It's a great time to be a fan of the Yakuza series right now. The franchise, which is now known as Like A Dragon, recently announced three new games for fans to look forward to. Not only was the next mainline entry in the series announced, officially titled Like A Dragon 8, but also two spin-off titles. The first is a remake of 2014's Like a Dragon: Ishin!, a spin-off that takes place in historical Japan, that was originally never released in the west. The second, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, will bring back Kazuma Kiryu as the main protagonist. It will tell a story that bridges the gap between Yakuza 6 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7), shedding some light on Kiryu's activities between the two games.
Like a Dragon's rising popularity over the last few years has paved the way for Like a Dragon: Ishin! to finally get the western release some thought it would never have, and it's a great show of triumph for developer Ryu Ga Gotoku. The original game was a spiritual successor to Like a Dragon: Kenzan!, a PS3 title that was released in Japan in 2008. Taking place in Japan during the late Edo period, the game follows Sakamoto Ryoma, a ronin who takes the fall for the murder of his adoptive father. Fleeing to Kyoto, he assumes a new identity and sets out to avenge the murder.
Like a Dragon's Popularity in the West is At An All-Time High
The Yakuza series started out on the PS2 in 2005. The first game, simply titled Yakuza in the west, was a gritty crime drama that introduced several key components of the franchise, including protagonist Kazama Kiryu, and the fictional city of Kamurocho, which is based on Tokyo's entertainment district Kabukicho. Many have praised the developers' determination to stay true to the source material over the years, and the game's realistic setting has been a consistent high point. The first couple of games were hits in Japan, and sold reasonably well in the west too, but it wasn't until the 2015 release of the prequel Yakuza 0 that the game begin to gain some real traction outside of Japan.
Yakuza 0 was followed by remakes of the first two games, as well as Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, and the most recent installment, Yakuza: Like a Dragon. The latter was the first game in the mainline series to offer English dubbing since the original PS2 game, another sign that the series was beginning to draw in new audiences. With each of these iterations, the franchise's popularity has grown exponentially.
Like a Dragon: Ishin!, though, is one title western fans thought they'd never see. Ryu Ga Gotoku had expressed concern that the game's late 1800s Japanese setting would've felt alien to western audiences. Some words and themes used in the original game are not even familiar in modern-day Japan, let alone the western world, and this was enough to convince the developer that the game would probably fall a little flat if given a western release.
All of this started to change, however, thanks to the series' growing fan base, as well as a sharp increase in the rise of Japanese-style action RPGs in recent years, such as Ghost of Tsushima and Nioh 2. In a recent interview with Fanbyte, executive producer Masayoshi Yokoyama said the team had paid attention to Ghost of Tsushima in particular, and how a game with a very Japanese setting, made by Americans, had been so popular. This gave Ryu Ga Gotoku the confidence that the game could succeed in America too.
The original Like a Dragon: Ishin! was released for the PS3 and PS4 in 2014. It took all of Yakuza's characters, themes, and gameplay elements, and placed them into a historical Japanese setting. From footage released so far, the remake looks to be sticking close to the original. Unlike other games that used the Dragon Engine, which has been the primary engine the developer has used in each release since Yakuza 6, Like a Dragon: Ishin! makes use of Unreal Engine 4. The game should scratch the Yakuza itch for fans who are patiently waiting for the next installment, and the change of setting should provide a welcome new experience.
Like a Dragon: Ishin! is set to release on February 21 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.