Best Fighting Styles In Like A Dragon: Ishin

Key Takeaways

• Brawler style in Like A Dragon: Ishin is more agile but does the least damage – War Cry parry grants temporary invincibility.
• Gunman style allows players to damage enemies from afar with special ammo, but it requires grinding to reach full potential.
• Wild Dancer style combines sword and gun attacks but requires skill to master defensive abilities – improves with upgrades.

Yakuza games are no strangers to different fighting styles, and fans know that they are going to need all the skills they can get. As the game progresses, the fights become more and more difficult. All Yakuza games have a lot of combat in them, and Like A Dragon: Ishin is no exception. The story and the fights are intertwined and one cannot move forward by being good at just one or the other.

There are four fighting styles in Like A Dragon: Ishin and each one comes with its strengths and weaknesses. As the player progresses in each style, they get orbs that they can use to upgrade their skills, from generic skill-based orbs that apply to all skills, to unique colored ones that only apply to one style or another. So, which one should players prioritize? In the end, it all comes down to which style the gamer feels they are best at or simply enjoys more. But for anyone starting out, here’s how Ishin‘s fighting styles rank against each other.

Updated December 10, 2024 by David Heath: For years, fans had to import Ryu Ga Gotoku: Ishin from Japan to play it, then either use Japanese or a translation guide to understand it. That changed when RGG Studio, likely inspired by Ghost of Tsushima’s success in the West, remade the game as Like a Dragon: Ishin and released it worldwide. They tweaked a few things, like adding more substories, redesigning some characters to resemble ones from Yakuza 0 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and changing the gameplay.

The result was a pretty fun game, if rather grind-heavy. Between dungeon crawling, crafting swords, guns, armor, and seals, growing fruit and veg and catching fish for cooking and selling, learning new moves from three different trainers, and dealing with collectibles and substories, there’s a lot to do. But that all amounts to naught if players aren’t having fun with the gameplay, so this list has been updated with some extra details to see which of Ryoma’s four fighting styles are the best for starting players, and what it takes to make them as strong as possible.

4 Brawler

Taking on Steel Blades with Iron Fists

• Pros: More agile than Swordsman, War Cry parry works on blades and grants temporary invincibility, can access special weapons and pick up objects, and has the Tiger Drop.
• Cons: Does the least damage out of all 4 styles, can’t block blades or bullets, and using special weapons doesn’t count towards Brawler XP.

For gamers who prefer hand-to-hand combat, there’s the Brawler style. It basically lets Ryoma fight like Kazuma Kiryu from the regular games, using many of the same punching combos and Heat moves. Many of them can affect multiple foes too, like the “Essence of Swinging” and “Essence of Dragon Strikes”. He also gets the ‘War Cry’ parry that resembles Tanimura’s parry from Yakuza 4. Using it can boost XP gain and make Ryoma temporarily invincible, as well as lead to its own Heat move follow-up.

That’s not to mention Kiryu can throw foes with the grab button, or pick up random items in the field to use as weapons in a pinch. Pressing Down will also let Kiryu use special weapons like odachi, cannons, and spears, which each come with their own upgrades and Heat movies. Unfortunately, the style doesn’t do a lot of damage on its own, even after upgrades. It takes special seals in the weapon and armor crafting to make its damage output match the other styles. Even the almighty Tiger Drop feels more like a kitten’s strike this time around.

Still, that parry can come in handy. Plus, one of its later upgrades, the “Asura Spirit,” will let gamers spend their Heat Gauge to recover their health. They’ll need it if they’re sticking with Brawler, but it can act as their lifeline if they’re left in the lurch in other combat encounters.

3 Gunman

Bringing A Gun To A Swordfight

• Pros: Can take out enemies from afar, upgrades can make it end combat encounters in a flash, can access different kinds of ammo to inflict status ailments on foes or cut through armor.
• Cons: Special ammo can be expensive to make in decent quantities, requires seals to break through armor more easily without special ammo, and works better against regular grunts than bosses.

For gamers who want to end things from afar, they can switch to Gunman at any time. As the name suggests, it lets them shoot their enemies while keeping their distance, as they’re not as good at dodging bullets as Ryoma. His shots will automatically target the nearest foes, though thankfully he has infinite ammo, so the player doesn’t have to worry about reloading. They can spare a few shots that go astray while trying to shoot an enemy.

What they can’t afford to waste are its different kinds of bullets, like flame and lighting rounds, which can do extra damage and inflict status ailments, like the armor-sapping Acid rounds. With one of the best upgrades, the player can get a host of Heat moves that can instantly down 3–4 enemies at once, or at least injure them badly, like the “Essence of the Three-Legged Mare”. It sounds like the perfect style. So, why is it in third place?

For one, it doesn’t do much damage to start with. After upgrades, it can blitz the biggest groups, but out of the gate, it’ll leave players hammering away at the Light Attack button constantly until they get a repetitive strain injury. Getting the know-how to make the special ammo takes a few upgrades too, and getting enough of it requires at least as much effort as getting the right seals to increase the gun’s firing rate and damage against armored foes. With enough grinding, it can break the game. Without it, it can break the player’s fingers instead.

2 Wild Dancer

Gun + Sword = Gunsword!

• Pros: Fast, nimble, breaks through defenses well with the ‘Phoenix Frenzy’ move, certain Heat moves take care of multiple targets.
• Cons: Unstable, likely to leave the player open to damage if they make a mistake, can’t guard, sword and gun attacks aren’t as strong as in Gunman and Swordsman styles.

A lot of new players will go straight for the Wild Dancer style since it lets them shoot and slash at the same time. They can do a range of slashes with the Light Attack button, then combo into any one of them with a gunshot with the Heavy Attack button. The attacks are quite fast and rack up the damage well, so it is also good for gamers who want to trim down an already grind-heavy game. However, it has quite a big drawback: it requires more skill to get the hang of its evasive and defensive skills.

On the one hand, Wild Dancer has the Phoenix Frenzy, a spinning attack that deflects enemy bullets while plowing into them like a circular saw. It can even lead to its own Heat move, the “Bloody Wheel,” which can take care of a foe or two once the player has the right set of upgrades. On the other, it’s easy to end up spinning into an errant sword strike or blunt smash that’ll leave players grounded. Players also can’t block with Wild Dancer.

Instead, they have a parry, which requires tighter timing than any other parry in the game and is likely to leave players eating steel until they get the hang of it. As such, Wild Dancer takes a while to come into its own. Once players get used to the gameplay, and after it’s buffed up a bit, it arguably becomes the best style in the game. But in its early stages, it’s a bit rough.

1 Swordsman

Getting Straight To The Point

• Pros: Decent damage output from the start, can block bullets, strong counter-attacks. Heat moves do a lot of damage too, many of which can affect multiple foes.
• Cons: The slowest style of the bunch, with predictable, slow combos that can leave Ryoma open to damage.

It’s no surprise that a samurai game would have a Swordsman style. With it, the player uses a single sword for hefty combos that, on their own, do the most damage. It has a range of different combos that work better at fighting foes up close than Brawler’s strikes. However, he’s not as nimble in this style as others. Even without pulling off his Charged Attacks, one mistake could leave him vulnerable to an errant strike. Luckily, Ryoma can block in this style, defending himself against bullets as well as sword attacks.

It has some of the best upgrades too. The “Splendid Skill: Rustling Leaves” gives it a parry that, with enough uses, can disarm sword-wielding thugs and leave them more vulnerable to Ryoma’s attacks. “Splendid Skill: Lightning’s Glory” is a counter-attack slash that outdoes the Tiger Drop in speed and damage. While “Essence of Mincemeat” and “Leaping Maelstrom” can blitz through bosses and multiple foes very well. However, it takes some time to get these upgrades, as they’re some of the last ones on its wheel.

Crafting seals and different swords can help speed up the grind, as can some other upgrades that increase its XP. It’s the best style in the game’s early stages, as its damage output makes up for its lack of speed. As such, players are likely to find themselves getting those sweet extra skills sooner than they thought. It’ll at least see them through until they can get to grips with Wild Dancer’s erratic spins and parries.