Old Gold

First, Ishin (Known in Japan as Ishin Kiwami) is a remake of an exclusive game to Japan released at the end of the PS3 life cycle and the start of the PS4. It's still a PS3 game in it's DNA nonetheless. This new release aimed both to be released in the west and gave the original a new coat of paint, while still retaining the everything from the original game and adding some extra content.

Personally, I only played little of the original game since it's in Japanese. Tried to find a guide that translated the text to english like I did in Kenzan. No luck, only the cutscenes were translated. A year after, a sort of remake was announced in a State of Play presentation. I was really happy that day.

Having said this let's start with Ishin itself. The first thing it struck to me were the return of familiar faces, literally. The original Ishin for PS3 as far as I know used a mix of new face models for the occasion and fairly old model from past games, specially Yakuza 5. The decision to face swap the character was odd, but a welcome one and most of the characters that were changed do fit the personality of the original, but unlike the Yakuza 0 cast they don't shine as bright. It is more remarkable knowing in the original those characters didn't flesh out much of them to begin with, only serving for the one purpose they were given. This feeling made me expect something way more of them, but it didn't deliver at their full potential. It's like trying to fit something, but it doesn't because it's too big.

The story itself is interesting, while not being something wildly different from past games. In fact, the main premise of changing our identity to hide our past and search for an impostor of ours is directly taken from Kenzan. It has major pacing problems towards the end making it oddly enough longer that it has any rights to be. For example, the town were Ishin takes place gets burned to ashes just to be rebuilded in a couple of days. It was cool for a setpiece, but it didn't had any major consequences whatsoever. Liked the decision of Okita (Majima) as an ally rather than a rival and some of the characters of the shinsengumi, either allies or foes. If you ever played a Yakuza game, either Y1 or Y7 you'll now how things will roll throughout the story. While playing I was trying to spot a differences in some characters to see how they differ from their original counterparts. Kiryu now kills people for example, so they are not totally the same characters as before and that was refreshing to see.

I didn't like much of what of the gameplay offered me. We have 4 styles to play: Swordman, Gunman, Wild Dancer and Brawler. In a sword battle you won't be throwing hands like crazy making Brawler pretty useless because of it's minimun range capabilities. Wild Dancer and Swordplay were the most useful ones to level up and combat. The light RPG system is what ruined the combat for me, is the difference that makes this game easier or harder outside of the difficulty you selected in the menu screen. It trades the mostly skill based combat of past games with something much more approcheable. While there is still skill necessary to tackle the bosses in this game, normal battles against a group of enemies are either more harder than it needs to be or easier thanks to the Wild Dancer. Mainly because the enemies don't lost their stability as often as past games and are prone to make those combats much more of a headache that has any rights to be. Wild Dancer Style is perfect for this since it's fast, covers a lot of space and while it doesn't do much damage is perfect for crowd control. Braindead easy, or overly hard. Boss battles are great in my opinion while using the Swordman style, it is the optimal way to beat them. They are a good fun challenge to tackle.

The Trooper Cards is an addition that I didn't mind throughout the game. It was simply there and forced more than anything. It could've served to alliviate the pain that is getting through the dungeons and meaningless task, but they are present in the main adventure. Wish they weren't or at least be optional, they take a decent portion of the screen and do very little to shake up the gameplay itself.

Alongside the RPG elements there is crafting. Never really used it outside upgrading some of my equipment since crafting weapons is expensive and you're required to have really specific materials, found mostly in dungeons. Bosses in this game throw some weapons; from sword to guns that are really powerful and do an exaggerated amount of damage, for free. I'd say crafting more than anything, is optional content.

Side content, as any RGG game is prevelant and very extensive. The Substories, a farming-type minigame, dungeons to gather material, the trooper card system and lots of extra content to be completed. It's been a tradition at this point so I'm not totally crazy about it and is something that rather than be surprised it's there, is something that I was expecting. The Dungeons are really big, well dungeons that help gathering materials for the blacksmith to create better equipment. But as I said, it would be hard to convince someone to do these dungeons if the rewards ain't that big for the time wasted on them. They are really long, or at least the one I tried. If crafting isn't so effective then why would you do the dungeons at the end of the day. Something like an arena full of enemies and a boss at the end would have worked way better to level up the character. Lastly we have "Another Life" with Haruka. This time she isn't a major character that directly affects the story unlike past games or Kenzan and is only relegated here. There are a couple of exclusive minigames in her house like cooking and farming. Decent time killers.

Exploration is big and inmerssive in this game. Like Kenzan you can go on narrow paths with very close camera angles that are nothing but nature, it's refreshing to escape from the big crowded Kyoto once in a while. Kyoto itself is really big and a bit hard to navigate. At first I didn't knew where Haruka's home on the map was since you can only go on boat and I totally forgot that, oops.

As for my experience, I did play this game on Hard since in my personal opinion Yakuza games are fairly easy as long as you have medicines equiped. But I found this game to be fairly challenging and the difficulty curve was well adjusted. From Chapter 10 to the final chapter there is a big spike in difficulty, some long battles felt like I was running towards the end of the game by how spectacular and difficult they were, the very last stage felt underwhealming because of it.

Technically speaking the game looks great overall and everything runs at stable 60fps but the cutscenes. Going from a 60fps gameplay to the CGI cutscenes running at 30fps was jarring but once I got use to it I didn't really mind the change. As much as it looks good it uses Unreal Engine 4, and the textures takes sometime to load. It's most notable on cutscenes and close-ups. The menu has really slow animations, in fact the sound that is used while pressing a button is faster than the transition itself. Selct Inventory > Exit the Inventory Screen, pressed B a total of 4 times and the menu was still loading, you can test it yourself. It might had to do with animations more than anything, the old games had faster and snappy ones.

It is a fun time at the end of the day like any Yakuza game. I'd recommend this game to the fans of the series either are sick of Kamurocho or want can't wait for Kenzan to be localized.