Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth released to great success and extremely positive reception. But an egregious DLC policy is ruining the fun for many fans.
Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth is a fantastic game and one of the best in the long-running series. In our review, we praised the game’s beautiful and gripping story, the exhilarating combat and the gorgeous world of Honolulu.
The game has enjoyed a very successful launch, and many new and old fans have greatly enjoyed it. However, user reviews show how conflicted players end up being on the game – and it doesn’t even really have to do anything with the game itself.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s Greedy DLC Policy Has Gone Too Far For Fans Of The Series
The game was criticized ahead of release for SEGA’s pretty egregious DLC policy. One of the worst offenses was locking Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth’s New Game Plus mode behind a $20 DLC, a feature that was just part of the main games in every other title of the series. Additional difficulty levels and achievements are also tied to the NG+ mode, making it impossible to achieve 100% completion in the game or make it more challenging for yourself without spending another twenty bucks.
A lot of other in-game content is also locked behind paywalls, including additional classes, skins, music and an entire epilogue featuring a new dungeon. Overall, the game features a ton of day one DLCs, with all the bundles together being worth $158.81 on Steam.
Publisher SEGA in turn also offers an Ultimate edition for $110, which includes all of the DLC plus the base game. The aggressive DLC policy seems to be intended to drive players towards that more expensive edition of the game.
This strategy backfired and, predictably, caused a shitstorm within the game’s community. Of the 2,759 Steam user reviews for Infinite Wealth at the time of writing (January 29, 2024), over 10% of those reviews are negative. Looking at these 284 negative reviews, it becomes clear that basically all of them praise the game itself, but criticize SEGA for how it handled DLCs.
One review put it quite succinctly, saying: “As great as the game is I will not recommend it as my little way of telling Sega and RGG that I do not support cutting basic game mechanics that are required to 100 percent the game in order to up sell us and get more money from us.”
The positive reviews for Infinite Wealth showcase how tricky the situation is. Even among the many people rightfully praising the game, and still giving it a thumbs up, you will find many bemoaning SEGA’s controversial DLC policy:
“Absolutely stellar game that is even greater than its predecessor. Unfortunately, SEGA are greedy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that made the game $70 with almost $200 of dlc"
5/5 for the game1/5 for greed ng+
I like when ichiban looked directly at the camera and said "dont forget to purchase ALL our dlc with that infinite wealth of yours"
On Metacritic, the same conflicted nature can be observed, with even more reviews being negative than on Steam (25% to 10%). It’s a shame that one of 2024’s first amazing games has this annoying, and utterly unnecessary, stain on its otherwise stellar reputation. This is of course not the first game with such an onslaught of DLC, but locking features that have been basics so far behind a paywall definitely goes too far.
It apparently hasn’t hurt the game’s overall success though, as it is shaping up to be the most popular game in the series by far. During the launch weekend, Infinite Wealth peaked with 46,161 concurrent players on Steam, completely blowing the previous series record of 13,737, set by Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, out of the water.
And the game itself absolutely deserves this success. However, here’s hoping that SEGA tones it down with the excessive DLCs next time.