Co-op mods are all the rage these days, partly thanks to that FromSoft modder who's added seamless multiplayer to everything from Elden Ring to Sekiro to Dark Souls Remastered. And now, Yakuza sickos can get the same treatment.
The Intertwined Fates mod for Yakuza 5 lets you play almost the entire game in co-op or with an AI-controlled partner. Obviously, for most of the criminal adventure, main man Kazuma Kiryu is entirely alone, so modder Jhrino simply inserted everyone's favorite goof Ichiban Kasuga where he doesn't belong.
It doesn't make much canonical sense since Ichiban, the hero of the seventh and eighth mainline Like a Dragon games, isn't even in Yakuza 5, but that's the magic of modding, eh?
The only place where the mod doesn't quite work with an AI-controlled Ichiban is in free-roam. That aside, dance battles with Haruka are now fully playable in co-op, as is hunting, the taxi minigame, and idol battles. It wouldn't be functional Yakuza co-op unless the minigames were also playable with a friend, I guess.
Ichiban also had his own moveset and even appears in cutscenes, though if you find his silent presence in the background of the drama distracting, you can remove him by following the instructions on the NexusMods page. There's even an option to have him in cutscenes but not gameplay, if you like. While the mod is also designed as a local co-op experience, there is some software detailed on the page that'll let you play online, too.
Years before we learned of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, Majima's voice actor pitched a JRPG about the fan-favorite anti-hero and was told "that's not going to happen"
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