It’s developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega. Like a Dragon: Ishin! launches Februfor PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox. But its jack-of-all-trades approach still resonates. It doesn’t have the engrossing standout minigame like the cabaret or business management challenges of previous titles, and its time period means it also doesn’t pack a fun arcade. But it works well with the rest of the game’s strange juxtapositions.Īt its best when its focus is divided, Like a Dragon: Ishin! is a fun Bakumatsu sandbox. The localization adds a few chuckles, especially when using modern phrasing in this old-timey context. But, and we’re sure you didn’t need us to tell you this, please don’t use this as a serious educational tool. Many characters have names of real-life people, and those names usually do have something to do with how they’re portrayed. And we’re no experts, but we get the feeling that the game approaches adherence to history similarly. With the old faces playing these roles, its story feels more like a stage play than ever. There’s even a “Dragon of Dojima” skin for the protagonist, and equipping it makes things even more confusing. ![]() It’s fun to see familiar faces play the roles of characters in the adventure, but you may need to take notes or check the relationship chart in the menu often. It’s exactly as confusing as it sounds for both newcomers and returning fans. ![]() Like a Dragon: Ishin! uses the likeness and mannerisms of fictional protagonist Kiryu Kazuma to play real historical figure Sakamoto Ryoma as he pretends to be a man named Saito Hajime. So if the system puts you off, it’s probably fine to not mess with them too much and enjoy some minor health regeneration or whatever else shows up by default. We found the effects helpful enough without micromanaging too much, and in the pre-release review period, we couldn’t address how broken those DLC cards might be. You can equip extra effects, like special attacks and healing, and upgrade these cards a lot like a gacha mobile game. Gunman lets you just shoot with reckless abandon, and we used it a lot on low-level fights to finish them before foes even got close.Īccompanying all of these styles is the new Trooper Card system. Swordsman style is probably what you’d expect to see most in a throwback setting, and we found it most useful for one-on-one boss-battle standoffs. The fist-fighting of Brawler wasn’t our taste, but you do end up using it when you’re surprised without your weapons handy. Just in case you want to take a break from the clear core gameplay here of farming just outside of town with your best pal Haruka - and we don’t know why you would - it’s good to get acquainted with the combat system! You can switch between four styles at almost any time. Ishin even includes a story explanation for why you can find items in pots and why it’s totally fine to take them. Still, in some of these substories lies the true charm of the franchise. Similar is the battered defender, who just needs you to stuff his gullet with medicine about 50 times. There’s a kid who loves vegetables, and he’s endearing! But the number of times you have to push through the same prompts to hand him a veggie? Too high. Perhaps the most egregious? Ones that make you keep performing the same fetch quests over and over. And hey, by doing some of the side activities, like becoming a samurai cop and exposing your mentor’s killer, you can unlock cool upgrades for your farm! The early hours are a slog that tries to get you invested in the story, and we find this to be way less effective than the open parts that let you opt in to the main narrative when you feel like it. It always takes a bit for a Ryu Ga Gotoku game to open up and get good, and Ishin is no exception. It’s tolerable, and we bet RGG Studio can patch many of these issues! But you should know about them going in. Playing for a long time at once (which, surprise, we review folk have to do a lot) led to some serious slowdown when loading a scripted sequence or talking to a vendor. Sometimes, menu selections just didn’t load and you could still choose blindly to continue but it wasn’t ideal. The franchise’s tactical reuse of withered technology brought with it some of its own problems in the past, but here we saw some different pain points. Ishin also suffers from a number of technical issues.
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