I’m fairly late to the Like a Dragon party. To date, the only games I’ve played are Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth, Gaiden, and the spinoff, Judgment. They’re all great games and I’ve enjoyed sinking hundreds of hours into the series across all of them, but I think the most interesting of the bunch is the latest one I’ve picked up: Yakuza 0. A prequel to (most of) the rest of the games, Yakuza 0 is credited with popularizing the series in the West, and it’s a shame that more of its design principles and tenets didn’t survive as the franchise continued to balloon.
I admit it, Yakuza 0 feels dated. Whereas the modern entries in the series have largely cut loading screens, Yakuza 0 feels segmented by how many there are. The Dragon engine, which powers most of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s games since Yakuza 6, is defined by smoothness and seamlessness. Running animations in Infinite Wealth look and feel fluid, but in Yakuza 0 they are stiff and a little janky. If Ichiban’s movement in the latest games could be defined as flowing, I’d reckon that Kiryu and Majima’s movement in 0 could be called jagged.
And yet I can’t get enough of it.
I love the friction in every second of Yakuza 0 so far, and it goes beyond the aforementioned jank. It is great to be able to save your game anywhere in the later titles, but I love the feeling of having to walk my ass over to a phone booth in order to save in Yakuza 0. It leads me on so many adventures, and I’ve encountered so many characters and substories already just by trying to find a save point. Then I get strung along on a fun little journey with some screwball plot and quirky characters that usually ends in a fun but ridiculous fight.
Some of these encounters haven’t gone in my favor! I was hesitant to jump into the earlier Like a Dragon games largely due to the fact that I didn’t really enjoy Judgment’s brawler gameplay, and I’m glad to report that I’m pretty bad at Yakuza 0, as I expected. And after barely escaping some street scrap, I found that Kiryu couldn’t sprint, let alone walk upright. Instead, he limped along in whatever direction I prodded him, and slowly but surely, we made it to a nearby fast-food joint where Kiryu could eat and recuperate his health. He walked out of that place like a new man. He just like me.
In both instances, Yakuza 0 makes the friction work for itself. It is a game built upon everyday hurdles, and clearing them is not only conducive to how it doles out stories, but allows for moments that make the character feel tangible, and incentivizes me to dig into Yakuza 0’s features. And that isn’t all of it! You get winded after sprinting for too long, meaning you can’t just run from every fight, which is good because you need the money that literally files out of enemies whose faces you maim in order to level up and buy anything. On its surface, these mechanics seem oddly limiting, but it only takes a few hours to learn that these are master strokes from developers executing at a high level. These blemishes are actually masterfully disguised designs.
These elements are absent in later games, which admittedly have made up for some of these sacrifices with other qualities that similarly deepen the environments and the characters, though I can’t say it entirely works 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 does make Kamurocho feel like more than just set dressing, and suggests a literal interiority that goes a long way toward player immersion. Infinite Wealth encourages players to try out combinations of food and drinks at various restaurants in order to apply greater buffs and unlock dialogues between multiple party members around the dinner table. However, the former feels more like a technical showcase than anything, and the latter feels like a largely skippable detour. They only serve you if you look for something deeper within them.
By contrast, Yakuza 0 feels like it’s intentionally shuttling me from diverse experience to experience, and has been greater for it. Everywhere I look, there’s a subtly deep mechanic or feature or quirk of animation and art that gives Yakuza 0 a texture that’s absent from the more sanitized games that have come after it. I love how fluid Infinite Wealth feels, but I’d love it even more if future Like a Dragon games could find a place for that friction.
It’s not like the change in engine has robbed the series of a voice and personality, or even the ability to do things like this. Yakuza 6 largely brought many of these quirks forward, and Kiryu would not only get gassed after running for a long while, but he’d even trip over smaller elements of the world. You could get shot in a fight, sending Kiryu hurtling over a railing and tumbling into water, where he’d immediately drown. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which transformed the series into a turn-based RPG, your turn could be interrupted by enemies in your path. These might be points of frustration to some, but they are also cool touches that personify a game, and lead to little stories we get to tell ourselves or tuck away to remember! Nowadays, any hurdle in a modern Like a Dragon game is either cleared by an auto-mount mechanic or just acts as an invisible wall you need to get around. It’s too clean.
The difference is pronounced enough that it now retroactively feels like there’s this dissonance between the hard-hitting stories of the later Like a Dragon games and their actual feeling. Like it’s talking its talk, but also walking a distinctly different walk, and every subsequent step continues to stray a bit further from where we began. In Yakuza 0, by contrast, these elements are considerably more in sync.
I’m not suggesting RGG take steps backwards. I appreciate the ways in which the series has grown, but I think I’d like it a bit more if the series felt more intentional, and not like it’s cast off some past shell for something new and glossy. I think if they just rough up the next Like a Dragon game a bit more, it’ll get back to that grime and that texture that’s really helping me appreciate Yakuza 0 these days.