After Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio gave us an open world, turn-based JRPG with a new protagonist in a new location with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio overhauled the series’ formula, Like a Dragon: Ishin seems is the next logical step forward. After all, it takes the subtitle (a literal translation of the Japanese title) of the previous game, giving us another, different location, and like more and more games from Japanese developers, Swapped its proprietary Dragon Engine for Unreal. But in practice, it’s actually a case of looking back and meeting a long-standing demand from Western fans for almost a decade.
Set in Japan’s turbulent 1860s during the twilight of the ruling shogunate, Ijin first released on PS3 and PS4 in 2014, but has been considered less of a hit due to the series’ niche status and idiosyncrasies of the period. Probably forever localized for audiences outside of Japan. However, if there’s one samurai game that resonated with Western audiences, it’s certainly at a time when Japan was starting to trade with the West and ending its long period of self-isolation.
For newcomers, it’s just as good an entry point as Yakuza 0, though it’s set in 19th-century Kyoto (then called Kyo) rather than the usual urban grit of contemporary Tokyo. This is mainly because all the characters from the show are still there, just with different names, essentially playing different roles in the costume drama, so you don’t need to be familiar with their history.
Longtime fans, however, can appreciate what’s essentially the hottest list, as it’s not just longtime protagonist Kiryu as samurai and historical figure Sakomoto Ryoma (following Japanese tradition, first name after last name). Nearly every mainline entry returns to familiar faces, including resemblances to some of the characters in entries released after Ishin’s original release.
Unlike turn-based combat like a dragon, Yishin returns to real-time combat, only instead of using only fists, Ryoma is also armed with a katana and pistol, or both, and you can switch between each fighting style Toggles the click of the arrow keys. However, there is an odd dissonance in playing a character with the face of Kiryu, a stoic protagonist who usually doesn’t kill but often impales hundreds of street thugs with his blade and spills barrels of Blood – even if you usually see enemies that are alive and then kneel at your feet.
While there is an option to turn off the blood, unfortunately sticking to your fists doesn’t work well in the long run as the weapons just do more damage, especially since you can get better gear or craft them over the course of the campaign In the smithy. The more battles you take part in, the more soul orbs you earn, which are used to unlock skill trees for longer attack combos and unique Heat moves. These contextual attacks require filling the round heat meter to be usable, but result in more cinematic and brutal kills in the game. My favorite is that if you’re on the bank of a river, Ryoma knocks your opponent straight into the water for a quick finish. Even so, boss fights are a nasty, cavernous affair, several of which are worth lowering the difficulty, and it’s especially frustrating to use your meter for Heat moves only to see it deal negligible damage Excluding.
Although you are often attacked by ronin on the street, when you see someone causing trouble, you have to step in and teach them a lesson. Again, Ishin’s most compelling aspect comes from the optional distractions that, once your attention is drawn, you can’t help but investigate. Doing more side hustle activities also earns you virtue, which in turn can be used to unlock perks like improved running stamina or leveling up an entire farm sim minigame. Sometimes they’re goofy, some more rote, and you can bond by giving an NPC a requested item every time you pass by–although a lecherous lady’s quest for a very phallic-shaped vegetable does a bit of both. Even more interesting are the side quests, which provide a glimpse into the sociopolitical turmoil of the end of the Bakumatsu period.
For example, in a series of sub-stories, Ryoma encounters an anarchist hip-hop dance with the refrain “Ee ja nai ka,” which is often synonymous with social and political protest, but is also used as a nuisance populace An excuse to provoke mob violence. While this was a time when Japan was forced to open up due to “black ships” on its doorstep, we also meet Western characters who, while encountering xenophobic extremists, are also seriously seeking to people’s cultural exchange. These smaller, more human stories capture the mood of the times better than the lengthy exchanges of political intrigue in the main story. Ryoma is not just like Kiryu, he is also an idealist who wants to make Japan a better place, i.e. rid itself of a feudal class society, but this enthusiasm tends to get lost in the main story’s tendency to make us sit down for a lengthy explanation just Cutscenes of what happened, what really happened, or what will happen next.
But as the opening disclaimer states, Ishin is not a history lesson. While some scenes are based on actual events or events, it doesn’t hesitate to fabricate the setting to fit the well-worn Yakuza narrative tradition of betrayal and secret identities. It’s worth noting that our Kiryu doppelganger is actually two historical figures, revolutionary Ryoma and captain Saito Hajime, captain of the shogunate’s dreaded paramilitary Shinsengumi, but here the former is an alias for the latter.
Even more oddly, you’ll also find 19th century versions of real-life modern businesses like Don Quijote and Watami that have appeared in the mainline game, while you can still sing along on Singing Bar’s rhythm-based mini-stage “Baka Mitai” – the game supplanted the invention of karaoke a century later; even the localization team opted for a more modern translation, though I did feel that way when the NPC greeted Ryoma early on with “It’s been a minute” Very jarring.
These anachronisms might seem a bit distracting, but I find them more authentic and from RGG, a Japanese studio that started with Ishin as a Yakuza/Like a Dragon game for Japanese audiences, not about the game Japan is culturally enamored across the globe. It’s worth noting that there’s a film filter available that doesn’t go out of its way to mimic Kurosawa’s films.
Where Ishin does disappoint is that it doesn’t quite measure up to the other current-gen remakes we’ve seen. Despite being rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 4, it feels like the team is sticking to the same building plan as the original, with loading screens separating the interior from adjacent locations, and NPCs retaining the clumsy late PS3 puppet look and movements that make this This remake is more like Kiwami 1 than Kiwami 2. Of course, both games are still huge leaps forward from the PS2 originals, but Ishin is already a PS4 game, more of a remake than a remake. Perhaps due to the team’s inexperience with Unreal Engine, sometimes it was worse, characters outside of story animations were sometimes poorly lit, and I also had some unintentionally hilarious glitches like NPCs stuck in the environment or enemies suddenly levitating mid-combat in mid-air.
I can imagine that Japanese gamers might find this remake worth paying for even more controversy, but for western fans, who have been clamoring for Ishin for nearly a decade, finally being able to play this samurai spinoff in its entirety localized enough up. Yet even after the long wait, there’s a lingering sense that it could have been more.