Right Now Is the Perfect Time to Play the Quietly Best Yakuza Spinoff

When Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name was released in 2023, the Yakuza series was in a strange position. The team at Sega's Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio was gearing up to give a heroic sendoff to longtime protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. They had big plans for 2024's Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth to pass the torch to a new main character. But Yakuza had unexpectedly become bigger than ever outside Japan, thanks largely to the viral success of Yakuza 0 throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s. The fans demanded more Kiryu, not less. And developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio rose to the occasion with The Man Who Erased His Name, an interquel that depicts his lonely years in exile after the events of Yakuza 6.