Yakuza games in order: Like a Dragon release and story timeline

radiotimes.com:

Critically acclaimed, adored by fans, and the source of many an out-of-context YouTube meme, the Yakuza franchise has been a large cultural presence for almost two decades. And it's only getting bigger, with the success of 2020's Like a Dragon bringing the series to an even bigger audience.

Next year's Infinite Wealth is garnering a lot of hype, so if you're not already a fan now is the time to jump in.

But where to start with such a huge series, with so many spin offs and prequels and remakes?

That depends entirely how how you want to experience it. You might be a cultural purist who always starts from the beginning to watch it evolve. Or you might want to catch up with the story in the most efficient way possible, while avoiding dated graphics and gameplay.

The aim of this page is to help both types of gamer. We'll list every Yakuza game twice. Once in order of release, and again on order of the lore's chronology. How's that? Whichever way you choose, we hope you go on to play the games. You won't regret it.

First, a quick list of every title in order of release date and console. At lot of the early titles were later ported to modern consoles, but we'll keep things simple by just listing the original hardware. It's self explanatory and doesn't need more explaining, so...

There are a lot of spin offs and remakes in there. If you only want to follow the mainline series, follow the numbered games: Yakuza (2005), Yakuza 2… right up to the Like a Dragon reboot in 2020. Yakuza 0 is a prequel to the first game, so you'll want to include that too. But more on the chronology below.

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