This fascination spreads to the way that Ichiban views his foes, with even the most mundane of street fights transforming into epic battles between the hero’s party and a grouping of mythical creatures. Ichiban is a fan of the Dragon Quest games and frequently makes nods to the hero’s journey and the presence of dungeons, side quests and levelling-up.
The word quest was carefully chosen in the previous paragraph, as both Like A Dragon and Ichiban himself make plenty of allusions to the fact that this is an RPG experience at its core. It is here that Ichiban meets Nanda and Adachi, two similarly down and out members of society that join his quest for redemption and are by his side when Ichiban finds himself in scenarios well out of his comfort zone. In an introductory sequence that admittedly goes on for far too long (almost two hours with minimal player input), you learn Ichiban’s backstory and follow him journey from Kamurocho Yakuza, through prison inmate, to a homeless member of society living in a tent city in Yokohama. Ichiban Kasuga is the hero here, but like Kiryu Kazuma, he opts to go to prison for a crime that he didn’t commit in a show of respect to a Yakuza boss, and like Kiryu, Ichiban emerges from his jail cell years later in a world that he no longer recognizes. Initially, you could be forgiven for thinking that Yakuza: Like A Dragon is more or less a continuation (or even a retread) of the typical Yakuza series. Unlike the typical Yakuza formula of open-world exploration and combat that would seem similar to players of the Grand Theft Auto or Sleeping Dogs titles, Like A Dragon takes its cues from the RPG genre, with turn-based battles, levelling up characters and a more gradual pace to progression. Both undeniably feel as if they are hewn from the same DNA, but below the surface, both feel distinct from one another in ways that can be surprising and refreshing in equal measure. There can be a similar approach taken when comparing Yakuza: Like A Dragon’s protagonist Ichiban Kasuga to Kiryu Kazuma to when comparing Like A Dragon to the entries in the main Yakuza series.
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