RGG Studio recently opened a roughly three-hour demo for Like a Dragon: Ishin!, spanning four chapters and expanding the experience beyond combat to include story, exploration, and performance-based gameplay. Playtesters appreciated the game's narrative and period atmosphere but noted significant issues with combat feel and close-range visual quality.
The story begins in San Francisco, where mixed-race protagonist Makoto Daito is framed for murder and embarks on a fugitive journey to evade the police. The plot also covers Kokura in 1925, Kure in 1929, and Osaka in 1945. The cinematic direction, context-sensitive switching between English and Japanese dialogue, and character details have been well-received, while historical street scenes, posters, and product packaging enhance the cross-era atmosphere.
Combat uses the left and right shoulder buttons for left and right punches respectively, with parries executed by pressing the corresponding shoulder button after blocking. Compared to previous versions, the standard difficulty appears to have been adjusted, but playtesters still found the multi-button controls cumbersome and felt enemies absorbed too much damage. Characters lack reliable evasion options when surrounded from multiple directions, wielding one-handed weapons also restricts attacks on the other side, and movement and ladder climbing in narrow factory areas feel equally clumsy.
Exploration elements include pharmacies, poker, cigarettes, face card games, and DJ mixing mechanics, with the mixing segments requiring players to adjust tracks based on different audiences' preferences. Playtesters ultimately praised the game's narrative ambition and period feel, while expressing concerns about blurry visuals, low-resolution textures, stiff animations, and the combat system. The developers emphasized that the version provided was still unfinished.