How To Play The Yakuza Series In Chronological Order
Like a Dragon Gaiden Kiryu suit
The Like a Dragon series – known for most of its life as the Yakuza series – has just had its latest release, the elegantly titled Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. But as you may know, there was another Like a Dragon game released earlier this year, another set to release early next year, and over half a dozen other games in the series.
While the games titled Yakuza are fairly easy to follow chronologically, things took a turn with the seventh installment, and it seems like future games won’t be numbered at all — at least in English, the Japanese releases retain the numbering scheme. Because of this, it can be a bit difficult to know what the timeline for these games are at first glance.
Related: Two Like A Dragon Games Are Headed To Xbox Game Pass
To help guide you through the story ahead of next year’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, we’ve sorted all the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games in chronological order — that is, from the earliest in-universe point of time to the latest.
Yakuza Canon Games Timeline
The following is the timeline for games in the Yakuza series that are confirmed to take place during the series’ canon story. This includes spinoffs like Judgment and side stories like Like a Dragon Gaiden, but anything that’s ambiguously canon or very obviously non-canon will not be included. We've also skipped over games that didn't get released outside of Japan, despite some being canon — in part because it would balloon this article out massively, and in part because they're very tricky to get your hands on, even if you speak Japanese.
Yakuza 0
Yakuza 0 might be the first game in the series chronologically, but it wasn’t actually the first to be released, coming after the release of Yakuza 5. Yakuza 0 takes place in late-1988 to early-1989, some seventeen years before the first game in the series. It acts as a prequel to the whole series, telling the backstories of series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima.
Yakuza/Kiwami
Sega
Yakuza – retroactively called Yakuza 1 by fans – was the first game in the series to be released, and prior to the release of Yakuza 0, was the earliest point in the story’s timeline. Set in 2005, it introduces our dashing hero, Kazuma Kiryu himself, after having spent a decade in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. A remake of the game, called Yakuza Kiwami, was built on the Yakuza 0 engine and is by far the best way to play it today. It features an almost identical story, but has certain parts expanded.
Yakuza 2/Kiwami 2
Yakuza 2, as you might expect, takes place shortly after the first game, in 2006. It’s a pretty straightforward sequel, and like its predecessor, it got a remake — this time shortly after the release of Yakuza 6. It more or less tells the same story as the original game, but again has some expanded sections just to flesh it out a bit.
Yakuza 3
You’re not going to believe this, but Yakuza 3 takes place right after Yakuza 2. I know, it’s shocking. Yakuza 3 starts in very early 2007, goes through to 2008, and finally 2009, though it’s unclear if it ends in 2009 or in early 2010. Either way, it, too, follows Kiryu’s story, though that won’t last for too long. Which brings us to…
Yakuza 4
Sega
Yakuza 4 takes place in 2010, shortly after the events of Yakuza 3. Unlike previous games in the series, the fourth entry in the Yakuza series sees you playing as multiple different characters – financier Shun Akiyama, Yakuza assassin Taiga Saejima, and Masayoshi Tanimura, a kind-hearted corrupt cop – with Kiryu not making an appearance until quite late in the game. Akiyama and Saejima would make appearances in later games, but sadly this is the last we’ll see of Tanimura, at least at the time of publishing.
Yakuza 5
There’s a short gap between Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5, with the latter taking place in late-2012. It took the foundation that Yakuza 4 built and had five playable characters — Saejima and Akiyama return alongside Kiryu, and Kiryu’s adoptive daughter Haruka Sawamura and baseballer-turned-journalist Tatsuo Shinada join the fold. It took years for Yakuza 5 to leave Japan, but it’s available on just about everything now as part of the Yakuza Remastered Collection.
Yakuza 6
Yakuza 6 briefly shows some events right after the end of Yakuza 5 in 2012, but then takes a big leap forward to late-2016. Yakuza 6 returns to having just a single protagonist – Kazuma Kiryu – and for a long while it seemed like it would be the last game to feature the leading man in the leading role. As a side note, this is the only game in the series where you don’t either fight against or as Goro Majima, which doesn’t really mean much but is interesting nonetheless.
Like a Dragon Gaiden
Sega
Okay, this is where things get very complicated. Gaiden is the most recent game in the series, but its main goal is to bridge the gap between Yakuza 6, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. As such, it starts after Yakuza 6 – in 2018 – but before Like a Dragon, but covers the events before, during, and after that game. That means there will be spoilers, so even if it technically fits into the timeline here, we’d strongly recommend playing this after Like a Dragon.
Judgment
Judgment is a side story in the Yakuza series, set away from the main players in the main series. It starts in December 2018, and tells the story of private detective and disgraced former lawyer Takayuki Yagami. It’s very different in tone and content compared to other Yakuza games, but it is set within the same universe and shows the fallout of much of the events of Yakuza 6. It finishes in early-2019, just before the events of the next main game.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is called Ryū ga Gotoku 7 (Like a Dragon 7) in Japan, and as you might expect, is the next mainline game in the series. It starts in 2019, after all-new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga has finished serving his 18-year prison sentence — a clever way to explain his absence from prior games, all things considered. This is a totally different kind of game, taking the form of a turn-based RPG rather than a brawler, but it does feature appearances from some of our favorite characters from games past.
Lost Judgment
Sega
Lost Judgment is a follow-up to Judgment, taking place in late-2021 into early 2022. In this game, we once again see the fallout of the massive events of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, with the Yakuza in tatters and the cities of Kamurocho and Ijincho rapidly trying to fill a power vacuum. As with Judgment before it, the tone and content is quite different from the main series, but it does return to its brawler roots, and deals much more directly with events in the main series compared to the first game.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
And we come to the final game, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Called Ryū ga Gotoku 8 in Japan, this is the first main series game in the West to use the Like a Dragon title instead of Yakuza, due to the events of the game prior. We don’t know exactly what year Infinite Wealth takes place in yet, but we can be reasonably sure it’ll be in 2023 or 2024, as a few years have passed since Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Both Kiryu and Ichiban will be protagonists in this one, which is an exciting prospect.
Yakuza Non-Canon Games
There have been a few non-canon games in the Yakuza series, though the majority of them never really made it outside of Japan. Of the two that did, though, one is pseudo-historical fiction that could potentially be canon – but isn’t confirmed either way – and the other is so obviously non-canon that it probably doesn’t need any kind of confirmation. Like the canon games timeline, we've excluded games that never got an English release, of which there are a few. These aren’t presented in any particular order, they’re just the order I wrote them in.
Related: Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth Gets A January Release Date
Yakuza: Dead Souls
Yakuza: Dead Souls is very much a spinoff, set in a non-canon timeline shortly after the events of Yakuza 4. In it, a zombie outbreak occurs and it’s up to our heroes – Akiyama, Majima, Ryuji Goda (a side character in the main games), and of course, Kazuma Kiryu – to pick up some guns and blast some undead ghouls in a third-person shooter. It’s very weird, and unfortunately not easily accessed in 2023, being locked to the PS3.
Like a Dragon: Ishin!
Sega
Like a Dragon: Ishin! is a remaster of a Japanese game of essentially the same name that was originally released on PS3 and PS4. Set during the end of the Edo Period in Japan – 1866-1867, to be exact – this samurai game features fictionalized versions of historic figures like Sakamoto Ryoma that look a lot like our modern day heroes. It’s not explicitly said whether or not Ryoma is Kiryu’s ancestor, though it is hinted at, leaving the canon very much up in the air.
