HAWAIIAN SOUL-SEARCHING
If Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Yakuza and Like a Dragon series has taught me anything, it’s that I should probably stay away from Japan — lest I be accosted by delinquents, yakuza, and assorted assholes at every street corner. With Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, that irrational fear has now expanded to include Hawaii, which turns out to be just as dangerous for any man daring to leave the safety of his hotel room.
Before he ever sets foot there, protagonist Ichiban Kasuga finds himself working at an employment agency in Yokohama, helping former yakuza reintegrate into society. Then disaster strikes. He’s fired after a dishonest VTuber publicly accuses him of immoral work practices, and his awkward attempt at courting Saeko — a companion from Yakuza: Like a Dragon — fails spectacularly. At rock bottom, Ichiban learns from a former yakuza boss that his mother, long believed dead, is actually alive in Hawaii. With little reason to stay behind, he sets off for America’s fiftieth state.
There, he teams up with Kazuma Kiryu — the legendary protagonist of the earlier Yakuza titles — alongside a mix of new and returning allies. What begins as a desperate personal search gradually spirals into a conspiracy involving a religious cult and a nuclear waste disposal facility. The story flirts with political themes but rarely explores them with much depth. Its strongest moments instead focus on the fallout of the yakuza’s dissolution, and the consequences of society’s failure to properly reintegrate former criminals.
As a setting, Hawaii is a breath of fresh, humid air — a troubled paradise drenched in sunshine. Palm trees line the beaches, flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts dominate the streets, and the food looks as enticing as ever. Simply existing in this space, soaking in its culture, is a pleasure.
Getting there, however, takes patience. Infinite Wealth struggles to find its footing early on, frontloading the experience with dense exposition while offering very little actual gameplay. This has always been a series trait, but here it pushes uncomfortably close to excess. Five hours in, it’s still cutscene after cutscene. I distinctly remember wondering whether it would ever lead somewhere. Thankfully, it does.
As usual, the main plot is convoluted and unfocused, meandering through detours that feel unnecessary in hindsight. It’s far from the series’ strongest narrative. Yet it’s consistently overshadowed by the exceptional characterization, dialogue, and voice acting (I played with the Japanese dub). Alongside Kiryu and familiar faces, you recruit new companions like the disenfranchised cab driver Tomizawa and the duplicitous ballerina Chitose. Later, the party expands further — especially once Kiryu branches off into a second playable protagonist with his own group.
Having fully embraced its RPG identity, Like a Dragon now revolves around party dynamics and relationship-building. A handful of bars function as social hubs where you deepen your bond with companions. These hangouts are genuinely engaging, revealing unexpected passions and emotional baggage through casual conversation. Despite spending most of my time reading dialogue rather than fighting, I felt more invested here than I ever did in combat.
Since the shift to turn-based combat, justified by Ichiban’s love of classic JRPGs (particularly Dragon Quest), battles have become a tactical affair. Three party members fight alongside him, employing the full genre toolkit: status effects, area attacks, summons, magic, equipment, and upgrades. Positioning matters — proximity bonuses, back attacks, and follow-up hits all reward coordination.
Combat is further supported by a robust job system, with new roles unlocked through sightseeing activities. Characters can freely switch jobs, specializing in healing, tanking, damage, magic, or crowd control. A new feature allows skills to be carried over from previous jobs, encouraging experimentation. In practice, however, I rarely engaged deeply with the system. Since the game never demanded strategic mastery, I mostly stuck to default builds, leaving much of its potential untapped.
While combat is brisk, humorous, and full of charming animations, my engagement inevitably waned over the game’s immense runtime — my playthrough clocked in at 89 hours. The design prioritizes quantity over quality. Enemies are everywhere, and while their absurd names (Beerserkers, Nicotine Liches, Maneating Loan Sharks) are amusing, they pose little challenge and rarely require thoughtful play.
Level-gated areas further limit experimentation. Overleveled enemies are virtually unbeatable — though the reverse is also true. If you outlevel foes, encounters resolve automatically with a button press. As a result, I never developed meaningful strategies, even for boss fights, instead relying on instinct and brute force.
This weakness is especially apparent in the two optional combat dungeons. Burned by a similar experience in the previous game, I rushed through them early this time to boost my character levels and eliminate future difficulty spikes. The result? Joyless, flavorless filler that drains the game of momentum. For as long as they last, they are actively unfun. I sincerely hope RGG Studio abandons this concept entirely going forward.
What keeps me invested, as always, is the writing, the characters, and the emotional storytelling. Kiryu’s sections back in Yokohama and Kamurocho are especially affecting, despite the plot bending over backwards to justify his return. Watching him reminisce about old friends and familiar places is equal parts funny, sad, and nostalgic.
Officially presumed dead, Kiryu cannot reveal his identity — though his paper-thin disguise fools absolutely no one. This leads to wonderfully awkward scenes where both parties speak of “Kiryu” in the third person, each fully aware of the charade. It’s often hilarious, but also deeply tragic, as the story clearly positions this as his final farewell — though I’ve said that about his last two or three outings as well.
Ichiban’s Honolulu storyline doesn’t hit quite as hard, but it’s bolstered by a staggering amount of side content. Many activities return from previous entries at the same high level of quality: karaoke, golf, batting cages, darts, gambling, mahjong, and shogi. New additions include a Crazy Taxi-inspired delivery game and a bizarre photo challenge involving muscular exhibitionists on a tram. Dating has been reimagined as a surprisingly entertaining chat app, culminating in in-person encounters if you manage your profile — and your typing — well. Sadly, the SEGA arcade selection is among the weakest yet, featuring SEGA Bass Fishing, SpikeOut, and Virtua Fighter 3tb.
Two major side activities disappointed me: a Pokémon-style Sujimon collecting and battling mode, and an Animal Crossing-like Dondoko Island resort simulator. I sampled both briefly. While mechanically sound, neither was engaging enough to justify the time investment required to see them through.
If the story is the heart of Like a Dragon, then exploration and side content form its soul. Together they create the series’ signature emotional cocktail — goofy, sad, angry, heartfelt, often all at once. Ichiban embodies this unfiltered emotionality. He wears his heart entirely on his sleeve. When he loves, he shouts it from the rooftops. When he’s depressed, he hits rock bottom. When he’s angry, he swings his electrified bat. Crucially, he channels all of it toward doing good — toward becoming the hero he wants to be.
This marks a stark contrast to Kiryu, who has always been stoic, reserved, and emotionally guarded. His substories felt more rewarding because they peeled back that facade, revealing unexpected vulnerability. Ichiban’s substories are usually hilarious — a random shaman and a rock band with a camcorder stand out — but they rarely deepen his character, since he behaves much the same everywhere.
That’s where my reservations about the series’ future come in. I find Kiryu’s restraint more compelling, especially when juxtaposed with absurd situations. Ichiban, by contrast, risks wearing thin more quickly. The writers pile every conceivable hardship onto him, and everything sticks — yet he remains relentlessly, almost irritatingly virtuous. It’s impressive that he works as well as he does, but I’m not convinced there’s much room left for growth.
Perhaps that doesn’t matter. Ichiban may primarily serve as a gravitational center for interesting people, and most of his companions — with the exception of Joon-Gi and Zhao, who feel like late additions in both games — are excellent. Complex, grounded, and genuinely fun to be around. In that sense, transforming the franchise into a full-fledged RPG, with its expanded cast of companions, may turn out to be the masterstroke RGG Studio needed.
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