Sometimes, the most influential pieces of entertainment take time to catch on, starting from humble beginnings before becoming real powerhouses. It took years of proselytizing fans for Blade Runner to cement its place as one of the great sci-fi films. Seinfeld didn’t become a Top 10 TV show until its fifth season, and now it’s seen as perhaps the most pivotal sitcom ever created. The Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise, feels like gaming’s Seinfeld — a series that blends the absurd and the serious, and is now hitting its biggest stride 20 years later. Between becoming one of Sega’s best-selling series and a live-action Amazon Prime adaptation, Yakuza has hit its golden age. If you look at the consistency of the team that created it, it was all part of the plan.
Yakuza, which debuted on the PS2 in 2005, centers around a legendary criminal named Kazuma Kiryu, diving into how he and the city he lives in change over the decades. His is a small world and the game feels intimate and quirky, like virtual toy boxes, where you can sit back and explore the streets of real Japanese cities, buy a coffee from the vending machine, hit a few balls at the batting cage, and then mercilessly beat a gang of arrogant thugs into the ground. These are games that are just as beloved for their zany humor and minigames as they are for their gripping character-driven stories.
