A fun but flawed entry in the Yakuza/Lika A Dragon series. This is a standalone historical adventure which require no previous knowledge of the franchise. The characters in the game are based on real historical figures but modelled on series protagnist Kiryu Kazama and his roster of allies, frenemies, and antagonists.
The combat is a refreshing change in this edition as guns are reintroduced and permanently available as part of two fighting styles. There is a weapon crafting and upgrade tree which is complex but rewarding if you put in the requisite grinding and resources. If you don't want to grind through side activities, you can get by in the game by using weapons awarded to you from defeated bosses.
The farm is a fun addition at first but quickly becomes tiring and dull due to overlong animations and very repetitive gameplay. The gloss comes off once you've prepared the same meals over and over again to meet orders or grind for money. Still, you can fill your farm with cats and dogs so that's a big plus.
The story is overly long and comes with plenty of twists and turns that eventually become a little overwhelming. It doesn't help that the cutscenes can sometimes run up to 20 minutes long. This is nothing new for the Yakuza series but this time my tolerance for the story was worn out by the final three chapters. There is historical context to the story that is lost on me as a Westerner who knows very little about Japanese history so that did hinder my enjoyment somewhat.
There are many substories (sidequests) dotted throughout the game. Most are fun stories, although many are just repetitive requests to feed resources to an NPC. This was disappointing as although attempts were made to make them amusing, it's still boring to feed someone vegetables for the 5th time and read the same dialogue until you fill their friendship bar.
I sound like I'm down on the game but I did have fun with it. I think part of the issue I had was that I put too much time into it without too much reward. I would recommend engaging with the side content but to not devote dozens of hours to it as they rarely pay off in satisfying ways. Play for a good time, not a long time, is my advice.

As someone who feels like they're in a constant game of tug of war with each Yakuza game they play, I was genuinely surprised with how much I ended up enjoying Ishin. As far as ones I've completed go, this very well may be my second favorite in the series.

Yakuza games are often funny and unique, with really entertaining characters. I really think Kiryu is one of the best protagonists of all time. But theres always some things that bring them down for me. Grueling pacing, terrible boss design and lackluster endings are what a lot of this series has left me with. Most of the games make up for this overall (besides Yakuza 4. Sorry I dont usually like to use reviews to insult other games but god I fucking despised playing that). But starting with 0 which does have some of the same issues but is by far the strongest I've beaten yet has made the entire series onwards feel a bit disappointing. Especially with my last two experiences, Yakuza 5 and 6. I never ended up reviewing them but they did so much that I wanted from the series and I really felt the Yakuza love again (much needed after 4), but then both of them completely dropped the ball for me with some of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever experienced.

So yeah, I made sure my expectations were tempered for this one. Which I think in the end made me enjoy it more. Its completely fair to expect the mainline series to be high quality but in most cases its understandable to expect a spinoff to be a little weaker. But damn, not this one.

I'm not really familiar with the history behind what inspired the story, but the small amount I do know tells me they definitely took some liberties. I can't really comment on if thats a good thing or not, but the way they play off of some of the real life events is pretty damn cool. Even without the history aspect, its just a badass story to begin with. And my god, characters are getting murdered every other chapter. I love that shit. And! Half of them aren't ridiculously stupid fake out deaths, hallelujah. I can't really get into too much detail because of spoilers but, for basically every Yakuza game there's a few chapters in the beginning or near the middle where I want to cry myself to sleep, but with Ishin I was hooked the entire time past the end of chapter 1.

The combat is already pretty fun. Yakuza needs more guns. Wild Dancer obv is the most entertaining but Swordsman and Gunman are both fun in their own right. Brawler is completely useless, barely touched it lol. The card system is fine, It wasn't implemented all that great and the best cards in the game are free DLC so I just used those the whole time, but It existing is neat. There's also the Another Life farming sim side mode that was cute and fun but for a reason I'm about to get to, I didn't get too far into it.

By 'about to get to', I mean we're going to talk about it right now. The only thing I really disliked about this game is how god damn grindy it is to interact with the side stuff. I usually skip a lot of the side content in this series but I like to do a bit of it when its one of them I particularly like, and it really felt like this one was fighting against me. The battle dungeons are absurdly long, everything in Another Life takes ages (also you can't pay off Haruka's debt with your own money normally for some dumb reason) and trying to upgrade weapons and make the blacksmith actually useful is a nightmare. The light rpg elements and how slow everything is really take away from wanting to interact with much of that.

But that rather large-but-not-really issue aside, this was definitely one of the most surprising games I've played in a minute. Very high contender for the most fun and best written game in the series.

We are now at the blog portion of this review. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR and my final score if you don't care about all that. Things have been going solid, this was one of 5 games I beat in a day (not in their entirety obv) the other day so I'm pretty proud of that. Found a sealed copy of Persona 4 Arena for PS3 so happy to get that. Been playing Breath of the Wild too. Not sure what my next review will be but a MGRR one is quite likely. Also been doing a lot more creative writing which made trying to do write this review harder than usual. I hope this turned out good enough and you enjoyed reading it. If you did, thank you <3

-----TLDR-----
+ Great story
+ Fun gameplay
+ sexy music
- Extremely grindy side content

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 41%
Time Played - i forgor I'll add this in later
Completion #3 of May
Completion #92 of 2023

Hilarious to me that right as the Yakuza games started to pop off outside of Japan they changed the name to Like a Dragon. This title is, at times, the most fun game I've played in the series. The combat is great, particularly the Wild Dancer tree. More games should let you use a sword and gun at the same time. But Ishin definitely feels like a PS2 game at its core, and I don't think the setting really works for me. It felt much more bland compared to the active city life of the modern day titles. And the pacing is downright glacial for quite a while, which is pretty par for the course in this series but it felt even slower this time. A fun experience but definitely lower in my series ranking.

frankly.....eeeeeeeeh. this is honestly the most eeeeeeeeeeh ive felt towards a yakuza game. a lot of the story felt like kinda like slog. some of the characters were fun and frankly i like the amount of fanservice for long time yakuza fans, just seeing people like mine again is great. A lot of the music is also great. but otherwise its just eeeeeeeeeeeh. side quests werent my favorite, and the ones with friendship bars to fill up were all awful (im looking at you vegetable kid i gave that fucker 100 cucumbers). combat was kinda cool, even if i got my ass kicked. still overall a good time if youre yakuza fan but its far from my favorite

Desperately wanted to like this game more, but ended up quite mixed on it. To its credit, I think this game has a neat spin on history that's fun for series fans, and some of its peaks are legit great, I'm glad we finally got this one in the west. But this is the most I have ever dragged my feet on a RGG title. The substories are probably the weakest in the series and I feel similarly about the other side content offerings, the story feels even more stop-and-start than usual, I wasn't huge on the grind or extra systems... I dunno, it never really clicked the way most of the series did. I enjoyed it overall, but it's low-middle of the pack for me; definitely made me appreciate how far we've come with the Dragon Engine games, flaws and all.

Finished in 2023

Let me just start by saying that I very much enjoyed this game. I’m very glad they decided on a western release. Honestly a great stand-alone game and one of the more fulfilling endings in the franchise.

However the grind in this game is anything but fun. Having played through the series i’m used to quite a bit of it but this game takes the cake. The substories weren’t as memorable as the ones in the main series either. I felt like both of these take away from the overall rating. Settling for 3,5 stars now.

Man, what a let down. A great idea on paper, let's take the Yakuza/Like a Dragon universe and move it into a new time period. There are some differences here and there of course, but the general idea should be a slam dunk and unfortunately, it comes up quite short and becomes maybe the worst Yakuza/LaD game in the franchise (excluding Dead Souls).

This game just feels incredibly scaled down from LaD's normal over-the-top nature. I never found much of the heat moves that you normally see to be that impressive. Most of the items around you that are normally grabbable and usable are pretty generic as well. Luckily this game features sword and gun (and a combo of both) fighting styles to help make up some of that.

Unfortunately, these aren't all that fun to play with either. All four fighting styles feature pros and cons to them but quickly you'll realize that the hand to hand is kinda pointless. You do get a weapon you can swap to in this fight style, some of which can be interesting and fun to use but to me, it just never made up for some of the limitations this game felt like it possessed.

The enemies feature a lot of the Yakuza 3 issues of just constant blocking. All four fighting styles do have a guard break attack but some of those had range issues. It also happens so frequently too that some of these moves get so old because you are constantly having to use it to break through for damage.

The gun had moments of being OP which was satisfying and the sword/gun style had some fun crowd control uses. I just wish they went over-the-top with these styles, though I didn't unlock every heat action or move so there might be some I missed out on that are silly and over the top. If they do, I wish they would've better spread those out to make the combat more fun, I might've stuck it out more if I was getting these fun moves, would've probably made the monotony of the combat decrease as well.

The new feature in this game where some of the over-the-top attacks resided was the army/card system. Think Majima Construction type card setup but in Ishin you are able to set these cards up for use in battle. There are a few over the top attacks found here, you can have a Tiger or Bear help you for instance. You can add 3-4 cards to each fighting style all that have different powerups. Some will heal you, some are stat buffs, general attacks, etc. If they are the General in your squad, those also lead to various powerups as well, so placement can be important as well.

In order to use these attacks you'll have to attack in that fighting style in order to build up bars that, when filled, will allow you those abilities during a fight. If you aren't using those styles though, they will stay at the level they were at when you last used that fighting style. I found some of these pretty useful and fun to use but there seemed to be a lot less 'rare' or story character cards then in previous games so rarely strayed from the cards I selected fairly early into using it (this card based thing is not unlocked right away in the game).

I found crafting and upgrading your weapons a bigger grind than in previous Yakuza games and more annoying to deal with. There aren't a ton of super powerful weapons that can easily be found in this game, so you'll be tasked with focusing on crafting to help keep your attacks doing damage as you progress. The weapons are so pricey to make though. You can 'level up' your crafting abilities to help cheapen prices but I always felt like it was barely knocking them down. Since you're having to craft basically everything too, from weapons to armor, you're still spending a good amount.

You can get money in various ways, many that should be familiar to people who have played other games in the franchise. If you like some of the money making ways of other games, you'll probably be able to still go through those means in order to make money. I did grind through my normal ways of making money but because so much was going to crafting, it just felt like a bigger grind in those ways.

The farming side game is kinda neat and easy to use. You can use these items to make food as well, and those cooking games are pretty standard but a nice addition as well. Think Cooking Mama style mini games. The biggest pain with this cooking game though is you have to make every item one by one, there is no ability to cook multiple dishes at the same time. I wouldn't even mind having to do these mini games over and over and over if I could at least choose to make more than one of a dish at one time. These dishes I found were a huge lifesaver too since they provide a good amount of health recovery. The normal medicine and items you can buy in this game always felt pretty underpowered too so I was constantly going back and making dishes.

The other big problem with this game is just traversing in it. If you want to go farm and make dishes, there is only one point on the map that will take you there. You can't even use a taxi to go there directly. So if you're on the other side of the map, you'll have to either walk all the way down to that one singular location or fast travel to it, and the fast travel areas that are set in the game are spread out way too far. So even when you fast travel to the nearest point, you're still having to walk a good amount after that.

The side quests, another Yakuza staple are all a pretty big let down. Another area that feels scaled back from its normal silly and over-the-top nature. You can also make connections/relationships with various people around town, something that has been featured before. These connections though are not all that different from each other. So you'll be constantly giving people dishes or junk or vegetables to slowly build up these meters.

Overall, Like a Dragon: Ishin just feels like a missed opportunity. This setting and the LaD style should be great, but the grind, the lackluster side quests and main story, the slog of battle, and overall lackluster location just made me want to get through this game as quickly as I could. Besides all of this, it looks pretty nice, seeing some of these familiar character in newly imagined ways is neat, seeing some characters that only were featured in one Yakuza game from ages ago was a nice treat as well, it's not all doom and gloom when it comes to this game. It's just that the bar for Like a Dragon games is pretty damn high for me and Like a Dragon: Ishin just doesn't come close to hitting that bar and being as silly and satisfying as the other games in this franchise.

So I'm not going to go indepth here as I did with my original review of Ishin since in my opinion I prefer the original 2014 version of Ishin, but I will say Ishin 2023 is not a bad remake, it's great, but it's not as good as the original Ishin.

The gameplay has retained fun aspect that the original has.
I'm happy to say that the card system did not ruin the game and actually I appreciate the integration of them now due to the fact they made boss fights last longer with bosses using their own unique abilities. One thing I really wish they fixed/ made easier to achieve was leveling up without so much grinding like the original, but I guess the remake retains it's grind nature.
The minigames are all here and prestine, I just wish they added an actual courtesan carabet club like from Kenzan for this new version, since this game has the best looking hostess character in a courtesan minigame.
I wish as well they added more than just 1 new song for the karaoke and had more characters singing like Nakagura Shinpachi (Seijima), Hijikata Toshizo (Mine), Katsura Kogoro (Akiyama), Saigo Kichinosuke (Ryuji), and even Ryoma's love interest Oryo.
Esthetically the game looks nicer and has cool new unique tracks with remixed names fitting the style of Ishin:

Soar (Ishin) - Fly (3)
Collision of Our Sword (Ishin) - Collision of Our Souls (5)
For My Sake (Ishin) - For Sake (Kiwami)
Pseudo Fight (Ishin) - Affected Fight (5)

It does suck that they didn't remake any more themes in the style of Ishin, it would have been awesome to hear remixes of:

Pledge of Demon
With Vengeance
The Battle for the Dream

They could've remixed them and renamed them to:

Vow of Devil
With Retaliation
The Clash of Hope

However the cast in my opinion is a major downgrade from the original, where here it clearly felt like RGG cared more about pandering to Yakuza 0 and Like a Dragon fans, by making certain characters from 0 and 7, replace characters from 3-5 that made sense for the roles there were originally casted as.

The downgrades in my opinons are:

Takechi Hanpeita: Originally was a unique character potrayed by Katsunori Takahashi, but now has been replaced with Hideo Nakano (Shibusawa) immediately eliminating the twist from original Ishin.

Todo Heisuke - Originally potrayed by Baba from Yakuza 5, now is potrayed by Zhao, which doesn't match at all, and it's worse with Zhao's stupid glasses. In my opinion it would've been better to have casted Someya from Yakuza 6 Song of Life as Todo Heisuke, since both Baba from 5, and Someya from 6 are as tragic as Heisuke, and would've made more sense for Someya to be the replacement actor instead of... Zhao.

Yamazaki Susumu - This one is just stupid, they replaced Hiroshi Kugihara with Joon-gi Han, even though being an intimating informant with Kugihara made more sense, but I guess we have to pander to female fans who like hot looking korean pyschopaths is the quota they have to fulfill now.

Kondo Isami - the head of the Shinsengumi was originally portrayed by Eiichiro Funakoshi which subverted expectations for the way he acts, and even if he's the head of the Shinsengumi, he's not that strong when Ryoma fights him, his appearance of being potrayed by Eiichiro Funakoshi subverted that expectation, now that he's been replaced by Koichi Adachi, you already know he's weak, and while Adachi in 7 is a great character, he doesn't fit with the character he's portraying in Ishin.

There are upgrades in the cast in my opinion:

Takeda Kanryusai - Originally played by Hiroshi Hayashi, he's now instead played by Yakuza 0's Hiroki Awano, in my opinion both actors worked for the character of Takeda, with both being vile in terms of personality, but Awano clearly loves being vile, while Hayashi doesn't realize he is. So in my opinion Awano was an upgrade.

Ito Kashitaro - Originally played Goh Hamazaki from Yakuza 3 and 4, he is now instead played by Daisaku Kuze From 0. In my honest opinion, either one can work because I think both being casted for this character doesn't make sense. In my opinion Daisuku Kuze should've been Takechi Hanpieta since his overall character in 0 matches more with Takechi than it does with Ito. Goh Hamazaki should've remained Ito if we're taking his overall character from Yakuza 3, but considering 4, it doesn't make sense. In my opinion Ito's recasted character should've been Hideo Nakano (Shibusawa) and Hitoshi Ozawa (Kuze) should've been Takechi.

Oryo - This one might be petty of me, but in original Ishin, Oryo isn't good looking. Instead here Oryo is potrayed by Yuki from Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2's hostess club. Major upgrade and the chemistry with Ryoma/Kiryu is great.


The story still remains it's amazing story told, I'm happy that tracks from the original game are still within this remake, I'm especially happy for them keeping imo the best Yakuza song in the franchise, Assassination of Bodhisattva. I wish they kept the health bare systems from the original/Yakuza 0 because I feel the Red Health bare bosses now have limit the intimidation aspect of the bosses, however I do appreciate that they contrasted this by making boss fights longer, I do wish however they added more dynamic qtes.

Overall I still prefer the original Ishin, however I'm happy to say the card gameplay did not ruin the game and actually improve the gameplay, the cast of the game is a mixed bag, with severe downgrades, the worst being Takechi Hanpeita but also good upgrades, especially Oryo being a great upgrade.

Overall I'm happy with this official Western port of Ishin, I hope however modders for the steam version of the game add some of the original cast as mods, but with options as really the only character who I'm happy got replaced was original Oryo from Ishin (2014), as the 2023 version is much cuter.

I highly recommend Ishin 2023 without the perspective of the original, but if you've played the original, I also recommend this version just so you can compare and later see which one you actually prefer. I actually thought halfway through that this version was actually better, so they did something right, but I do have that bit of bias towards the original.
Still I highly recommend Ishin 2023, I hope one day RGG studios remakes Kenzan, Kurohyou 1 and 2.

#BringKENZANtotheWest
#BringKurohyoutotheWest
#BringKurohyou2totheWest

Points positifs:

- Des très beaux graphismes que je trouve même plus beaux que le Dragon Engine

- Des substory et des minijeux incroyables parmi les meilleurs de la série

- Un très bon système de combat

- Une ville très sympathique et fun à explorer

- Des boss excellents pour la plupart

- Une histoire extrêmement bonne et riche en rebondissements

- Tous les personnags sont extrêmement stylés

- Des excellentes QTE et dynamic intro

Points négatifs:

- Le grind est HORRIBLE, il faut faire les tournois pour l'XP, grind les battle dungeon pour les matériaux et en plus il faut grind les jeux d'argent pour farm la thune, c'est vraiment hyper chiant

- Les boss qui se mettent à faire des kamehameha ou je sais pas quoi virez moi ça

- Les trooper cards là virez moi ça aussi !!

- Quelques boss qui sont chiants voire décevants, surtout ceux qui sont à plusieurs contre 1

- Une fin décevante surtout le long battle et les miniboss

- Du potentiel gaché pour certains personnages (Kuze, Awano...) et certains qui ne méritent même pas d'être là (Mabuchi? Koshimizu?)

- Et pour moi le plus gros défaut du jeu: Le faut qu'ils n'aient quasiment rien changé au jeu à part une refonte graphique mais qu'ils fassent quand même payer plein prix c'est quoi ce foutage de gueule, ils ont même pas enlevé les temps de chargement ou quoi ils ont juste remasterisé les graphismes et ils font payer ça 60 balles

Ryoma Sakamoto, the man who rewrote history with his sword.

No "Like A Dragon" game is complete without it's many substories, plot twists, and action movie-style cliches. Was really excited to play the new installment, however, when I ended up starting my journey I started to have issues taking this spinoff seriously at all. It is difficult to be immersed into the characters and stories when I know these characters and mannerisms as others in the canon Like a Dragon universe. It is confounding because I honestly do not know if it could be as good without these great performances, especially with Takaya Kuroda killing it as always. Fortunately, it did not take me long to adapt to it and get invested in the story which seems to suffer from a bit of a slow start but kicks into gear after a few chapters.

Great beat-em-up gameplay with the new editions of the upgradeable weapons and crafting system. The world and environment are as vibrant and lively as ever. This is one gorgeous-looking game especially crossing the bridges and seeing all the scenery and water surrounding Kyo.

Swordplay is really nice against many bosses and the final climactic battles are always one hell of a ride. Definitely a must-play for die-hard fans of the series with a plethora of side content and mini-games to enjoy. I put 59 hrs in and ended up only completing 19%.

Sing some Baka Mitai and watch Ryoma's story unfold. Hopefully, we will eventually get Kenzan as well, I really wanna get my hands on that one now!