Eight Yakuza games coming to PlayStation Plus in 2022, beginning in August

A whole host of Yakuza games, including the Kazuma Kiryu saga and the most recent and highly acclaimed Yakuza: Like A Dragon are on the way to PlayStation Plus. The series will be gradually released for free for PS Plus subscribers, allowing players who have missed out on the JRPG series to sink their teeth into the bizarre, compelling, and highly criminal world of the Yakuza series.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon joins the PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup in August. Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 will launch in the August Game Catalog for PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium members. At an unspecified time later in the year, Extra and Premium members will get to play through the rest of Kiryu’s story with Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 Remastered as well as Yakuza 6: The Song of Life.

While playing through a whole series of games can be intimidating, Like A Dragon is a fantastic starting point — it introduces Ichiban Kasuga, a grunt from a minor yakuza family who’s fresh out of prison. For those who enjoy Like A Dragon, they’ll find that the series is deeply interwoven (aside from Like A Dragon’s turn-based combat system), with shared characters and through lines.

The Yakuza games are a breath of fresh air because of their absurdity and tongue-in-cheek humor, but they also manage to consistently find gravitas. The series has been spun-off many times over the years, including a detective series called Judgment and even a cameo from Kiryu in Super Monkey Ball.