Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth Hands-on Impressions

As expected, Infinite Wealth tells an incredibly deep and winding story, and, despite being the ninth mainline game, it still manages to be incredibly interesting and unique. On top of the wild new story beats, Ichiban is taken to Hawaii, on a hunt for his Mother, whom he’d thought dead. Hawaii itself is the largest location in the series, and none of the space is wasted. Along with Hawaii though, Isezaki Ijincho and Kamurocho are once again returning locations, with the same quality of location design that we’ve come to expect from RGG’s games. The story blends many wild concepts and manages to tie them all together nearly flawlessly, even with its multi-continental plot. It also manages to make the world feel even more well realised than any we’ve seen in the past, making a modern world feel realistically modern, even in the smaller details.

The combat system of Infinite Wealth retains the same style of combat (mostly) from Yakuza: Like a Dragon, with some improvements and alterations. The turn-based combat makes its return, along with a plethora of new jobs (classes) for each of the new and returning party members, along with new tag-team abilities and the Kiryu exclusive Dragon’s Resurgence. This returns Kiryu to his classic combat style, breaking out of the turn-based format, and returning to his real-time brawling roots, which is incredibly charming. The new party members each have incredibly unique and interesting jobs, such as the Cabbie job for Tomizawa, or the Sujimancer for Ichiban, which I’ll discuss in more detail later. Ichiban’s, and by extension, Kiryu’s personality traits can all be increased through a plethora of systems, which affect Ichiban’s Hero job, and Kiryu’s Dragon of Dojima job in different ways, increasing resistances and buffing abilities. 

The side content of Infinite Wealth manages to not only bring back the staples of previous games within the series, such as the Arcade’s and side stories, but some incredibly deep and well-thought-out side content such as Dondoko Island and the Sujimon League. Dondoko Island is a fun jab at the Animal Crossing series, giving Ichiban full reign over a trashed island, to restore it to its former glory as a popular resort island. It’s a simple little experience, but well worth the time investment, I’ve seen many other islands, and people have recreated many other locations from the series’ past. The Sujimon League is a fun play on the Pokémon formula but is a legitimately well-designed system, that manages to stand on its own, despite the obvious Pokémon influences. Defeating opponents around Hawaii occasionally gives the option to attempt to capture them, for use in your Sujimon team, along with a Gacha system, and, Raids, located around Hawaii with specific types of Sujimon to be captured, with the chance of Legendary Raids for Legendary Sujimon. They can then be taken into Suijimon battles to level them up, and after enough trainers have been defeated you can tackle the next League battle, increasing your Sujimon level cap, and opening you up for the next League battle, once you’re prepared.