Reviews from

in the past


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.

like a dragon: ishin.. man was this reveal something. for a while i knew about the existence of ishin and thought it was intriguing! unfortunately it was japanese only and never got a localized release, however at the playstation states of play, i was NOT expecting an announcement like this! which made me really happy to finally experience the game!

the story is pretty good! while im not familiar with japanese history, i still really enjoyed the story of this game! sakamoto ryoma was an interesting character here but tbh all i could hear and see was kiryu lol. while i don't remember the names of the other characters just know that i found them really enjoyable too! the main antagonist was good too!

the gameplay is definitely interestingas it has 4 fighting styles:
- Brawler is your typical like a dragon combat
- Swordsman i didn't really use much at all
- Gunman is quite literally just gun
-Wild Dancer i really liked! it's very precise and has a gun which functions like the gunman so really you get 2 for 1 in here!
the bosses are quite decent in this game too! don't got much to say

while the minigames were pretty fun, side content surprisingly i didn't really enjoy as much, there wasn't much to them and i didn't bother completing most of them. the soundtrack however is EPIC! lots of bangers in here!

overall yeah i enjoyed my time with ishin, it's not required to understand the mainline games but pick it up if you want

Up yours Tosa Loyalists....we'll see who cancels who!


thanks rgg for seals and unreal engine very cool

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.

How do you make a Samurai game Boring???

Bit too repetitive but I love the final lines of dialogue here, incredibly powerful words that a lotta people today should hear.

This remake of the Japan-exclusive spinoff brings the Yakuza series to feudal Japan. Instead of beating people up, you can now rip them to shreds with a katana or shoot them, or both at the same time! I really enjoyed my time with the story and characters, and as usual with Yakuza games, the side stuff is also great. I did not particularly like the heavy grind in this game, but I could ignore that part with the free sword DLC you get relatively well (otherwise this review would probably be a lot more negative). Also, the many bonding side activities were a bit too much for my taste. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed this entry, and I hope they bring Kenzan to the west too. Perfect game for the Steam Deck.

Esse é um jogo meio curioso, ele tem uma boa história principalmente se você se interessa pelo contexto histórico do japão dos anos 1800, além de ter um mapa 100% inédito e 4 estilos de batalha, sendo 3 deles totalmente novos, já que o estilo brawler foi mantido da série principal (esse estilo é totalmente mal aproveitado e sinceramente nem precisava estar no jogo, podia muito bem ter só os 3 novos).
Só que, de longe, o grande problema do jogo é o balanceamento: vai chegando na reta final e os inimigos e principalmente chefes vão ficando com uma barra de vida simplesmente imensa e você dá muito pouco dano, a sensação é de que o seu personagem não evolui junto com os inimigos (dá pra comprar equipamentos novos pra aumentar os stats mas eles são extremamente caros, então se você não grindar vai ter que ir se virando na maior parte do tempo com o que os inimigos droparem).
Dito isso, se você já tiver jogado a franquia principal e estiver querendo algo novo, recomendo muito dar uma chance, porque a história e ambientação são realmente muito bons e, na minha opinião, valem a pena o sufoco da reta final.

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.

Me ha parecido súper divertido y me lo he pasado genial jugándolo. Pero creo que es el yakuza más desechable y el que menos me ha gustado de la saga.

benchmark dla serii
jesteś lepszy - zajebiście
jesteś gorszy - coś poszło nie tak

The Final boss is the most samurai of samurais

É muito diferente quando o mano kiryu não participa do time sem camisa no final, a história fica interessante da metade para frente. As lutas principais pecam um pouco na criatividade, mas o musou está interessante como sempre.

Pretty good mix of samurai story and yakuza style action

Like a Dragon: Ishin! could make a Japanese historian shoot himself if you explained the game's plot to him, but its bold reimagining of real life Japanese history puts it in a unique historical fictional setting that can educate if you are willing to put in effort on your end.

The gameplay is the sore-point of this entry in the franchise since it takes what was usually a very tightly done third person brawler and applies RPG elements to it that don't flow well together and make the game feel like a grind to play.

The story does numb the disappointment that is the gameplay, with a very interesting version around the events of the Great Fire of Meireki, fitting these iconic Like a Dragon characters into this historical piece while keeping their personalities intact.

“Your Country Should Be A Place That Makes You Happy To Be Alive!”

Le jeu fan-service ultime, mais qui marche très bien !

Je ne m’attendais à rien en lançant le jeu car ne m’attendant qu’à un spin-off pas canon, et je suis surpris qu’il soit si complet. Je suis tellement heureux de voir mes personnages préférés arborer d’autres rôles ! Les 4 styles de combat sont assez cool, même si j’ai beaucoup plus joué danseur et bretteur. Je ressens quelque chose de bizarre avec le jeu qui fait que je ne saurais pas le situer, car il est très bon sur tant d’aspects, mais beaucoup de choses me gênent sans que je ne puisse trop savoir quoi.

Si vous avez du temps, le jeu est à faire, et ne nécessite pas d’avoir joué aux précédents !

acho q o melhor jogo de samurai moderno

It was pretty fun, all things considered. It would have made it a lot more enjoyable if I knew anything about the Bakumatsu period that it's referencing, but I still somewhat enjoyed the story.

As cool as it was having the Yakuza actors be in this one in different roles, it made all the plot twists extremely obvious. Wow you're telling me the good guys from the previous games are good here? You're telling me the big bads are bad here? I don't think they should've necessarily switched it up, because then it wouldn't feel right either, but I suppose this problem is inherent to what this game was trying to do. On the one hand, it made me greatly appreciate what the more complex antagonists could have been in the main series, and how the protagonists would interact with each other in this new timeline.

The story has a really eerie Japanese ultranationalist position. It shows this especially hard in the ending. Considering the horrors that were committed by them in the next period following Sakamoto Ryouma's assassination, it's really tough to just stand there and watch Ryouma talking about the bright future of Japan and how great a country it is etc. when RGG seems to be doing the thing that's popular there: pretending the 1900s didn't happen.

The combat was... ok? I think I initially tried to play it like the mainline games and it felt really wrong. Brawler is basically useless. Only when I got to the barracks missions did I finally realize that it feels much more like Nioh than Yakuza. After putting myself in that mentality, I really started enjoying the combat.

This game probably hurt the most in terms of not having infinite sprinting like the newer games. My god does it suck to constantly run out of breath until you can afford enough virtue to sprint for longer.

OST had some cool callbacks to older games which I really appreciated. Substories were pretty decent. Platinum grind was very very painful.

Alright game if you're looking for some more Yakuza gameplay.

Played it on the PS4. There were definitely a few hiccups in the frame rate and such, but nothing to make it unplayable or even any less fun.

Overall I very much enjoyed this game. While it doesn't really have the best combat in the series, nor does it really have the best story in the series, I still very much enjoyed it, including the story.

Technical mess across the board
Visual glitches and pop in left and right, random freezing during heat actions, unexplainable performance dips etc etc.
In one instance the boss music didn't stop playing after the boss was down and continued playing over cutscenes, only way to fix it was to reopen the game.
Some of the usual Dragon Engine combat jank is still somehow present even in an Unreal game, hitreg and hitbox/hurtbox issues etc. it's nothing new at this point.

Kiry... I mean Hajim... I mean Ryoma's moveset is pretty interesting with the 4 unique styles. Unfortunately Wild Dancer was the only one that really felt great, brawler is just completely useless and swordsman/gunman feel too simplistic and somewhat stiff.
The bosses overall are probably the best in the series (minus some very cheap moves) but some of the other enemy designs aren't so great, specifically this one big ogre enemy they reuse as a miniboss like 30 times throughout the game which swings a massive boulder around, doesn't get startled by your attacks and throws projectiles at you when you're too far (he's also usually accompanied by 10 foot soldiers). Very not fun to fight!

The Bakumatsu era is a cool historical time period and the story itself is pretty entertaining for the most part but some of the creative decisions the writers took near the end REALLY sour the experience... We love random plot-twists!

While Ishin was irritating at times, the usual Yakuza charm is there with a cool new setting that was really well realized.


Great game but ngl, this is one of those where it took the longest to click with. Got it around launch and I sorta put it aside cuz I wasn't feeling it, but the latter half started getting really good, and I was hooked.

Finally we are getting remakes of spinoffs that never got translated to the west and i was not dissapointed. Plenty of fanservice and content to do this game is a blast through and through. This was was worthy of my hard earned cash

At the beginning, I was hooked.

In the end, I was sudoku.