'Like a Dragon: Ishin!' Review: An epic samurai tale leaves Japan for the first time
It took nearly a decade for a samurai spin-off of the popular 'Yakuza' franchise to get remade and translated for international audiences. It's got drama, heart, and whimsy to spare.
It's easy to forget nowadays, but the Yakuza franchise actual struggled outside of Japan for many years. With its mainline games floundering in the West, spinoffs didn't have a chance at localization for an international audience.
One of these titles, 2014's Ryū ga Gotoku Ishin!, never made it out of Japan. But the franchise's fate improved with Yakuza 0's Western release in 2017. That game's popularity paved the way for future games such as Yakuza: Like a Dragonto make their way overseas. It also sparked a remastering renaissance, as older games got released on new hardware, such as and
