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.
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.