Every time a new entry in the RGG Studio universe of Yakuza/Like A Dragon gets announced, the same question surfaces at the top of every game discussion, every Reddit thread, and even every gaming forum (the few of them that are left at least). “Do I need to play the other games first?” and “Where do I start the series at? Can I skip any games?” It’s a reasonable thing to ask of this franchise, which has over a dozen games, a few remakes, and even some story retcons in recent entries like Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut and Yakuza 3 Kiwami & Dark Ties. But for Stranger Than Heaven, the answer is genuinely just no, or well, not really. You can walk into this game having never touched a single Yakuza title in your entire life and still have a rich, complete, and emotionally meaningful experience.
You may wonder why I say “not really”, as it leaves the door open for potential spoilers, but here’s the thing about Stranger Than Heaven that makes it different from any other “no prior knowledge required” RGG entry: the less that you know, the more you’re going to want to find out afterwards. The more that you know, the more you’re going to feel a sense of awe and excitement towards the lore, as you’ve already been deeply connected to the franchise over countless game entries. This is due to Stranger Than Heaven serving as the Tojo Clan’s birth, the main faction seen throughout every Yakuza entry, but due to this being the birth of the Tojo Clan, everything you’ll experience comes long before the time of Kiryu Kazuma or Ichiban Kasuga.
Now, I’ve been a Yakuza fan for years. I’ve watched Kiryu Kazuma walk through countless impossible situations, endless fights on top of the Millennium Tower, and even fight zombies in the PS3-exclusive title Yakuza: Dead Souls. Despite this, I promise not to throw out any spoilers in this article as I’m aware there will be a lot of people who would rather not know that stuff. What I will say is I know the Tojo Clan, the history, the internal politics, the weight that is carried throughout every game in the series with it, and when the very first moments of the Stranger Than Heaven showcase had Makoto Daito announcing he was founding an organization for “Yakuza types like us, a place where people with nowhere else to go can live on their terms,” called the Tojo Clan, I got super excited.
Yakuza 0 VS Stranger Than Heaven
The easiest frame for understanding what Stranger Than Heaven would be, relative to the rest of the RGG catalog, is Yakuza 0. That game tells the story of a young Kiryu Kazuma and Majima Goro before either of them became the legends that the series builds around. It’s technically a prequel, but it’s also the best entry point the franchise has ever had because the story it tells is complete and emotionally satisfying entirely on its own terms, allowing players to sink their teeth deep into that entry if they’re really interested in Yakuza before they move on to the other titles.
Stranger Than Heaven is operating on that same principle, but with an even longer runway into the past. Yakuza 0 is set 30-ish years before the mainline games, while Stranger Than Heaven begins in 1915, over a century before the Yakuza series properly began. We will experience the story of Makoto Daito for over 50 years before we even get to where 0 begins. So this isn’t a prequel in the narrow sense that it fills in gaps, but instead it’s the foundation that everything else was built on, told as its own complete saga.
For newcomers, that means you’re getting a 50-year story about two outsiders carving out a place for themselves in a Japan that doesn’t know where to put them. You don’t need to know anything about the Tojo Clan, about Kamurocho, about Kiryu, about anyone. The story works without any of that. The characters earn your investment on their own terms, across five cities and five decades of history.
For longtime fans, however, every single thing that the story builds toward is going to land with a weight that newcomers simply won’t feel in the same way. This isn’t because the story is worse without any context, but because you know what Makoto Daito’s legacy eventually becomes. The organization he founded is the same one that Kiryu spends his life wrapped around. The seeds Daito plants grow into the tree that defines every Yakuza and Like a Dragon game that comes after. Knowing that doesn’t ruin anything, but it makes every moment feel like it matters twice as much.
So, Do You Need to Play The Yakuza Games First?
The honest answer is simply no. Stranger Than Heaven, as mentioned above, is designed to work as a first RGG game, and based on everything shown so far, it absolutely will. If you consider Yakuza 0 a franchise prequel, Stranger Than Heaven is a prequel’s prequel. The story of Makoto Daito and Yu Shinjo is complete, emotionally driven, and grounded in characters who will earn your investment entirely on their own terms, even without the branches of the massive tree that the Tojo Clan is; instead, they are the ones who plant the seed for that tree. You don’t need twenty years of franchise context to care about these two outsiders who are trying to build something that matters.
But if you are a long-term fan, if you’ve followed Kiryu from his early days in Yakuza 0 all the way through to the latest entry in the franchise lore-wise, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, then Stranger Than Heaven is going to feel like something especially rare. The chance to finally see where it all started. Not as a substory or reference buried in some Amon fight at 100% completion, but as a full, 50-year-long story built with the same craft and passion that made you care about this franchise in the first place.
Play it either way, but just know that if you start here, you’re probably not stopping here. The Yakuza / Like a Dragon franchise is very special.
