RGG Studios have announced Like a Dragon 8, the latest major game in the Yakuza/Like A Dragon franchise.
The trailer teaser shows the game’s original protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu, walking down the bright lights of Kanto next to the more recent lead character, Ichiban Kasuga. While nothing has been revealed, the trailer highly suggests you could be playing as both characters at different points in the campaign, or possibly that there are two full campaigns for both of them.
Starting in 2005 on the PlayStation 2, Sega’s Ryu ga Gotoku series of video games places players in an open world, where you can fight gangsters and push the story forward, or take on an incredible number of side missions that have overtaken the main story campaign to becoming the most popular element of the franchise.
The story itself mostly revolves around Kazuma Kiryu, a former yakuza member who keeps getting dragged into the activities of his former employer, the Tojo Clan. While Kiryu gets compelled to save his beloved Tojo Clan again and again, he desires to reintegrate back into normal life by starting over and raising a group of orphans.
Ryu ga Gotoku‘s side missions run the gamut of what you can imagine is possible in an open world, rivaling and possibly even outdoing Grand Theft Auto in their variety and popularity. You can earn money doing side jobs, learn new fighting moves from NPCs, eat at a hostess bar, run a hostess bar, play the batting cages, sing karaoke, and gamble at a variety of games including poker, blackjack, and mahjong. You can even go into one of the in-game arcades and play Sega’s other video games, in full, inside this game. Some games that Sega has packaged essentially as bonuses for Ryu ga Gotoku include Virtua Fighter, OutRun, and Puyo Puyo.
While some fans see the series as a spiritual successor of sorts to the prematurely halted Shenmue series, Sega has described the franchise as a fresh start intended to get the company adapted to the new landscape of console gaming that had set in after the company decided to leave the video game hardware business.
The original localized name for the game series in the West was Yakuza, however its original title, Ryu ga Gotoku, always translated to the current name for the franchise, Like A Dragon. The 2020 game Yakuza Like A Dragon introduced this real meaning of the game series to the West, alongside the new series protagonist Ichiban Kasuga. Yakuza Like A Dragon was also a break from the conventions of the prior games because Ichiban Kasuga was no longer acting as a yakuza. Instead, he stays retired as he discovers his boss has betrayed him and their yakuza clan, prompting him to forge his own path in society while seeking revenge. With this change in theme, Sega’s Ryu ga Gotoku studio has changed the series direction as well. Yakuza Like A Dragon was noteworthy for its success outside Japan, prompting Sega to launch this, one of many upcoming Like A Dragon video games for an international audience. You can read our prior report on it here.
Like A Dragon 8 will be released on Windows, Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Note that Sega announcing Steam separately indicates their intention to make the game playable on Valve’s very own Steam Deck.
Source: Twitter.
