The Yakuza series—which has rebranded to Like a Dragon with recent entries—always features a number of different minigames and side activities for you to pour your time into. These range from simple games to earn extra cash, to deep, long-running side stories, with unique mechanics that only exist for the minigames. Across the franchise, you could lose hundreds of hours to these minigames.
Since fans love them so much, developer Ryu Ga Gotoku has only gotten bigger and better with them, but some of the older ones still hold a place in my heart. These are my picks for the best minigames in the Yakuza franchise.
For minigames that appear in multiple titles, I’ve listed my preferred version, but I also note other appearances.
8
Hostess Club Management (Yakuza 0)
Perhaps the standout minigame from Yakuza 0, the fairly modern prequel to the franchise, is the Hostess Club Management minigame. As Majima, you become the manager of Club Sunshine, where you must recruit, dress, and train an army of hostesses.
Once ready, you must assign them to potential customers, understand their signals to help support them, and upsell the best liquor money can buy. Majime has to take down rival clubs and recruit even more girls.
While this might sound like it has limited appeal, it functions more like a management sim with minigames built in, making it a ton of fun.
7
Baseball (Yakuza 6: The Song of Life)
Baseball appears in some form in most Yakuza games, but usually it’s only a batting cage minigame. That isn’t the case for Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, which features a more in-depth baseball experience, where you recruit new players, practice, and play full games against other teams in your adult baseball league. The ultimate aim is to become league champions.
6
Majima Construction (Yakuza Kiwami 2)
Majima Construction, also known as the Clan Creator minigame, appears in Yakuza Kiwami 2, although a slightly different version of the minigame also appears in Yakuza 6.
As Majima, you recruit former family members, and various workers into your construction company, which occasionally does actual construction projects. However, what you do in this minigame is large-scale wars against enemy gangs.
It plays with a top-down perspective, where you can order units to attack certain areas or activate special powers, like a real-time strategy game. Winning means listening to the Majima Construction anthem, the greatest reward.
5
Business Management (Yakuza: Like A Dragon)
In Yakuza: Like A Dragon, you can run Ichiban Confections. In this minigame you must purchase new businesses and place employees you recruit elsewhere in the game to maximize profits.
It’s simple at face value, but it has some incredible depth to the amount of businesses you can have and the quality of employees at your disposal. It also offers some incredible rewards, as you can make a ton of money running these businesses, and it unlocks an additional party member, making it important in addition to being fun.
4
Dondoko Island (Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth)
As the franchise has shifted into its turn-based RPG era, the minigames have grown in size and depth to match the genre. That has been taken to an extreme in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where several of the minigames feel like they could be a whole video game on their own.
Dondoko Island is an island covered in garbage that you need to turn into a functioning resort, while fending off pirates trying to dump more garbage on it. It’s one-part Animal Crossing and one-part resort management, offering a ton of depth as you work your way to a five-star resort.
3
Pocket Circuit (Yakuza 0)
Pocket Circuit racing is a minigame where you have small RC cars that race around small man-made tracks. You have to customize your car, changing out the frame, wheels, and battery to fit the track and beat your opponents.
While the version in Yakuza 0 is the best version of the minigame, it also appears in Yakuza Kiwami and Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. You need to collect car parts and find rivals around town as well, letting the open world aspects of the game feed into the Pocket Circuit minigame.
2
Sujimon (Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth)
Sujimon is a 3v3 monster collector and battler, clearly inspired by the Pokémon series. While it appears in a smaller, less involved way in Yakuza: Like A Dragon, the version in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth has some incredible depth.
You can track down new Sujimons (who are just goons and wacky characters), capture them, and battle them. There is a whole league to battle through, tons to collect, and multiple ways to level them up. In an even more surprising move, the battle system is a different turn-based system compared to regular combat, opting for a 3v3 meter system.
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1
Dragon Kart (Yakuza: Like A Dragon)
While it won’t live up to the high bar set by the Mario Kart series, both Yakuza: Like A Dragon and Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii feature kart racing minigames.
There are a variety of karts for you to purchase and upgrade, multiple cups to compete in, and a bunch of wacky racers for you to take down. The races take place in different parts of the open world map, so while you won’t be blown away by the courses, the racing itself is quite solid and the items you can use are fun too. Plus, it doesn’t cost $80 and comes with a whole other game.
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