Today Sega released another gallery of screenshots of Ryu ga Gotoku 7: Whereabouts of Light and Darkness, also-known-as Yakuza: like a Dragon in the west.
Following yesterday’s reveal focusing on how to make money at the beginning of the game, looks like the new hero Ichiban Kasuga will have the chance to climb out of his monetarily challenged position.
After the middle point of the game, enemies become quite powerful, which means that you’ll need expensive equipment to fight them.
In order to make big money, you’ll be tasked with managing a small company on the verge of bankruptcy.
Ichiban and his friends meet Eri Katamaki, who has fainted on the street. When she regains consciousness, she tells them that she is the president of a small company making senbe (rice crackers) that she inherited from her deceased father.
Yet, the company is in financial trouble and about to go bankrupt. Eri feels that she is not suited for management and she is conflicted about shutting the company down. But Ichiban is a hero, so he decides to save her and her company.
Our hero becomes the new president of the company while Eri steps down to work at his secretary. Tasks involve property and human resources management, raising funds from financial institutions, and business promption to help the company grow.
It’s important to purchase different types of properties for shops and other activities while keeping an eye on the situation of the employees and funds.
If you find a property that has good potential, you can earn more management funds via fundrising and sale activities.
You can also invest on nurturing talented individuals within the company. This includes Eri’s chicken, who is basically the mascot.
The General Meeting of Shareholders is held at regular intervals. It’s basically a battle of wits in which Ichiban will have to persuade dissatisfied shareholders in a questions & answers minigame.
If you manage to firmly refute their objections, you will earn support, and if you have more than 50% support, you win.
The shareholders’ objections have different attributes, people, things, and money. If you argue back with the right attribute, you can destroy their speech bubble leaving them unprotected to your counterattack. By doing that you can drop their fighting spirit, and when that reaches zero, they’ll drop their argument.
There’s also a gauge that fills up and lets you use a “full-blown apology” wildcard that can reduce the anger of the shareholders.
The company’s stock price and rating changes with sale activities and after the general meetings of shareholders.
After every meeting, Ichiban receives his executive salary. This is personal money that you can use however you like. It’s separate from the company’s funds, which you cannot use for personal purchases.
Your salary will depend on the company’s performance, so it’s important to promote growth and take advantage of your success at the general meetings of shareholders.
A good way to spend the money you earn is by crafting and improving weapons and armor. This can be done by Sumire Sawa in her factory.
She is a brillant engineer that can create all kinds of equipment despite her young age. Ichiban is impressed by her skills and passion, and visits her often to improve his equipment.
If you have the money and materials you can either produce new equipment or improve what you already have.
You can enjoy all the screenshots below.
If you’d like to see more about the game, you can check out the latest trailer that revealed iconic hero Kazuma Kiryu, a batch of screenshots introducing the men of the Seiryukai, more showing the Omi Union crew, a few female characters that will help Ichiban Kasuga, a look at some inevitable product placement, one the at battle mechanics, and another showing enemies and summons.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon will launch in Japan on January 16, 2020, exclusively for PS4. It’ll also come west later next year, and a demo is already available on the Japanese PSN.
Microsoft and Sega recently announced that some Yakuza games are coming to Xbox One, but for now Yakuza: Like a Dragon remains PS4 exclusive.
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