SEGA has just released its latest Yakuza/Like a Dragon game on PC, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. Powered by the Dragon Engine, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.

For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64,  RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 546.17, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 23.11.1 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio added a few graphics settings for you to tweak. So, you can adjust the quality of Shadows, Texture Filtering, Geometry, and Reflections. A bit surprising, though – there’s no setting for Texture Quality. But hey, at least the devs threw in an FOV slider for you to tweak. And the best part? The game supports all the PC upscaling techniques from the get-go. So now, you can use NVIDIA DLSS 2 and Intel XeSS, alongside AMD FSR 2.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name does not feature a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, we used the first open area you encounter in the game. This scene should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game runs.

At 1080p/Max Settings, most of our GPUs were able to provide a smooth gaming experience. Even our AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 was able to run the game smoothly (provided you use a FreeSync monitor). On the other hand, our RTX4090 could push framerates higher than 240fps. This also clearly shows that the game does not require a high-end CPU, and most of you will be limited by the performance of your GPU, even at 1080p.

At 1440p/Max Settings, our top five GPUs had no trouble pushing framerates higher than 60fps at all times. As for Native 4K/Max Settings, the AMD Radeon RX7900XTX and NVIDIA RTX4090 were the only GPUs that could provide a constant 60fps experience.

Graphics-wise, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name looks fine. While it does not push the graphical boundaries of third-person games, it’s one of the best-looking Like a Dragon/Yakuza games. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t look bad. However, in 2023, we’ve seen games pushing amazing graphics. The Dragon Engine is clearly showing its age here, especially when it comes to its lighting system. That’s actually why Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio switched to Unreal Engine 4 for Like a Dragon: Ishin!. At least the game’s character models remain detailed. Not only that but Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name has an amazing art style. And, to be honest, that’s its saving grace.

All in all, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is butter smooth on PC. We didn’t experience any stutters, and the game will pre-compile its shaders at launch. And what about mouse movement? It’s a dream and way better than what we got in the past Yakuza/Like a Dragon games. And hey, the devs added some cool Quality of Life PC improvements, like an FOV slider and the PC upscaling techniques. Even if it’s not winning any awards for its graphics, the game runs like a charm on lots of different PCs. So, if you’re a fan of the Like a Dragon/Yakuza series, we’re telling you – PC is the way to go!