A Tale of Swords and Souls

As a long time “Like a Dragon” series fan, Ishin was an entry that I wanted to see localized in the States since its original PS3 release back in 2014.

Luckily, with the popularity of the series growing with each new entry, we finally have a chance to check out Ishin in its improved form and despite some notable flaws, I’m glad to have had the chance to check out this missing link in the venerable franchise.

Let’s give one of the most dangerous man in the world a katana and a gun, how much damage can he possibly do?

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PC, PS, Xbox
Played on PC: i7 9700K, RTX 3080, 32GBs RAM
Price I’d Pay: $59.99
Played: 35~ hours
Steam Deck: Verified. Minor hitches but perfectly playable.

Returning home to Tosa after honing his swordsmanship skills in Edo, Sakamoto Ryoma is quickly reminded of the cruelty of the caste system that oppresses his homeland. With the guidance of his adopted father Yoshida and sworn brother Takechi, Ryoma takes up the fight to abolish the caste system once and for all. However, his hopes for the future are burnt to ashes when his adopted father is assassinated and vows revenge against the assassin who killed the man he most respected in the world.

The story presented in Ishin is interesting in that it’s loosely based on historical characters and events and as familiar characters from the the series reprise various roles in the game, I was always looking forward to new character introductions to see who would be playing who. As I am by no means a Japanese history buff and my knowledge of the infamous “Shinsengumi” comes entirely from the classic anime series “Rurouni Kenshin”, there isn’t much I can say in regards to how fitting the casting choices are. However, I did get a kick out of Ryoma/Kiryu taking up the mantle of Saito and Majima as Soujiro, two of my favorite characters from the Kenshin anime series.

As is tradition, there are many moments of long exposition and some incredibly climatic moments but overall, I felt the overarching story to be one of the weaker aspects of the game due to some odd storytelling/pacing decisions. There are many characters introduced throughout the story and oftentimes, not much is done with those individuals and some which I felt were pretty important were killed off-screen in unceremonious ways. So while there were some great moments sprinkled throughout the experience like epic clashes against rivals, I never felt quite as emotionally invested in the unfolding events as I have in the previous titles like zero and seven.

Majima is nailing this look.

In terms of combat, this closely resembles the more action focused titles instead of the turned based RPG combat of the latest entry. There are four different stances using variations of katana, gun and barehanded. Each stance excels in different areas where the gun is great for getting easy damage from afar, the katana is excellent in one on one fights. My favorite stance of the bunch was wielding both a katana and a gun at the same time which allowed me to deftly dodge out of the way of incoming attacks while twirling around swinging my sword in wide arcs and unleashing a barrage of bullets at the same time.

Each of the stances leveled up independently of each other and I was able to increase the attack power and learn new skills. As the skill trees also included passive buffs that would benefit all stances, it encouraged me to use all the stances equally which kept the combat feeling fresh from beginning to end.

There was also a crafting system to forge new equipment like armor and weapons and given that the stat bonuses from equipment meant I was dealing much more effectively in combat, I was incentivized to hunt down various ingredients for forging and upgrading my equipment. As equipment didn’t mean very much in the previous action combat Like a Dragon games, it was nice to see it making a big impact in this entry especially since most of the rewards from doing side content was material for crafting. Given I could also add various modifiers to weapons and armor, I ended up spending more time on crafting than I expected and after finalizing a powerful loadout, I was rolling enemies that felt like they had bloated HP pools previously in a matter of a few hits which was satisfying.

It takes a lot of time and effort to make the best gear but it can make a big difference in combat.

Another staple that the Like a Dragon series is known for are the side quests/mini games and the ones presented in Ishin are a bit of a mixed bag. There are some charming/fun and interesting side stories that put Ryoma in ridiculous situations like having to determine who ate someone else’s mochi but there were many others that simply had me turn in items until a gauge was full to complete the story which felt repetitive and uninspired. There’s a nice variety of minigames like karaoke, chicken racing and many more but I missed going into the sega building to play some fun arcade games.

Tonal whiplash is a core component of the Like a Dragon series and it also applies here.

The biggest side activity comes in the form of battle dungeons and squadron management but I didn’t find either things too interesting as the dungeons looked/felt very samey and it was always just a gauntlet of enemies to get through. While some of the rewards offered were worthwhile, it wasn’t fun to go through due to it getting repetitive very quickly. It had me missing the side activity like the cabaret/real estate from other titles as they introduced new gameplay elements instead of having me double down on combat even more.

The squadron cards added passive buffs to my stats and offered other skills during combat but the activity to get them and level them up was uninteresting.

While Like a Dragon: Ishin! Might not be the strongest entry in this venerable franchise, its emphasis on weapon combat and an interesting take on historical characters and events makes it one worth experiencing all the same.

Fun Tidbit – When the game launched, it was plagued with various issues on the PC but at the time of this review’s writing, most of the issues have been fixed. The issues were the main reasons for the delay for the review

Review copy of game provided by publisher.