Hello dear GoGers,

It is I, Carliewarliee, also known as Chickenarla on the 'cord, once again asking for your time to sit down and read this lil' request right here for Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

What is Yakuza??

For those uninitiated to the series, Yakuza is like a scorsese gangster movie. Stunning, stylish, suave and filled with fun filled moments. The Yakuza franchise as a whole is an action-adventure game, mostly about Kiryu Kazuma. Over the series, we also follow Goro Majima, Haruka, and many more special characters who are close to Kiryu himself. As of Like a Dragon, the main protagonist has since changed to Ichiban.

Kiryu Kazuma is a former Yakuza, trying his hardest to live a quiet and honest life since becoming a civillian. However, the dark and murky world of the Yakuza keeps calling out to him, and throws him various challenges to overcome. The franchise timeline starts in 1988, and prior to Yakuza 7, concludes in 2016 (Yakuza 6).

About me:

Hereth begins a simple yet modest tale of the Chicken, and how she came to first learn about the series, to playing the first game.

For about as long as I can remember, I've always loved gaming. Regardless of whether it was a card game, board game, mobile game, PC or console game. For both books and games, it has always felt like lovely tools to use to escape from reality and all the crap going on in life.

Despite living in the UK for most of my life, I did not come from a well-off family. Growing up, I watched my parents worked multiple jobs to just about make ends meet. Almost everything I owned was hand-me-downs, from clothes to furniture to (eventually) games, etc. When I grew old enough and went through Uni, I worked and juggled about 3-4 side part-time jobs and 1 main full-time job. This was when I was not caring for my siblings.

I first discovered this series back in 2018, when I first arrived in Japan. This was around the time I was just setting up to live here for a bit. I had been looking around youtube and twitch in hopes of finding quality content and users to follow. I cannot remember the username of the individual that I stumbled across in particular, but it was of one iconic scene in the game, that intrigued me to find out more about it. I soon found myself binge-watching walkthroughs, watching various clips from the game, and reading up about the timeline of the games. Some people don't like doing this as they feel it ruins the experience, but for me, it just makes it all the more special for when I one day am able to play the game and get to that point. Saejima, Akiyama, Majima, Kiryuu, and Nishiki are so far my top 5 favorite characters of the series, all for various reasons. The storyline is amazing and very well written. It consistently follows all the characters as they grow old together and form timeless bonds with each other.

About a year later, me and my partner met a person who's an actual Yakuza member. We were at the beach, chilling with our friends and this guy comes to bum a smoke from our grill. The way he did it, he almost burnt half his face and we had to tell him to be careful. The person was super friendly, wholesome, and funny, and soon enough started talking with us about various things. It was only when he started talking about his tattoos, time spent in jail, and Yakuza affiliation that we clocked on he was a member of the Yakuza.

“If you wanna look down from the top ... it’s the endgame that matters. Ruling the world don’t mean shit if you lose it the next day” - Shimano

It wasn't until a kind user by the name of u/Kelsier0fHathsin (again, thank you from the bottom of my heart), gifted Yakuza Kiwami 2 to me a couple of months ago that I was finally able to play the first-ever game properly and as I expected, I fell in love with the series even harder after that. It was hard not to! The experience playing Kiwami 2 from cutscene to my first ever brawl instantly had me hooked. The writers did a stunning job at fleshing out each character and also raising the stakes for the trials and tribulations each character has to go through, and they have come up with super creative ways of playing out events and scenarios. I personally believe that the series has the best crime drama plot there is to gaming at this point in time. There's witty dialogue, dialogue, and cutscenes that make you laugh, cry, have you contemplating what in the ever bloody hell did you get yourself into... and honestly, it's a fantastic series all in all. I already have an extensive playlist of the soundtrack... saved on youtube, and I admittedly listen to it in my spare time. I also have a whale of a time with activities I can do.

I have been in love with the series for quite some time, and it has helped me stay calm in times of stress, anxiety and beyond. Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2 solidified in making me a long-term fan and seeker of memes.

Why Yakuza Like a Dragon?:

Yakuza: Like A Dragon is the latest installment to the series, but is vastly different in several ways. For instance, rather than being strictly an action-adventure game, they added turn-based JRPG content to this particular title. As someone who loves turn-based RPG games, it made me very excited to hear about this and made me curious to find out more about how they were able to implement this, why, and how. From what I've read, the new main protagonist, Ichiban, is pretty nerdy and seems to also love video games too! He builds his heroic impulses around a lifelong love of Dragon Quest, to the point where every time he enters street combat, he imagines that he’s fighting monsters and evil creatures. I love the idea and concept behind it, and it makes me wonder if it's only him that sees the world and fights in this way. That what people are seeing in this title is how he and he alone views the world. It makes me wonder if a case study has been made yet about the character's state of mind, and if there's one out there, I would be infinitely fascinated to be able to have a chance to read up on it.

I also heard that the MC is a stand-up guy who's thrown into shitty situations, from friends who played the game. Ichiban is approachable, human, unprofessional, and flawed. I like character progression like that. It makes following his journey all the more satisfying, as the MC (Ichiban) figures out life stuff and doesn't always get it right. It's nice having characters who are perfect, but I personally think it's better to have characters who are flawed and human, I can as a player and person, connect to his character better.

Like a Dragon seems to have several brand new features that look extremely exciting. You can summon various people and creatures using your telephone, kind of like a stand or a persona. There's also a mechanic called Life Experience that Ichiban needs to nurture throughout the gameplay, as it would boost his stats as he battles across various dungeons and through real-life situations. You can romance different team members (and it can turn out terribly for you like in persona if you decide to date, say, many members of your team). Also, you can go-kart, and play a traditional movie theatre minigame too, where you have to fight to stay awake! Also, this cutscene. This is just a small drop in the ocean as to what I think makes the game great, without even mentioning the wonderful storyline and narratives followed.

Why am I having trouble affording it?

As mentioned before in prior posts, I am an assistant teacher and am on an assistant teacher's salary. Despite my named role as an assistant, myself and other teachers refer to me as just a teacher. This is because I take on the majority of things a fully-fledged, registered teacher does here. Salary wise isn't a lot of money, especially after deducting tax, rent, living expenses, student debt, visa renewal to stay here for 1 more year, notary to get married in Tokyo, marriage registration, visa to move to either UK or US with my husband to be, and so on. My partner and I have to for some reason do visa renewals to stay here on different days... and work initially promised they'd help with the visa renewal cost and travel to the nearest city to finish the application (they can't do it online) but has recently pulled out from offering any kind of support whatsoever, despite knowing we needed the support. It's a combination of budget cuts and not wishing to be held liable in the event one of us gets infected while strictly going to get the visa renewed.

On top of being strapped for cash, I've been very stressed and anxious. Despite fighting for better protection here during the pandemic... there's no real protection for teachers out here (or in many places tbh), and no social distancing neither (students' seats are too close to each other, etc). We have to teach 40 kids in person on a day-to-day basis, where not many follow social distancing or other pandemic safety protocols. I can only do so much by enforcing it in my classes.

In saying all of this though, I keep coming back to this quote:

'Life will always have ups and downs. And if we don't have the bad parts, we'll never appreciate the good ones.'

I hope better days come over here. Not just for me, but for all of us. This pandemic sucks. I haven't seen my family face to face in 3 years. Neither has my partner seen his.

その他 (Other):

Here's my Steam ID if you want to take a look at my profile. You're always welcome to message me here, on discord, or on steam.

Thanks to everyone for being so welcoming and kind since I joined this subreddit!

Take care all, stay safe and gucci!

Chickenarla / Carliewarliee

EDIT: Thank you so much to everybody who upvoted, supported, and shared in the excitement about this amazing series! A close friend of mine who's in the GoG discord and a massive fan of the series was able to gift it to me this morning, but they don't really use Reddit, so I'm not sure how to proceed in thanking them on here just yet (working that one out)!

I'm gonna make a thank you post all the same for them, and I also promised to draw a PFP as a form of thanking them. :)

Again, a million thank yous to everybody who spoke with me, privately and publicly shared in their support!

But most importantly, thank you all for being so wonderful to me on this sub. You're all awesome, and I hope to one day do something big in return as a form of thanks and make somebody's day!