14 DAY TRIAL // 
It only took 10 years for the western audience to get a taste of the side stories imagined by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio for the Yakuza series. Renamed Like a Dragon with a more complicated release schedule than the artificial ingredients of a Twinkie, while waiting for the sequel, the fans can enjoy a detour to the feudal Japan with the adventures of Sakamoto Ryoma. Prepare your katanas and guns for a real showdown!
Like a Dragon: Ishin! Replaces the shiny night life of Kamurocho and the sharply pressed dresses of Kazuma Kiryu with the dusty streets of Japan’s countryside where people stroll around wearing traditional haoris. The new game takes us back to 1860, a period when the western world already had a foothold in a world where the time of shoguns has already started to set.
Our hero, Sakamoto Ryoma – any resemblance with Kazuma is of course intentional – after returning to his home village lands in a political conflict that will see his benefactor murdered and himself exiled. This initial period serves more like an extended tutorial covering the basis and establishing the premises of the story. The real action begins 1 year later in the city of Kyo, where our low-level samurai hero tries to uncover a larger than expected conspiracy.
What I really love about the game is if you're a Yakuza fan, then you know exactly what to expect. More importantly, the game delivers exactly what you expect from a Yakuza game. On the other hand, newcomers are in for a revenge story with our hero being one of the last pillars of morality with several twists, over the top scenes and overdramatized character arcs. The result is much closer to the original direction of the franchise than the latest installments that will please a big chunk of the audience.
Those familiar with the older Yakuza games will have a weird feeling of déjà vu feeling when it comes to the characters. Most of them are built on one or another historic figure from Japan, but all of them wear the faces of well-known figures from the saga. We already pointed out the fact that our main character is the carbon copy of Kazuma Kiryu, but without revealing too much we can see that all the familiar faces make a return.
Among the return to the old we find also fresh twists to shake things up. Such is the focus on your swords and firearms, the importance of kung fu taking a small step back. Your main tool will be the various katanas that can slice up any kind of opposition you will encounter. In a typical fashion for the series, the streets are littered with various undesirables that will take offense at the sight of Sakamoto and will provoke a fight.
In those moments the game world morphs into a small instance that you cannot leave until you have defeated your enemies, or you have been defeated. You can use various moves, weapons and even objects laying around to put a smackdown on the bandits, outlaws or groups ronin acting out. At the end of each fight, you will get a summary about how well you performed which will determine your rewards.
The system works without too many flaws and is very satisfying, despite relying on a foundation laid almost two decades ago. The only comment in this instance is that immersion is broken by the fact that if you choose to pick-up a shiny object from the ground, the enemies strolling around tend to disappear into nothing in front of your eyes. This is one of the few issues that can distract you from a truly entertaining experience.
Next to the experience points you will also gather Virtue that you can use to unlock various useful bonuses from expanding your inventory capacity to improving your reputation. You get a list to guide you, but basically any activity in the game from praying to fishing, to forming relationships will bring you Virtue. As expected in a Yakuza game, there are plenty to do next to the main storyline, the developers finding a way to also include a karaoke bar in the game, an activity apparently just as popular as crafting better equipment.
The game world is pretty large and full of side activities, yet it somehow feels somewhat empty. You can see the patterns governing the NPCs around you and the way they act around you feels quite robotic. The random spawning of opposition can only partially balance out this feeling, distracting you from your surroundings.
Although short we still have the spell breaking loading screens between various areas. This is a bit hard to fully justify since as we know from other recently released games with much more complex graphics and worlds there are plenty of ways to hide these transitions.
The graphics itself feel like a huge evolution compared to the original release, but still a bit behind the latest releases. We already know that the current generation of consoles can handle more than Ishin! Throws at them, but at least we can praise the developers for thoroughly optimizing the game. There are no frame rate drops, no bugs or annoying glitches, the latest Like a Dragon being an enjoyable experience from the get-go.
The Good
- The usual over the top story
- Plenty of activities
- Greatly satisfying combat system
The Bad
- Some game mechanics feel like fillers
- Loading screens could have been avoided
- The graphics feel like a step back
Conclusion
There is plenty of content to keep you entertained, and the game diversifies and adds new gameplay elements up to the end. It might not be the most memorable of the series, but it is a game that is worthy both of the Yakuza and Like a Dragon series.
Review code was provided by the publisher.
