Humble Choice - August 2026

Yakuza 8 Infinite Wealth

As a preamble, I've played every mainline game in the series (except Kiwami 3).

Overall I liked it, but I feel RGG studios should have trimmed some fat because the game is too big for its own good.

Mechanistically they fixed the biggest flaw of Y7 turn-by-turn combat system, and now you can have limited movement which adds a neat strategic aspect that was sorely missing before.

So there's too much content. The story is structurally similar to Y0 in that we follow two parallel stories with independant progression. But in Y0 the combat style of the two protagonists were different enough that is felt fresh switching from one character to another. Here since the characters share the job system it feels more like restarting each time instead of a palate cleanser.

Each Yakuza game has small minigames that are reused from game to game (golf, darts, cards) and large minigames that are mostly of the time specific to a game. In Y8 you have two that ate very Nintendo inspired: you have I-swear-it's-not-Pokémon and I-swear-it's-not-Animal-Crossing. I had the misfortune of getting a really strong pokemon sujimon early in the game so the strategic dimension was lost on me. But there's still a dopamine rush in merging and evolving your roater. As for the Animal Crossing island management game, it made me feel like I was designing my house in the Sims again. It's a nice way to reuse the gazillion assets RGG studios made over the time.

The game takes place in both Yokohama (same map as in Y7) and Honolulu (brand new)(Kamurocho still guest stars, but it's not that important). Those are huuuuge and I feel like there's more padding than necessary. That being said, this gives ample time to let the characters banters amongst themselves, which I loooove.

Which make me segue into the story part. On par with the course of the other game in the series, it's yet another govermental conspiracy, now sprinkled with some v-tuber and an American sect. I have no affect to the story and it's been a long time since I got more interested in the character relationship instead of the main plot.

But then even if I really like Ichiban and gang, here half of the attention is grabbed by series resident Kiryu. And there's a whole lot of nostalgia bait built around him (you collect memories and have side quest with cameo of various characters). Which is fine for me (as I said I played all of his adventure) but it sort of choke Ichiban's contributions to the story. Really I would have put this in Yakuza Gaiden instead. This spinoff really felt like "one last Kiryu style adventure like the old time" but could very well have supported the memories collectathon. There's one nostalgia bait I loooove and that's Kiryu ultimately skill which is a meta-joke (spoiler) that works very well.

I don't known where RGG could go from Y8, but I suspect they don't know either, that's why the next major game from them is not Y9 but a large scope series prequel (Stranger than Heaven).

Dead Cells is one of the action roguelikes and is highly recommended, though The Bad Seed is only the first of their DLC trilogy (and the Castlevania crossover DLC).

As someone who grew up on Turtles in Time, Shredder's Revenge never sparked that same feeling of joy? I beat the game once as Leo and never returned to it. The game feel was off to me and the characters need to have their levels grinded out for their max potential. I guess I'm not a fan of Tribute Games' beat-em ups compared to Guard Crush Games (both dev teams have Dotemu as a publisher).

Infinite Wealth is tempting, but I still have to actually start up Yakuza 0 again, so this month's a miss for me.

Heard very good things about dead cells

I’ve played dead cells and I’m not very good at it, but I’d still love to have a copy, but I’d be buying this for a like a dragon.

Dead Cells is fantastic. If you somehow haven't already played it, then this collection is worth it for that game alone. That said, I have played it, so another skip for me. Nothing else sparks joy for me.