Players can get a taste of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the next chapter in the franchise once known as Yakuza, by completing the recently released Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and accessing the demo added to the game by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio.
The developers have also recently participated in a Q&A with the Japanese website Game Watch. According to the translation by Automaton Media, writer Masayoshi Yokoyama referred to Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth as a ‘monster game’ longer than any game previously released by the studio. Yokoyama expressed the hope that players would still go through with it in a brief amount of time – even at the expense of their health.
The games take a long time to clear, don’t they? Gaiden, not so much, but Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is a monster-class game longer than anything we’ve made so far. If you go at it continuously, you’ll get sick, and it won’t end with just one or two all-nighters. This means that a lot of people are going to hesitate to play the game or will end up having it wait on their shelves. I found the possibility of that kind of outcome sad, so I thought, we have to get everyone hyped up enough to play it.
We have to get people to play the game in about a week or a month, even at the cost of their health, which is why it’s our duty as creators to generate enough to be excited about. I’ve thought this way for the past year or two – for a game like Infinite Wealth, we have to get a festival going on. It would feel kind of rude to just drop such a long game and be done with it (laughs).
The previous mainline installment required 45.5 hours to complete just the main story, so longevity is definitely not going to be an issue, and that’s not even counting the freshly announced AC-style side mode.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth will be released on January 26, 2024 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X. Meanwhile, you can check out Gaiden, which bridges the story of Kazuma Kiryu between Yakuza 6 and Infinite Wealth.
Gaiden received a 7.9 score from Kai:
Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is a bite-sized appetizer meant to satisfy players’ appetites for just a few more months until Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth hits global shores. That being said, Gaiden hits all the marks I want to see in the series: amusing side stories, an epic crime drama that spans multiple games, and all the knuckle shuffles one could ever want.
