Summary

I haven’t played Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name yet. This is a very shameful admission from such a known fan of the series. I am the kind of person who, when asked at parties about what games I think everybody should play, immediately starts talking loudly and enthusiastically about Yakuza 0 while everybody else looks around uncomfortably. But in all honesty, I haven’t had the time to get through that many games in the series. I’ve played Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami, and I’m working on finishing Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon before the end of the year comes around.

My colleague Meg Pelliccio, who reviewed Like A Dragon Gaiden, loved the game. But she alsowrote a feature saying that Gaiden revealed the biggest twists of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life and Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon. Istillwant to play those games spoiler-free, because I want to play all the games in the series spoiler-free. I could just let Gaiden spoil what’s happened so far for me, if I really wanted to be time-efficient, but I really enjoy playing these games and discovering all the secrets they hold at my own pace. I don’t want to take a shortcut for the express purpose of making it through every 2023 game before the end of the year.

I feel like I need to apologise for the various Yakuza games I’m naming here that are allfrustratingly difficult to tell apartif you’re not familiar with the series. Sorry.

But I also feel like I should play Like A Dragon Gaiden before I play Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. After all, Gaiden chronologically sits between Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon and Infinite Wealth, so it makes sense that I play Gaiden first. But I can’t, because I need to finish Yakuza 7, at the very least, and I’d like to play Yakuza 6 as well. Except I can’t, because I need to play games thatactuallycame out in 2023 and evaluate their place in my GOTY list. And boy, are there a lot of games that deserve to be considered.

Maybe in a less stacked year, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Hell, if either Baldur’s Gate 3 or Starfield hadn’t come out this year, this wouldn’t have been a problem. I haven’t finished either of those massive games, and still the hours I’ve put into them combined could have gotten me through seven or eight shorter games. I could have played any number of the indies that caught my eye but I didn’t have the time to play. Or, you know… I could have finished more Yakuza games.

But I didn’t do that. In between months full of non-stop releases, I’ve barely played anything just for fun. The glut of great games is awesome for audiences who don’t need to play things for work, but not so fun for little old me, who really just wanted to play Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth with the appropriate amount of lore and context but instead found themselves wasting hours of their life onStarfield.

Even assuming I leave Gaiden off my GOTY list this year because I didn’t have time to play everything that leads up to it, Infinite Wealth releases January 26. That means I have 26 days from the end of the year to play three Yakuza games in preparation to play a fourth game, whichfrom the time I spent previewing it at Tokyo Game Show, will likely be my favourite of all of them. One thing’s for sure: I’m going to manage my gaming time better next year and ditch games that don’t click with me earlier. I am not going to have a repeat of 2023.