This review contains spoilers
Like a Dragon: Ishin is real unique in this kooky little game series that I've been fond of since Yakuza 0 first stole my heart. I was hyped to play it and got it early access, and after finishing it this past evening: The Yakuza Samurai game is kinda good with some caveats.
Ishin's gameplay manages well, despite being weighed down by the decade old clunkiness that defined much of the entries at the time and before. Wild Dancer is absolutely bizarre and a highlight for ripping through crowds and stun locking many big bads, nearly completed the whole ring by the end of the story. The gun style is hilariously broken and mows down common enemies well. Swordsmen's is also nice to play yet the most clunky and awkward out of the four, and I never used it much outside of boss battles. Despite the great parry ability, Brawler is far away the weakest link unless items and objects came into play to account for the terrible damage output, despite this being an issue across the board especially against bosses who deal huge amounts of damage and take slivers themselves. Ishin's combat mostly was very fun and rewarding as upgrades opened up, but man I was missing the near perfect combat of Lost Judgment so hard during the first ten or so hours of my Ishin playthrough.
The story was solid with the historical focus of Edo period Japan leading up to the Meiji Restoration. I was compelled by Ryoma's search for his father's killer and how he grappled with his position/legacy as a samurai in these tribes of the Shinsengumi and Tosa Loyalist Party. It was a real solid mystery that slightly complicated the view of samurai as righteous warriors of the land and featured moments that critiqued not just English colonialism, but also the class system in Japan that disproportionately benefited the rich and powerful in feudal society. This was damped a bit with the turn in the second half towards a hardcore nationalist propaganda that tries to absolve the samurai clans (especially the Shinsengumi) even after being shown the terror they've brought on individuals and communities. Our playable character deadass gives a long, rousing speech at the end of the game about what makes Japan great in his dark blue police outfit, despite being very against the way "justice" is handled by both sides of the aisle.
Of course this is a very complicated issue given the conflicts in Japan at the time and the looming threat of the West invading. I don't think the game itself can really disconnect itself from the ideological underpinnings of these clashes in order to tell this historical story as effectively as it did. Still, the heel turn from the first to second half of the game felt like whiplash. I feel that the story could have benefited from three or four more chapters in the middle that better paced these changes like suddenly becoming besties with the captains. Stuff like getting more time with the main individual captains like Shinpachi (who I think even had a moment where he revealed to Ryoma that he didn't agree with the clan's extrajudicial actions) or even the main and final antagonist of the story would have done some good. Even outside the propagandistic tune change, some story elements felt undercooked into the second half as it felt that the game's pace started sprinting to capture so many historical events and wrap them up before the ending arrived.
I'll touch a little on the graphics and framerate from my playthrough. The game looked decent when it ran at 60 FPS on performance mode on my ps4 pro, but the textures and pop-in looked very ugly when loading in the distance or even right out of loading screens. The performance was at its worst during one of the last chapters of the game where the town is set on fire and the framerate chugged for most of the gameplay. Fortunately this wasn't the case much outside of this one chapter, but I'd recommend setting the game to performance rather than quality/graphics mode because of how shaky it felt in the latter in my experience. Strange that this is named a "Kiwami" game since this feels like a slight remaster with some changes in a new engine, but very much not a remake like Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2.
Not much to talk about for sidequests though. There were a few interesting ones that contained some genuinely comedic moments, but most of them were very forgettable and were extended, repetitious friendship events with little interesting rewards.
Funnily enough, the card system did not feel too intrusive to me. They were an eyesore at first but blended into the background as time went on. I'm conflicted on the boss card attacks as they were only a small handful that never fundamentally placed a disadvantage against me as you can guard or dodge easily out of most of them and they feel on brand to other gameplay tropes in other Yakuza games, yet I can see them being a problem for others. The dungeons themselves are cool fun for like 15-30 minutes with how samey the locales are and how easy the enemies are. I barely interacted with the crafting system because of how grindy and stingy the game is with certain materials and money/experience. The game thankfully gave some decently powerful weapons through defeating bosses in story battles, so it wasn't that bad.
To tie this long review off, LAD Ishin was some good action game fun all things considered, though very dated in many places. It clears most of the other Yakuza games for me that I've played and is an easy top 5 entry, even though I still feel a little contentious with the game and the issues I had with it. Regardless, I'll definitely be returning to play more side content and eventually do a legend and Ishin run down the road. Here's hoping Kenzan gets a remaster or remake sometime soon and joins Ishin as the second samurai Yakuza game to be localized in the west.
Ishin's gameplay manages well, despite being weighed down by the decade old clunkiness that defined much of the entries at the time and before. Wild Dancer is absolutely bizarre and a highlight for ripping through crowds and stun locking many big bads, nearly completed the whole ring by the end of the story. The gun style is hilariously broken and mows down common enemies well. Swordsmen's is also nice to play yet the most clunky and awkward out of the four, and I never used it much outside of boss battles. Despite the great parry ability, Brawler is far away the weakest link unless items and objects came into play to account for the terrible damage output, despite this being an issue across the board especially against bosses who deal huge amounts of damage and take slivers themselves. Ishin's combat mostly was very fun and rewarding as upgrades opened up, but man I was missing the near perfect combat of Lost Judgment so hard during the first ten or so hours of my Ishin playthrough.
The story was solid with the historical focus of Edo period Japan leading up to the Meiji Restoration. I was compelled by Ryoma's search for his father's killer and how he grappled with his position/legacy as a samurai in these tribes of the Shinsengumi and Tosa Loyalist Party. It was a real solid mystery that slightly complicated the view of samurai as righteous warriors of the land and featured moments that critiqued not just English colonialism, but also the class system in Japan that disproportionately benefited the rich and powerful in feudal society. This was damped a bit with the turn in the second half towards a hardcore nationalist propaganda that tries to absolve the samurai clans (especially the Shinsengumi) even after being shown the terror they've brought on individuals and communities. Our playable character deadass gives a long, rousing speech at the end of the game about what makes Japan great in his dark blue police outfit, despite being very against the way "justice" is handled by both sides of the aisle.
Of course this is a very complicated issue given the conflicts in Japan at the time and the looming threat of the West invading. I don't think the game itself can really disconnect itself from the ideological underpinnings of these clashes in order to tell this historical story as effectively as it did. Still, the heel turn from the first to second half of the game felt like whiplash. I feel that the story could have benefited from three or four more chapters in the middle that better paced these changes like suddenly becoming besties with the captains. Stuff like getting more time with the main individual captains like Shinpachi (who I think even had a moment where he revealed to Ryoma that he didn't agree with the clan's extrajudicial actions) or even the main and final antagonist of the story would have done some good. Even outside the propagandistic tune change, some story elements felt undercooked into the second half as it felt that the game's pace started sprinting to capture so many historical events and wrap them up before the ending arrived.
I'll touch a little on the graphics and framerate from my playthrough. The game looked decent when it ran at 60 FPS on performance mode on my ps4 pro, but the textures and pop-in looked very ugly when loading in the distance or even right out of loading screens. The performance was at its worst during one of the last chapters of the game where the town is set on fire and the framerate chugged for most of the gameplay. Fortunately this wasn't the case much outside of this one chapter, but I'd recommend setting the game to performance rather than quality/graphics mode because of how shaky it felt in the latter in my experience. Strange that this is named a "Kiwami" game since this feels like a slight remaster with some changes in a new engine, but very much not a remake like Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2.
Not much to talk about for sidequests though. There were a few interesting ones that contained some genuinely comedic moments, but most of them were very forgettable and were extended, repetitious friendship events with little interesting rewards.
Funnily enough, the card system did not feel too intrusive to me. They were an eyesore at first but blended into the background as time went on. I'm conflicted on the boss card attacks as they were only a small handful that never fundamentally placed a disadvantage against me as you can guard or dodge easily out of most of them and they feel on brand to other gameplay tropes in other Yakuza games, yet I can see them being a problem for others. The dungeons themselves are cool fun for like 15-30 minutes with how samey the locales are and how easy the enemies are. I barely interacted with the crafting system because of how grindy and stingy the game is with certain materials and money/experience. The game thankfully gave some decently powerful weapons through defeating bosses in story battles, so it wasn't that bad.
To tie this long review off, LAD Ishin was some good action game fun all things considered, though very dated in many places. It clears most of the other Yakuza games for me that I've played and is an easy top 5 entry, even though I still feel a little contentious with the game and the issues I had with it. Regardless, I'll definitely be returning to play more side content and eventually do a legend and Ishin run down the road. Here's hoping Kenzan gets a remaster or remake sometime soon and joins Ishin as the second samurai Yakuza game to be localized in the west.