Highlights

  • Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth blends multiple elements from the series, offering engaging combat and a wide range of mini-games for players to enjoy.
  • The inclusion of positioning in combat adds a new layer of strategy, allowing players to take advantage of proximity bonuses and deal damage to multiple enemies at once.
  • The game rewards players for engaging in side activities, providing in-game currency, experience points, and increased bonding levels with party members, ensuring that no time is wasted.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is developer Ryu Ga Gotoku's biggest, most ambitious game yet. Blending elements from several entries in the Like a Dragon series, including engaging combat, and a suite of mini-games covering a wide range of activities, from a crazy taxi-themed delivery game to a Pokemon-style battle game, there's certainly no shortage of things to do. While the turn-based combat successfully iterates on 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon by adding several new mechanics, it's when players start to wander off the beaten path and discover the game's huge world, that some of its new rules come to the fore.

After the successful pivot away from the series' tried-and-tested real-time combat in the previous game, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth sees protagonist Ichiban Kasuga back for an even bigger adventure that has the series leave Japan for the first time. Alongside him is the veteran Kazuma Kiryu, a man who has served as the face of the franchise since its inception in 2005. There's a lot going on in Infinite Wealth, and players will want to know how to get the most out of their time spent with the game.

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How Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth Improves on its Predecessor's Turn-Based Combat

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth improves on LAD 7's turn-based combat through a few mechanical additions, making it an even more robust experience.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth's Unwritten Rules

Positioning in Infinite Wealth's Combat is Key

Despite much of the turn-based combat remaining similar to its predecessor, a few key differences help keep Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth's combat feeling fresh. The inclusion of positioning in combat adds another layer of strategy that can help tip the battle in the player's favor, with characters now being able to move around within a set area before each turn. This allows for things like proximity bonuses, dealing extra damage for being within touching distance of the enemy, as well as letting players line up their characters with several enemies, dealing damage to all of them instead of just one.

Infinite Wealth's Side Activities Are All Beneficial

The sheer volume of side content included in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth can be a little overwhelming. With a main campaign that's already over 40 hours long, finding the time to explore everything the game has to offer may feel tricky. Thankfully, though, regardless of how players choose to spend their in-game time, they are suitably compensated. Whether it's with in-game currency, experience points, or increased bonding levels with party members, every single thing that players do in Infinite Wealth comes with a reward that will help them progress through the main story. This lends credence to the fact that no time is wasted, no matter if players invest hours upon hours into side activities like Dondoko Island or Sujimon battles.

Infinite Wealth Can Be as Challenging as Players Like

Turn-based RPGs are synonymous with grinding. Players expect to spend significant amounts of time leveling their party up in order to hold their own against enemies. This was the case in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which contained a few late-game difficulty spikes that threw players off-guard. This isn't the case with Infinite Wealth though. The game presents no such difficulty spikes, and players should be able to make their way through the main campaign without ever needing to grind for any significant period.

Of course, for those who are struggling, grinding is still an option, and Infinite Wealth includes two optional dungeons that are filled with tricky enemies to battle. Completing these dungeons will result in some great rewards in the form of equipment to make the party stronger, but more importantly, the player's party will emerge far stronger than they were before. This means that the game's main story battles can almost become a cakewalk, should players choose to spend hours grinding in these dungeons. The result of this is that the game can be as challenging as players want it to be, even without altering Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth's difficulty settings, which only become available in New Game+ anyway.