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Infinite Wealth is the newest game in the Like a Dragon / Yakuza franchise. After travelling to Hawaii in search of his long lost mum, Ichiban Kasuga must team up with Kazuma Kiryu to unravel another criminal underworld conspiracy, which reaches all the way back to Japan.


Gameplay


• The player will control two separate parties of characters, led by Ichiban and Kiryu, in Hawaii, Ijincho and Kamurocho. There’s so much content that this actually feels like two whole games.

• You’ll fight against yakuza, other criminal gangs, and various random wierdos in turn based combat which feels better than the previous game, although I think there’s still room for improvement.

• Each character can move a short distance around the combat area on their turn, allowing you to line up attacks to knock enemies into each other, hit them from behind, or trigger a combo attack with another companion, all of which deals bonus damage. And when an enemy attacks, pressing the block button at the correct time will reduce damage taken.

• Your companions can level up in various jobs (classes), such as pop idol, samurai, aquanaut, and geodancer, which allows them to use powerful skills to hit multiple enemies, deal elemental damage, apply status effects, or heal allies.

• However, because of the game’s extreme length, the combat does eventually feel repetitive. And the more side content you complete, your parties will eventually become really overpowered compared to enemies in the main story, which combined with the better weapons and armours that you’ll acquire, will even make boss fights feel fairly simple.

• When you’re significantly higher level than trash mobs in the open world, you can get an automatic win by pressing a single button, which at least saves some time.

• In addition to the main story, there’s also lots of substories which have the usual wacky tone, including Ichiban working as a film stuntman and a beach lifeguard, helping a kid sell lemonade, and investigating a hula girl scamming tourists for money.

• There’s also the usual minigames including golf, baseball, karaoke, darts, sega arcade, casino, shogi, mahjong, can collector and crazy food delivery.

• Each companion has their own personal quest. The stories are mostly interesting, although unlocking the final stages can feel a bit grindy because you need to level up their bond meters by having conversations around the open world. There are 8 companions and they each have 16 conversations.

• Kiryu has his own sub plot relating to connecting with characters from his past. Again, the story is interesting, but unlocking the final stages can feel a bit grindy because you need to level up his stats by triggering dozens of memories of events from past games which are located around the open world, as well as performing activities related to fights and minigames.

• There are two dungeons which have random floor layouts (similar to Persona 5 Mementos), each dungeon has 40 floors and every 5th floor is a boss fight. Enemies within these dungeons are higher level, which makes the fights more challenging and tactical.

• Ichiban can recruit defeated enemies to take part in turn based Sujimon battles against other trainers. The related substories have a slight Kobra Kai feeling, involving rival dojos. Combat can be tactical because different Sujimon types are strong or weak against each other which affects how much damage they deal, while their speed determines how often you can attack. I got to the final boss but even with a full party of max level Sujimon I was getting absolutely wrecked. Almost every new recruit starts at level 1, so levelling them up is really grindy and I can’t be bothered to put any more time into making a stronger party.

• Ichiban can also build a tourist resort called Dondoku Island. I took one look at the crafting menu and decided that this is not for me, so I left as soon as I could and never went back. And considering how much other content is in the game, I’m glad I didn’t waste any time here.


Story


• As always, the story is very well written, featuring lots of interesting characters who have their own agendas, and lots of dramatic twists and turns.

• I liked most of the companions and would be happy to see them return in another game.

• Kiryu’s chapters feel like you’re on one final adventure with this legendary character.

• Cutscenes are high quality and look very cinematic.

• Voice acting is really good. I played with Japanese voices / English sub titles.


Technical


• It took me 114 hours to complete the game, which is great value for money, but also at times feels exhausting, and bloated by repetitive copy/paste content.

• I didn’t have any crashes or problems with framerate (i7-12700K, RTX 3080, 32GB DDR4, 1440p). Graphical quality is high, although some of the character animations during sub stories are looking a bit old now.

• During conversations that take place in the open world you can often see NPCs spawn or despawn in the background, or you’ll see them walk towards you, and then turn around and run away like there’s a no entry bubble around Ichiban. Honestly I think its more distracting than if they’d just walked normally past the camera.

• I sometimes saw ghosting on character eyelids when blinking.

• Controls worked great on my xbox 360 gamepad.

• This game did not actually tell me how to earn Infinite Wealth.


Recommendation


Despite some flaws, Infinite Wealth is a must play for fans of the Like a Dragon / Yakuza franchise.

The story continues from events in the previous games of both Ichiban (Like a Dragon) and Kiryu (The Man Who Erased His Name), so you’ll need to play those games first to fully enjoy Infinite Wealth. If you’ve never played any Yakuza game it will take a few hundred hours to get up to date, but its worth it because its a really great franchise.