most points, and Bad Fortunes granting only a single point. You can trade the fortunes for points, and obtain accessories in the fortune point store with Kamelop.

Party and Character Talks

Character talks are littered around town and are marked on the map. It's kind of like the Tales of games where you have a conversation based on what is going on the location. You have a bingo card for each character for character talks as you learn more about them and as you get character talks and bingos, you get even more character link level ups. Party talks are similar and not marked on the map. They're similar accept the whole party talks about something and all characters talking get character link points.

Alo-Happy Photo Rally

Probably the best character of the game. Alo-Happy gives you a photo rally contest to go around town and find unique pictures. They are marked when you are close to them, but not on the map. There are dozens of pics to talk depending on the region of the map you are on. And getting all the pictures for a particular region will unlock a weapon.

Recycling Center

So there is a girl that wants to help save the planet and will help take all your recyclables. Certain ones grant different point values. And there are two main ways to collect recyclables. Swimming in the ocean and diving in the water. Or running around the beaching and walking over sand mounds (this is generally quicker). There are two good items in this point shop that require a lot of points to grind up. But I've spent around 2-3 hours simply farming recyclables.

City-unique Dungeons

Each main city has a unique dungeon that is unlocked about 3/4 through the main story. They're basically grind dungeons. There's nothing too special about them. There a little monotonous. But they have good items, good enemies to fight, and it's easy to level up in them. But each sector of each dungeon takes about an hour or two or so, give or take. Each sector is divided into 10 floors. After the 10 floors of each sector, there is a strong boss. You can get really good gear, and upgrade items in these too. But it's often just random.

Specialized Tough Enemies

In this game, around town there are enemies chilling with a crown over their head. These are basically tougher normal enemies. You'll get more EXP and money. But the key thing is they are generally blocking a safe or crate with a good item. So there's two good things about these situations.

Arcade Game Center

Sega isn't shy about putting a full blown emulation of their games within the Yakuza and Judgment games. This one features Virtua Fighter 3tb, SpikeOut, and even Sega Bass Fishing.

Gambling

Gambling isn't really my thing, but there is Blackjack, Poker, and even Japan gambling games that most people don't know like Koi-Koi and Oicho-Kabu. As well as Mahjong and Shogi. Casinos and gambling parlors also feature their own point shops to trade for items.

Batting Center

I've been vocal about past Yakuza sports mini-games not being very good. But in 7 and 8, there are not bad at all. Baseball has 9 sectors to hit the ball and based on the difficulty, it's actually pretty fun to hit home runs.

Golf

Golf is also the same at 7 and a huge improvement from Y3. You can line up your shot to the hole on the mini-map and adjust power, and swing. And that's it. You don't even need to get in the whole, just close to it to get more points.

Can Quest

Can Quest is the first mini-game from Y7. It's a fancy Pac-man. When Ichiban is homeless in 7 and needs money and items, they send him to collect cans. You ride a bike with a wagon attachment and run over cans. It expands as you need to collect the large pile of cans and avoid other homeless people from running into you and stunning you. As you choose harder difficulties, it can be fairly challenging at Hard difficulty, but the better you do the more multipliers you get for it's respective point shop.

Crazy Delivery

This is a new one. It's basically uber eats on a bicycle, but you have to be constantly doing tricks and collecting food to maximize your delivery fees and tips. If you manage the map well, and are constantly doing front, back, and side flips, you'll make out fine each time.

Darts

Not much as changed from 7. Darts is pretty much like live darts in Japan and there are different darts you can buy, and different people you can challenge.

Karaoke

A fan-favorite, there are so many cool songs to do karaoke for. Including Yakuza classics. It's not necessarily a hard mini-game, but more just a social activity to do within the game.

Miss Match

This is a new one to 8. You are testing out a dating app that a woman has developed in town and you have to set up a dating profile, match with respective woman, and hopefully lead up to a date with them. This is one of those things I find a little cringe, as if you do score a date with a woman, it plays a video of them in lingerie or a bikini, talking to you, and moving in sexy poses. It's just not my thing. And they had something similar in all the other Yakuza games. Not the dating app, but the sexy video parts.

Ounabara Vocational School

The vocational school is the exact same thing from 7 with different tests. So you pay a fee and sign up for quizzes, and you typically need a 60% too pass (3 out of 5 randomly assigned questions and answers). Some of the tests are cool like classic Sega history. And some are difficult like Hawaiian Marine Biology.

Sicko Snap

Sicko snap is new. You ride a trolly early on and meet a photographer. Apparently his thing is to photograph sickos around town and hands you a camera. It's an auto-scrolled ride with a fixed number of shots you can take and a fixed number of sickos to photograph. Nothing too out of the ordinary and it's not too difficult. Again you rack up points to trade in for items in it's respective point shop.

On top of Sub-stories (they refer them in game as these. I've called them side-stories prior. You can think of them as side-quests with a narrative focus). And Memoirs.

Sub-stories are in every Yakuza game. Some have a lot. Yakuza 0 had 100. Yakuza 3 had over 100. And it seems the recent titles are settling on 52. I would say maybe half are related to mini-games or the main story itself. Like introducing job classes. There's 5 romance ones this time around, well 6 including the final culminating one. I found the substories a little lacking, but they are on the sillier side and bring out the silly in the game. A lot of returning characters from Y7 are featured in the substories, so I felt the game lacked an identity for sub-story content due to that.

Memoirs are new and are unique to Kiryu. You basically wander around town and reminisce on what happened there during a previous game. There are a few that are more in depth with character interaction. And it's really cool to see how far the characters have come and how Kiryu positively changed peoples' lives.

Oh, a third thing is Life Links. Kiryu is pressured to try to meet up with people close to him from his past from his best friend. But there's a reason he can't. Can't say much else without spoilers.

So that covers all the gameplay. There is simply just so much to do.

I don't really have much to say about the graphics. For better or for worse, the graphics don't appear to have changed much in fidelity since Y7 in 2020. But does that really matter? They do the job well, there's very little glitches for such a large game made in 3-4 years.

In terms of story and presentation, I'm a little mixed on it. Yakuza games story is fairly strong and has usually been a crime drama. Y7 kind of changed that up by introducing a new protagonist while still rooting him in the heart of crime drama, but also political drama. Each character in 7, beyond the optional character, had in-depth character build up and felt like they were integral to the story. I loved every direction they took and was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

Y8 story is contemplative to think about what parts I liked or if it was that good. I just felt like I was being chased every chapter and the "good guys" just never had a leg up. They were also behind, and there's not really a reason the "bad guys" let them come to them towards the end. The main conflict doesn't particularly come to light until near the end, the two dual-antagonists both have a soapbox speech, one of which admits to his false truths, and one who admits his efforts were in vain. And I felt a lot of solutions were just done in minutes, lore-wise. There are characters with lose ends that you don't know what happens to them, and the main political and criminal conflict you're left wondering "is it even over?" Like are they saving it for another Gaiden game? There's one character that disappears that is featured in a scene before the end credits and really showcases Ichiban's character.

And for me Ichiban is a relatable character. He oozes unconditional positivity. No matter the negative aspects in life, he just pushes through. Not just physically and mentally. But verbally. He's very naive, but that's the whole aspect of his personality. That he is so naive he believes himself no matter what. And that's a sentiment I've driven through others close to me in my own life. He's not just a standard hero or protagonist. He is a catalyst for others to spring off to find success and happiness in their own lives. This is something I just can't relate to enough. I've had situations where I've had to move away and friends would tell me they don't do group hang-outs anymore because I would bring them together. Or that I was an instrument of positivity through self-belief. I think that's one of the reasons after I finished Y7, it became one of my favorite games beyond all the other systems and loops.

Kiryu, the other protagonist, has his own ending. Which gave me a couple more questions. And I'm looking forward to seeing if they are featured or mentioned in Y9 or another side-game/gaiden.

Side-note: They introduced a minor aspect of lore with a love interest with Ichiban and another character at the beginning and the end of the game. And I kind of wish they took it more seriously, I'm not sure. They made it incredibly silly, and it does well on it's own for being really stupid and play off Ichiban's naivety. But they take it far enough to wear it's embarrassing and take it a little too far.

At the end of the day, Infinite Wealth is an awesome game. As I'm typing this, I have two more sectors in the post-game dungeon. I clocked in 98 hours and will likely clock in 100 or slightly more. I would say I enjoyed Y7 more than 8. But for different reasons. I think Ichiban's ending scene really hit me hard and sealed everything up for me. Not lore-wise. But impact-wise.

I don't really rate games, I mean I do, but I usually always play games I enjoy. And don't play games I don't enjoy (I'll stop and not finish a game I'm not enjoying). So I don't really know how I'd express myself with this game. It's extremely good. Y7 had a very strong impact on me. Where I'd take Y7 is in my top 5 or top 10. But it's hard to say for this game for me. I loved it for sure. But the main story lore and pacing I felt could have been done better. And honestly, there is just too much side-stuff to do. Y7 I clocked in 78 hours and I thought that was a lot. I think those are the only negatives. Everything else is positive.