I’m pretty late with the Like a dragon Party. So far I have only played the following games: Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Infinite wealth, Gaidenand the separation, assessment. They are all great games and I have invested hundreds of hours in all parts of the series, but the most interesting of all, in my opinion, is the latest one I picked up: 0. A prequel to (most) of the other games, 0 will be credited Popularization of the series in the Westand it’s a shame that more of its design principles and tenets weren’t preserved as the franchise continued to grow.
I admit it, 0 feels outdated. While modern entries in the series have largely cut down loading screens, 0 feels segmented depending on how many there are. The Dragon engine that has powered most of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s games since Yakuza6is defined by smoothness and seamlessness. Running animations in Infinite wealth look and feel fluid, but in 0 they are stiff and a little jerky. If Ichiban’s movements in the last few games could be defined as fluentlyI would say, Kiryu And Water‘s movement in 0 could be called jagged.
And yet I can’t get enough of it.
I Love the friction in every second 0 so far, and it goes beyond the crap mentioned above. It’s great that in the later titles you can save your game anywhere, but I love the feeling of having to walk my butt to a phone booth to save 0. It takes me on so many adventures and I’ve come across so many characters and side stories just from trying to find a save point. Then I’m taken on a fun little journey with a crazy plot and quirky characters that usually ends in a fun but ridiculous fight.
Some of these encounters did not go in my favor! I hesitated to return to the earlier Like a dragon Games, especially because I didn’t really like them assessment‘s Brawler gameplay, and I’m happy to report that I’m pretty bad at 0as I expected. And after we narrowly escaped a street fight, I realized that Kiryu couldn’t sprint, let alone walk upright. Instead, he limped in any direction I pushed him, and slowly but surely we made it to a nearby fast food joint where Kiryu was able to eat and restore his health. He left the joint like a new man. He was just like me.
In both cases 0 lets the friction work for you. It is a Game based on everyday hurdlesand clarifying them not only benefits the way stories are told, but also allows for moments that make the character tangible and encourage me to delve deeper 0Features. And that’s not all! Sprinting for too long will leave you out of breath, meaning you can’t just run away from every fight, which is good because you need the money literally pouring out of the enemies whose faces you mutilate in order to level up and buy something. On the surface, these mechanics seem oddly limiting, but it only takes a few hours to learn that these are masterstrokes from developers working at a high level. These blemishes are actually masterfully disguised designs.
These elements are absent in later games, which admittedly made up for some of these sacrifices with other qualities that similarly deepened the environments and characters, although I can’t say it quite worked for me. For example, there are no longer loading screens separating indoor and outdoor environments, thanks to the Dragon engine’s ability to render both seamlessly. This makes Kamurocho feels like more than just a backdropand suggests a literal interiority that contributes greatly to the player’s immersion. Infinite wealth encourages players to try out combinations of food and drinks at different restaurants to apply larger buffs and unlock dialogue between multiple party members at the dinner table. However, the former feels more like a technical demonstration than anything else, and the latter feels like a largely skippable detour. They only serve you if you look for something deeper in them.
In contrast, 0 feels like it is intentionally leading me from one experience to the next, and it has gotten better because of it. Everywhere I look, there is some subtly deep mechanic or feature or quirk of the animation and art that 0 a texture that is missing in the cleaner games after it. I love how smooth Infinite wealth feels, but I would love it even more if future Like a dragon Games could find a place for this friction.
It is not that the change of engine has robbed the series of a voice and personalityor even the ability to do such things. Yakuza6 brought out many of these quirks, and Kiryu was not only out of breath after running for a long time, but even stumbled over smaller elements of the world. shot in combatcausing Kiryu to fall over a railing and into the water, where he immediately drowned. In Yakuza: Like a Dragonwhich turned the series into a turn-based RPG, your turn could be interrupted by enemies in your path. This may be frustrating for some, but they are also cool details that embody a game and lead to little stories that we can tell ourselves or keep as a memory! Nowadays, every hurdle in a modern Like a dragon The game either ends with an auto-mount mechanic or simply acts as an invisible wall that you have to get around. It is to clean.
The difference is so pronounced that it now feels retrospectively as if there was a dissonance between the hard-hitting stories of the later Like a dragon Games and their actual feeling. As if it says its words, but also goes a significantly different way, and each further step takes us a little further away from our starting point. In 0In contrast, these elements are much more synchronized.
I am not suggesting that RGG takes a step back. I appreciate the way the series has grown up, but I think I would like it a little more if the series had more intention and not as if it had shed its old shell for something new and shiny. I think if they just Like a dragon Play a little more, it gets back to that dirt and texture that really helps me appreciate 0 nowadays.
