The Best Yakuza / Like a Dragon Games
Sega has been releasing Yakuza games for a long time now. The first, simply titled Yakuza in North America, was a Playstation 2 game released in 2006. The latest, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, is the 23rd game in the series if you go by some counts, but a more honest count puts it at 20. Sorry, Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, but sharing a developer and also an entire game format with Yakuza does not make you a Yakuza title, too, no matter what the series’ Wikipedia page might say about it.
If you’re new to the franchise, it can be overwhelming. So let’s take the (non-Fist of the North Star) Yakuza games released in North America and rank ‘em. Some ground rules: Neither of the Judgment games are included here, as they’re spin-offs with entirely separate casts. The Japan-only spin-offs have also been left off. As much as I’d love to, I cannot justify including Project X Zone 2 on the list, even if it does feature a key battle at the Millennium Tower, which is one of the most Yakuza things possible. And you end up fighting against Street Fighter’s M. Bison and Resident Evil’s Nemesis while you’re up there, too, making it just as ridiculous of a Millennium Tower fight as any other out there. Still! I take my duties seriously.
Finally, before you tear off your shirt, ready to fight: nearly every game on this list is genuinely really (really) good, at minimum. It might feel like hating to see a favorite Yakuza or Like a Dragon game of yours ranked lower than where you would have put it, but it’s more an explanation of preference than a dismissal of what made that game work. They all work! The greatest of them are some of the very best games of their respective generations! What a series, we’re lucky to have it.
13. Yakuza: Dead Souls
Playstation 3
Sega CS1 R&D
2012
The brawler combat is one of the things that truly makes Yakuza games sing. So much is made about the power of a fist and the iron, unbreakable will of the one punching others with it, and while it can be a little goofy at times the whole vibe also completely rocks. So… making a zombie invasion game where you do not get to do all that awesome brawler stuff is a little bit of letdown just from the start. Which wouldn’t be a problem if the replacement third-person shooter mechanics worked and felt good, but they do not. “What if Yakuza was a little bit The House of the Dead, too?” was a question worth asking, but the answer is unsatisfactory.
12. Streets of Kamurocho
Windows
Empty Clip Studios, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
2020
Released to celebrate Sega’s 60th anniversary, Streets of Kamurocho is a spin-off that puts a Yakuza coat of paint over classic Sega beat ‘em up Streets of Rage 2. And while Streets of Rage 2 kicks impressive amounts of ass even decades later, Streets of Kamurocho is actually just a remade version of the first level of that game, that loops at higher difficulties until you run out of lives. You get to play as Kazuma Kiryu, Goro Majima, and, eventually, Ichiban Kasuga, but all three have the same move set—Axel Stone’s—so they’re just skins instead of genuinely different characters like in Streets of Rage 2 proper.
Oh, and there are bicycles everywhere, but you can’t even pick them up to knock your foes senseless with them. That’s just a cruel tease, Sega.
11. Yakuza Kiwami
Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
2017
The worst thing you can say about Yakuza Kiwami is that—for all the updated changes they made to the inaugural Yakuza to bring it into the more modern era—is that it still very much has the bones of a Playstation 2 game. Which is not a knock against the Playstation 2 or its games, but Yakuza now is so much bigger than what it was then, and I don’t just mean in terms of game length: Kiwami ends up feeling a little small in the end, in scope, in depth, in its narrative, in its characters. It’s shorter, there’s less to do, the history isn’t as rich, but the Kamurocho you grow to love over the course of many games? Your introduction to it is here, and it’s more than worth the experience for the foundation that gives you.
10. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life
Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
2018
The Song of Life is genuinely engaging, and there are some narrative beats that really stand out, but it’s also not quite up to par for the series in too many ways. It goes maybe a little too “big” in some places because it felt it had to as the then-wrap for Kazuma Kiryu. He gets involved in some real country-wide nonsense with deep, historic roots in Japan that can feel a little out of place for the more personal tale that ties it all together. And, while the story is extremely personal, it’s now no longer a conclusion for Kiryu since he’s been brought back from “death” again and again and again, which renders it all a little more ineffectual than it was upon release. Not a negative word can be said about Beat Takeshi’s role in the whole thing, however.
9. Like a Dragon: Ishin!
Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Windows
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
2023
The story, which includes some based-on-a-real-person and/or events worldbuilding, is riveting. You’re not playing as Kiryu, just someone with his face who was running around Edo-period Japan just as that era is ending. There’s an assassination, and Not Kiryu dedicates his life to figuring out not just who the killer is, but why the killing happened at all. It takes you to some unexpected (and occasionally very expected) places, but is satisfying and a real change from the usual setup, in terms of presentation and the world you travel in.
However! It’s also a bit easier to be taken out of all of this by the gameplay sometimes, as it’s missing a little bit of the charm that the games set in modern times have. Even with the goofy substories series fans are used to, it all comes off just a little overly serious on occasion. The whole “bloodless revolution” thing doesn’t really work, either, when you’re using a katana to slice people open and pumping ronin full of bullets. Oh, and they all get up after you do all of that to their bodies, lesson learned, unless it happens in a cutscene, in which case the damage means something, usually something fatal. And it’s all just a couple steps beyond being able to suspend disbelief like I can for Kiryu’s fists and all of Japan’s problems that they’ve fixed.
And no one rips their shirts off for big battles: dramatically unsheathing a katana is great and all, but it’s not that.
8. Yakuza 3
Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows
Sega CS1 R&D
2010
The original version of Yakuza 3 was missing lots of content for its North American localization, but upon its 2019 re-release, practically all of it was added back in, with an improved localization to boot. If you only played the original version, this might seem like too generous of a ranking, but the more recent edition for the Yakuza Remastered Collection is a better game, and not just because of the addition by subtraction of some out-of-character transphobia from the game, as well—removed in all versions, too, not just the North American one.
Spending half of the game in Okinawa, attempting to flee from a life as a yakuza but getting roped right back in because of the orphanage that Kiryu has chosen to run in his new life? Well, I had a better time in Okinawa than many others, from the sounds of it, but seeing Kiryu realize that there is no true escape for him even if he moves, even if he changes careers, even if he tries to go from being the most morally upstanding criminal in the world to running a literal orphanage that would close down without him… it was a lovely, and depressing, little journey, one that managed to keep things fresh with a far different focus than its predecessors, even if so much felt welcomingly familiar.
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