I understand why RGG Studios wasn't willing to port this game to the west back in 2014.
Now, hold on: this isn't necessarily because of a lack of quality, absolutely. Like a Dragon: Ishin! (or, well, it's remake) is still a solid game with the unique charm of the Yakuza series and the beautiful setting of 1860s Japan in its full glory, a combination which couldn't really fail for anyone or anywhere.
The gameplay is the same as a classic Yakuza, with the exception that this game was originally the first one with more than one fighting styles on one character: Ryoma Sakamoto can very well fights with his bare fists just like Kiryu Kazuma, but his true potential is revealed when using a katana or a gun, or even both at the same time.
The whole game feels pretty stiff. From walking in the streets of Kyo to fighting bad guys, the whole experience feels not only slow, but painfully mechanic, something that NEVER happened in the series, not even on the PS2.
It feels so stiff it hurts, and the battles suffer from this stiffness too: they are repetitive, slow and incredibly limited.
I also felt like this game spent more time on loading menus, figths and cutscenes than actual gameplay. It started getting really boring after a while, despite the fun of a classic Yakuza series still kicking in.
Now, that said, what made me think as my first sentence in this review?
Well, the answer's simple: the story is not meant for the west at all, and I'm not talking about the cultural differences of the setting.
The whole plot of Like a Dragon: Ishin! revolves around the Bakumatsu period, from its characters to its main plot development, and that means most of players outside of Japan won't understand it. How epic it was. How inspirational.
To fully understand the game's plot and message, you MUST know Japan history. Without it, you are sure to miss something, being it a crucial passage or just the fate of a specific character, because the game itself doesn't bother explaining most of what is happening on screen, since most japanese players old enough to have a basic school knowledge will put the piece together without any help.
If we can make an example, playing this game as a japanese could be like playing a game centered about the french revolution for a french person, or playing a game set in ancient Rome for an italian.
Taking into consideration the original Ishin! came out around 2014, when the west was just still opening to Japan and its culture (and viceversa), it is understandable that RGG Studios felt like this game wasn't really meant for a western audience, even more considering the series sails were a big failure outside of Japan.
That said, the story is still really good: it is much more political than your classic Yakuza, and the scale of the main conflict is bigger than ever in the series, but the spirit which never abandoned Kiryu is still strong in this one.
The cast is interesting and colorful, the soundtrack is fantastic and the gameplay is solid.
While cutscenes are really, really good, in-game graphic is mainly imported from the original game with just some new shaders added on, making it old-looking and, weirdly enough, REALLY slow to load. Many times, while playing, textures would not load at all until they were out of the scene.
I was originally gonna finish all the sidequests and defeat this game's Amon, but now that I have less and less time to spend on games and my backlog is still pretty big, I've decided to considered myself done with this game. It was an overall good experience, but I won't really recommend this game to anyone who isn't fan of the series or doesn't know Japan's history-at least good enough to understand the Bakumatsu period and his characters, that's it (and NO, playing the Fate series won't help you understand this game's Okita Souji at all, fools! Don't even think about it!).
Now, hold on: this isn't necessarily because of a lack of quality, absolutely. Like a Dragon: Ishin! (or, well, it's remake) is still a solid game with the unique charm of the Yakuza series and the beautiful setting of 1860s Japan in its full glory, a combination which couldn't really fail for anyone or anywhere.
The gameplay is the same as a classic Yakuza, with the exception that this game was originally the first one with more than one fighting styles on one character: Ryoma Sakamoto can very well fights with his bare fists just like Kiryu Kazuma, but his true potential is revealed when using a katana or a gun, or even both at the same time.
The whole game feels pretty stiff. From walking in the streets of Kyo to fighting bad guys, the whole experience feels not only slow, but painfully mechanic, something that NEVER happened in the series, not even on the PS2.
It feels so stiff it hurts, and the battles suffer from this stiffness too: they are repetitive, slow and incredibly limited.
I also felt like this game spent more time on loading menus, figths and cutscenes than actual gameplay. It started getting really boring after a while, despite the fun of a classic Yakuza series still kicking in.
Now, that said, what made me think as my first sentence in this review?
Well, the answer's simple: the story is not meant for the west at all, and I'm not talking about the cultural differences of the setting.
The whole plot of Like a Dragon: Ishin! revolves around the Bakumatsu period, from its characters to its main plot development, and that means most of players outside of Japan won't understand it. How epic it was. How inspirational.
To fully understand the game's plot and message, you MUST know Japan history. Without it, you are sure to miss something, being it a crucial passage or just the fate of a specific character, because the game itself doesn't bother explaining most of what is happening on screen, since most japanese players old enough to have a basic school knowledge will put the piece together without any help.
If we can make an example, playing this game as a japanese could be like playing a game centered about the french revolution for a french person, or playing a game set in ancient Rome for an italian.
Taking into consideration the original Ishin! came out around 2014, when the west was just still opening to Japan and its culture (and viceversa), it is understandable that RGG Studios felt like this game wasn't really meant for a western audience, even more considering the series sails were a big failure outside of Japan.
That said, the story is still really good: it is much more political than your classic Yakuza, and the scale of the main conflict is bigger than ever in the series, but the spirit which never abandoned Kiryu is still strong in this one.
The cast is interesting and colorful, the soundtrack is fantastic and the gameplay is solid.
While cutscenes are really, really good, in-game graphic is mainly imported from the original game with just some new shaders added on, making it old-looking and, weirdly enough, REALLY slow to load. Many times, while playing, textures would not load at all until they were out of the scene.
I was originally gonna finish all the sidequests and defeat this game's Amon, but now that I have less and less time to spend on games and my backlog is still pretty big, I've decided to considered myself done with this game. It was an overall good experience, but I won't really recommend this game to anyone who isn't fan of the series or doesn't know Japan's history-at least good enough to understand the Bakumatsu period and his characters, that's it (and NO, playing the Fate series won't help you understand this game's Okita Souji at all, fools! Don't even think about it!).