I got into the Yakuza (Now called Like a Dragon in the west to get in line with its Japanese name) in late 2021 after a friend of mine was going through the series and kept raving about how good the games were. After I saw Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2 on sale for 5 dollars each digitally I decided that was the best point that I could do so.
9 months and 8 games later I have been through the entire series and there is nothing quite like the Like a Dragon series. It's both a serious crime drama and super goofy at the same time and I totally love it for what it is. After the series’ huge success with Yakuza: Like a Dragon in 2020, RGG studio has started to look back and see what else they can give the west that we haven't gotten in the past. The first of these was the period drama Ishin. Ishin originally released on the PS3 back in 2014 and finally got its worldwide release with Like a Dragon: Ishin! Last month.
Ishin’s sensibilities as far as its gameplay are very clear. RGG’s games almost play like rings on a tree, as the games get newer and newer you can see where new ideas were implemented and experimented with. Ishin’s original Japan only release was in between Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 0 and even this remake feels like it. Ishin retains some of Yakuza 5’s clunkiness with some improvements that we later saw in Yakuza 0, such as the multiple fighting stances. In Ishin, these stances are sword, sword with gun (called wild rose), gun, or brawler. Especially in boss fights, the brawler style feels almost totally useless. The other styles with weapons just feel better to control and do more damage than the brawler style. The gunman style also feels fairly broken against normal enemies, it takes little effort to stun lock single enemies with the pistol by itself. The Wild Rose and Swordsman styles are the styles that I like to use and feel the most balanced. The game encourages you to use the Swordsman style against single enemies and Wild Rose against groups. I found most situations without bosses, Wild Rose was the best style to use, with Swordsman being a good style to use if I wanted the ability to block over being able to attack all foes around me.
There are a couple of small complaints I have regarding the combat. The main two issues I have are that groups of gun wielding enemies hit detection occasionally were able to hit me through objects, which lead to some frustrating deaths. The second are the quick time events. This is more of a general complaint that I have had for most of the games than anything, especially for first time players, the quick time events come up far too quickly and give you too little time to properly react. It was about a 50/50 split of when I was able to and when I was not able to hit QTEs when the game required them during boss fights.
It feels almost dismissive to call the plot standard Like A Dragon faire, but I’m not sure how else to describe it. There is murder, betrayal, twist and turns and all of that. Not to say in any way that the plot is bad, Ishin’s plot is still compelling throughout as both a murder mystery and a crime drama. There is just a bit more confusion with names this time around, especially with multiple people in the plot also having aliases, and on top of that having the faces of Yakuza characters, whose names from the Yakuza games I already have a hard time keeping track of.
Overall the game is pretty good! I'm hopeful that Ishin does well so that other Like A Dragon spin offs will be able to get worldwide releases in the future!
Review was cross posted from: https://t.co/RhCmePTwnJ
9 months and 8 games later I have been through the entire series and there is nothing quite like the Like a Dragon series. It's both a serious crime drama and super goofy at the same time and I totally love it for what it is. After the series’ huge success with Yakuza: Like a Dragon in 2020, RGG studio has started to look back and see what else they can give the west that we haven't gotten in the past. The first of these was the period drama Ishin. Ishin originally released on the PS3 back in 2014 and finally got its worldwide release with Like a Dragon: Ishin! Last month.
Ishin’s sensibilities as far as its gameplay are very clear. RGG’s games almost play like rings on a tree, as the games get newer and newer you can see where new ideas were implemented and experimented with. Ishin’s original Japan only release was in between Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 0 and even this remake feels like it. Ishin retains some of Yakuza 5’s clunkiness with some improvements that we later saw in Yakuza 0, such as the multiple fighting stances. In Ishin, these stances are sword, sword with gun (called wild rose), gun, or brawler. Especially in boss fights, the brawler style feels almost totally useless. The other styles with weapons just feel better to control and do more damage than the brawler style. The gunman style also feels fairly broken against normal enemies, it takes little effort to stun lock single enemies with the pistol by itself. The Wild Rose and Swordsman styles are the styles that I like to use and feel the most balanced. The game encourages you to use the Swordsman style against single enemies and Wild Rose against groups. I found most situations without bosses, Wild Rose was the best style to use, with Swordsman being a good style to use if I wanted the ability to block over being able to attack all foes around me.
There are a couple of small complaints I have regarding the combat. The main two issues I have are that groups of gun wielding enemies hit detection occasionally were able to hit me through objects, which lead to some frustrating deaths. The second are the quick time events. This is more of a general complaint that I have had for most of the games than anything, especially for first time players, the quick time events come up far too quickly and give you too little time to properly react. It was about a 50/50 split of when I was able to and when I was not able to hit QTEs when the game required them during boss fights.
It feels almost dismissive to call the plot standard Like A Dragon faire, but I’m not sure how else to describe it. There is murder, betrayal, twist and turns and all of that. Not to say in any way that the plot is bad, Ishin’s plot is still compelling throughout as both a murder mystery and a crime drama. There is just a bit more confusion with names this time around, especially with multiple people in the plot also having aliases, and on top of that having the faces of Yakuza characters, whose names from the Yakuza games I already have a hard time keeping track of.
Overall the game is pretty good! I'm hopeful that Ishin does well so that other Like A Dragon spin offs will be able to get worldwide releases in the future!
Review was cross posted from: https://t.co/RhCmePTwnJ