Just so we’re clear. I have never played a Yakuza game before this one. And I also don’t usually like turn-based JRPGs. But Yakuza like a Dragon both made me a new fan of the Yakuza series, but also made me sit my butt down and got me hardcore invested in a good JRPG. So if you’re someone who is usually indifferent to JRPGs in general, and want to get into one. This game might be exactly what you’re looking for. Below I’ve put my pros and cons of what I liked about this one, and didn't

+Battles are hilarious and I love them
The battles in Like a Dragon are… *bum bum bum* turn based. Now for a lot of people, myself included, this is a dealbreaker. Because most times turn based combat can be pretty boring and slow paced, or take a while to get interesting. However, Like a Dragon does a lot of things differently from other “traditional RPGs”. Basically the game is like Dragon Quest’s themes combined with a silly contemporary setting. All of the character's use classic RPG tropes but through the filter of a modern urban timeframe. So instead of fighting slimes and zombies. You fight the homeless, and gangsters. Your wizards and spellcasters are bums who breathe fire by doing whiskey belches, host and hostess who pop the cork on freezing wine and smash people with birthday cake. Instead of monks you have hitmen who are strapped with that thang on them. Instead of a sword wielding hero, you have a bat welding Yakuza. And all of your skills and abilities reflect this modern setting. Want to do huge amounts of damage, try the ultimate BDSM move (yes that’s real). Want to take out a large amount of enemies? Use the postmates app that’s like a final fantasy summon. But you summon a mentally insane knife man, instead of a dragon or whatever is in final fantasy. This makes battles very, very funny to watch. There’s something very cathartic about fighting a high ranking member of the Chinese Mafia using stuff like CD’s tossed like ninja stars, buckets of ice, and the move that literally just has your party member unload into an enemy with a glock. But it isn’t just you with these goofy ah attacks, your enemies are just as ridiculous. From the “Turncoat Titillator” to “Subjugation-kun”, and the “Twitchy Streamer”, oh, who could forget my personal favorite “Druggler”. This game has a sense of humor that makes the turn based combat really entertaining. And helps mitigate my issues with RPG combat.

+Character Building is really addicting
To add onto that, the way you build your characters is something I found especially good. Each party member who joins you has upsides and downsides. Some have high HP but low MP, others have bad magic stats, but great agility. But you can build your party members to be better than how they start out using the job system. Basically each character has their own “starting job” which is usually their best job. It’s the one that fits their role the best. However you can change a character’s starting job to one of many different jobs. Now changing to a new Job usually means losing temporary stat bonuses, however there’s an upside to this. Because every job has their own permanent stat bonuses that they award to the character using that job, as well as giving permanent abilities that transfer from Job to Job. This means you can train a character up in a certain job and shore up their stats in places they might be lacking in, as well as giving opportunities to change up a party member’s playstyle if you’re getting bored of it. I’m probably not doing the system justice but when I first discovered how it worked, I literally felt like an ocean of possibilities had just opened up in my playthrough. And I think that the variety and options it provides, not only makes the turn based combat all the more enjoyable, but it also gives the player something to always be working for. I genuinely wish more RPGs did this sort of thing.

+Great side content and sidequests
Now, I’ve never played a Yakuza game before this one. But I am familiar with how one normally goes. And in typical Yakuza fashion (i think) there’s a lot of side content. And personally I loved what I played of it. The sidequests are funny, and wholesome at times. I’ll leave finding those up to you, because they’re better when you don’t know what to expect. And the minigames are silly yet very addicting to get into. Like I didn’t think it'd get hooked on the Batting Cage for like 2 hours but… here we are. There’s a mini game where you do trivia in a vocational school and the math quiz took me like 9 tries because I’m an idiot. And the Go-Karting… OH MAN THE GO-KARTING. Is it better than mario kart? No, is it silly? You bet your sweet bippy it’s silly. There’s Karaoke, Golf, and Darts that you can play with your party members. It’s all great stuff. I think the way the game gives you the option to take a break from the dramatic story to just… play darts is… very unique. And something I like a lot. Heck, doing the business management minigame probably contributed to like a quarter of my playtime, so that should tell you how good the side content is… Because Good lord there’s no reason the bezos simulator should be that fun.

+/-The story has a slow start, but I found myself really invested in it
But this game can’t escape all of the classic RPG tropes, because the story has a *very* slow start. As someone who finished the whole game, I can say that getting through the first chunk of the story was worth it. But… I can definitely see how someone wouldn’t enjoy that as much. I mean quite literally my first 5 hours of gameplay was just doing the introduction segment with opening cutscenes and basic tutorial battles. And I thought that was a little excessive. But I think it’s worth sticking through because the story after that is, in my opinion, really solid. It’s got elements of crime/family drama. Silly anime battles that contain buff men ripping off their shirts to show how serious they are. And it has some genuinely touching moments of drama. I liked the story overall, and think that it’s worth getting through the slow beginning. To get invested in the payoff later on.

-The late game has a *bit* too much grinding…
Now my biggest issue with the game was the grinding. Now it isn’t a prevalent issue throughout the whole game, but you’ll definitely need to grind at least once or twice to beat some of the fights in this one. And good lord, you’ll definitely need to grind for the last few fights of the game. The rest of the game is well balanced but there’s this one fight at the end of the 12th chapter that’s just absurd! There is a huge difficulty spike around that point, and that unfortunately means grinding. I think throughout my whole playthrough I needed to grind like 3 different times. Now thankfully, it isn’t obnoxious to grind during these cases. Since there’s literally an enemy that drops a ton of experience and isn’t too hard to find. But grinding is still grinding, no matter what way you slice it. And regardless I think the absurd-ness of the latter fights could’ve been turned down a bit to avoid the grinding. Oh- and then there’s other grinding too besides just levels. There’s grinding for ultimate weapons, and job level grinding, and grinding for good healing items. And yeah… there’s a good chunk of grinding. Now I think it’s all manageable, if not a little annoying at times. But if you’re someone who just cannot do grinding in any sense. Then maybe skip this one. It’d be a sad reason to, since the game is really good other than that. But I wouldn’t blame you if that turned you off from the experience.

Overall like a dragon is a really solid JRPG, with some of the trimmings. But I would be wrong if I said I didn’t love it. I think that if you can tolerate RPGs then you’ll really like this one, like I did. But if you’re someone who hates these kinds of games, you might want to try the other Yakuza games.

Personally I loved it, an easy 4.5/5