I'm unsure how Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku make Like A Dragon games so quickly. We've not even reached the point where likely Game of the Year contender Infinite Wealth can be officially nominated for Game of the Year, and apparently, the next game in the series will be ready to be shown off at the Tokyo Game Show next month. An orchestrated move as that reveal will come less than a month before the Yakuza adaptation begins on Amazon Prime.
A very busy time for the series and between now and then, Sega wants as many people as possible to get into it. There are a lot of games to play through, probably too many for casual fans who want to know what it's all about, which is why the starter packs added to Steam and the PlayStation and Xbox stores give new fans two options. You can either go all the way back via the Yakuza Starter Pack, or kick things off with Yakuza: Like A Dragon.
Each pack includes two games to kick off your Yakuza journey. The Yakuza Starter Pack includes Kiwami and Kiwami 2, and the Like A Dragon pack is made up of Like A Dragon and Infinite Wealth. If you do want to go back to the very beginning, it would be the wiser choice of the two. Not only because it's considerably cheaper, getting you two fantastic games for just $29.99, but the Amazon adaptation appears to be based on the original game.
Time To Pick A Starting Point
The Like A Dragon pack is significantly more expensive, $79.99, because it includes Infinite Wealth, the newest game in the series that isn't even seven months old yet. Still a pretty good deal since Infinite Wealth is a $70 game, so you're getting its impressive predecessor for just $10. My only issue with all of this is neither starter pack includes the game you should actually start with — Yakuza 0. A prequel set a decade before the beginning of the first game, and still the best game in the entire series if you ask me.
It might not be included in the starter packs, but I'd strongly recommend picking up a copy of Yakuza 0 regardless of which starter pack you go for. Even if you're going to skip most of the games and begin your journey when the series changed its name to Like A Dragon, still play Yakuza 0 at some point. It's fantastic, and if it were up to me, it would have been thrown into the Yakuza Starter Pack for an extra $10. Think about it, Sega. It's not too late.
