Like a Dragon – Ishin Letsplay Episode 01 – Video

teasers

Hagen not only finds Ryoma’s brother Takechi, but also three new fighting styles that he can test directly on a few volunteers.

This Letsplay is crowdfunded by our community. If at the end of a season of ten episodes the financing of the next one is available, it goes on at full steam. If you want to get involved, just scroll down and you will find the crowdfunding bar.

Hagen takes off with katana and revolver to shake up historic Japan in the latest installment of Like a Dragon (aka Yakuza). Where are we in Season 1? Returning to his homeland as a low-ranking samurai, our hero finds that the high-ranking samurai in the Tosa region still treat the common folk and low-level samurai as if they were miles below them. Attempting to beat two of these characters insane will earn him a bounty, however. It also turns out that his foster father (the magistrate of Tosa) is secretly organizing a samurai uprising to change the system in Tosa – but things will soon escalate.

That’s what Ishin is all about
Unlike the main series of Like a Dragon, Ishin is not set in the present but transports us to 1860s Japan. Since the end of the Warring States period in 1600, the Tokugawa shogunate has ruled the country and the emperors have been deposed. But the power structures in the country were shaken after Commodore Perry’s black messengers forced the opening of Japanese ports to western powers with the “gunboat policy”. This political weakness of the shogunate gives momentum to actors who question the status quo and forces are also stirring that want to throw the Americans and Europeans out of the country again. Today this period of Japanese history is known as the Bakumatsu era and we know that it heralds the end of the shogunate and also of the special role of the samurai – in a way, how Red Dead Redemption played during the decline of the Cowboys. In the midst of this turbulent time, our game hero enters the stage: Ryoma Sakamoto is wrongly accused of a crime, flees his home region to the imperial city of Kyo and infiltrates the Shinsengumi, the shogunate’s protection squad, in search of the truth behind his misfortune. Unsurprisingly, we find ourselves right in the heart of the upheavals in Japan

This is how Ishin plays
As usual in the series, Like a Dragon – Ishin relies on a slowly unfolding drama story as the core of the story. All around, on the other hand, there are brutal action fights with exaggerated special attacks. It gets even more wacky in absurd side quests, which form a nice contrast to the mostly serious main story. So there’s a lot to discover, and with four fighting styles using bare fists, katana and revolvers, there’s also variety in the slapping of the face. Ishin is a remake of a PS3 game of the same name that has now been rebuilt in Unreal Engine 4 and slightly revised, but at its core it is probably still about the game that was between Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 6 originated.