Finished in 2023

Let me just start by saying that I very much enjoyed this game. I’m very glad they decided on a western release. Honestly a great stand-alone game and one of the more fulfilling endings in the franchise.

However the grind in this game is anything but fun. Having played through the series i’m used to quite a bit of it but this game takes the cake. The substories weren’t as memorable as the ones in the main series either. I felt like both of these take away from the overall rating. Settling for 3,5 stars now.

"To all my brothers in Japan...
Tomorrow is yours!"

Uma experiência diferenciada dos demais da franquia.

O spin-off é um remake extremamente bem feito (padrão de qualidade RGG) possui uma história fechada, tornando opcional que você tenha jogado qualquer outro jogo da série.

A história se passa durante o período Edo, na cidade de Kyo, uma versão fictícia de Kyoto dos anos de 1860, onde por sinal, trás o destaque do game, você é um samurai!

Portanto, como uma boa história de samurai romantizada, espere um bom drama, muitas reviravoltas, traições, lutas exageradas e muito bem coreografadas (dignas dos clássicos shonen), além disso aborda temas relacionados a preconceito, honra e patriotismo de forma polida e madura.

O combate segue a mesma premissa do Yakuza Kiwami e o Yakuza 0, a diferença está nos estilos dessa vez. O game apresenta 4 estilos de luta: Brawler, Gunman, Wild Dancer e Swordsman. Se tratando de um game de samurai, eu particularmente não utilizei o Brawler que é o único estilo que se repete na série. Disparado meu estilo favorito foi o Wild Dancer, que utiliza revolver e katana ao mesmo tempo (melhor dos dois mundos), é rápido, tem dano em área e é estiloso!

Se tratando de exploração, como de praxe na franquia o game conta com diversos minigames, assim, irei citar apenas as novidades. Another life é com certeza o destaque dentre o minigames, pois o game vira um slice-of-life que te permite plantar e cozinhar alimentos. Temos também o minigame de cortar madeira e o genial Cannonball, onde você corta/atira em bolas de canhão!
Acha que acabou? Em Ishin você pode dançar, pescar, trabalhar em um estabelecimento servindo Udon, e caso você esteja cansado os jogos tradicionais de aposta japonês, você pode também apostar em corrida de galinhas.

Num geral, Like a Dragon: Ishin! é um ótimo game que não fica muito atrás dos demais da franquia, ele tem seu valor e seu diferencial, além de ser uma boa opção de largada para curiosos da franquia.

A polished up PS3 port that is an alright time.

Pretty soon after I got into the Yakuza franchise (thanks to the PC Port of 0 in 2018) I learned that there were two spinoff games that take place in the real historical japanese past, with characters from the franchise filling in like actors of real historical figures. Immediately I wanted these two games to come out in the west. Reading up on them some people consider Ishin to be one of the best stories done in the franchise. But hey now that one of them is here (Hoping for Kenzan to get some kind of re-release as that one sounds more interesting from a narrative standpoint, Miyamoto Musashi was quite the character) does it live up to the hype? Eh, sorta.

Immediately I just viewed this game as all my friends from Kamurocho putting on a play, it's much funnier that way and I don't know enough Japanese history to be able to draw comparisons to the actual accounts of this period so anything crazy there is lost on me. It's fun seeing which characters appear and what roles they have in the story. I'm aware that a decent portion were recast to give parts to characters from Y:LaD and Y0, not a huge loss as I don't think I remember most of the people replaced when I looked them up. Some of the choices felt odd like Shibusawa being the sworn brother to Kiryu's Sakamoto Ryoma, or Adachi being the head of the Shinsengumi. However on the other end I'm glad that Mine plays a major role in this story as Hijikata who stays a close ally of Sakamoto. I felt that his character was underdeveloped in 3 and had the building blocks of someone who could've really been great. Majima also goes method and is himself even in 1800s japan. My view of it being a play is reinforced by the directors statements on the lack of Kasuga Ichiban being that joining a murderous samurai group would be against his morals. All the historical theming is fun really, I enjoyed the historical renditions of karaoke songs.

The narrative is fine enough, even if its based off of history its also just the usual Yakuza story but with samurai. I wasn't ever wowed or super engrossed with the story but there are some interesting moments and cool creative decisions along the way.

The combat is probably the best it's ever been for the traditional RGG game, even better than Lost Judgment. Each fighting style has its Pros and Cons, it feels necessary to switch between them depending on the situation, and they all feel great to use. It's especially funny to pull out a gun and blast down bandits with a 45 combo like the modern day Kiryu would. Equipment also matters for the first time in the franchise! Even if its tied to a pointlessly in-depth Monster Hunter crafting system that the game really doesn't need with how not varied combat really is. Different weapons have different effects and you can customize your weapons if you really get into it! probably helpful for harder difficulties/side content/Samurai Amon. Not a lot to say about Trooper Cards, I just equipped the celebrity guest ones and forgot about it, used the abilities but didn't worry about the intricacies too much.

On the other end of things this game is so clearly a weird inbetween of a remaster and a remake of a PS3 game. The combat is tightned up, areas are combined, and the visuals look nicer than the Yakuza Remastered Collection BUT the maps are bafflingly laid out+annoying to navigate and the story has the same pacing issues I feel plagued all 3 of the PS3 games with short chapters and rushed developments. I don't have any huge huge complaints but I ust felt underwhelmed with the game by the end. I don't see myself going back and finishing any of the side stuff here either, none of it feels all that compelling to visit.

Not a bad time by any means but it's so average it didn't feel like it was a super necessary play to me. If you want to get into the franchise but see that there's 8, soon to be 9 main games with 2 handheld spinoffs, a zombie what if, 2 samurai spinoffs, a whole side franchise in the same city, and a recently released side story for the main character of the first 7 games and start to feel overwhelmed OR you're on the fence. You can probably skip this or wait for a sale.

I wasn't expecting much, both from the opinions I heard and because it was an old spin off, and perhaps it was this low expectation that made me like this game so much, I'll start with the combat, which was the point that interested me most, when it it works, it's peak combat, but when it doesn't work it's Yakuza 4 Seishiro Munakata boss fight level of shit, of the 4 styles, fist, sword, gun and sword + gun, you'll only use two, fist is useless from the beginning, and the pistol starts OP but it quickly becomes obsolete when enemies start to have more health, leaving only Swordsman and Wild Dancer as really viable styles, and both are very enjoyable to use when they work, just cutting everyone or spinning with the sword while shooting, you really feel very powerful, but it is in some bosses that the flaws in the combat show themselves, often the bosses can have attacks that come faster than you can react, because you generally give preference to the Swordsman in 1v1 fights because it deasl more damage than the Wild Dancer, but it is impossible to execute a dodge or defense while you are already in an attack animation, and seeing as how the bosses give few openings for attack, you have to make the most of them, but out of nowhere they can just start a combo that stun locks you or a grab with absurd damage, I often felt that the combat was unfair and slow, but it still worked well for most of the game.

The story is by far the point that surprised me the most and that I liked the most, it easily enters my top 5 of the franchise, it is a grand plot but at the same time very personal, conflicts of ego, identity, morals, politics, everything very well developed, directed and with believable characters, and the icing on the cake is that all the characters have familiar faces from other games in the franchise, it's really cool for anyone who is a fan of the franchise to see Majima, Mine, Date and Kuze in the same room, and the characters manage to have similar personalities to their original versions but still distinct enough to not simply be the same character, I have literally no complaints in this regard.

The side content is the point that leaves the most to be desired, the game has practically 70 substories, which seems like a lot, but half or more of these substories are simply a 2-minute dialogue where an NPC asks you for an item, you deliver it, a friendship starts and that's it, the substory is over and now you can give more items to the NPC to fill his friendship to just gain virtue, which are the equivalent of the Completion Points from the other games, the substories that are REALLY stories are good and in the level of quality that you expect from the franchise, but they are buried by this stupid decision to make a substory for each friendship. Regarding the minigames, there isn't much to complain about, it has the same classics from the franchise and the addition of some new ones such as dancing, chicken racing and some minigames for hostesses, all of which are very fun and do a good job of distracting from the main story.

The songs and ambience as usual are impeccable, they nailed the setting of Edo period Japan, and the OST is not among my favorites in the franchise but it is very good and fits very well.

Now something that I don't usually talk about in my reviews but I think it's pertinent to comment this time, the game's performance on eighth gen consoles is strange, sometimes the game runs smoothly at 60fps and sometimes at 15, the graphics are also sometimes beautiful and sometimes pixelated and strange, and I also had 2 crashes, it's clear that RGG didn't know how to optimize Unreal very well.

Final rating: 8.5/10, 4/5 stars.

Grande parte da experiencia se carrega na estética samurai, o que é bom, cumpre a proposta nesse quesito, e ver os personagens da saga em contextos diversos, qualquer interação fora do comum eu me divertia. Sua narrativa tem um bom pacing, e tem uns temas interessantes de identidade, patriotismo japonês, etc e tal.
O maior problema é disparadamente a gameplay, é muito repetitiva, apesar de ter 4 styles quase nunca é necessário o jogador alterar, o sistema de tropas é desnecessário, o ferreiro é ruim, muita mecânica falha. Eu me divertia especificamente com o roll da Wild Dancer, desviar no timing tem seu valor, mas claro, cansa e não é recompensador all time. Além disso, o port é bem preguiçoso, tem uns problemas que eu nunca vi na franquia, com carregamento de texturas, delay nos menus, coisas bem amadoras.

I think this one has a lot of problems
They're mostly when it comes to how it goes about pacing and progression
The story itself is good, very tight pacing and good story beats, what you'd expect out of LAD and it has the same quality

My main problem comes in the form of design choices, everything is extremely grindy and, to add to that, very repetitive and boring to actually grind
Trying to 100% this game sounds like hell, just hours and hours of doing the same thing over and over again

Thankfully, you can just choose not to engage with any of this and you'll beat the game just fine, it's not a very difficult thing
Still, I usually enjoy maxing out some minigames or substories, but this entry just drained away all my will to do so, it made me a bit sad

Still, an enjoyable game, despite not being one of the strongest entries in the series

I did not enjoy this game as much as the other Yakuza / Like A Dragon games. Firstly, because of the setting & time period, it doesn’t quite have the same insane feeling of the other games in the series. It’s still a Yakuza game, but just not quite as absurd as what I am used to. The absurdity is part of the appeal of this game series for me, so the absence of that made it feel a bit dull. Secondly (and this may be because of the platform I chose to play on and not the game itself), as far as I could tell, there are a lot of things that you cannot skip in this game that you can easily skip in other games. Several substories & cutscenes make you go through the dialogue completely, there is no skip button. It made things a bit tedious and annoying at times. These games are not short and they have a lot of unnecessary dialogue in general. Not being able to skip certain scenes was unacceptable to me. Also, there are no gambling cheat items in this game at all. I do not enjoy a lot of the gambling games, so cheat items usually come in handy for me. The minigames in this one also were not as entertaining to me as the minigames in some of the other games. One highlight of the game was the “Another Life” content. I really enjoyed having the elements of cooking & fishing & gardening in the game. They were not very fleshed out as far as the tasks themselves, but it was nice to have them there. I also enjoyed the element of having the Shinto Priest and the shrines in the game. Overall, I would say I enjoyed the game, but I would also say that it’s probably my least favorite Yakuza / Like A Dragon game so far.

Like A Dragon: Ishin! set a personal benchmark for "cinematic storytelling." Ishin, like many RPGs, is dialogue heavy and dramatic. However, Ishin also has a clear understanding of mise-en-scène and cinematography. Ishin uses cinematics to enhance inherently passive conversations. Eleven hours of cutscenes sounds like hell, but the camerawork and editing and lighting is so tight that despite having literally no way to interact with them, I was still glued to the screen. A lot cutscenes feel like they are there as a replacement to gameplay, like the developers could not find a way to tie the action to interaction. In this case, Ishin makes the best of it and instead relies on conventional filmmaking techniques with its camera moves and editing to still give the dialogue an added layer of urgency and, in turn, making the transition between flashy combat and melodrama more tonally consistent.

When the game is not in heavy dialogue revealing the sixtieth plot twist of the second chapter, it is still great. The combat, although the highlight of RGG games, feels rigid and bordering on outdated. The systems and location surrounding the combat feel a whole lot more polished. For one, the world, a miniature Kyo, is perfectly sized. The city is just big enough that it manages plenty of geographic diversity, but also small enough that I was able to naturally learn my way around. By the time the full map was revealed, I could be told where to go and know how to get there without relying on the minimap or fast travel. This allowed for me to experience a lot more side quests. I am mixed on the mandatory interruption when triggered, but they are usually short enough that they make for welcome breathers. The best part of the city is the sound: there is always a light buzz of conversation. Whether that be overhearing actual conversations or just running down the main streets with the sounds of people and food, Ishin captures the intimacy of cities more accurately than most games.

Like a Dragon: Ishin! does an exceptional job of justifying why medium sized (by RPG standards) games need to exist. Ishin has a respectable scope, but by having a thorough understanding of film grammar and city design, Ishin still lets me get lost in conflict and farming.

Having played 6 entries in the series at this point I am fully attuned to what these games offer. 20 to 25 hour stories with twists galore, wacky sidequests/minigames and men expressing their emotions through their fists. I mention this because if you have played other games in the series, Ishin follows the exact same set up almost to a tee albeit with the backdrop of 1800s Edo Japan. The lack of change outside of the setting while initially comforting also led to me being burnt out with the game sooner than I did with other entries. That being said some of the ways the game does differentiate itself are great.

The city of Kyo is a refreshing new setting that does a good job of differentiating itself from the series usual setting of Kamurocho. The addition of forming bonds with the citizens of the city and helping them out not only made it so there was always something for me to do but also added additional depth to city that I wish some of the other games took note of. I loved that fact that when I helped NPCs with problems they started to react to my presence positively as I roamed around the city. Kyo also has great parts of it that are just fun to walk around. Whether it be the bustling main street or a quiet temple path Ishin succeeds in one of my favorite aspects of the franchise, that being it's fun to just run around town.

One of the largest changes to the game is its story with many beloved Yakuza taking the roles of real life historical figures that existed during this time. Through this you get the usual structure of a Yakuza story with the slow unraveling of a grander plot being orchestrated by unknown enemies. The context that this based on historical events, albeit obviously fictionalized in many ways, made the story plenty entertaining to go through even with is predictable setups.

For the most part, I had a blast with Ishin. For the first 12 hours I was glued to it with me wanting to do as much of the side content and even engage with its crafting system which I am usually not a fan of. Past this point however the intense similarities to previous titles made me start to become burnt out. Even the setting change and updated combat was not enough for me to really feel like I was playing the same game again. That being said the format the series is a lot of fun its just hard not to notice how repetitive it can be.

It's kind of sad to see this game pushed to the wayside after it came out early last year as I believe its a worthy entry and an overall great remake.

God game where you can still tell this was made off of the bones of a ps3 game. The combat is one of my least favorite in the series although it gets better as you put some time and upgrades in two of the trees, Swordman and the most fun one, Wild Dancer. Wasn't a fan of Gunman and Brawler.

While the story is really good, it is also quite predictable in most instances regarding the main twist. Alongside that, some characters feel wasted like Saigo that I wished were used more since their actors/3d models haven't been a part of the modern franchise for a while.

Like a Dragon: Ishin is a unique and entertaining Yakuza spin-off that takes you back in time to the world of Samurais. The story is gripping, the gameplay is a blast, and the world is so detailed it's like you're really there. With an intriguing main story and lots of side content and mini-games, the game has a ton of content for the player to explore through. It might not be the most visually stunning game out there, but it more than makes up for it with charm, humour, and the classic Yakuza goodness.

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While I understand why people didn't like this game (lots of hype is nigh impossible to live up to), I personally really enjoyed it!

I had a lot of fun with all the fighting styles (even brawler...which I tried my best to utilize despite the damage output being equivalent to a feather gently floating into your bullet proof shoulder) and since I never played the original, I don't care that wild dancer used to be better lol

I do lament baba not being around anymore, as well as some of the unique combat themes being swapped out but overall I had a loooooot of fun with the character swaps. Ryoma is.... hoo.... you thought kiryu was attractive? Hoo buddy.

Okita too...........

Anyways. I did a fair amount of history catch up on the late Edo period in preparation for this game and I must say, it was a lot of fun catching all the ways RGGS did their research and how they played with history to make certain choices that a specific historical figure made still fit into the "canon" personality of the character. Neat stuff. They didn't play as fast and loose with the history as they did with Kenzan (which is a whole other can of worms) but they still had fun with it and that I greatly respect.

Also, this game had Samurai Ondo, Majima's best karaoke song (made all the better with Kiryu's dry interjections).

あー！思い出した！骸街や〜（さっき言っただろう）lives rent free in my head, I tell you

Had a great time with it, really enjoyed the setting, characters and main story especially. The side content was pretty good as well, pretty fun sub stories as usual, I didn't really get gripped by any mini games like I usually do in these games though. Really though, the main story and characters was the best part of the game, and the combat was pretty enjoyable as well especially after a certain point. Probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite RGG game, around there with yakuza 0 and like a dragon, i'd need more time to think on it.

i accidentally 100%'d this game
the crafting system was pretty damn painful im not gonna lie
the combat got repetitive after a while but it was still fun
i honestly found the story quite nice and the way it felt like a theater screenplay was damn cool
i also love the setting of the game, but certain areas of the game were quite empty for whatever reason

This game is generally pretty good. The combat's a blast, the story has some really great moments, there are some fun new minigames, and the substories in these games never disappoint. It was pretty fun playing as a character much like Kazuma Kiryu, just in a different time period.

However, this game probably has the most scuff since Yakuza 4. The game is basically a remaster of the original, which I wasn't aware of; I figured it'd be more modern and in-line with the current gen Dragon Engine games. I didn't mind the blast from the past, but it was unexpected. The game doesn't seem fully polished for PC, either; I'd get the occasional freeze, stutter, and at the worst of times, a flickering shadow glitch when there were cutscenes in certain buildings. Not a game breaker, but it was disappointing. Oh yeah, and the prerendered cutscenes were capped at 30 FPS! Usually I'm not a snob when it comes to this, but it was pretty jarring when the rest of the game is usually played at 60 frames or higher.

Overall, this game is solid. It's pretty rough around the edges, but generally I'm happy ended up getting a port of this game. I just hope that if we eventually get Kenzan, it gets the remaster treatment instead of just a remake. I would GLADLY take more Like a Dragon swordplay!

At this point, you know what you're getting into with a Yakuza game. Difficulty curve is steep at the start, and smooth as butter by the end. Sidequests have funny writing, but too many rely on checking on a character and then coming back to them later - probably a holdover from the ps2 era.

My main criticism with Ishin, especially as this is a remaster, is the upgrade tree. I'm coming in after playing Yakuza Kiwami 1 & 2 last year. The rate at which you unlock new moves and abilities with the four styles was fairly consistent. In this game, the unlocks are more of a linear ring, and all of the interesting and special techniques are locked near the very end of the skill rings. So you end up doing the same stuff over and over.

the greatest historical drama video game i have ever had the pleasure of playing. my jaw dropped when i finished the game and realized this was based on the life of revolutionary figure Ryoma Sakamoto. learning what i thought was one of the greatest fall of the samurai game stories of all time actually roughly happened in real life is mindblowing!
straight up, I think this game has the best implementation of fighting styles ever in yakuza. it feels amazing to quick switch styles according to the situation, such as weakening approaching foes with your gun before you move in to finish the job with your fists, sword or gun-sword-fu and switch in and out to make your combos deal more damage. it's FUN and rewards variation while also challenging players to use all combat tools as effectively as possible to deal with a combat scenario, it's great!
if you have gamepass and love the tried and true yakuza gameplay, you will not regret playing this game. one of the best yakuza spin offs they've made, i would love to see RGG handle more japanese historical epics or a kiwami like remake of kenzan!