Once again, I am eating my words. Remember how at the beginning of the month I said thatSpider-Man 2hadruined quick time events for meand that the games industry as a whole should be moving past them? I’ve changed my mind, quick time events are good now. I’ve playedLike A Dragon: Infinite Wealthand seen the light. Ilovehow QTEs are used in this game and they actively make the experience better.
I may be a little hyperbolic when I say ‘they’re good now’ – a more nuanced and accurate way to describe how I feel is that I think the way Spider-Man 2 incorporated the mechanic, by forcing you to press buttons to advance cinematics, was not fun. I still do not think that every game needs them or would benefit from them, and the way they’re shoehorned into many games as a cheap way to keep players engaged during long stretches is an indicator of phoning it in. Infinite Wealth, though, is absolutely a better game because of the inclusion of quick time events, and it wouldn’t be the same without it.
There are a lot of differences in how quick time events are used in these two games. For one, it’s actually fun to do quick time events in Infinite Wealth, and they’re used in many different contexts. In combat, pressing the right button at the right time increases the damage your character does, and because the same moves always have the same prompts at the same time, timing your button presses correctly always feels like the victory of hitting a sweet spot.
They’re also used to catch Sujimon, imitating the way that many people spam the A button when waiting to see if a Poke Ball successfully captured a Pokemon. In Pokemon, mashing the A button is a tradition that doesn’tactuallydo anything, but in Infinite Wealth, the more you press that button, the more likely you are to successfully catch that Sujimon.
If you’re not quite familiar, Sujimon is the Yakuza universe’s version of Pokemon, where instead of catching cutesy animal-looking monsters, you’re catching human criminals based on different criminal archetypes.
And then there’s Miss Match, a dating mini-game where your success relies heavily on your reflexes. The mini-game represents typing by having you press buttons in a specific order, which will in turn make Kasuga text sentences. Near the end of each conversation you have with a match, you will have to ‘put it all on the line’ and beg the woman you’re talking with to meet you for a date, which means typing as many full sentences with these complex combinations of buttons as possible in the limited time you have. It requires focus, speed, and it’s very fun.
Also, the infamous karaoke minigame is all just button pushing, and also kind of counts as a quick time event.
More importantly, you don’t have to use them at all if you don’t want to. Hate having to pay attention during combat?Turn on auto-battle and do something else, your characters will be fine without your input, just slower. Don’t want to smash buttons when catching Sujimon? Don’t catch them. Don’t want to get frazzled with complicated button pushing? Don’t play Miss Match!
The thing is, you’ll want to play all these mini-games, and more. Instead of being compulsory, occasional button presses that advance a cinematic, this mechanic is used to make the game so much more tactile and engaging than it would be without it. I can’t wait to dive back into the game and push some more buttons.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
WHERE TO PLAY
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth continues the story of Ichiban Kasuga, in the ninth mainline entry in the series formerly known as Yakuza. It will once again feature turn-based combat, and takes our protagonist outside of Japan for the first time.
