Like a Dragon Gaiden Won’t Have an English Dub at Launch

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name arrives next month, but it won’t have an English dub at launch.

That might not seem that unusual since every other Kazuma Kiryu-fronted Yakuza game had a Japanese voice track. Well, apart from the first, which included Mark Hamill as Goro Majima, but the less said about that the better.

But Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio have been leaning towards including English dubs. Yakuza: Like a Dragon and both Judgement games came with an English dub. So what’s going on?

As spotted by Twitter user Knoebel, Like Dragon Gaiden is getting an English dub, it’ll just arrive later. “Implemented in a post-launch patch distribution,” reads the footnote on Sega’s official Like a Dragon Gaiden page. 

Related: The Best Order to Play the Yakuza/Like a Dragon Series

Sega has yet to offer any specific explanation as to why the dub’s arriving later, it seems likely it just isn’t finished. There were a lot of raised eyebrows when it was revealed that Kazuma Kiryu was to be played by YouTuber Yong Yea, though it’s far from his first voice acting role. 

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name sees Kazuma Kiryu returning to active bottom kicking, bicycle-smacking duty. Well, sort of. He’s the game’s protagonist but after the events of previous games he’s supposed to be dead, so he’s very much undercover. 

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name arrives on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC on November 5.