Like a Dragon Ishin! the World's most convoluted revenge plot.

Ryū ga Gotoku Ishin! was originally released in 2014 for the PS3 and PS4, it was a japan only game set on the county of Japan in the late Edo period, 9 years late in 2023 a remake of it called was Like a Dragon Ishin! was released for all modern plaforms, it's a spin-off of the Yakuza series, which nowadays is called Like a Dragon.

Personally I am not a big fan of the Yakuza series, at least the games that I have played it, Yakuza 1 and 7, I didn't like both of them so I didn't beat them, this was isn't much different honestly, but I have beat this game in all of it's 14 chapters, don't get me wrong I don't hate this game or anything, there's a lot of good in it, which I will highlight, however there's a reason as to why I won't be playing the Like a Dragon Series any time soon.

Story​

The story is about a samurai Ryōma who after 1 years of training comes back to his hometown find himself in a lot of trouble, get exile from there goes to kyo (Kyoto) in a quest to avenge his adoptive father.

I am going to be very honest and say this plot has some cool moments but I find it overall mediocre, it has a lot of factions and characters making hard to follow , thankfully the game has a section on the menu dedicated to explaining the different factions and characters, and while I like this additions, it doesn't do enough to make the story more comprehensible and a story shouldn't need a in game data log to explain itself, even if it was really well made, which isn't the case here.

Another problem with this game's plot is the fact that cuteness are way to long, they overstay their welcome and feel unnecessary long, as if that wasn't bad enough the whole revenge plot that drove much of the game's plot in the first half, has a deeply anti-climatic ending, which makes me think it's only purpose was to put the right character in the right place in the last few chapters instead of being a interest revenge plot.

it's not all bad however, I like Shinsengumi and how they operate as some sort of realistic evil anime Villain group, it feels like someone put Organization 13 but made all of them Samurais in the late Edo Period, they all are very different from each other from their personality to their motivations, yet are part of the same group which is fear by many for being violence, for example in your first mission as a member of Shinsengumi you are task with Killing an traitor of the group, so you go there fight in him, which is the easiest "Boss fight" in the game, after it Ryōma is hesitant in killing him, so he spares him, but before he could have escaped from the build he was currently in, Heisuke one of the captains of Shinsengumi, kills him, explains to Ryōma how the organization works, and how their no traitor policy means they must kill all deserter of the organisations, after that he just continues life like nothing had happen like he just did a regular 9-5 job.
I think it's a shame they didn't do more with it, another thing I like would be the ending but explaining why would be spoilers and the in final chapters where everyone units to fight a common enemy, which is cool but I wish the path to the point was more enjoyble to watch because it takes 20 hours for this game to become "good".

I get it that's loosely to events that happens IRL, but they already made a lot of creatives liberties with the plot, so I don't undertand why this game's story is so mid, because it certaly wasn't restrained by real life history.

Gameplay​

While I was harsh on the story department that won't be the case here, While I do have some issues with it, the gameplay here is solid. It plays like most morden beaten ups do, Your regular attack is done by pressing the Square button, a different type of attack is made with the Triangle, and the same can be said about the Circle button.

Where it divert from others is games is that you can switch between 4 different fighting styles, Brawlers in which you just punch enemies to death, I didn't it found very useful due to it's low damege output, I rarely used it outside of 2 stories fights that made it mandatory, Shooting where you use your gun to shoot the enemies long distance, it's situationally very usefull when you can fight enemies over long distance, but for most fights you are just better of using the 2 other styles, Wild dance, it combines both swords and guns, this is my favourite fighting style, It can be very usefull in a lot of boss fights but specially in regular fights against common enemy, because while your sword attacks are weaker on it, they are faster and can more easliy damege more than 1 enemy not only that but dodge is done much more easly under this style, on the downside, you can't block under this style making it useless agaisnt bosses who you need to block their attack, and you can't avoid them, the last style is the regular sword which plays like what you would expect for a samurai, it's usefull against 1on1 fights but lacks against mutiple enemies, still very usefull.

I like that you can change styles mid fight, tho I wish you could switch between them before fights, because there were so many moments where I started a fight in the incorrect style, another complaint is that the camera of this game is feels like it work against you in a lot of boss fights, where you sometimes you get hit because you couldn't see their attacks comming for you.

One addtion that make the combate worse in my opinion is the squade mechanic, you unlock it around chapter 6 if I am not mistaken and it feels out of place, basically you can optain squade members, either you can randomly encounter them in the world and if you win a fight against them you can recruit them or you can make a recruitment campaing to get a bunch of them in a list that you can recruit, you obtain them like Pokemon card that will level up the more you fight, they have an ability that can either heal, buff or damage the enemy, it's immersion breaking to be fighting a group of enemies and out of nowhere an ability pops up and deals 300 damege to everyone on the screen, specially when the animations for it looks like some sort of magic.

Outside of the main story you have a lot of side quest which is usual for a Like a Dragon game, despite me focusing in the main story I did 30% of the side quest because I came acroos them while playing the game and decided to play them, they are either really boring or actully funny/interesting, it's a russian rullet on which quest will be good or not, but they at least reward you with virtude points that can be exanged for some cool stuff, and some times money, which I won't complain about having more of it.

You have a rich and detailed open world that you can explore, and do the side quest and optional content, my only complait about it is that in a lot of the chapter, you will have to go back-and-forth between the Shinsengumi Barracades and the Hotel you currently live in, you have to do that once in most chapter , in some other you must do this joruney at least twice and once I did it 3 times in the same chapter, I know there's fast travel but it cost money and I am stinge, not only that it can only take you to some predetairmend location those locations are also not close to that hotel, and it's not like they are close to each other, they are in the other side of the map, one is in the south most end ot the map while the other is in the north west most part of the map, the game would likely be 1 to 2 hours shorter if I didn't have to do those frequent and repetive walk between locations.

Ending this section on a positive note, in the end of a lot of chapters in this game you will have an epic gameplay segment where you will fight a wave of enemies in a cool environment which a good action song is playing on the background, those segments are straight up fun, boss fights in this game can be challeging and sometimes enemy partherns can feel repetive however I still enjoy most boss fights outside of Giant bosses enemies fuck them, they are annoying to fight.

Visual and Music​

It looks like an Unreal engine game made in the 20's, I don't have much to add besides that I like the city of Kyo and it's locations, what I do dislike about the visuals is that they re-use, character models from other Yakuza games in this game, the protagonist of this game despite being completly different person from Kiryu of Yakuza games uses the same character model, I get it, it's supposed to be the same "Digital actor" but it doesn't feel right, even actor look different between films.

I know this is a very extreme example, but if real life people can look so different between films I don't see why the digital character of "Kiryu" couldn't have a slightly different character model for this game, having a different haircut would had gone a long way into making him look distinc for example, it just feels Laziness from the developers parts.

The music is good, I just wish I could hear it more loudly in game, instead of other sound effects, I also feel it doesn't want to be memorable and it doens't have ambitions of staying in the players mind despite having potential.

 

[deh]

The Game is great. Thanks buddy for your Article .

 

[Stookymalarkey]

The game's plot suffered since they had these major historical events they had to weave in but they did such a terrible job with it. Instead of feeling like a natural part of the plot, it feels shoehorned in and just clunky. For example,

Spoiler: Ishn Spoiler

Since Sakamoto Ryōma was assassinated in real life, the in-game one had to never clear up that his identity was stolen and instead go into exile at the end of the game.

Also, they made changes to the remake's gameplay that made it worse compared to the original. This includes nerfing the Brawler style to the point of uselessness, make all of the weapon upgrades more expensive, and even worse, make enemies recover as soon as you hit them once from behind so you can't combo them anymore. Both versions has issues that Yakuza 0 solved such as the tedious leveling system and not being able to switch between styles quickly enough to chain together.

I wished they thought of adding some QoL to the game like revamping the experience system or adding more quick travel points, but I guess making the sunsets look more pretty took precidence.

 

[Ain_Gamer]

The Game is great. Thanks buddy for your Article .

I was a little bit afraid people wouldn't like this because I was very harsh with this game's plot

 

[OldFartMk.II]

I found the story very confusing and the ending... Very bad, to be honest. I didn't expect this because I love basically every Yakuza game, even the bad ones.

 

[Konatalzumi]

great game, but I was way too scared that I was unprepared weapon and armor-wise. They should made the grinding way easier for money because the arenas were ass

 

[Stookymalarkey]

great game, but I was way too scared that I was unprepared weapon and armor-wise. They should made the grinding way easier for money because the arenas were ass

The game does give you weapons as you progress through the story mode so you'll always have a sword that's up to snuff if you ignore the side content. However, you'll still be lacking in terms of skills if you don't grind them out.

Make money is even more of a chore now that they patched the chicken races glitch where if select quit and then start the race, the game refunds the money you bet but you still get your winnings after the race is done. As of now, the dungeon raids are the best spot for making money, not the arena.

 

[Ain_Gamer]

great game, but I was way too scared that I was unprepared weapon and armor-wise. They should made the grinding way easier for money because the arenas were ass

In my case I got lucky with weapons and got a 800 power weapon in my second time exploring the mines, money was never a issue for me, I was very conservative with money and only spend it to buy food/medicine for hard boss fights.