Despite being a remake on the same engine, it's hard to imagine that Ishin is a 9 year old game with some new polish, features, and QoL. For all my love of the Dragon Engine, it's almost nostalgic playing another RGG game on Unreal engine.
Ishin follows the story of Ryoma Sakamoto through 1860's Japan following the appearance of the "black ships". As you go through the story, you are introduced to a number of historical figures who are played/modeled after characters that span the main Yakuza/LaD series. Part of this new remake is recasting to include some new characters, and it was great to see newer faces (particularly from 0 and LaD). This also means great new battle remixes for the relevant characters as well. While I'm not overly familiar with the history surrounding the game, I assume quite a number of liberties/interpretations are made to adapt it into a RGG studio story, but it's definitely one of the better ones they have put out.
Gameplay-wise, Ryoma fights with 4 styles. Fists, Sword, Gun, and Wild Dancer (Sword+Gun). I had my doubts, but all 4 of them maintain relevancy in different situations throughout the game and are all fun to use. The trooper system that lets you equip cards to activate different abilities is really fun to use too. You can even set the abilities to auto-activate so you can set-it-and-forget-it, should you choose. While the game is back on the previous engine, some QoL from the Dragon Engine did get backported as well - namely, auto-saving and saving anywhere, and expanded inventory. I miss the lack of loading screens and more dynamic animations/environments, but it still looks and feels tremendous.
At the time of writing this, Like a Dragon Ishin is easily a top 3 RGG Studios game for me (along with LaD and 0) and I'm really glad the work was finally put in to localize it. Definitely looking forward to doing more of the side content and looking up some of the real history!
Ishin follows the story of Ryoma Sakamoto through 1860's Japan following the appearance of the "black ships". As you go through the story, you are introduced to a number of historical figures who are played/modeled after characters that span the main Yakuza/LaD series. Part of this new remake is recasting to include some new characters, and it was great to see newer faces (particularly from 0 and LaD). This also means great new battle remixes for the relevant characters as well. While I'm not overly familiar with the history surrounding the game, I assume quite a number of liberties/interpretations are made to adapt it into a RGG studio story, but it's definitely one of the better ones they have put out.
Gameplay-wise, Ryoma fights with 4 styles. Fists, Sword, Gun, and Wild Dancer (Sword+Gun). I had my doubts, but all 4 of them maintain relevancy in different situations throughout the game and are all fun to use. The trooper system that lets you equip cards to activate different abilities is really fun to use too. You can even set the abilities to auto-activate so you can set-it-and-forget-it, should you choose. While the game is back on the previous engine, some QoL from the Dragon Engine did get backported as well - namely, auto-saving and saving anywhere, and expanded inventory. I miss the lack of loading screens and more dynamic animations/environments, but it still looks and feels tremendous.
At the time of writing this, Like a Dragon Ishin is easily a top 3 RGG Studios game for me (along with LaD and 0) and I'm really glad the work was finally put in to localize it. Definitely looking forward to doing more of the side content and looking up some of the real history!