Yakuza Like a Dragon (YLD) is a brilliant new entry in the Yakuza franchise that completely changed the gameplay from brawler to classic JRPG. And the result is a brilliant masterpiece, combining a dark and grim crime story, with out-of-mind humor and very likable characters. Moreover, on the gameplay side, YLD creates a complex and complete system, including many skills and jobs to interchange, dynamic turn-based battles, and even insane summons!
While the majority of enemies and bosses are thugs, weirdos, or crime lords, in some cases the game will go out of the ordinary with more complicated boss battles. For example, on a couple of occasions, the party will face industrial machinery, such as a wrecking ball, and even a tiger. But the game will always give its best in the nonsensical secondary quests that, sometimes, will also end up in insane boss battles. And this is exactly what happens with the battle against Sojimaru, a gigantic Roomba that went berserk and is trying to vacuum clean everything.
The insane quest that will bring to this crazy fight is called “Preparing to Suck.” In the beginning, you only need to provide funding for an eccentric scientist that created Soji, the best vacuum cleaning robot in Yokohama. After collecting the money, the scientist will show its progress: Sojimaru, a gigantic version of Soji aimed at cleaning the streets of Yokohama, while also providing coffee and massages to the people passing by. Then, of course, something will go wrong when the scientist will activate the hyper mode, sending Sojimaru insane. Before starting the actual battle against the gigantic robot, there will be space for nonsense comedy, where the robot will suck inside its body not only the scientist but also a kitten and an elderly woman! Just to don’t put pressure on your success.
The battle is a concentrate of pure madness in every detail, starting with the music. While the normal battles have a very standard soundtrack, the battle with Sojimaru plays boring and repetitive music, which sounds like the one that you can find in an elevator. But the explanation provided by the scientist is very straightforward: this is the music that Sojimaru plays when offering a massage, which now got stuck in a loop.
The proper battle against Sojimaru has multiple phases. In the beginning, the main body is impossible to damage, and the party should focus on the two more fragile extendable arms. The robotic arms will attack independently, each of them using a special move related to their function. For example, one arm will use a powerful fire-based attack, which consists in throwing a jet of incredibly hot coffee, like a sort of altered flamethrower. The other arm has installed the massage function, which now got altered in a deadly electric attack, like a sort of high-voltage taser. The friendly and serviceable robot transformed all its “to serve and pleasure humans” functions into deadly elemental weapons.
The main body of the gigantic cleaning robot is also able to independently attack, mainly by using a frontal extendable platform, which is also electricity-based, but definitively less dangerous than the arms. However, another attack is the highest danger while facing Sojimaru. The robot will create a sort of beam vortex, spinning and vacuuming the party members. The attack is visually very appealing, and also dangerous. In fact, this spinning attack can hit a character multiple times, and can even affect more than one character at a time. The deadly “Giant Slalom” can truly turn against the player the sort of the battle.
The long battle will move to the next phase after the arms are destroyed. The main hatch on the body will open, revealing a weak point in the military-grade defense of Sojimaru. By attacking this point, the player can finally damage the main body of Sojimaru. Moreover, the panel is also weak against electricity, which can be exploited to speed up the long battle. The enemy has a lot of health, and it is quite resistant to physical damage, so the battle will be a very long one. Luckily, without the arms, Sojimaru is less dangerous than before. It can still use the powerful rotating attack, but at least it will not attack multiple times in one turn.
However, the battle is still not won. After more than half of its health is depleted, Sojimaru will enter into another hyper mode, boosting its stats. This event is also accompanied by a comic scene, where the scientist will reveal that only a secret password can activate this hidden power mode… but since you beat Sojimaru too much, the mode got self-activated for the damages.
After finishing the quest, Sojimaru will be repaired and a “management” mode will be implemented to its key component. This means that the robot can now be recruited as an employee in the business management minigame of YLD. Yes, this is a strange game.
But the flights against giant vacuum cleaning robots are not over in YLD. In fact, there is a secret version of Sojimaru, called Seiso Shogun, hidden in a secondary dungeon in the sewers of Yokohama. According to the in-game Bestiary (called Sujidex, just to mock Pokemon), this Sojimaru version was stolen and modified by a hacker, creating practically a war machine. The fight is identical to the base Sojimaru, just much more difficult, especially now that the arms can inflict an insane amount of elemental damages.
Dark RPGs 