Everything feels familiar at first. There are the similar exploration and interaction controls, there’s the urban backdrop, and the wealth of stats and sidequests – I’m definitely playing a Yakuza game. I’ll admit that I kind of dropped off the series after a while; I think after the first couple I fell behind and didn’t stand a chance of catching up, but the newest instalment – Yakuza: Like A Dragon – seemed interesting. Even after such a long break, however, everything feels familiar. That is until trouble begins to brew and the only way to settle things is with a classic Yakuza brawl. Or not. The headline feature of Like A Dragon’s combat arguably comes from the new format which adopts a turn-based approach and a party system, much like classic and modern RPGs, and it was the feature that interested me enough to want to get back into the series again.

I don’t know if we’ll end up covering this game in the form of a full review, because traditionally Yakuza games are bursting with content, sidequests and other features – it could be weeks before I’m done. However, the combat deserves a mention, hence this article. To be honest, when I first found out about this new turn-based approach I wasn’t even that surprised – the early games that I did try already felt like they force the player to wait and respond during battle. In the PS2 games, simply button-bashing would quickly land you in trouble; it was wiser to block, let your opponent attack and wait for an appropriate opening when you were able to respond with your own moves. So before the game was even in my hands I had allowed my mind to make sense of this new system.

Like A Dragon’s Meta-protagonist

Part of the framing for the battles reveals that our hero, Ichiban Kasuga, seems himself as a hero akin to the protagonists of the videogames he played growing up. As a result, when you enter a classic Yakuza random encounter, the allies and enemies visibly transform into whatever Ichiban imagines them to be in his mind. It’s all satisfyingly meta – videogames are a pleasant escape and allow players to pretend to embark on an epic journey, and Like A Dragon sees Ichiban referring to his street justice as an ongoing “quest”, and frequently making comparisons between his predicaments and the plights that faced the heroes of his favourite videogames. Better still, it means that he can actually talk about levelling up without it sounding out of place – because it’s what’s happening in his head and what’s happening as a result of the player’s actions.

Risky beatdowns

The battles themselves are snappy and satisfying – like modern Persona games, they are initiated quickly and smoothly, and if your tactics are on point then they don’t need to last more than a handful of seconds (unless you’re facing a boss character, or entering a new zone with levelled-up encounters.) To take some examples of the fundamental battle mechanics that are simple yet satisfying – Like A Dragon lets you guard enemy attacks to reduce the damage you take, but it also offers a “perfect guard” window if you guard just as an enemy’s attack connects with your party member. Perfect guards reduce damage further and help prevent things like knockdowns, and so they keep you engaged even in a turn-based format, and encourage you to learn the timings and animations of attacks. Similarly, the opportunities available after an enemy is knocked down encourage quick decision making – enemies can take time standing up from a blow that knocks them to the ground, and if another party member executes a follow-up attack whilst an opponent is still “knocked down”, they take bonus damage. It’s an interesting way to invite risk-taking – you may have a healer in your party and you’re waiting for their turn to come around so that some life can be recovered… but if you end up knocking an enemy down, it might be better to spend their turn on a follow-up attack instead.

Like A Dragon and other battle formats

Other traditional staples of RPG battles introduce themselves as the game continues – available special actions eventually include buffs and nerfs for attack and speed, status effects similar to bleed, poison or charm, gear upgrades and material exchange, enemies calling in reinforcements and prolonging a battle – but I keep returning to my first thought – Like A Dragon still feels like a Yakuza game, and so there’s no need for people to be penning angry letters about how the series has been ruined. As mentioned in my opening paragraph, there was always a bit of a turn-based rhythm to combat in the early games, and other titles in the series have played with stats, levels and allies – this is just being a little more honest about everything. And even though this may look like a typical Yakuza battle format in RPG dressing, the combat system is still worthy of praise alongside the systems used in other RPGs I’ve played this year – I feel like it finds a happier medium between real-time response and turn-based action than something like Final Fantasy VII Remake, although Remake has more polish elsewhere. Equally, Like A Dragon’s battle system sits well next to Persona 5’s own system of weakness exploitation and follow-ups, but both suffer from a few moments where the pacing dips; in Like A Dragon’s case, this could come from a situation where you’re underlevelled, or perhaps where a particular story thread is overstaying its welcome and you’re waiting for something more interesting to happen. Even so, these moments aren’t ruinous, and Like A Dragon’s map is fairly quick to open up – so it’s easy to find distractions if you’re not interested in chipping away at the main quest.

I haven’t finished the game just yet, and I’m probably pretty far away from doing that, but I don’t think the combat is ruinous at all, and I’d love to see it either in future mainline games or in their own spin-offs. (Of course, there’s always a chance that this game could still throw a massive difficulty spike at me, but that would be more of a balancing issue rather than anything problematic with the battle system itself.) As ever, let me know what you think of Yakuza: Like A Dragon and its combat below.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon is out now for eighth-gen systems and Xbox Series platforms; a PS5 version is reportedly coming in 2021.