Yakuza 8 Officially Announced, Release Date Revealed

gamerant.com:

Yakuza 8 has finally been officially announced by Sega with a release window. The Yakuza series' last outing was with 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the game that acted as a soft reboot for the franchise, introduced new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, alongside a new setting, and a new JRPG influenced combat system. Now, after two years since its release, Sega has revealed the next mainline entry in the series alongside two new spin-offs, and a renaming of the series with Like a Dragon 8.

The Yakuza series first debuted on PlayStation 2 in 2005 and despite receiving major success in Japan, the franchise failed to find its audience in the west despite localizations for all mainline entries and the post-apocalyptic spin-off, Yakuza: Dead Souls. Two Japanese history inspired titles known as Yakuza: Kenzan and Yakuza: Ishin did not receive localizations due to fears that western audiences would fail to engage with them. In 2017, the release of Yakuza 0, a prequel set 20 years before the first game, released to surprise success for the west, and this carried through to 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which quickly became the franchise's biggest success yet.

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Given Like a Dragon's popularity, it's not much of a surprise that developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios announced three new entries in the series today, one of which is a fully localized remake of Yakuza Ishin, one of the perviously Japan-only games. The biggest of these three announcements was the reveal of Yakuza 8, now known as Like a Dragon 8, alongside news that the game will star the last game's protagonist Ichiban Kasuga and returning series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. Kiryu is even sporting a somewhat uncanny new