Beat Chapter 1 of Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and have some thoughts so far.

Some spoilers but mild ones if you know the series.

This was advertised as 6.5 but so far it has been more like Like A Dragon 7 Separate Ways. Chapter 1 had to come up with contrivance for Kiryu not to run into Ichiban and Nanba.

I fully expect to have to play the Kiryu vs. Ichiban boss fight from 7 from the other side of things at the rate this is going.

That said my big takeaway is I have never seen a game so openly contemptuous of its own premise. Like this isn't uncommon in the series, A lot of the LAD games boil down to "Jesus fucking Christ Kiryu that was the dumbest thing that you could have done" as the opening act.

But Gaiden stands on it. Gaiden feels like Kiryu faking his own death at the end of 6 was about the dumbest fucking thing this man has ever done.

In a list of dumbfuck ideas half a mile long.

Also it isn't working. We're in 2019 in the games, the Tojo have collapsed, the other clans are either collapsing, falling back to their strongholds, or getting absorbed by the Omi or non-Yakuza groups like the Daidoji Faction or presumably RK, so the old ways are fucked.

And like every dude with a unique face model has looked at "Joryu" and gone "oh fucking shit it's the Dragon of Dojima."

Kiryu has basically managed to keep his secret, poorly, because pretty much everybody who knows has either been put on the payroll of his benefactors or died or both.

Also I am trying to avoid direct spoilers but like.

After LAD 7 did well there were some rumors we might get a spinoff game for everyone's favorite breakout side character/cleverly reused assets/perpetual >:{ face, Masaru Watase.

At this point I'm beginning to think it'll be weird if we don't get him. If they made him playable in Infinite Wealth I'd be entirely okay with it.

He's the dude who just keeps coming up as plot relevant over and over again.

I will say one thing again trying to avoid major spoilers.

But of the gauntlet of Chapter 1 bosses.

I deeply appreciate that they gave us a giant brick shithouse dude and then made him a Taekwando practitioner. It was a nice touch to see a dude taller and broader than ~~Kiryu~~ Joryu respond to being rushed with an axe kick.