Like a Dragon: Ishin! (PlayStation 4) review "Assaulting your way through feudal Japan just because you can!"

Ryu Ga Gotoku is kind of an odd duck as far as developers go. After blending martial arts, cinematic tales and a sandbox city with tons of optional stuff to divert one’s attention in the Yakuza series, they’ve branched out into other stuff by means of making slight additions and alterations to their tried-and-true formula. With Judgment, they added some detective stuff; with Like a Dragon, JRPG elements got thrown into the mix and with Like a Dragon: Ishin!, they go back in time to the 1800s.

Ishin! could be considered an all-star line-up for the Ryu Ga Gotoku people, as seemingly anyone who was anyone in the greater Yakuza world makes an appearance cosplaying as a *checks notes* Bakumatsu-era resident of the Japanese city of Kyo. You’ll control Kazuma Kiryu as per the norm, except in this game, he’s Sakamoto Ryoma. At least for a little while, as in the game’s beginning, his father figure gets assassinated by a masked man and he gets framed and goes undercover to get to the bottom of things under the alias of Saito Hajime.

Because the assassin used a particularly rare fighting style that’s only practiced by members of the Shinsengumi — one of those “we do things how we want and that’s that” police forces — Ryoma works his way into that organization by virtue of being one tough S.O.B. and starts trying to figure out who the killer is. Of course, his mission will have all sorts of complications. He’ll become friends with some of his potential targets and find that things both within the Shinsengumi and Japan in general are far more complex than he anticipated, with machinations in progress that could alter the country’s future.

If you’re even remotely familiar with the greater Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, you won’t need much of an explanation as to how Ishin! works. You’ll be placed in a Japanese city, you’ll have a plot directing you to go to one place or another, you’ll start walking in that direction and you’ll promptly get diverted from your task by any number of distractions.

Maybe you’ll run into a person who’ll involve you in their problems, setting up one or more side quests. You’ll listen to an old woman’s tiresomely long tales, you’ll help a down-on-his-luck courier by out-performing every member of an aggressive team that brags about their delivery speed, you’ll catch fish for a guy who really sucks at that pastime. Perhaps you’ll blow your hard-earned money at a casino in the hopes of winning a big jackpot and being able to afford to craft superior equipment. There are dojos to train Ryoma in various disciplines, tons of anonymous thugs roaming the streets to test out the new moves he obtains from those places and all sorts of restaurants and bars to frequent. You’ll do karaoke, battle in an arena and take on jobs from a crime-fighting group and that’s just scratching the surface of what can be done in this time-sink of a game.

When in battle, you’ll be able to choose between four different styles. If you want to deal scratch damage to foes and make fights last an eternity, you can forgo weapons and utilize the Brawler style. If you want to have fun, you can skewer foes with the Swordsman style, blast them with the Gunman style or combine those two with the graceful Wild Dancer style. After a while, you’ll get access to Trooper Cards and equip a few to each style to gain attack or defense bonuses or special (and flashy) moves. Let me tell you, having a card equipped to my preferred Swordsman style that restored a massive amount of health upon charging was a godsend against a lot of boss fights, especially as most of them have their own special attacks they tend to bring out with regularity as their life bars diminish.

Ishin! is a fun game that feels just like the others by Ryu Ga Gotoku I’ve played. The story has its share of twists and turns and there are plenty of big fights against all sorts of guys from the Yakuza series. I suppose a person more familiar with that series could complain that, due to having a massive number of characters lifted from virtually every single game, the majority of them get very little time to shine, with a few just sort of disappearing from the story and several others only popping up here and there for a few minutes and (probably) a fight or two.

For me, the only real issue I had with this game was that boss fights often felt like somewhat of a slog. Maybe I just wasn’t getting into the intricate nature of Ryoma’s attack styles and not making the most of all the moves he could perform with a sword in his hand, but it felt like so many of those battles devolved into me blocking an attack by them, striking them two or three times in retaliation, blocking another attack and so on until I’d gradually and painstakingly whittled down their health. It was an effective strategy that carried me through virtually the entire game, but it didn’t result in the most enjoyable fights I’ve had in my gaming career…or even in the handful of Ryu Ga Gotoku games I’ve experienced.

And I guess I could say that I fell out of obsession over Ishin!’s sandbox more quickly than I did with the cities of either Judgment or Yakuza 0, leading to me rushing though the final chapters of this game after taking FOREVER to slowly meander through the first few. I can only blame the game’s setting for this, as 1800s Kyo didn’t have the same appeal for me that the modern cities of those other games possessed, possessing no arcades with classic Sega games or drone races or slot cars or other super-fun diversions that kept me away from advancing the plot for days on end.

Don’t get me wrong: Like A Dragon: Ishin! is still a fun game that I enjoyed going though. It just wasn’t as addictive to be part of its world, so I was a bit more efficient in advancing through its plot and finishing it. However, the game still kept me occupied for a decent amount of time and kept me invested in what I was doing, so I can’t complain too much. It might not be a crown jewel in the Ryo Ga Gotoku library, but it was a good time. Besides, with how the likenesses of so many characters from the Yakuza series were used in a game taking place well over 100 years before their original appearances, it allowed me to have a fun time imagining that Kiryu, Majima and company are in this endless cycle of reincarnation, fighting with and against each other throughout all of eternity. It seems quite fitting, all things considered.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (April 25, 2025) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.