My introduction to the Yakuza (now known as Like A Dragon) series was Yakuza 0, a hilarious, dramatic, campy game that quickly became one of my all-time favourites. Yakuza games can take a while to get through if you, like me, get entirely sucked into side activities where you can manage a real estate business or run a hostess club. Like, yeah, I could continue with the main story, but I could also spend two hours in a disco maxing out my score on every song. I could go on dates with my top hostesses so they get better at entertaining clients. I could fish.
For that reason, I bought Like A Dragon: Ishin as I was finishing Yakuza 0. I want to play the rest of the Yakuza games in order, but Ishin is technically a spin-off and doesn’t affect the main series, so I thought I’d dip in before I continued playing through anything else. I’m enjoying it for the most part, though it’s not nearly as campy and lively as Yakuza 0. There seems to be a huge gulf between it and Ishin, despite the original Ishin being released only a year before 0 in Japan. I love farming in my little country house and visiting izakayas to get drunk and eat sushi, but holy shit, I cannot walk around for more than a minute without getting accosted by bandits or some other cabal of losers.
It’s incredibly frustrating. I’ll be on one side of town and be required to cross to another end to continue my quest, and I will get into six fights on my way. The map is much bigger than Kamurocho or Sotenbori, and with a ton of tiny alleys to get cornered in, it’s much harder to avoid multiple bloodbaths as I make my way somewhere. There is one particular section of the town, Rakugai, that bottlenecks the rest of the map and you have to go through it if you want to get to your destination on foot. Rakugai is also crawling with outlaws. You can finish a fight, turn a corner, and immediately get attacked again. I got into three fights in a row last night and learned my lesson – I need to start paying for palanquins (Ishin’s version of taxis) to get across town unless I want to get trapped in a never-ending series of battles.
There isn’t even a narrative reason for this. You just, according to one pharmacy owner, have the kind of face that makes people want to fight you. You can be minding your business and be accosted. Sure, people fight you in Yakuza 0, but that’s because they’re yakuza looking for you, or drunk, or young people looking for trouble. There’s at least some sense to it, and it’s not every other goddamn step. But from the start, people in Ishin are just raring to kick your ass. Just let me live, bro, I’m trying to find a girl so I can say sorry to her for hurting her feelings but I can’t get there because even travelling the short distance from the palanquin to a bridge, I am being attacked every thirty seconds.
I immediately found myself wishing for Pokemon repels, the kind you use while walking in tall grass to get yourself some peace for 100 steps. What would the analogue be – bear spray? I was just desperate to be left alone for like, ten minutes. I would pay any amount of mon to be allowed to move through Ishin’s world unmolested. If there was an option to turn off random encounters, I would not be constantly filled with irritation at having to explore this open world. I want to amble my way through the streets, triggering sub-stories left and right, but I can’t. It wouldn’t be as bad if I enjoyed the combat more, but I don’t. I mostly default to shooting wildly at my enemies so I can get the fights over with as soon as possible.
None of my complaining is going to change Ishin, and I will probably still go back and keep playing it because its substories and plot are what make the game fun. It doesn’t click the way Yakuza 0 does, but it’s still fun. Just know that I will be yearning for a repel spray the entire time, and cursing every time some group of assholes yells, “Hey, you!” at me while I’m walking into a soba restaurant. God, just leave me alone.