The historical spinoff I've been waiting for in years has been finally translated into English and released worldwide. And they go and make the game inferior to the original.

Like a Dragon: Ishin does nothing to address the issues the original Ishin had, and in fact, adds more problems into the mix.

Bosses have an insane amount of hyperarmour now, making them impossible to actually combo. The damage in Brawler style has been nerfed into the ground, making it virtually unusable except for parrying/tiger dropping. The four styles still have no cohesion between them, and are imbalanced as fuck as a result. Ground attacks have been removed in favour of just swinging the sword when enemies are on the ground and having them take damage. And most of all, both the trooper card system and boss magic attacks add nothing to the game except annoyance.

The sword upgrading system has been completely fucked as well, based on random enemy drops. It was so bad, the game had to patch this drop rate. It worked fine before, why change it?

On top of this, Unreal Engine adds the usual UE jank into the mix. Although, to give the game credit, the lighting in the world is quite beautiful and it has a quite robust options menu as well.

Overall, it's just disappointing that this is what we ended up getting. 100% an unnecessary remake, even just translating the original into English would've been better. If you don't want to play the original with a guide, go for this one, the base game is still great.

I started off absolutely hating this game when I tried playing it the first time, came back several years later and ended up loving it. I've never been that big of a fan of Fromsoft games so it was a pleasant surprise.

Game can be brutally difficult, but you'll learn as you go along. Parrying and reacting to unlockable attacks takes practice but becomes seperate nature after a while, making for a uniquely satisfying combat system. The boss lineup is easily one of the best I've fought in a game, they'll all test your knowledge in one way or another.

The world is cool and beautiful, and the story is decent as well. If I had one major gripe, I wish we had more incentive to use the Shinobi tools. The way they were implemented makes them too limited, never seeing mileage. The same holds true for the different combat skills outside of Mortal Draw

Overall, getting gud really was the answer. Hope they create another game like this again some day.

One of the most conflicting games I've ever played. RGG at their best and at their worst. After finally finishing my playthrough, I've concluded I respect this game's ambition, with the goods outweighing the bad.

5 characters who are play different, 5 main cities that are unique in their own ways, 5 plots that come together at the end, loads of substories, 4 different side stories with their own character stories attached, an astronomical amount of minigames, this game has it all. On top of that, being built on a completely new engine (at the time), improving both texture quality and lighting from Yakuza 3/4.

As a result of this, the game can drag a bit and pacing is all over the place. You'll most likely forget parts of the plot due to the stop-and-start nature of the game. Additionally, some of the characters (Akiyama in particular) feel underbaked in comparison to others. The encounter rate is also absurdly high, which makes the game really annoying. Minigames are quite varied as well, with the fun of some being vastly different than others. I'd choose taxi racing as Kiryu or baseball as Shinada any day over dancing as Haruka or hunting as Saejima.

The stories are of varying quality. The game starts off strong with Kiryu but then takes a nosedive with Saejima. Your mileage with Haruka will vary, depending on whether you enjoy the dancing or not, but the plot in this section is pretty good regardless. Akiyama is introduced here as well, but plays more of a minor role than in Yakuza 4. Some people love Shinada and other people hate him. Personally, I'm in the camp of loving him. He's tied for my favourite story in the game alongside Kiryu. The plot centers around these characters and their interactions with a mastermind, controlling traitors throughout both the Tojo Clan and Omi alliance. The game does a good job at keeping up the intrigue with what's going on, slowly unravel more and more of the conspiracy with each character's story.

In saying that, it pains me to say that the game just couldn't stick the landing. The plot loses itself a bit, leading to some of the most random/lackluster final boss choices in the series. Characters are built up but then killed off screen or just don't appear again. But what could they do, they had to find a way to tie up 5 coalescing stories in a way that made sense.

But I cannot lie, despite my gripes, this game has easily some of the strongest moments of the series. My final take is this: if you're looking for the quintessential Yakuza game, I'd recommend playing 5. Just be ready for a long ride.