Like A Dragon: Ishin! is the Japan-only Yakuza game remade for a global release

Sega and Yakuza developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio are remaking Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin!, now called Like A Dragon: Ishin!, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The Yakuza series spinoff will be released in February 2023, Sega revealed during Sony’s September State of Play presentation.

The trailer for Like A Dragon: Ishin! set the scene for the newly remade game, which will be available to players outside of Japan for the first time since it was released in 2014. The game is set Japan’s Bakumatsu period, focusing largely on a samurai, Sakamoto Ryoma, looking for revenge before “spark[ing] the greatest revolution in Japanese history,” according to the trailer. It all goes down in Kyo, a fictionalize Kyoto.

Yakuza character Kazuma Kiryu will appear as Sakamoto Ryoma, RGG Studio said on the PlayStation blog. It continued:

Like a Dragon: Ishin brings in familiar faces to tell this epic historical tale. Fans will recognize our protagonist as Kazuma Kiryu from earlier entries in the franchise. In Ishin, Kiryu is cast as Sakamoto Ryoma and brings the rest of his crew along too. Goro Majima and other Yakuza celebrities join Ryoma as friends and foes in this fictional world that trades the flashy streets of Tokyo for the chaotic bustle of 1860s Kyo. These new character dynamics are as thrilling as they are unexpected, with a series of mind-blowing twists and turns in a story only RGG studio can tell.

For gameplay, there’s, of course, swords, but also a gun. “Better yet, wield both a gun and sword and enter a fury with the Wild Dancer style,” Sega of America global community manager David Hinds wrote on the PlayStation Blog. “And when you’re feeling extra brutal, smash some skulls with your bare fists using the Brawler style.”

Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin! was originally released on Feb. 22, 2014 for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.

Since Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin!’s release in 2014, the Yakuza franchise it’s based off has become widely popular outside of Japan — and it makes sense to bring more games from its suite of titles into the current generation of consoles. The most recent release in the Yakuza series, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, was released in 2020.