3.5/5 ★ – frannybeltoni's review of Like a Dragon: Ishin!.

It's a Ryu Ga Gotoku game so all the usual positives are present. The story and characters are a little dry and uneven but ultimately they are endearing and unique, the combat is weighty and fun. The environment is gorgeously detailed and the side content is massively diverse but completely optional and all given equal amounts of effort. What I will say is that because this is a "remake" of an older game there are a few elements that feel a little behind where the series has ended up, mostly through combat and mission design. There are a few differences to the formula but the major one is the story, which takes the setting to the Late Edo Period of Japanese history (mid 1800's) and casts the notable characters of the series as historical figures and other fictional characters. I think the idea of using the same voice actors/models for the characters creates interesting parallels between these characters and their modern counterparts. There are some interesting uses of the parallel imports like villains recast as allies and vice versa, but on the whole the characters do mostly work as their modern counterparts, especially Sakamoto Ryoma (the lead) who is basically just Kiryu down to the aversion to killing. This feels like a slight missed opportunity to explore other sides to the voice talent and their skills rather than just playing similar roles, but I understand it. The actual plot follows real life revolutionary Sakamoto Ryoma, but instead focuses on a fictional father figures death and is mostly about trying to uncover the conspiracy that led to his father's untimely demise. As someone who knows very little about this period some of the story was probably lost on me, though the game does a good job of explaining most of the political goings on. I think overall I enjoyed the story, though politically there are some questionable moments. Aside from those there is a great subversion on a lot of the ultra right-wing talking points that could be taken from this game, especially with the dialogue before the ending battle. The game is less concerned with making a political statement than it is about generically helping those less fortunate, beating up "evil guys" and being kind of revolutionary without a lot of the necessary evils that come with that. Once again like a Yakuza game. I think the historical framing makes a lot of this feel a little more hollow. It's all well and good in a modern setting but it feels a little childish to ascribe those politics to real political events that shaped society and obviously didn't happen like that. But it's a fun story with good twists that does a good enough job keeping you invested. In terms of other changes a major one is in combat, the game still has the stance shifting of Kiryu's adventures but you shift between hand-to-hand, sword, gun and sword and gun. If I'm being perfectly honest I think hand-to-hand and gun felt kind of superfluous. Using objects in the environment and grabs feels great, like it does in every Yakuza game, but the damage output is so much less than with a weapon and with no equipment to dramatically increase damage like the other stances it was mostly unused. The gun does slightly more damage than when paired with the sword, but it is only really useful for the special shots that target weaknesses so I found myself using that ability then switching to one of the other abilities. The new card system can trivialise certain combat encounters, but are incredibly fun and wholly necessary for some of the trickier fights in the side content. I didn't like that some of the random encounters felt completely unavoidable. I did enjoy parts of the crafting system but it felt as though it was far too easy to completely ignore because equipment found while playing barely upgraded scaled much better than most of the stuff you could craft. Everything else was great. I loved the "another life" farming addition, it's simple but really fun to check in on and manage. The dilligance system (of which there are similar things in some other games) really incentivises you to explore the environment and partake in a lot of the side content. Also it's worth mentioning that sub-stories are usually the highlight of any Yakuza game and this is no different. I feel maybe a few too many are just basic fights, but the amazing writing can either be incredibly funny or genuinely emotional. These games are all very similar and it's taken me a long time to say not a lot because the changes can be so minute from the outside. All of this to say this is a good formula that works when this team does it right. This is nowhere close to the best the series has to offer, but there's a lot of changes I genuinely liked and enough interesting ideas that definitely would need refinement to be done again that I can't help but enjoy this.