Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £59.99)

Verdict: Epic silliness

Rating:

Infinite wealth, indeed. The name of the latest release in the Like A Dragon — formerly the Yakuza — series gives you a good sense of how it feels to play. 

There’s a seemingly endless amount of stuff to do in this game, and most of it is shiny and enticing and satisfying.

But first: where are we in the series’ (also seemingly endless) timeline? This one acts as a sequel to 2020’s Yakuza: Like A Dragon. 

It follows that game’s protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, a goofy former street hoodlum who’s now helping other gangsters find lives outside of crime.

And it contains all of its predecessor’s charms. There’s Ichiban himself, of course: one of the most lovable characters in all gaming. 

There’s the stunningly evocative version of downtown Yokohama. And there’s the same enjoyable turn-based combat against various ne’er-do-wells — all spun out of Ichiban’s imagination and his love for old Japanese role-playing games.

Except there’s more. After a prologue that (even for this Yakuza fan) may be a bit too slow and self-indulgent, Infinite Wealth takes the series outside of Japan for the first time — to sunny Hawaii, where Ichiban goes in search of his long-lost mother.

And that leads to more fights. More jokes mixed with socio-economic observation. More minigames. 

There are even Yakuza-themed spins on other popular series, such as Pokémon and Animal Crossing.

It’s a lot. Sometimes too much. But that is the thing with having infinite wealth: you can’t get through it all at once. You have to give it time, let it work for you. You have to savour it.

Persona 3 Reload (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £59.99)

Verdict: Dark delights

Rating:

We'rein a rich patch for remakes, redos and reboots. In just the past few weeks, we’ve had the brilliant The Last Of Us Part II Remastered and Another Code: Recollection. 

In the next few weeks, there’s the excitement of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster.

And right now, slap-bang in the middle, there’s this: a modernised and — in many ways — improved version of 2006’s Persona 3, one of the most intriguing entries in a series of Japanese RPGs that peaked, in terms of quality and public awareness, with 2016’s Persona 5.

To some extent, this ‘Reload’ of Persona 3 has been Persona 5-a-tised: it now plays and looks a lot more like the later game, with slicker animations and cooler-looking characters (if waifishly goth-y teens are your idea of cool).

But much of Persona 3’s originality and distinctiveness still shines through. This one — with its story of supernaturally powered high-schoolers struggling against the demands of teenage life by day, then nasty, leering, multi-limbed demons by night — didn’t just set the tone for Persona 5. 

It totally committed to that tone, making it a darker, more challenging, more infective experience than any of its successors.

Think Scooby-Doo, but where the gang of mystery-busters faces up to death on a nightly basis — and not just the threat of death, but the meaning of it.

As your characters battle, in classic turn-based fashion, up the levels of the otherworldly Tartarus complex, they’re actually travelling deeper into their own psyches.

Which, in a way, is what makes this remake make so much sense. 

If you played Persona 3 when it first came out, return to it now with all the accumulated experience of the 18 years in between. What you’ll find is a far more adult game than it looks.