Kiryu's half-arsed attempt at disguise begins and ends with donning a pair of glasses like he's a karate-kicking Clark Kent.Įven so, despite the fact Kiryu is about as good at remaining undercover as my feet are on a hot summer’s night, what follows is yet another tense tale of modern Japanese crime with all the generous helpings of betrayals and brutal murder we’ve come to expect from this series, building towards a customary climax where everyone angrily rips their shirts off and you’re going toe-to-toe with a burly boss who’s packing more health bars than a bodybuilder’s gym bag.Īdmittedly, with just five chapters that took me around 12 hours to complete, Gaiden’s story is a little on the short side compared to previous Yakuza games, but I actually appreciated the more focussed framing of its plot. In fact, he stood out even more so when I used the in-game tailoring tool to clad him in an ostentatious golden suit that made him look like C-3P0 on his way to a court appearance. Somewhat hilariously, almost nobody you meet over the course of his investigation into the Omi Alliance crime syndicate buys into the ruse, possibly due to the fact that Kiryu’s half-arsed attempt at disguise begins and ends with donning a pair of glasses like he’s a karate-kicking Clark Kent. So why is the Dragon of Dojima suddenly kitted out with hi-tech gizmos like a Japanese James Bond? Well, it’s because this time around he’s gone undercover as an agent for the Daidoji crime family, returning him to one of his old curb-stomping grounds in Sotenbori and forcing him to adopt the pseudonym ‘Joryu’ in order to protect his true identity. However, outside of the revitalised combat, almost everything in Gaiden’s toybox feels like a hand-me-down from an older sibling in the series, meaning once the fighting stops it quickly starts to feel a bit too familiar.

This time the sharp side of the katana blades aren’t the only things that are on the cutting edge, as returning hero Kazuma Kiryu can employ a suite of state-of-the-art tools for taking out his tormentors as though he’s bypassed the weapons locker in favour of a trip to the Apple store. Packed with enough gadgets to cover a belt for Batman’s trousers, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name returns to the classic, combo-based street fighting that featured in earlier Yakuza games but enhances it with a fresh technological twist.

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