More and more developers are abandoning their own classic game engines to focus solely on Unreal Engine 5. But Ryu ga Gotoku Studio has so far not done this, and first and foremost uses their in-house Dragon Engine (although to some extent also Unity and Unreal Engine), like in the recently released Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
And this is nothing that's going to change anytime soon, as Dragon Engine is considered a critical part of Ryu ga Gotoku Studio. In an interview with Type, the studio's technical manager Yutaka Ito to learn more about this, and he explained that using a general-purpose engine makes it harder and considerably slower to get things done fast (following Google translation):
"When creating Ryu ga Gotoku, we absolutely must not do away with the Dragon Engine , and we will continue to develop in-house engines.
Dragon Engine concentrates its development resources on the functions necessary for Ryu ga Gotoku and the biggest advantage is that new features can be added quickly. If you are using a general-purpose engine, you can send an email to support and get a response in about 3 days, but if you ask the programmer next to you, it will only take 5 seconds. I think this difference is huge."
This doesn't always mean they have the best sollution though, and Ito thinks the programmers need to be ready to step up and keep an eye out for the competition:
"However, it is not a good idea to think that 'our game engine is the best!' In particular, I believe that we programmers should always have a sense of crisis: 'This is better over there, and we have to work harder'."
He also touched upon the design philosophy behind the highly successful Yakuza/Like a Dragon series and said: "If it's not fun to touch, it's not Ryu ga Gotoku". And we definitely think they got that right, as explained in our Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth review.