Like A Dragon: Ishin

With this thorough, if not comprehensive, refurbishment of 2014’s formerly Japan-only release Ryu Ga Gotoku: Ishin, the recently retitled Like A Dragon series might just have found the most ideal expression of its dual personality. This is, after all, a game that has blended violent drama with broad comedy from day one – and Ishin duly delivers the bloodiest fights so far, while putting forward a strong case for being the funniest entry to date.

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Born in the late-PS3 era, finally making its western debut two console generations later, it has the visual hallmarks of an expensive cut-and-color several weeks on: from a distance it can look spectacular, but its greying roots are showing through. More significantly, it tells a story that demands its hero adopt an alter ego to remain incognito, building a fictional 19th-century tale around a real person who here has the face, voice and phlegmatic character of the series’ best-loved protagonist. For Saito Hajime, née samurai revolutionary Sakamoto Ryoma, read: Kazuma Kiryu. Confused? The way the story unspools ensures you shouldn’t be, although we do dip into the glossary more often than we’d anticipated.

It might seem an odd, if not outright disrespectful, way to depict one of Japan’s most significant historical figures, though only a fool would come into this expecting period authenticity. Besides, as Ryoma (masquerading as Hajime) attempts to track down the murderer of his adopted father in Kyo – having been wrongly accused of the crime in his castle-town home of Tosa – RGG Studio gives him the same insurrectionary spirit. Donning the light-blue haori of the Shinsengumi, the brutal special police force of the military government Ryoma’s no-kill policy, like Kiryu’s, not only proves radical but draws more attention while he’s already putting his life on the line. Granted, it’s because he’s pursuing a single-minded revenge mission rather than attempting to advocate for democracy, but in abjuring the Shinsengumi’s lethal diktat, fewer lives are lost to his blade, if not those of his less merciful associates. These, too, are familiar faces (and voices) from the