Like A Dragon: Ishin Review – An Interactive Samurai Thriller With Slick Combat

With the Yakuza or rather Like A Dragon series rising from the undergrounds of obscurity to rivaling Sonic as one of Sega’s modern mascots, the Team at Ryu Ga Gotoku has decided to remake Ishin, a spin-off title set in the Bakumatsu Period of Japan that also never made it out of Japan, until now that it.

I’m a pretty big fan of Samurai media, from Kurosawa’s classics to the blood-splattered works of Takashi Miike, and from the 20 hours I’ve played, Like A Dragon: Ishin takes all the best parts of pulpy Samurai thrillers and brings them into the interactive medium. This comes alongside a versatile battle system, fun characters, and a great world to explore.

A Tale of Revenge

Like A Dragon Ishin takes place in 1866 during the Bakumatsu Period in Japan. American ships forced the country to end its 200+ year isolation, causing a rift between Samurai working under the Shogun and loyalists who wish to see the Emperor restored to political power.

In the middle of this is Sakamoto Ryoma (played by Yakuza’s Kazuma Kiryu) a high-ranking samurai from the Tosa clan. At the start of the game, his adoptive father is murdered, and he is framed for the attack leading him to desert his home and travel to Kyoto under the name Saito Hajime. Upon hearing that the attacker is a member of the Shinsengumi, The Shogun’s elite samurai police, he is determined to infiltrate their ranks and get revenge on the killer. As he investigates further however he’ll learn of a greater conspiracy that will affect the future of Japan as a whole.

Welcome to The Shinsengumi

The plot of Ishin is a well-told samurai revenge story with plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing. It was always exciting to see how things would unfold next with the vast web of schemes, alliances, and betrayals rearing their heads.

I really like the portrayal of the historical samurai in the game. Characters like Ryoma, Saito Hajime, and the various Shinsengumi members were all real-world people who have been portrayed many times in Japanese media. Here they’re played by different Yakuza characters, taking a lot of interesting artistic liberties with the source materials. I think my favorite is probably Souji Okita, who tends to be depicted as a young bishounen yet here is portrayed by the unhinged Goro Majima. Other characters like Hijikata, Izo, and the girl at the inn Oryo likewise make for memorable cast members with likable arcs and revelations.

The game actually goes on the depict a number of events leading up to the Meiji Restoration often with more comedic or shounen-style antics. It’s a lot of fun especially if you’re interested in the real-life history of the setting. If you’re a fan of works like Rurouni Kenshin or Gintama which also cover The Shinsengumi you’ll probably like how they’re dealt with in this game.

Exploring Kyo

Most of Like A Dragon Ishin takes place in the city of Kyoto, or ‘Kyo’ as most characters refer to it. This is where the game’s Yakuza DNA really shines through. First, the city is beautiful and feels very appropriate to the time period from the costumes and architecture. The performance of the game also ran well although it did have the occasional texture pop-in and there were minor bugs with some of the NPCs getting stuck on objects while they walk. Minor issues overall but it did happen quite a few times. 

Despite being a fairly small set of streets, Kyo feels a lot more alive than some open-world games do. The town is littered with various shops and activities. These can come in the form of minigames like Karaoke, dancing, gambling, and fishing, you can even get a second house to raise and sell crops. Not to mention, you can also upgrade your sword, gun, and armor at the blacksmith (or the black market) and eat some Ramen to regain health. There’s a lot to do and I found myself exploring for hours. 

This all ties in with the side stories or ‘sub-stories’ as they’re referred to where Ryoma meets with and helps out various people around town and some of these people can be weird. You have foreigners sneaking into the country, a female debt collector that essentially doubles as a vigilante, and feeding a low-ranked sumo wrestler so he can get back in the game. My favorite is probably the sub-story with the journalist who wants to conduct the first-ever interview in Japan with you. You have the answer with different prompts to make the Shinsengumi look better, and showed me I really have to work on my marketing skills. It can get silly but it’s charmingly silly.

Increase your virtue

Buying goods from shops, working part-time, and trying out mini-games will increase your bond with the various Kyo residents, which in turn can net you new dialogue scenes that give you a greater look into the lives of these people and also some new items and upgrades. Doing these errands around town will also get you virtue points, which can be traded in at temples for upgrades around the overworld, like being able to sprint for longer periods of them. 

That feature, in particular, is pretty important because there’s a lot of backtracking in this game. You’ll be running between your Inn, The Barracks, and other places constantly and it can get a little tedious after a while especially since Ryoma’s regular running animation outside of battle isn’t super fast. You can unlock a quick travel feature later on through a side quest but it’s still somewhat restrictive to certain areas.

Overall however I really like the world of the game. You can see what fans mean when they say the fun of Yakuza is in the side content, it’s cool exploring the different shops and goofing off with the mini-games. The side characters while not important in the grand scheme of things also feel appropriate to the time period and never overstay their welcome. You can ignore most of this if you want but there were always certain shops or restaurants I constantly found myself returning to because they were just nice to chill at.

Fight Like A Dragon

Of course, this wouldn’t be a samurai game or a Yakuza game with some street brawls. With thugs and bandits wandering the streets of Kyo, you can be pulled into a fight at any time. Battles take place in the form of beat ’em up style gameplay, with a light attack, heavy attack, dodge button, guard, and guard break. Fighting in battle will also build up your heat gauge which can be seen with the blue flames rising around Ryoma’s body. These allow him to perform special attacks for extra damage. 

Another cool feature is if you get an enemy on the ground, you can perform a cinematic attack, hitting them while they’re down such as stabbing them to the ground with your Katana. These are really helpful for quickly taking out enemies when you’re surrounded by a pack of thugs. This is also a good time to mention that combat can get super violent, with lots of visceral blood. Despite this however it’s shown that Ryoma never actually kills anyone, your foes are totally fine even after you’ve just shot them through the stomach. Overall, combat is a riot. Is easy to string seamless combos together and the attacks always pack a punch without ever feeling repetitive.

The Four Styles

This is combined with four styles of combat that you can use in the game: Brawler: barehanded combat, Swordsmans: using a katana, Gunman: using a pistol, and Wild Dancer: using a combination of swords and guns. Each feels very different and all of them can be fun and useful in different circumstances. 

Brawler is classic Yakuza, bashing and kicking dues in the teeth. Swordsman was probably my favorite, just slashing enemies down with the katana, it hits really hard but many attacks require some time to wind up and can leave you vulnerable if timed wrong. Get it right however and it’s both bloody and satisfying. The Gunman style has you just shooting people, it can be good if you want to cheese the game and snipe foes from afar but otherwise isn’t too interesting. 

Finally, Wild Dancer is the red mage of styles, it’s a middle ground between sword and gun, allowing you to slash, shoot and twirl around like a drunken grandpa in Texas. As the name implies it’s super flashy with dance-like spin dodges and ending combos with a flurry of gunshots in all directions. The downside is that it does less damage but I found it really good for bosses since it lets you dodge their attacks more easily then comes back in with another slew of combos. 

Each of these systems has different skill trees which you can upgrade with orbs you gain by using them more. The skill tree is interesting as well, it’s shaped like a circle with branching paths to follow and unlock stat upgrades very similar to the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X. I do like how easy it is to follow while giving a good sense of progress. 

Trooper Cards

Even Yakuza couldn’t escape having a sort of in-game gacha mechanic in the form of the trooper cards. Being a Shinsengumi Captain, you have a squad of soldiers who work under you and they come in the form of cards that you can equip to Ryoma.

In battles, you can equip four cards for each of your four style systems. They can provide you with a limited amount of buffs or healing, and a couple of rare ones even give you access to special attacks. One trooper for each style will be a corporal and have an extra corporal trait. This can likewise be a passive buff like extra damage.

Trooper cards can further be leveled up to enhance their abilities and lower the cooldown time it takes for them to use their attacks once again. At the Barracks you can even go on special dispatch missions like getting rid of bandits to train and level them up quicker.

You can recruit more cards by drawing more of them with in-universe money (the money you earn through the game to buy items, not real-world money), unlocking them after battles and some enemies will even ask to join you and will turn into one. There are even big-name Youtubers like Nyanners that appear as cards (no seriously). You also have the option to fuse them together to make stronger cards because apparently, Japanese soldiers work like SMT demons in the Shinsengumi. 

With around 400 different cards and a variety of different skills with different effects, there’s a lot you can do with the troopers. Getting a slow but reliable healing trooper really saved my neck a couple of times and I can see people playing on the harder difficulties really sinking time into the customization that they provide.

Closing thoughts

Like A Dragon: Ishin is a great action-adventure game that brings the best of the Yakuza series into a new setting. The Bakumatsu Period Kyoto feels lived in. Yeah, the backtracking can be a pain at times but the amount of detail in the world and the various characters and side quests still make it fun to explore. Seeing the portrayals of historical samurai and the pulpy thriller surrounding them is likewise great, creatively showing real events of history through Yakuza’s more over-the-top and heartfelt storytelling. 

The combat is classic beat-em fun with the four battle styles each feeling engaging and exciting to use in different situations. Pulling off a tricky combo and then stabbing a guy through the stomach remains incredibly satisfying the whole way through. Overall Like A Dragon: Ishin may be but a humble spin-off title but it very much has the heart of Yakuza and the soul of a samurai. 

Like A Dragon: Ishin is available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Game code provided by the publisher. The game was reviewed on PC via Steam.

Like A Dragon: Ishin

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio

Release Date: 2023-02-22

Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

1860s Kyo is plagued by widespread inequality, and one samurai will change the course of history in his search for justice. Take up the sword of Sakamoto Ryoma and venture to Kyoto to find your father’s killer, clear yourself of a framed murder, and restore your honor. In doing so, you will bring an end to the samurai era and forever change the future of Japan. Draw your blade, load your revolver, and join the revolution in this heated historical adventure that only the creators of Yakuza: Like a Dragon could produce.

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