Like a Dragon: Ishin prequel Stranger Than Heaven has combat that actually demands your full attention

Stranger Than Heaven – the upcoming Like a Dragon prequel – debuted a playable brawling demo at a BiliBili Game First Look event in Shanghai, and the new combat system is a genuine departure from anything RGG Studio has shipped before.

The biggest change is how you throw punches. Instead of the classic combo-mashing setup, Stranger Than Heaven maps protagonist Makoto Daito's left and right fists to the controller's four shoulder buttons, meaning you're literally puppeteering each arm independently. On top of that, the game demands active parrying – you need to read incoming attack directions and block them precisely, not just tank hits while you spam a combo string. The preview writer, a series veteran with hundreds of hours across the franchise, got repeatedly beaten down in the first attempts before the rhythm clicked. Once it did, the payoff felt noticeably more satisfying than the familiar beatdowns of previous Yakuza and Like a Dragon entries.

To be clear, this isn't a replacement for the turn-based JRPG combat introduced in Yakuza: Like a Dragon and expanded in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth – that system is staying in the mainline entries. Stranger Than Heaven targets the beat-'em-up side of the series, the style that's been living in spin-offs like Like a Dragon Gaiden and Pirate Yakuza in recent years. Those games added gadgets and flintlocks for flavor, but the underlying combo mechanics barely changed. Stranger Than Heaven is the first time in a long while that the brawling formula itself has been rebuilt from the ground up.

The hands-on session was only 30 minutes, so the full picture of how the system scales over a longer playthrough remains to be seen. But the early impression is that RGG Studio has found a way to make street fights feel like something you actually have to think about again – which, for a series this long in the tooth, is exactly the kind of jolt it needed.