If you ask someone like me who actually loves Yakuza games why you should play Yakuza games, there’s a good chance early in the process that they’ll default to grabbing you by the lapel and saying in their most gravelly Kiryu voice Saying things like: “Look, just play with the damn thing”.
That’s because there’s a lot going on in the world of Big Kaz, especially in the latter stages of 2024, both for the character and the narrative of the world he’s running around in. This sparked a thousand arguments about how many entries there were in The Big Kaz. You should play the series to get the best taste and in what order you should eat the dishes. I started my LAD dom journey with Yakuza Zero a few years ago, and all I knew at the time was that it wasn’t quite the same as Sleeping Dogs, another major game about a tattooed gangster using Furniture and punching stories. *Get away from my favorite thug in life.
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I can’t quite remember what I really expected from the familiar Yakuza games of the past, but I assume they were similar to the Yakuza: Like a Dragon TV series, at least through the first two episodes I’ve watched so far.
There are chain-smoking men in suits who like to fight, people who clash with themselves in the pressure cooker of the underworld, and people who are run over in pretty bloody fashion by the freight train of Kamurocho life. There’s no doubt that all of this is a key part of the Yakuza series, but it feels like the show is really trying to pay enough attention to it, as fans might enjoy the odd coin that Ryuga has been twiddling between his thumbs for years. On the other hand, carefully deciding when to flip, re-polish, or otherwise manipulate it may make it shine even more.
There’s some good humor in it, but it’s mostly there for some throwaway jokes or the odd subtle sarcastic quip. There’s a neon-drenched and well-rendered version of the series’ most iconic scene, but because of its format you can’t interact with it, you can touch and become one with it as you stroll from the restaurant to the minimart. arcade. While there’s emotion, we rarely have time to catch our breath as we jump from event to event in the Prime Video version of the original Yakuza’s story.
It’s a decent crime drama with some potentially interesting stuff in it, like the fact that Dragon of Doima is a given that Kiryu wants to be, rather than a unique moniker he’s established for himself through his actions. As someone who’s always been keen to read about the character and examine his relationship to determinism, I was curious to see if this was particularly applicable. There’s some solid action, the frequent shifts in time and location are handled much more subtly than in earlier installments of Netflix’s The Witcher show, and as with any show of this nature, from a purely visual standpoint, Everything comes from a clothing set that looks sleek and stylish.
Some characters look and act a little different, and there are a few new additions, but for the most part I’m generally open to that, assuming they actually get some proper room to develop over the next four episodes. Would I say I believe this is definitely going to happen, or will the series manage to deliver the same dragon-like experience that games do after thousands of hours of character development and storytelling? Not exactly, no, but I think Yakuza: Like a Dragon was always likely to be fighting a losing battle in that regard, unless its producers chose to go the route of the Fallout TV show and add a new twist on Yakuza ” presents its own brand new story. The world of the series.
That said, if I hadn’t gotten some damn Kiryu and Majima karaoke, I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t have reacted this way when the final credits rolled.
