Fantastic release, glad to have this game in everyone else hands because it's definitely worth experiencing. The gameplay is pretty smooth, around Yakuza 0 standards. The music is phenomenal, especially towards the end and every character is well acted. I haven't finished the original so as for the recasting I dont have much of a say but everyone who was new to this game is a welcome addition. The visuals sre beautiful, they really did well with the lighting here, models and textures are high quality and for a 2014 game the animations are good. The card system is fine, I wish there was a way to disable it though, would have liked the bosses not to shoot beams and swords but whatever. The UI is a little bulky too, the cards dont need ro be on screen at all times no? The pause menu is also kinda unresponsive, backing out of the ability menu or using restoration items takes way too long. Otherwise a great RGG game, definitely play it.

Yakuza: Ishin!, or as RGG have rebranded the francise, Like a Dragon: Ishin! is amazing. The game is a remake of the original Yakuza: Ishin from 2014 and you cannot tell one bit. Ishin is the first in the series to utilize Unreal Engine 4 and the sheer ridiculousness to how beautiful it looks compared to most AAA games is staggering. You'd never have guessed that at one point, the Yakuza franchise was on the verge of completely shutting itself off from the west.

Nevertheless Ishin! is a standout in the franchise, it takes real Japanese history, with real figures and organisations such as the Shinsengumi, and retells it with the added bonus of faces and voices from the entire Yakuza franchise, from 0 all the way to 7. It's incredibly entertaining to play spot the character to see who they've chosen for what role and how their relationships with each other have been changed from the mainline games. My favorite comical change being Nishiki's relationship to Kiryu and who they actual chose to be Kiryu's brother in game. The choice to do such a thing ultimately benefits the game obscenely, as we're given a completely new set of minigames and substories all fitting the time period of 1800's Japan. While it certainly worked, the rest of the franchise does have the tendency to reuse assets, as most of the franchise has taken place within the same 4 areas with the same handful of minigames, with a very extra added each time. However, i think with the exception of Karaoke and fishing, each of the minigames are completely original, making for a much more refreshing game as a result.

The combat has also needed to be changed, due to the context of the time period, a time when guns were only recently being smuggled into Japan, we have a completely brand new set of combat styles to dig into. The one other time the Yakuza franchise attempted to change the core combat style in Yakuza: Dead Souls, they completely flopped, as they simply didn't understand how to properly design gun combat. However, Ishin! blows Dead Souls out of the water in that department with 4 unique combat styles, all making you feel badass as you perfectly dodge a sword swing just to retaliate back from behind. The combat is smooth and seamless.

In terms of it's story, from the perspective of someone who doesn't know everything about the time period or context of a lot of the events happening at the time, it was an initial difficulty having to wrap my head around so many factions, political parties and foreign terms that seem to get thrown at you constantly. The game does feature a glossary mechanic, in which you can get the meaning behind certain terms during dialogue however, the range of terms they can explain to you isn't nearly enough, at least in my experience. It seemed as if the glossary was only there to explain domain names and nothing else leading to bouts of confusion until i could get to grips with it. However, by the end, i feel as if i could very clearly understand everything being said as well as the context behind each character's actions and how they will go on to affect history in general.

A decent remake of a good game, if on the older side. I really lliked how they put the story together using other characters from the series as 'actors' like they did in Kenzan, but to a much more effective extent because of the larger cast at that point. As a result, and with even more of the cast being previous game characters, going through the story is a fun mix of enjoying the story for what it is and anticipating who the next guest will be. Combat remains fun but a bit unbalanced due to the large difference between styles and the addition of the warrior cards outside of the dungeons. Overall though the game, while it mostly holds up, does feel like the older title it is with a lot of little pauses and animations that slow things down and make it a little clunky. Slowly picking up things from the floor after hours of Lost Judgment in particular can get quite irritating.

Steam Deck report: I first played this when it came out in 2014 and it has been gratifying to see the promise of the Vita app finally completed, where the whole game can be played on a portable system. The move to Unreal has caused performance to dip though: in crowded areas the load on the CPU will cause the frame rate to dip to the low 40s and there's nothing you can do about it. Otherwise, it's like Lost Judgment in that you can set it to 60 if you're not moving around too fast.

A breath of fresh air to the RGG formula from the new setting and combat styles. The story starts off real slow but definitely picks up and becomes more investing towards the second half. And seeing familiar faces play new roles is a fun addition.

Most of the side content focuses on the usual RGG grinds or "bonds" similar to the Judgment games, leaving the side content feeling lackluster compared to the main series.

All in All, a very fun game and a great remaster (putting aside some slight framerate drops on certain story segments on PS5) to a long awaited localization of this entry in the beloved Yakuza/LAD franchise.

Ishin is a solid game, but not as good as some of the series better games. It was released just prior to Y0 and the dated mechanics does unfortunately show even in this "remastered" version.

The story starts off interesting, but I never really got hooked by it and never got much better afterwards. The plot twists are mostly foreseeable and the big reveals are lackluster. It also lacked big epic moments from other Yakuza titles.

Characters are solid throughout, but not much of a standout. It was nice seeing many Yakuza characters appear in the game and the different roles they were given. Kiryu as Ryoma was about 95% the same person, but some of the differences were nice to see like him acting like a lazy bum at one point. Other characters were pretty much the same as their Yakuza counterparts which is both good and bad I guess.

Combat is very much in line with Y0, but not quite as good. Gun style is pretty boring and the hybrid Wild Dance style is missing something that elevates it to a different level. Brawler added a parry mechanic which is nice, but otherwise lacks the depth that Kiryu's style normally has. Sword style felt clunky early on, but did got much better towards the end.

As someone who has already gotten used to the Dragon Engine games, seeing the loading for pre and post battles with mobs is quite annoying. Even picking things up from the ground takes a while to load.

Kyo is a decent setting, but not quite as interesting as Kamurocho or Yakuza's other major city hubs.

The game has a ton of content on par with other Yakuza games, but there wasn't a unique side activity that I really liked. The Second Life Farm Sim wasn't as engaging as I liked.

Overall, it's a decent game with a lot of content, but it doesn't feel up to par with some of the best in the series. I guess the change in setting is a nice change of pace, but it really needed a bigger makeover. Even then, it wouldn't make the story better than it already is.

A Long-awaited Localization/Restoration With a Bumpy Transition to a New Engine

Disclaimer: I played on a GTX 1070ti which runs the game fine but needs extra tinkering to eliminate stutters and get the performance/visuals that I wanted. Also played on-release so my gripes about performance could already be fixed

Like a Dragon: Ishin is a welcome remake and localization of the original released back in 2014. However, its switch to Unreal Engine 4 has introduced bugs and performance issues that may take you out of the wonderful experience the game is trying to portray. Here are my pros and cons as a fan of the series and as someone who got 100% Achievements

Pros:
+ Amazing Retelling of Sakamoto Ryoma's story w/ the blend of wacky and serious that RGG is known for
+ Cool and fun cast of beloved characters from previous Like a Dragon titles. The recasts are mostly good too
+ A nice variety of side-content that keeps you busy throughout. Casually, it's fun but extremely grindy for completionists
+ Trooper Cards are a nice addition that adds fun and keeps the gameplay fresh and more strategic
+ OST is a banger

Cons:
- Some of the recasts were worse than their original counterpart (Hanpeita and Yamazaki especially)
- Framerate Drops A TON on DX12. I had to switch to DX11 and thankfully that fixed it for me 100%
- Scummy DLC practices. You can only use the DLC items you paid for on one save, the highest difficulty level is locked on paid DLC
- Photo Mode is extremely buggy for me. It lowers resolution and there's a ton of aliasing. As a massive fan of photo mode in games, this is a definite con for me.

Overall, Like a Dragon: Ishin is a fun experience as a long-time fan and someone who already played the original Ishin. Much like the transition from the PS3-era games to Dragon Engine, the transition to Unreal Engine 4 leaves a lot to be desired. I hope RGG Studio listens to the community and apply the necessary fixes such as Shader Compilation to current and future games (as of this review on 04/08/23). With all that said, to all my RGG kyodais around the world... tomorrow is yours!

153 hours and 100% Achievement later, I give Like a Dragon: Ishin a 4/5

I'm happy to say it's about damn time we got to play this game over here in the west. It's such a good game. The story is top notch, and it keeps you interested in the twists and turns all along the way.

Gameplay is what you expect from the Like A Dragon series. It's fluid, fun to use, and leveling up feels so good to do in this one. Generally I stick to one style and just focus on it, but in this game, using all four was a blast. Later on you unlock abilities to swap between the styles fluidly during a combo, and that opened up so much strategy and situational planning.

Leveling up is super simple this time around. You just play the style you want to level up, and it naturally will give you points to spend in that skill tree. However, there is a general level up system as well, allowing you to place points in any skill tree. You can then swap those out for a specialized skill point and use that generic skill point again. I hope all games going forward use this system because it's simple and it rocks.

Now for the big negative: this game is not optimized like it should be. It runs fine for about 60% of the game, but then you get to the bigger bombastic scenes with effects and the game will chug on PS4. (Not sure if this happening on any other consoles or PC) One boss fight in particular dropped the fps to around the 10-15 mark. I usually don't care about fps, but when it actively ruins the timing for parrying attacks or my rhythm in attacking, that sucks, and it's a shame it shipped like that.

The team has said they are working on future patches to address those issues, so keep an eye out for those. Hopefully this gets fixed in the future.

I also found myself once again enjoying all the side content. Like A Dragon really knows how to make side quests fun, interesting, and varied. I always go out of my way to make sure I do them before advancing the story. I think this is the only series of games I ever do that in.

So in summary, it's a good game that needs some optimization still, but I still recommend playing it. It's a real fun ride.

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

An incredibly top tier Yakuza game, easily in my top 3. I love the blend of styles, the story, the entire setting, it's great.

I'm really really glad that RGG listened to the western fans and took this incredibly Japanese game and localized it proper. I appreciate it so much that they just give you a glossary button instead of dumbing down the story for the gaijin that'll be playing it.

I genuinely hope that even with Nagoshi gone, we'll still keep getting top quality bangers from the Like a Dragon series. RGG hasn't made a bad game yet, and I want that to continue.

This is easily one of the best Yakuza/Like a Dragon games, and I'm glad that it's finally available in the west. I don't have much to say really, it's a very faithful remaster of the original (with some odd changes here and there, I'm not entirely on board with the kamehamehas in combat and literal giants), meaning that the gameplay might seem outdated in some aspects, but generally it is very close to Yakuza 0's gameplay since it was made around the same time on the same engine. Thankfully the slightly dated gameplay does not take away from the combat, which is still very enjoyable, as it should be, considering the majority of the gameplay is comprised of combat segments. In particular, the Wild Dancer fighting style is my favorite, evokes feelings of Majima's Breaker style in Yakuza 0 where you just endlessly spin around, beating down your enemies. Story-wise it's great, with a story that rarely had any low points or filler moments for me, unlike some other RGG games. The side content is enjoyable as well, with stupidly ridiculous substories as always and a karaoke mod, both being series staple at this point. Overall, I'd say this game is definitely on the higher end of RGG games, and I'm glad we finally got it in the West. I just hope that in the future we can get other Japan-locked RGG games, such as Kenzan and the Black Panther games.