Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
"From Monday night to Tuesday morning, they swagger around downtown just like that. It's their way of saying 'we run this town,' without saying anything at all. Anyone tries to challenge that... they get gutted."
Kasuga, Kiryu, and company represent the best of those who grew up on the fringes of society, but the same can't be said of everyone they cross paths with. Even across the Pacific Ocean, scoundrels, murderers, and the worst that humanity has to offer gather all the same.
Story
- The Barracudas in general. Don't let their head-banging leitmotif fool you, this is far and away one of the most viciously brutal factions seen in Like a Dragon to date. Their Establishing Character Moment has them strutting around openly in droves at night in Downtown Honolulu, with HPD officers casually walking away as they round the corner. As if that wasn't unnerving enough, the pickpocket who tried to take Kiryu's wallet earlier meets a gruesome demise when he tries his luck on an unsuspecting Barracuda member. The last we see of him, providing the page image, is the guy pinned to the wall with huge nails hammered into his hands, a machete in his chest and his guts spilled out. Mercifully, we're spared the worst of such a graphic sight, but our main heroes aren't. And judging from Tomizawa's reaction, plus the fact that the pickpocket is still alive while nailed to the wall, he definitely didn't go quick.
- Concerning Arakawa's backstory:
- Before Ichiban sets off to Hawaii, Sawashiro explains the story of Arakawa's Roaring Rampage of Revenge as he looked for Akane. While it was talked about in the last game, it gets shown in full here as a flashback. It's not pretty - Arakawa goes full One-Man Army on the Hikawa Family, bloodily slaughtering its men left and right before eventually reaching the Patriarch, soaked in blood and looking positively feral. He then demands that the Patriarch call off the manhunt for Akane, but all the Patriarch does is taunt him and laugh in his face... even while Arakawa holds him down and starts shooting off his fingers one by one. And then Sawashiro says that the Patriarch just kept laughing until Arakawa made him draw his dying breath.
- We get to see Akane's hardships while Hikawa is being interrogated by Arakawa. Hikawa taunts him that Akane has been ported to the Philippines in a shady cargo boat. The implications for what happens to a lone, young woman with no money and no connections in the middle of the sea, with a crew that is likely engaged in criminal activities, are very unkind - the Japanese script is more explicit and says that she must have been forced to "take care" of those sailors. While unclear whether this is true or just Hikawa trying to torment Arakawa, it is safe to assume that Akane suffered a lot after hastily giving birth (a process that most would need to rest for weeks to recover from), being on the run, captured by Yakuza and thrown onto a boat to another country.
- Tomizawa's backstory: happily married to the love of his life, expecting a child, and suddenly charged with a crime you didn't commit because a local gang needed a scapegoat. Report them to the authorities? Sorry, local law enforcement is on their payroll. This leaves the expecting father with a "choice" between sucking it up and serving a 5-year sentence, or try to fight off all his charges and serve 15 instead. With his wife and unborn child at stake, he swallows his dignity and plead guilty - and after 5 unwarranted years in prison, his wife has a miscarriage from the stress and vanishes without a trace. That would be enough to drive anyone mad.
- Bryce goddamned Fairchild. Like a Dragon protagonists have had to face a myriad of gangsters and Serial Killers across the games, but Bryce is a whole different monster: a seemingly benevolent and sagely old man who is actually a manipulative cult leader with an army of brainwashed soldiers ready to answer his every beck and call.
- What makes it worse is that anyone could be under his control - Bryce has spent decades seeding sleeper agents throughout society, waiting for the moment their leader calls upon them to act. Gangsters, cops and even random civilians wandering around Hawaii are fanatically loyal to him, and one false step will see Ichiban and friends attacked from wherever and whenever they least expect it.
- We even get to see part of Bryce's indoctrination process: young (as in children) initiates are ordered to execute prisoners with guns... blindfolded prisoners, tied to stakes, that are terrified and weeping shortly before being put out of their misery. Then Bryce orders them to keep shooting the corpses. And later on, Ichiban and company happen across a room where Bryce's followers are murdering each other in a horrific fight to the death that only the strongest would walk away from. If this is what little we're shown, lord only knows how bad things get for these poor initiates offscreen.
- During his Boss Battle, one of Bryce's followers is knocked down and crawls back to him begging for assistance. Bryce's response is to riddle the man with bullets before pushing his dead body aside like it's trash, and the other Palekana bodyguards around him do not bat an eye at this display.
- Also during his Boss Battle, he can command his followers to charge at you with live dynamite. As vile as some previous antagonists in the franchise could get, none of them resorted to using suicide bombers.
- The waters around Nele Island are home to several large and exceptionally vicious great white sharks, several of whom attack the Heroes of Tomorrow at different points near the climax of the story. One of them even devours Dwight when he tries to escape his final boss battle, and the Heroes see only a brief flash as his boat is crushed.
Gameplay
- Those who have entomophobia (fear of bees and wasps) may not enjoy the Kunoichi's "Thousand Stings Jutsu" and "Essence of Hell Hive" skills, as they have the Kunoichi summon a horde of hornets to attack the enemy.
- The Pyrodancer's "Essence of Masked Medium" is just wrong on every level. The Pyrodancer dons a mask that straight-up possesses them. Painfully, by the looks of it. They then let out muffled, animalistic roars as they charge towards the poor enemy chosen for the attack like an enraged primate, before leaping at them and clawing the hell out of them. This is followed by a huge corkscrew kick and a series of erratic movements. Judging by how the attack damages the user, it must have been excruciating. It's bad enough on anyone, but it's especially freaky on a more composed character like Kiryu or Joongi.
- The dungeons have some rather strange rooms: while some are comedic, others are so bizarre you just have to wonder what the hell they are doing down here. For example, one room has chairs arranged in a circle, each one with a blood transfusion bag. Some rooms have grown men in play pens acting like babies, while others have homeless looking men dancing in cages. Worst of all, completely innocent people are kidnapped and trapped inside this pit of debauchery on a regular basis. Who knows what gets done to them before you arrive.
