Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a charming but flawed pivot into JRPG territory for the series. The flaws, small though they are, are understandable: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio didn't start developing the turn-based battle system until very late in development. Overall, fighting in Like a Dragon is fun and theatrical, though some players of the Western localisation noticed one glaring omission at launch.
That omission is the absence of any clear in-battle information about an enemy's weakness. Hawk-eyed players quickly noticed that while the original Japanese version featured weakness icons for each foe, the Western version didn't.
Well that's fixed now: a newly released patch adds the weak icon, so now you'll know mid-battle whether someone is weak to fire, or electricity, or a good old fashioned baseball bat around the head. Previously you'd just have to wing it, but now you can approach battles in a manner closer to tactical, which is nice, because some of the game's late stage encounters are hard. (Of course, weakness information is available in the game's Sujidex, but you can't consult that mid-battle.)
Patch 1.03 also doles out the Upstart Assistance Pack 2 to all players for free, which can be accessed via the in-game smartphone. It includes a bunch of items and crafting ingredients, as well as a nurse costume for Nanba. For more info on the patch, including some bug fixes, check it out on Steam.
Just quietly, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is my favourite game of the year by a landslide, and that's mostly because of this:
