Yakuza (Japanese: 龍が如く | Hepburn: Ryū ga Gotoku | also known as Like a Dragon) is a Japanese video game franchise created, owned, and published by Sega and published by Ryu Ga Gotoku. The franchise incorporates elements of the action-adventure, beat-'em up, and role-playing genres. The storyline premise for each franchise installment is typically a crime drama, with plot lines inspired by yakuza films and pre-millennial Japanese crime dramas. The most frequently featured protagonist is Kazuma Kiryu, a reformed yakuza associated with the Kanto-based Tojo Clan. While Kiryu often finds himself working with the leaders of the Tojo Clan to thwart conspiracies aimed against them, the primary theme of the series is his desire to leave the yakuza for good and start over by raising orphans and trying to assimilate into civilian life. The gameplay of Yakuza has the player controlling Kiryu (or another character, depending on the title) in an open world where he can fight random groups of punks and gangsters, take on side missions and activities to earn experience and money, learn new moves from non-player characters (NPC's), eat and drink at various restaurants, visit hostess and cabaret clubs, craft items, and engage in a variety of mini-games such as golfing, bowling, batting cages, video arcades, karaoke, and gambling games including poker, blackjack, Cee-lo, and Koi-Koi. The franchise has become a commercial and critical success, and as of 2021, Sega has reported that the video game series has sold a combined total of 19.8 million units in physical and digital sales since its debut in 2005. Strong sales of the games in its original Japanese market have led to the franchise's expansion to other media, including film adaptations.
Yakuza (Franchise)
Influences
for Influences in Project Riftborn (Live Action Original Film)
Suggested by nihilus
Niranthorn is a martial-arts prodigy wasting away in a dead-end life, his spirit rusted by monotony—until a cosmic rift tears open the sky and swallows him whole. He awakens inside The Ascension Spire, an off-world prison orbiting dying planets, where megacorporations conduct grotesque experiments fusing alien chi with human DNA. Each inmate is rebuilt, weaponized, and released into endless, escalating trials that climb the Spire floor by floor—a vertical labyrinth where survival is measured in kills. As Niranthorn learns to control the energy burning inside him, his strikes twist bone and metal, his body mutates with every victory. The deeper he ascends, the more the prison bends to the laws of a false divinity—gravity distorts, corridors shift, and opponents evolve mid-fight. Behind every battle lurks something watching: The Architects, who feed data from the Spire to every reality the rift touches. When Niranthorn reaches the top, he uncovers the truth—the Spire isn’t a prison. It’s a proving ground. Each survivor is broadcast to countless worlds in a cosmic battle royale, a blood-sport experiment to forge gods from humanity’s ruin. But Niran refuses to play their game. Instead, he breaks the system, shatters the Spire, and crashes through the atmosphere onto a neon-soaked Earth ruled by gangs and syndicates hunting for the next Ascendant. For the first time, he isn’t looking for a way home. He’s looking for a throne.
