A hyped localisation and remake of a much requested game.. that personally I feel ended up being pretty terrible.
Ishin's story felt rushed, and a lot of emotional story beats failed to really feel like they had impact due to how little i got to see of the characters involved. It's plot, while having a cool setting and setup, leaned too hard into making crazy twists... in the same vein as yakuza 4's infamous plot twists. It's historical setting is cool to see, and I liked a lot of RGG's warped versions of past events to fit with their original plot.
The gameplay side doesn't fare much better either. Out of the 4 combat styles, only Wild Dancer felt like it had any practical use and appropriate speed, while the others felt sluggish and stiff. I'd guess that the game wasn't designed around the speed and fluidity of this style, as the bosses tended to have 1 or 2 simple repetitive attacks you can avoid with ease, making this pretty easy on it's hardest difficulty. The boss design being so basic, I think its the worst in the series.
And while a servicable remake, I was disappointed in the choice to change character identities from their previous likenesses to characters from 0 and 7, the two most popular and mainstream games, sure, but it's sad to hear about characters I like getting cut due to that. I would have loved to see a bigger variety from the series as a whole. With these new faces, associated themes come back from their respective games, albeit in a cheap and disappointing form, a copy paste without remixes. The familiar tracks that do get remixes tho are excellent.
I wish this was better than it turned out to be, because I could see with work the game be a lot more enjoyable and engaging, but as of now it ranks among my least favorite RGG games.
Ishin's story felt rushed, and a lot of emotional story beats failed to really feel like they had impact due to how little i got to see of the characters involved. It's plot, while having a cool setting and setup, leaned too hard into making crazy twists... in the same vein as yakuza 4's infamous plot twists. It's historical setting is cool to see, and I liked a lot of RGG's warped versions of past events to fit with their original plot.
The gameplay side doesn't fare much better either. Out of the 4 combat styles, only Wild Dancer felt like it had any practical use and appropriate speed, while the others felt sluggish and stiff. I'd guess that the game wasn't designed around the speed and fluidity of this style, as the bosses tended to have 1 or 2 simple repetitive attacks you can avoid with ease, making this pretty easy on it's hardest difficulty. The boss design being so basic, I think its the worst in the series.
And while a servicable remake, I was disappointed in the choice to change character identities from their previous likenesses to characters from 0 and 7, the two most popular and mainstream games, sure, but it's sad to hear about characters I like getting cut due to that. I would have loved to see a bigger variety from the series as a whole. With these new faces, associated themes come back from their respective games, albeit in a cheap and disappointing form, a copy paste without remixes. The familiar tracks that do get remixes tho are excellent.
I wish this was better than it turned out to be, because I could see with work the game be a lot more enjoyable and engaging, but as of now it ranks among my least favorite RGG games.