A stunning setting which ✨is✱ rich with real-life history
The swordplay adds a refreshing twist to combat
Side quests and minigames are robust and๊ often hilarious
Random difficulty spikes
Some non-optional🌠 side quests interrupt the pacing
Main story🍬 might be predictable for fans of the sಌeries
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Stepping into the remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin is as jarring as it is exꩲhilarating. It's set in 1860s Japan, a feudal-era Kyoto and a far cry from the shimmering cityscapes which the Like a Dragon and Yakuza games typically thrust us into. Dressed in traditional Japanese garb, a katana at my side, it required a good few minutes to take in my very unfamiliar surroundings.
Release date: Feb 21, 2023
Platform(s): PS5, PS4, PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox One
Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku
Publisher: Sega
Kyo is a stunningly-beautiful sensory assault. Developer Ryu Ga Gotoku has built an authentic-feeling reimagining of a historical city – an open world wh🦩ich is enthralling to explore. Every corner of Kyo, from the peaceful fishing docks in Fushimi with their view of waterfront homes and a forested mountain range, to the dilapidated slums of Mukurogai, begs to be explored. Thiꦺs is by far the most picturesque Yakuza game to date, and it's a magnificent demonstration for the first in the series to be built in Unreal Engine 4. In fact, for my money it's the most interesting setting in a Yakuza game in many years.
There's never a time of day in Like a Dragon: Ishin that doesn't feel like it's brimming with life, even if half of it is drunk on a startling variety of available sake. Everywhere you look, all sorts of peddlers hurry through the crowded marketplaces♚ selling fertilizer and food, sloppy izakaya patrons spill out into the streets, merchants loudly advertise their wares, palanquins await passengers looking to fast-travel around town, and citizens gossip about the latest news – which usuall꧑y involves protagonist Sakamoto Ryoma, who bears an uncanny resemblance (and shares a voice actor) with Yakuza's Kazuma Kiryu.
Ishin's setting easily captures our collective fascination with samurai culture, and that period of history more generally. The plot is a loose retelling of the Bakumatsu era at th🍒e tail end of the Edo period, when the Tokugawa shogunate ended, and the main characters are hybrids of familiar Yakuza faces and actual historical figures. I doubt you'll learn as much from Ishin as you would from reading a history book, but the highly dramatized story is packed with interesting historical concepts, particularly around class inequality and societal destabilization. There's even an in-game glossary that lets you learn more about historical Japan when certain places are mentioned in dialogue.
I am in no way an expert of Japanese history, but I've been lucky enough to explore parts of Japan that have been relatively preserved from the Edo period, and Ishin is like taking a return trip. Coming into Ishin, I was concerned Ryu Ga Gotoku wouldn't bring an entire historical era to life in the same way that it would a bustling𝄹 modern-day city. Fortunately, the studio has breathed life and personality into a time and place no living person has ever physically visited. I truly want to live in Ishin, just so long as I have Sakamoto Ryoma as my personal b𓂃odyguard.
| Genre | JRPG |
After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I w🐈as hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writ🥃ing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.
