Upon finishing Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name--the action-brawler that tells Kazuma Kiryu's story after the events of Yakuza 6--you'll get access to a two-part demo for Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the upcoming RPG sequel to 2020's Yakuza: Like A Dragon. That might be a lot to parse for those not fully tuned in on the Yakuzaverse, but think of Infinite Wealth as the point when these two branches of the series collide. In the process of reviewing Gaiden, I can now talk about the free-roaming demo for Infinite Wealth that comes packed in. And although it's such a small slice of what this next Yakuza RPG offers, I couldn't help but feel my heart swell with the joy of seeing my favorite characters band together in some of the goofiest and coolest ways possible.

The new setting of Hawaii, the new friends made along the way, the ridiculous side quests to get roped into, and all the plays on RPG tropes come through in the demo. It includes a small portion of the area around Waikiki Beach, three substories, a handful of minigames and party conversations, restaurants and shops, and a short story-focused boss fight. And with a full party made up of Ichiban, Kiryu, and newcomers Tomizawa and Chitose, I got a good idea of how the turn-based RPG combat has evolved and how each character's personality shines through in their mechanics.

Kiryu and Friends in RPG Form

Ichiban's base job is Hero again, wielding an electric-powered bat, and his beginning moveset is similar to that of the previous game. However, the biggest question that's been answered is how Kiryu's brawler-focused fighting styles would translate to RPG form, and what RGG Studio has done is brilliant. With his base job, Dragon of Dojima, you can swap between three different stances during his turn: Beast, Brawler, and Rush, which are all references to styles he used in Yakuza 0. These stances change his base attack--for example, Beast style has guard-breaking grapples, Rush allows an extra basic attack per turn, and Brawler features Heat actions.