Like an Ishin dragon! | Review – From Japan (pre-restoration) with fury

Highly anticipated by fans of the franchise Yakuza, Were! was made to wait a very long time, and by the mouth of Sega himself and the team that developed this remake for PS5would never have seen the light of day without the great success of titles such as Ghost of Tsushimawhich demonstrated Western gamers’ interest in Japanese history.

The process of clearing the brand in Europe has certainly favored the publication and, after carrying the role of a samurai from 19th century Japanwe’re ready to tell you if the nine-year wait was worth it.

Ryoma Sakamoto

At the end of the 19th century, Japan was living a very turbulent timetorn between the rigidity of centuries-old traditions, such as the subdivision of society into castes and the reign of the Emperor (Mikado), and the need to open up to the outside world in order to evolve and avoid succumbing to foreign powers – in particular the Europeans, who with their powerful fleets patrolled the coasts in search of new conquests.

In this powder keg, halfway between historical verisimilitude and fiction, our protagonist evolves, Ryoma Sakamotoraised by his adoptive father to one day become the leader of the Tosa loyalist party, founded by Takechi Hanpeita, his blood brother.

Just when the father of the two seems determined to hand over the scepter to the two sons, a ninja bursts in and kills him with a single swing of his sword, then flees through the stormy rains of the Japanese night: in a vain attempt to stop him, Takechi is injured, while Sakamoto struggles in an attempt to stop the mysterious killer.
The guards rush in, as often happens in these circumstances, take the jeers for fiascos, and blame Sakamoto, in whose arms his father dies, for the murder, not having seen the real culprit.

Sakamoto, though innocent, puts his injured brother’s safety before his own, flees the crime scene and fuels suspicion, eventually being blamed for the murder.

Apparently, this is where Sakamoto Ryoma’s journey ends: our alter ego, in fact, will be forced to assume a false identity, and with the name of Hajime Saito he will go to Kyo (current Kyoto, long the capital of the Japanese kingdom), in search of skilled swordsmen in a particular fighting style, which he believes he recognized in the mysterious assailant.

From this prologue, as is the tradition of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio products, a rarely trivial plot will unfoldwhich will draw heavily on historical background and events that actually took place in Japan at the time.

While the betrayals, intrigues and twists will be familiar to those who have followed the series from the start, the setting, the paraphernalia and the historical and political context are the real novelties of the story of Like a dragon was! (game you find on Amazon), which offers a cut that is sometimes too specific (so much so that the introduction of a glossary is necessary) the political and social situation in Japan two centuries ago.

If fans of Japanese history and culture are the ones who will most appreciate the careful reconstruction carried out by the development team, all other players will also appreciate, thanks above all to the Italian subtitlingcan easily follow the plot, paradoxically less complex than that of certain canonical chapters of the saga.

The return of familiar faces, albeit in new guises, is bound to bring a smile to any fans of the franchise, and generally speaking it’s safe to say we really enjoyed the change in tone from the episodes taking place to Kamurocho, who manages to bring a breath of fresh air to a title which, as we will see, remains in many respects a simple offshoot of the parent series.

Spade and gun

say that Were! Both a costumed version of a Yakuza classic, of those before the transition to the Dragon Engine, that would be an oversimplification but certainly not a lie: the structure of the game is the same that fans of the series have come to know, with a fairly small map that can be freely explored, filled with distractions and weird side activities as in the tradition of the main series.

Despite the technological backwardness, Kyo’s premises will still be able to offer karaoke, the possibility of indulging in dancing, a battle arena and much more, including a real game in a game called second lifein which to tend a farm outside of town to make a profit and help Haruka buy it out from an unscrupulous entrepreneur.

Returning to main activitiesheavily narrative-based and a continuation of the full-bodied main campaign, which we completed in a little over twenty-five hoursthey usually consist of two distinct phases, those of a lot and those dialogical.

If these are explicit, with a direction improved from the original titlewhich winks at the most recent episodes of the franchise, the first offer a successful mix of tradition and novelty, recovering the real-time combat system which distinguished the series until the sixth main chapter but adorning it with the continued use of spade e gunfor a total of four different fighting styles that liven up the fights.

Two of them favor close combat, one with his bare hands and the other holding a katana, while the other two involve firearms, at the time barely arriving on Japanese territory, alone or under a hybrid form with the katana, in an asymmetrical double handling that won us over right away.

Crazy Dance (that’s the name of the particular style) allows you to alternate attacks with the bladed weapon with rapid spreads with the pistol, with two important penalties to consider: the inability to parry enemy blows and the Overall damage reduction with both guns and swords.

On the other hand, it allows you to glide nimbly between bullets and enemy blows with unparalleled grace, and, in its revelation fundamentally different from all the styles seen in the various installments of the franchiseoffers a real breath of fresh air to an otherwise basic combat system, though quite challenging at higher difficulty levels.

Also note the RPG soul of the production: each activity – from gaining the confidence of a passerby to completing one of the dozens of secondary stories available – multiplies the dedicated bars and increases the sense of continuous progression, just like, by collecting objects and materials around of the map, it is possible to improve your arsenal at a blacksmith, capable of forging deadly katanas and extremely resistant armor.

Although many of these tasks are not actually necessary to complete the game, which at the standard difficulty level, it turns out to be very forgivingtheir compulsive completion, as in many other chapters of the series, manages to quickly take hold of the most dedicated players, lengthening the time of completion and immersing themselves even more in the fascinating setting of the game.

Finally, there’s no need to get into the feud between longtime fans, who would have preferred the franchise to stay on these tracks, and proponents of the new course, who didn’t appreciate the main series’ change of protagonist so much, than the switch to turn-based combat and with a structure more distinct from a Japanese role-playing game: you’ll find the old-school gameplay here, with respect to the original product – and, honestly, that made us seemed the most appropriate choice since it was a re-proposal rather than a true remake.

Unreal Engine, cross and delight

Although devoid of any real problems, the technical sector production is probably the one that convinced us the least, all things considered: the title runs on a customized version of the Unreal Engine and not the proprietary Dragon Engine from the development team – and this has led to a series of small rollbacks in terms of continuity of action, loading and streaming speed of graphical assets, which are returning, overall , a distinctly next-gen gaming experience and an image on average dirtier than productions designed exclusively for current-gen consoles.

Getting in and out of buildings, with the exception of some bars and outdoor stalls, still requires even a short loading with the screen going black, a wait that the last titles in the franchise had thankfully made us unaccustomed to, and at the same time. entry to each new zone, the slow loading of surface texturesknown issue with the Unreal Engine that had not affected the last three released episodes of the series (Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza 6 e like a dragon).

In addition to this, the animation sector and the mimics of the secondary characters remind each shot that the first publication of the title took place a few months after the launch of the PS4 in Japan, moreover cross-gen with the PlayStation 3 .

We must also point out that this is the version with the apparently least stable code among those tested in this enduring franchise: although we are referring to version 1.0.0, the object of all our hours of testing, we have encountered weird (but never bothersome) bugs such as NPCs getting stuck in the ground, cutscenes dripping with heavy flickering, glitches in the pathing of many secondary characters, and even translation and punctuation errors in the subtitle. Italian title, otherwise of good quality.

All the little flaws that we are sure will be fixed in time for the game’s debut on February 21, but which we find fair to point out, given that the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio had always accustomed us to immaculate titles from this point of view. .

Overall, therefore, the work carried out can certainly be described as discreet, but it represents, especially with reference to the most recent standards dictated by the PS5, a step back, even more compared to the episodes of the franchise based on the Dragon. Engine.

Well, however, from the point of view of Artistic direction and, as a tradition for the series, from there sound: Japan of the 19th century is painted with accuracy and love of detail, between customs of the time and meticulous reconstruction of architectural styles, costumes and weapons – and the dubbing, entrusted to the historical voices of the series, always manages to stand out for his acting, the intensity of his performers and for the impeccable choice of voices, even minor ones.

Similar speech with regard to sound effects and accompanying music – and, of course, for the amount of content offered: if the main campaign alone will not take less than twenty-five hours to reach its epilogue, the The usual plethora of optional activities, from Second Life to managing your own ronin team, to some very tasty side missions, could easily double the aforementioned overall length for anyone wanting to get lost in vintage Japan.

Version tested: PS5