On January 4th, I received an email that I had been both anticipating and dreading for months. My copy of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, one of my most anticipated games of 2024, had finally dropped into my inbox. This moment would normally give me a jolt of energy, as I love critiquing games that have real substance. The RPG tells a thematically rich story about an unlikely hero finding his confidence amid a quest to take on Japan’s criminal underworld, and I was still chewing on 2020’s unforgettable Yakuza: Like a Dragon several years later.
However, my desire to dive into the new game came with one major caveat: I needed to give up the next three weeks of my life for it. As I read through the email, the game’s developer, Ryu Ga Gotoku, suggested that it would take 80 to 100 hours just to zip through the main story without stopping to enjoy side content. The studio’s boss, Masayoshi Yokoyama, went one step further and claimed that it would make players “sick” if they tried to binge it all.
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Let it snow
There’s a specific moment in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth that pushed me to make a change, setting me down a healthier path. In a substory titled Let it Snow, Kiryu encounters an eccentric man who is running around Honolulu City buying snow cones and tossing them into the air. It’s played for laughs at first, but it quickly turns tragic. The man’s wife is on her deathbed and he’s determined to let her see a snowfall one last time despite being in Hawaii. Kasuga, with the help of some adult babies (don’t ask), is able to simulate a snowy night from the roof of her apartment. As flakes drift in through the window, the husband breaks down…
