One of the things I was most excited about going intoLike a Dragon: Infinite Wealthwas itsAnimal Crossingmode -DonDoko Island. All I knew was that you could build your own town and hang out with mascots, a fun distraction to earn some cash on the side that doesn’t amount to the same turn-based brawling where we otherwise spend all our time. But nobody told me that it’s also partSims, partRollerCoaster Tycoon.
What I like least about Animal Crossing is the tedium. Building doesn’t just require materials but also time, as you have to wait for real days to pass before projects are completed. I get that it’s an incentive to keep you coming back and not get swept up in a video game for every hour of every day, but we end up fiddling with the internal clock to time travel anyway. In Infinite Wealth, you walk up to a calendar and end the day, and building is instantaneous. Simple as that.
Once you have materials, you go to a DIY bench and craft furniture items and entire buildings. Then you enter what is essentially The Sims’ build mode and start placing things from a birds-eye view onto a large, snappy grid. It’s far less fiddly, taking the best of two games and merging them into a single package. But what I assumed was just decor has surprising utility as well.
The first thing I placed on my refurbished island, now clean of the trash heaps that scared away visitors, was a public bathroom. I thought it would just be set dressing, making the place look lived in as the statues, park benches, and street lamps do, but then we hit the next stage of bringing the island back to life - inviting guests over.
You can even get schematics for a Majima statue by completing the dungeons outside of DonDoko island.
These visitors are more like the kind you get in park simulators than Animal Crossing. You have to ensure they’re happy, have a lot to do, and can navigate your island with ease. That means building roads, establishing places like cabaret clubs, and ensuring their basic needs are met. I constantly get notifications that someone is happy with the decor I’ve placed, using these utilities I’ve dotted about to make the island look less barren. I often find Animal Crossing aimless, struggling to stay motivated, but this goal to improve the quality of life changes that.
When they leave, you choose who you want to invite from a list to visit next (some of whom you’re able to find in Hawaii), and they all have their own tastes you can cater to. Some like a rustic island, others want something a bit more sketchy, so you can build dilapidated buildings and put together seedy alleyways for them to explore.
A lot is going on beyond that initial hook of ‘Animal Crossing in Yakuza’, but since it is a Yakuza game that nestles this entire, complex mode inside of it, there’s some RGG charm, too. A band of thugs are dumping trash on the island and harassing anyone who visits because they don’t want this place to become the paradise it once was. Instead, they want to keep using it as their junkyard. That means there are the occasional fights as you clear the island of waste (but these aren’t turn-based, to differentiate it from the main game), and a villain looming on the horizon, their presence growing stronger as you claw for each star rating.
I was excited at the idea of Animal Crossing in Yakuza, but I found so much more depth than I could have ever expected from an optional mode lurking inside of a much bigger game. It’s not a blatant ripoff cashing in on better ideas from other series, but a tribute that pays homage while doing its own thing, reinventing these concepts with RGG’s signature flair and humour. We’ve seen it withSujimon, its take on Pokemon, and the very clear love ofDragon Questthat permeates throughout every single encounter.
Infinite Wealth isn’t a pick-and-mix of other games, haphazardly cramming together ill-fitting ideas, it’s a homage to all the titles the developers clearly love, and nothing sums that up better than DonDoko Island.
