IGN’s first day of its “Summer of Gaming” event has come and gone with a few cool announcements and a lot of awkward commentation. Amid all of the technical hiccups and constant reveals was a 14-minute trailer for Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Along with giving us our first real look at the gameplay systems here, we’ve also now seen how the English localization is coming along. It looks great!

The stream was held as an in-depth interview with Yakuza localization lead Scott Strichart. Over random gameplay of protagonist Ichiban being a goofball, Strichart explained the shift to new location Yokohama and how the RPG mechanics would feel like a natural evolution of what came before. As he stated, this isn’t something you can simply sit back and let happen. You’ll need to be actively involved to win battles.

The version IGN was streaming was likely the PC port. Everything was running at 60 FPS and looked razor-sharp. This is probably what the game will look like on Xbox Series X later in the year (which will be a free upgrade for anyone that buys the game on Xbox One), though you can get a reasonable idea of how it will appear on PS4. Just think 30 FPS and limited to 1080p.

The trailer also gave us a glimpse of the mini-games that Ichiban can occupy himself with. They bear some resemblance to the stuff in No More Heroes with Ichiban taking on part-time jobs and racing go-karts around the city. It’s exactly what fans of Yakuza would expect from a new entry.

I’m still a little skeptical of the combat, but Like a Dragon is shaping up to be a solid sequel. Maybe it drifts in an entirely different direction, but developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios has earned that right after producing so many hits. If it can successfully branch off into another genre, why not?

We didn’t get a release date during the stream, but it seems the localization is coming along nicely. With Sega promising this to launch with Microsoft’s Series X later this year, we can reasonably expect a Q4 2020 window.

Source: YouTube

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