Like a Dragon: Ishin Review - A refreshing spin on the Yakuza universe
by GamertechAUpublished on
Experience a brand new Kiryu story in feudal Japan
The Ishin spin-off story is our next stop on our journey through RGG's Yakuza/Like a Dragon series.
Ishin features many of the key characters from throughout the Yakuza series with new names and filling their roles in pre-Meiji era Japan as samurai.
While there's some things that could be improved, the story was great, and it was fun to see great characters and their voice actors brought back for a whole new tale.
Plot
Not-Kiryu aka Sakamoto Ryoma returns to his home village of Tosa from training swordsmanship in Edo to find the class system brutally oppressing the citizens. Ryoma gets dragged into the bakufu loyalist party intending to take down the class system once and for all.
After some key events I can't really say here without spoiling, Ryoma flees to Kyo (Kyoto) and assumes a new identity.
Dive into a bustling pre-Restoration Kyoto, protect the citizens and save Japan. As is standard in the Yakuza series, everything lands on Not-Kiryu's shoulders.
Gameplay
Ishin has the real-time combat we're used to, not the JRPG turn-based that was added in Yakuza: LaD. Bring the hurt to your enemies with 4 different styles, being Brawler hand-to-hand combat while being able to pickup suitable bonking objects off the ground, Swordsman which as it sounds allows you to wield craftable katanas and other melee weapons, Gunman which gives you a pistol (which is really fun with a bunch of enemies stuck in a corridor) and Wild Dancer allowing you to use a fluid, fast-moving combat style combining sword and pistol.
As you level, you gain orbs which you add to class-specific skill trees to unlock new skills and improve your stats. I recommend spreading the love between all four styles as they each have some skills that improve your stats globally.
Combat is generally pretty smooth, however there's no animation cancelling and Ryoma likes long dramatic posing after completing a combo. This means if you're not careful, you can see a powerful attack coming but be completely unable to dodge or otherwise react to it due to being locked into a combo for a few seconds. Many of the previous Yakuza games had it too, but it's far more noticeable and painful in Ishin than in previous games. Wild Dancer helps reduce it a bit, but it's still present.
A big negative is the camera. In combat, it's rarely pointing in a direction that's useful and completely loses sight of the fight when you're close to a wall requiring constant manual adjustments.
Gear is really important in Ishin. Once the feature's unlocked, you can craft weapons and gear using a blacksmith tree system that would be familiar to Monster Hunter players. You can craft and loot decent weapons fairly easily, but if you want the good stuff it takes a LOT of grinding. You definitely don't need the best stuff, but it helps. The enemies can be HP sponges at times.
If you want the good stuff, you have to farm materials and a whole lot of money. A single top blade costs a lot more money to craft than you'd earn through a normal playthrough without really pushing the money-generating mechanics.
Most of the materials you need are farmed from Battle Dungeons, which are small challenge dungeons Ryoma must fight through and collect RNG drops. The loot table is specific to each dungeon. For some of the best stuff, you may need to run a specific dungeon over 100 times which slightly killed my enthusiasm for that feature.
The game features most of the minigames you'd be used to from the series, though more accurate for the era. ie. there's karaoke, but no computer screen feeding you the lines. The west are making inroads into Japan in this time, so there's casino games such as poker mixed in with traditional games.
There are a fair few of the staple Yakuza substories to discover. Unfortunately they seem to have regressed back to where none of them are shown on the map and you have to find them all yourself by lucking across them while exploring. They are engaging and high-quality though, so worth seeking out.
Some are also hidden behind improving your friendship with store owners and other citizens around town. Shop at stores and help randoms to improve their personal opinion of you and unlock additional stock and side story. As you do almost anything around town, you gain reputation in that part of town which changes what people say about you as you run around and interact with them giving a nice feeling of progression.
Tech
The game is built using Unreal Engine 4 instead of RGG's usual in-house Dragon engine. It runs pretty smoothly and looks pretty, though there are some standard glitches such as characters falling from the ceiling when a cutscene switches to them or NPCs getting stuck on corners while walking.
Unlike LaD, Ishin only has the original Japanese voices, no English dub to be found, however the voices are the experienced actors from throughout the Yakuza series and are excellent quality. Hidenari Ugaki especially as the unbeatable voice of Majima/Okita who has consistently been one of my favourite characters throughout the series.
Ishin has earned Platinum and Verified ratings for ProtonDB and Valve's Steam Deck respectively so it should run great out of the box for everyone.
Recommendation
Like a Dragon: Ishin is a solid spin-off of the Yakuza series. It's not connected to the story (though technically could be considered a prequel) and was a lot of fun.
There are some shortcomings such as the combat delay and the (optional) grind, but they don't take away from a solid and enjoyable game.
If you're a fan of the Yakuza series, I definitely recommend grabbing this one.