The Steam Machine PC Gaming Podcast · Dalton Suter, Willie Eaton, TeamRetrogue

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Part 2 Spoilercast)

·1 hr 55 min·2 clips

Dalton says Project Gorgon feels like "Final Fantasy 11 vibes" mixed with RuneScape-style skill trees and death experience.

They start with the usual table noise and a retro handheld show and tell. The wood grain CRT styled device gets praised and roasted in the same breath, because it looks slick but still has the silly flat screen problem where the fake bezel eats part of the image. That joke hangs around for a while. From there, the conversation slides into Ichiban Kasuga and locks onto how the group keeps framing him as the emotional opposite of Kiryu without turning him into a joke. He wears his feelings on his face, trusts people way too fast, and still comes off as genuinely endearing instead of just naive. Someone calls him a trusting dumb ass, and that lands as a compliment, because the group likes how his loyalty keeps surviving every bad decision and every betrayal, including the Namba situation. He is loyal to a fault. Even after beating the crap out of someone, he still tries to find redemption and can forgive people hard. They linger on the way he can beat somebody down, pull them back up later, and still act like bygones are bygones, which gives the story a warm, messy center. Kiryu stays in the frame too. The contrast is useful: Kiryu is the stoic straight face, while Ichiban is all bad decisions, facial expressions, and big sincere energy. That contrast matters, and it even feeds into the gameplay talk, since the party based RPG setup feels like the right fit for a protagonist who is all about letting other people in and letting them help. The room keeps drifting between character writing, game mechanics, and side chatter the way this crew usually does, with interruptions, corrections, and little bursts of profanity. By the end, the discussion feels less like a formal breakdown and more like a bunch of friends trying to pin down why this loud, emotional guy works so well.

As heard by us

A loose Yakuza chat that starts on a wood grain handheld and settles into Ichiban's loyalty.

Steam Machine Podcast spends most of its time on Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and the best part is how it treats Ichiban Kasuga as a person, not a bullet list of plot beats.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Play this if you want Ichiban framed as a lovable, trusting mess with a big heart.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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