It never ceases to amaze me how big this series got.

My familiarity with Yakuza/Like a Dragon began back in like 2010/2011 when I got Yakuza 4 for $10 from a Walmart Black Friday sale (I have no idea what my random small town Walmart was doing selling Yakuza 4 but I digress). It's in the middle of Kiryu's story so there was a lot I didn't understand, but I fell in love basically immediately. The soap opera drama, the beautiful cutscenes, and that immersion! The tourism porn drew me in immediately, and like 12 years later it hasn't let go.

But the Yakuza series was different then. After I played 4, I played 3 and Dead Souls, and I was one of a small but vocal group of fans who was asking for Yakuza 5 -- the largest game in the series yet -- to come West. I wanted it so bad I considered learning Japanese for it.

Yakuza 5 did come west on PS3, but it was digital only, 3 years late (I believe late 2015), and only happened because Sony helped foot the bill if I remember right. It made me very happy, even though now I think Yakuza 5 is maybe my least favorite in the series.

A year or two after that, Yakuza 0 came out and the world was ready for Kiryu Kazuma. Since then, Yakuza has grown to the point where it is probably SEGA's biggest game franchise, it's getting full English voice acting (not that I'm using it, lol), and it has even switched its English series name to Like a Dragon -- the series' name overseas.

It got so big that we now have Like a Dragon: Ishin!, a new gen remaster of the 2014 PS3/PS4 game that was Japan only. It got localized, a few tweaks, and a fresh coat of paint, and now we're playing it.

Playing it now, I see why it was never localized. It's a LaD-style retelling of a specific time in 19th century Japan. It uses real historical characters to tell a story that doesn't really explain what all the terminology means and the intricacies between the military and imperial government in Japan from a century and a half ago.

It's a little confusing at first, but if you pay attention and use the glossary, it's not too hard to get caught up by the halfway point in the game or even earlier. The story is excellent, touching on themes of Japanese nationalism and the human cost to one's politically-motivated actions, and a few of the beats are high points for the series.

The combat is weird and took some getting used to, but I grew to like it as well. As opposed to the fists-and-bikes style of old Yakuza games, this one has you swinging swords and shooting guns in a handful of different combat styles. Once you unlock the skill tree and do some of the side content to expand your arsenal, the game gives a lot back.

Speaking of, the exploration and side content is great. Yakuza open world immersion at its finest, and despite some great drama I think this might be one of the funnier one of these I've played. If you want to walk around and chill out, you can do it; if you want to feed a sumo or race chickens, you can do it; if you want to befriend a worker at a brothel with some of the strangest minigames I've seen yet, hey, it's there. And of course, if you want to exploit a major side mode for 10 hours in order to get all the resources you'll ever need, you can do that too. All the beats are here.

So yeah, it's top tier Yakuza (I need to learn to start saying Like a Dragon, oh well). It's pretty easy on Normal and fairly annoying on hard, so I just kept it on Normal. I never went after Amon before, I may do that here.

Anyway I think this series is my favorite game ever.

If you didn't enjoy hearing "yume" in Y5 or "Sawa Sensei" in Lost Judgment oh boy I hope "Sakamoto Ryoma" will change your mind cause you're gonna go mad if not.
Imagine playing brawler or gunner style. You gotta be fun at parties.
Some of the cast changes were questionable.
The story started pretty strong and then the middle happened but the last 3-4 chapters (except the ending) managed to catch my attention again.
We need more Mine in our life.
Has one of the most disappointing Amon fights in the franchise.

I had first learned of this game back around the time I started Yakuza 6 and ever since I had hoped that one day, due to the series' popularity exploding in the west after 0, it would come over. Needless to say my excitement when this was announced was through the roof. Sadly I cannot say I enjoyed the game as much as I would have liked. Even the worst (mainline) Yakuza game is great by gaming standards so its not like it was terrible, but it just never really landed for me.

Out of the way, its combat was fun as always. I do enjoy the style systems, Wild Dancer was probably the most fun for me as Brawler just felt absurdly weak, Gun was too run around and Sword was rather stiff. However it did get old by the end but that is something every game can run into as they grow in length. I really liked how the leveling up the skills was handled. The standard "get orb upon level up for skills" remains but rather than just the standard ones you get from a standard level up, you also get on for specifically the style that you ALSO leveled up (which maxes out at 25). Those style orbs can be swapped with the generic orbs in a slot which allows you to spend that generic on on a different skill entirely.

The story meandered at times, but thats common in the series and I found the busywork before the very end to be rather stupid. Take a walk around the city and do these minigames and fights these guys again (except for one who was the only new fight). That soured it and maybe if I knew more about Japanese history I would have been more interest. I did like that I could complete all the substories without gambling or fighting Amon, so I think this is the first game I actually did do all substories. I don't even know if he's in the game but he always seems to be so he must be hiding somewhere.

My biggest issues comes from getting money. Because of how much this game relies on weapons compared to the previous games, aside from 7 and one character in 5, you need to interact with grinding resources and making weapons more than usual. They are expensive, not as expensive as I remember weapons costing in Yakuza 7 but also you do not get money anywhere near as fast in Ishin. The whole Second Life subgame was clearly intended to be the go to for money outside of gambling but its not fast enough. The crops grow in real time, and even with the max level fields and using fertilizer (which has a cool down unless you interact with the order book) the best stuff takes 20 minutes. What you need for orders and how much you get for rewards goes on a rotation and from what I saw range from 2000 gon to 1.1 ryo (which if my math is correct 1 ryo is 10k gon) and that 1.1 was strictly for ginseng. Making weapons and armor costs both money and resources and the best stuff can cost hundreads of ryo which means over a million each item. You also need to level up the blacksmith to make the better stuff and making weapons barely even increases it at low levels nevermind higher. The best way was donating so you're either spending resources making weapons to donate or you're going to the arms dealing and buying the cheap weapons in bulk to donate both which will cost you A LOT of money as weapon drops from enemies didn't happen unless they were story bosses or found in the battle dungeons which in of themselves are monotonous.

No wonder everyone says you better learn how the chicken races work. I hate gambling to the point where if a game forces me to then I usually knock the game down a half point so I initially wasn't gonna even touch them but unless I wanted to rely on my packaged in dlc weapons the whole game or use unupgraded stuff. I went in there and used the exploit (available at the time of writing this) to basically get free money since it allowed the bet to be removed but still pay you out like it was active. I never had to worry about money after that and just used the golden gun as my gun equip the whole game after that.

The trooper system was also something I did not care for or wanted to interact with much. Trooper cards are cards that allow you to activate special abilities such as shooting a big fire beam or stealing health from enemies and give you bonuses such as an HP increase passively and attack increases if they are in the commander slot. I could no be bothered to want to level them up so I just used the free dlc ones and was almost entirely for the health bonus until bosses themselves started using similar attacks to them.

TLDR: I was excited for this one but unfortunately it just didn't really land. Combat was fun until the final dungeon where it became dull, story didn't grab me, and the game has a money wall problem that would grind it to a halt if I didn't learn of the ways to mitigate it as early as I did. I don't think its the worst but it also ain't gonna be in the top 5. I like it more than 6 but probably not more than 3 (I don't hate Blockuza as much as the average Yakuza fan). Also Sega I don't care that you changed the name in the west to be the same as in Japan, I'm gonna keep calling this series Yakuza due to not only due to reflex but my own stubborness.

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.

9 years after the original Japanese release this game finally see the light of day overseas and it was great. The combat basics is the usual bread and butter of the action Yakuza games but with of course, a samurai twist, pre-dating Yakuza 0 this is the first game in the series that introduced style switching, including Sword, Gun, Sword + Gun (Known as Wild Dancer), and Fists. All of them have their uses and are all fun to use (except maybe Fists as the damage output is pretty low).

The story is based on real life events with a real life person named Sakamoto Ryoma (with the appearance of series star Kazuma Kiryu) which has you infiltrating the Shinsengumi to find you killed your father while reforming Japanese society along the way. This is a must play for people into Japanese history and can also act as a gateway for people that want to get into its history too.

This game can also act as an entry point for people looking to get into the series as it's completely disconnected from the rest other than multiple characters taking the appearance of certain characters from the main series. Don't be scared to start here cause it's great.

Now RGG can you please bring over Kenzan!, Kurohyou and remaster Dead Souls please?

Fantastic game if you enjoy the time period it's set in/ understand a bit of the history of when this story takes place. Might be a bit confusing if you don't know anything about Edo/Shinsengumi/Bakufu. Love that a lot of fan favorite characters from previous Yakuza games got a reappearance here. Just brings back everything you love about this series but in a different time period so if that interests you you'll love it. My one major gripe is that like the most recent games in the series the upgrade paths are so damn grindy and require way too much time investment that I am not willing to give it + the upgrade paths for weapons are extremely expensive and ask way too much in regards to materials unless you go out of your way too grind for them. Seriously the combat is fun but towards the end of the game it drags because of how hard it gets based solely on an experience/material deficit.

Feels like a Yakuza all-stars game, but Samurais. While there's certainly nothing wrong with that, it was a little tricky to remember who some of the cameos were because they were a secondary villain in one Yakuza game. It does take a while for the game to get going, but that's normal at this point. Once it gets into the real meat of the game, it's fantastic, with compelling characters and story. Sometimes you want to ignore the great side stories and bonds just to find out what happens next. The combat is fun and fluid, with you using a Katana and Gun, switching style to best suit the situation.

Any other Sakamoto Ryomas I should know about?

It's pretty good. The combat might be my favorite in the brawler games (aka literally every game other than Yakuza 7 lol), with a decent everything else.

I was really enjoying the Ishin combat more than I normally do with Yakuza combat. It especially opens up when you get the upgrade that lets you hot swap between your styles during rush combos. Each style has pretty clear strengths and weaknesses and I was very actively swapping between them all in combat. Bosses can still have that classic yakuza thing where they'll armor through a lot and you have to temper how much you can actually hit them in an opening before they'll turn around armor through your combo and beat your ass, but the introduction of Wild Dancer letting you dodge out of most hits makes it a lot more bearable; if I dont see him get staggered from a hit I'm fucking hitting that dash baby.

There's other small things that help the overall combat experience: something I found happening in other Yakuza games often was a lack of ways to use Heat on bosses; often locked to on the ground heat action as bosses very quickly stop being grabbable and there being a lack of other ways to use heat actions on them. Ishin gets around it in a pretty natural way; there's just way more Heat actions that don't have excessive requirements. There's a heat action on getting grab broken so grabs can still lead to damage, heat actions that just require the opponent near a while, heat actions for when they're mid swings, wild dancer has a heat action that has no extra requirements but needs a lot of bar, ect ect. Hell some bosses even get extra QTEs during these heat actions just to keep you on your toes

The squad stuff is... okay. I had the preorder stuff so I hit them with the Influencer Attacks!. The most surprising thing is that between my Influencer Battle Squad and the other stuff you get at the start I dont think I ever really found a need to change my squad. Maybe I should've swapped off the dog commander for bosses who are not wooed by a cute dog doing tricks but I didn't really need to anyways. Maybe if I digged more into the squad dungeons stuff I would've found more cool skills but the dungeons were pretty whatever from what I played. It's all worth it however to have 1v1 bosses get interrupted by a sudden Tiger attack tho. And then a bear.

(Also, the reason it's Nyanners instead of Kson is because being a jpg with a special attack is because that's too small time for kson. Her ass is trying to become a hostess option in Yakuza Gaiden, and bro she might win. godspeed)

The story is... okay. It hits the ground running almost instantly but then slows tf down once you leave Tosa until like the mid/late period of the game. I kinda found myself getting lost in Bakumatsu political groups personally but I was getting into it when it picks back up, although I think everything after the final boss (great boss btw) kinda sucks? So it was a kinda disappointing way to close the game out. Also if I really did a deeper think session there's probably plenty of holes.

I'd also say it's got some of the weaker side quests in the franchise. There's still some good ones in there but a lot of them are pretty forgettable, and a lot of quests are Give Person Thing, Go To A Loading Zone, Walk Back, And Repeat multiple times until it's done. Again, there's still some funny and memorable ones but then there's some other shit.

It's pretty good. I actually really enjoyed the combat despite my usual frustrations with the Yakuza games, but the story and side content left me a little wanting. But also I could hit people katana gates of babylon so that's pretty cool.

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.

This game was certainly a trip, story, music and characters go ham but gameplay....man the gameplay wasn't the best

The game IS built around the new card system which sucks as they had to buff the enemies to give them insane fictional ass moves which ruined the gameplay so hard and the enemies also were buffed to have ridiculous super armor in boss fights and on legend ridiculous combo strings that would kill you instantly with no escape even at full health

Overall I'd say a 6/10, game good but gameplay itself kinda fumbled

Damn, spending a few evenings to read on the turning events of Bakumatsu and nearly mythical status of Sakamoto Ryoma in Japanese culture paid off in spades. This isn't simply a history lesson with cool Yakuza dudes – Ishin's entire shtick is a subversion and dramatization of events that turned the course of Japanese history around. The prior context is, in fact, so cornerstone to key reveals and emotional bits, you kinda see why developers were so wary about bringing the game outside of Japan? The more happy it makes me they trusted our curiosity to learn this context ourselves. When RGG storytelling dramatism and historical anticipations truly synthesise — it's a fucking riot.

Where it does kidna lose me is in the handling of Shinsengumi? RGG games can sometimes be conflicted like that, but more thought should be given to the fact that we work with literal fash secret police, be it history or not. The game doesn't even embellish them and fully elaborates on atrocities they commit. And yet the adherence to subvert Sakamoto Ryoma's legend is just so backbreaking, to the point we're simply required to accept that some boys in blue are ready to put their lives for the future of reformed country just as we are, and it's just so at odds with the rest of the story told. Love Majima and Mine as much as the other guy, but I'm just not buying it here.

As a digression I'd add that Kiwami remake is actually totally fine? In most shots it looks better than before (unless you enjoy the swelter of seventh gen piss filter), the trooper system is a fun additional thing to play around (and can be totally ignored if you wish so), and cast changes are mostly for the better (you're lying to yourself if you think Zhao sells his character worse than fucking Baba). If anything, it could change more.

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

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.