Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is reaching shelves as we speak, and you might wonder which games are necessary to play in order to understand the plot.

Quite a lot of people are saying things like If you want to play Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, you only need to play the previous installment, Yakuza: Like a Dragon or You only need to play the first and seventh installments or any arcane play order.

Each alternate play order is wrong in its own way. The previous installment, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, introduces new series protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, a Dragon Quest fan whose obsessions shifted the series from brawler combat to a classically styled JRPG. While the early game shifts away from established settings and characters, this isn’t a starting place. The game not only mercilessly spoils Yakuza 4, Yakuza 5, and Yakuza 6, but present their major plot revelations in a way that simply make no sense to a new player.

You’re not only missing years of build-up, you’re missing years of context that the game won’t stop to explain. The final chapters of the game, dozens of hours of playtime, would become a haze of non-comprehension that you march through.

In fact, every game in the series has at least one unmissable element the rest of the franchise depends on players knowing. Each game iteratively builds on each other, both mechanically and narratively. Luckily, these are amazing games and the journey is worth it.

As always, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is right.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

With this in mind, you have two ways to play the series.

First, play in release order. This will give you the entire sense of the series as it was developed: Yakuza (also available as the remake Yakuza Kiwami), Yakuza 2 (also available as the remake Yakuza Kiwami 2), Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, Yakuza 5, Yakuza 0, Yakuza 6, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, and then, finally, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

Alternatively, you can begin with Yakuza 0, one of the best games in the franchise, and then continue from there. Yakuza 0 is written and designed to smoothly both set up the original game as well as slotting into the themes of the game it immediately followed. It is done exceptionally well.

Featured Image: SEGA

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