While Like A Dragon: Ishin forgoes the usual setting of the Yakuza series, it does share the majority of its DNA with those games. In particular, it borrows from Yakuza 0, including its four fighting-style system, which allows you to switch between four distinct methods of fighting on the fly. While this allows a ton of flexibility in the way you approach combat, it also means you need to understand and balance four skill trees, along with relevant equipment and items. Here’s everything you need to know about combat in Like A Dragon: Ishin.

The four styles of combat

Like A Dragon: Ishin features four styles of combat: Brawler, Swordsman, Gunman, and Wild Dancer. The Brawler style focuses on unarmed hand-to-hand combat, while Gunman and Swordsman focus on the single weapon featured in their name. Lastly, Wild Dancer combines the use of a sword and a gun, creating a hybrid style of fighting. As for which of these fighting styles you should use, the combat in Like A Dragon: Ishin allows you enough flexibility that it primarily comes down to personal preference, although you will want to try and balance out your usage of each class. The reason for that is that XP and skill points are earned mostly on an individual basis for each class.

The four skill trees

Each fighting style has its own skill tree and its own skill points in the form of orbs. There is a fifth type of orb called the training orb, which is awarded as you level up overall. Each orb type can only be used in its specific skill tree, while the training orb can be used in any skill tree, letting you either over-level your preferred class or keep another up to speed. Training orbs can be swapped with class orbs from their skill slot, so feel free to use them early on. The reverse is not true, so any class orbs spent cannot be swapped out with training orbs. While most skills can be obtained as soon as you reach them in the tree, there are a few locked skills and paths in each class tree.

There are two types of skills in each tree, stat boosts and new attacks. New attacks typically open up a brand new combo or move for you to use, some of which will have multiple tiers to upgrade to, improving the move. Stat boosts provide bonuses, some to health, some to the heat gauge, and most importantly increasing the base amount of damage that fighting style does. These are the most important skills to grab, as this is the only way to significantly increase your damage output other than upgrading or acquiring better equipment.

These locked skills must be learned from the relevant training grounds found around the city. The Brawler class studies at the Komaki Dojo in the southeastern part of Fushimi. The Gunman hones its shot at Unyuan in southern Rakugai. The Wild Dancer and Swordsman train at Ginryu Dojo in northern Rakunai.

Each fighting style’s best use case

While you can use any fighting style you prefer at any time, there are some situations where each style shines better than the rest. The Brawler class is best used when there is a large number of enemies in the area, as well as a number of objects nearby that you can use as weapons. The Wild Dancer falls into the same category, being a strong fighting style for taking on a large number of enemies at once. The Wild Dancer style has multiple combos that involve spinning and dealing damage all around you.

The Swordsman class is best used in one-on-one fights, or when there are only a few enemies present. This style excels when you can focus your sword combos on a single enemy, without needing to worry about multiple enemies attacking you from behind. The Gunman style is best used when you want to put some distance between you and your enemy. This means enemies using firearms or a tough opponent in a boss fight who you don’t want to get too close to.

If you find yourself getting overwhelmed by your opponents or taking more damage than you are dealing with, one of the best ways to shift the momentum of a fight is to try a different fighting style. While each style has something it’s better at, there is no one size fits all, so switch it up frequently.

Trooper Card bonuses

When you reach Chapter 5 and unlock the Trooper Card system, one of the things you might immediately notice is the massive boosts you can receive from the equipped cards. You can equip up to four cards to each class–although you will need to unlock the ability to have that many at the Shrine in exchange for Virtue points–with each card provide a passive bonus and an active bonus. These boosts are present during combat outside of the special missions you can go.

The passive bonus provides health and one other trait, like having Trooper abilities charge faster. The active ability varies heavily, having Sakamoto either do a powerful attack, having a Trooper step in to do an attack themselves, or a stat boost. The higher rarity the Trooper Card is, the better the active ability is going to be. Once you unlock this system, you will want to make sure you always have the best cards equipped to give you the biggest advantage in battle.

In GameSpot’s Like A Dragon: Ishin review critic Michael Higham gave it an 8/10, writing, “By virtue of its brand of storytelling, Ishin forgoes some of the tropes that have glorified samurai but rides that line ever so closely. If the series is one thing, it’s consistent–because despite the shift to Edo-era Japan, there’s an unmistakable familiarity. The days of asking Sega to bring Ishin to the West are thankfully over. And although this revision uses an older foundation that shows its age, it’s nice to finally have a version of the game that has been tidied up for modern platforms. Like a Dragon: Ishin brings an all-star cast back together for a story that’s bigger than any one character, and it makes for a fine addition to the series’ deep history.”

New mid-range GPUs from AMD and Nvidia are just around the corner, including the Nvidia RTX 4060 and RTX 4070 cards and AMD’s Radeon RX 7800 and 7700. Well, we say mid-range and therein lies the problem. Where the heck are these graphics cards going to be priced?

All the indications are that the likes of Nvidia’s TX 4080 (opens in new tab) and RTX 4070 Ti (opens in new tab) along with AMD’s RX 7900 XT (opens in new tab) and RX 7900 XTX (opens in new tab) are pretty tough sells. After all, pretty much all of them have reverted to their official MSRP shortly after launch and they all seem to be in abundant supply.

Today, Roblox provides creators with a platform that enables end-to-end tools, services, and support to help them build the most immersive 3D experiences. With Roblox Studio, creators have everything they need, out-of-the-box and for free, to build their experiences and publish immediately on all popular platforms, reaching 58.8 million people daily worldwide. With the advent of generative AI techniques, however, we are seeing an opportunity to revolutionize creation on the platform, both by augmenting Roblox Studio to make creation dramatically faster and easier, and also by enabling every user on Roblox to be a creator.

As we all know, generative AI learns the underlying patterns and structures of data and generates new content, such as images, audio, code, text, 3D models, or other forms of media, that have not been seen before. With a dramatic acceleration in these tools’ effectiveness for everyday content creation, this technology is at an inflection point. It now has the capability to capture the creator’s intent, provide a broad range of digital editing capabilities, help create the content, and allow for fast iteration. We have already heard from Roblox creators about how they are using this technology to create. However, these off-the-shelf AI systems are not integrated with our platform and they often do not produce “Roblox ready” output that requires substantial follow on work from a creator. We see an incredible opportunity to build generative AI tools and APIs focused on Roblox.

The Value of Generative AI for Our Creators

Today a Roblox experience is created through a combination of 3D objects of various forms (constructive solid geometry, avatars, meshes, terrain, etc), connected in behavior through Lua scripting, and backed by a universal physics engine that provides core behavior on the platform. While the engine is an underlying portion of the platform, it is up to the creator to build or otherwise acquire everything in the experience. We see generative AI tools being applicable to each of these different creative processes. What we have already started to see through internal prototypes is that specialized generative AI tools can not only accelerate creator productivity, but can significantly drop the technical skill needed to bring ideas to life.

For example, some creators know how to code, but may have limited experience creating high-fidelity 3D models. Others may be more experienced with model design, but less experienced with code. In both cases, we see a future in which even a beginner (such as myself for example – I’m a terrible artist!) can get a running head start as they look to bring their imagination to life in a Roblox experience.  

Even more powerful, the convergence of media supported by generative AI will allow creators to develop integrated 3D objects that come with behavior built in. For example, a creator could design a car through a simple statement such as “A red, two seater, convertible sports car with front-wheel drive”. This new creation would both look like a red sports car but also have all the behavior coded into it to be driven through a 3D virtual world. 

This work involves unique technical challenges as we tackle the ability to generate 3D models with event handlers, an animation rig, and physical properties. This work is unprecedented because making interactive content requires a deeper understanding of the generated object. With the breadth of immersive content opportunities on Roblox, we also have the unique opportunity to create a generative model for all types of content at once – image, code, 3D models, audio, avatar creation, and more.

Everyone becomes a creator

We are building a platform that will enable every user to be a creator – not just those comfortable with Roblox Studio and other 3D content creation tools. We believe that many experiences in Roblox will become creation experiences where one can create a new shirt, hat, an entire avatar; a house or even an entire experience – all from within another experience. This vision requires a set of tools significantly more accessible to a typical user than exists in any environment today – things like voice and text or touch-based gestures rather than intricate mouse and keyboard movements. Generative AI tooling can help make creation intuitive and natural for users and be directly embedded into experiences, allowing any of our 58.8 million daily users to create unique content that can be shared across the platform.

We also see a huge opportunity for the AI community itself to become creators on the Roblox platform. By enabling 3rd party AI creation services to plug directly into Roblox (likely as a creation experience), we provide a mechanism for their unique creations to be directly offered to Roblox users. For example, if you develop an AI model that builds the most expressive superhero characters based on a combination of text prompts, graphical queues, and photo examples, that capability is something you should be able to offer directly to those Roblox users who want an incredible superhero avatar. We envision the community as a force multiplier for generative AI, creating an ecosystem that our creators and users can leverage to create content and tools more effectively. 

This vision also involves some unique technical challenges. First, the tools have to be suited to things a user would create, and how they might fit into an in-experience creation environment. Second, in all cases we need to keep Roblox safe and civil. This means we need to build a fast and scalable moderation flow for all types of creation. Third, we need an economic system that encourages such creation. Roblox stands apart as a platform with a robust creator-backed marketplace and economy, and we must extend that to support in-experience user-creators as well as AI algorithm developers.

As we do this, we remain aware of the need to implement generative AI thoughtfully and ethically on the Roblox platform, in line with the value we have always placed on respecting our community. We are committed to using diverse and robust data sets to limit biased content and encourage safe and high-quality content output.

Learn More at DeveloperWeek

Our teams are working on rolling out tests for two new AI tools in the coming weeks: generative AI materials from a text prompt and generative AI code completion to help increase development velocity. These are just our first steps to bring the creation power of generative AI to our creator community. I’ll be sharing more this week at my talk on the Tech Stack for the Metaverse at DeveloperWeek. And Stef Corazza will also share more during his talk at the AI Summit of Game Developers Conference next month. We hope you are as excited as we are to embark on this journey together.

Don’t save your resources or consumables

The main resource in Returnal is Obolite, which you’ll find littering the surface of the planet and exploding out of enemies like the neon-tentacled piñata’s they are. You can use it to buy consumable items or temporarily upgrade your suit for the current run. Since every death kicks you back to square one, make the most out of your Obolites and consumables while you’ve got them. While there’s wisdom in saving important consumables for the boss of the biome you’re in, it won’t matter if you die before you get to them. And the longer you survive, the more opportunities you’ll have to gather more resources. 

The only resource that carries over after death is Ether, which you can use on the Cthonos—the weird machine covered in eyeballs—back at the start, which allows you to unlock random consumables or artifacts. Each time you do, the new item will be added to the pool of items that spawn throughout the game. There are a few other uses for Ether, like establishing a one-time respawn point or removing malignancy from items, but largely it’s best to use it to unlock new stuff.

Move and dash aggressively

Returnal doesn’t hold back with the speed, and right from the get-go you’ll move more like a scared roadrunner in a hamster ball than a concussed spacewreck survivor. That speed is essential, as enemies aren’t shy about spitting out a vast number of deadly glowing projectiles that you’ll need to outrun. Unlike some other third-person action games, you’ll be spending a lot more time running and jumping at top speed. Staying stationary and hugging cover is mostly going to get you needled to death from multiple angles—instead, dash behind cover to absorb bursts of fire or beam-style attacks, and then quickly get back on the move. 

Your dash ability isn’t just quick—it also gives you a brief window of invulnerability while you jet forward. While it can be useful for getting across gaps or dashing away from enemies that rush you, it can also let you dash straight through projectiles or attacks that would otherwise be difficult or even impossible to avoid. With such a brief cooldown, it’s smart to get used to using it frequently so you have a good sense of when you can count on using it again. Establishing this muscle memory will see you dashing in between strings of plasma fire in no time.

If you didn’t have enough incentive already to be on the move, remember that the Obolites enemies drop will disappear pretty quickly—so dashing in to get them is important.

You don’t have to explore and complete everything

The many randomized rooms of Returnal’s biomes change up every single run, and sometimes they’ll be downright unfair. If a particular room looks like a death trap, ask yourself whether or not you can just sprint through or otherwise bypass it. On your map, darker blue doors indicate the main path, while lighter blue ones are optional. This should give you a good idea of where you need to go, but you can also scan the area (‘T’ by default on PC) to get a better sense of what’s in the room you’re in and highlight doors you may have missed.

Similar to dangerous rooms, malignancy can also put the squeeze on your runs. Each time you grab an item with malignancy, there’s a chance of a suit malfunction. Each malfunction is a negative status—like falls causing damage, losing Obolites when taking damage, or disabling overload—that can only be removed by meeting the random conditions it gives or using a consumable. It’s tempting to want to maximize your run by grabbing malignant items or opening containers, but consider whether malignancy is worth the risk. Most of the time it’s simply not, since every third malfunction will destroy one of your artifacts and some suit malfunctions are bad enough on their own to kill you before you can remove them.

Watch for the (usually glowing) signs

There are a bunch of locked or hidden cues throughout Returnal, all of which are easy to miss the explanations for, or are lacking cues entirely. In some cases, simply knowing what they mean will be enough to let you take advantage of them, but others require specific tools first. Here’s what to look out for:

If you’re frustrated by out of reach platforms with orange lights on the edge, you aren’t the only one. Eventually you’ll get permanent access to a grappling hook that will let you swing up to these, so until then just ignore them.

• If you find a room with a glowing yellow ball, it’s probably worth checking out. The floor in these rooms will collapse and drop you into a room below with only a teleporter to return with. The room will also have Obolites, consumables, and other goodies. Just be aware that there’s a chance a challenging enemy will spawn in the room, too.
• If you’re frustrated by out of reach platforms with orange lights on the edge, you aren’t the only one. Eventually you’ll get permanent access to a grappling hook that will let you swing up to these, so until then just ignore them.
• You’ll encounter chests and other goodies locked up behind bars from time to time, but if you look around you’ll find a glowing yellow switch hidden nearby. Shooting this switch will let you get inside to claim some free stuff. 
• Like the grappling hook, you’ll get access to a permanent sword—albeit, much earlier on—that will let you get through any glowing red vines that are keeping you away from delicious items, and ditto to patchy gray walls with red glowing eyes, as you can break them to find an alcove full of treats. The sword is also how you break through the glowing red shields on enemies that are otherwise invulnerable, so just avoid them until you get it. 
• Likewise, if you find a glowing orange barrier you’ll need the Blade Balancer artifact, which upgrades your sword to bust through them. Inside these rooms you’ll usually find loot to grab.  

Don’t forget the rest

While they may not be as important as the above, there are a few other things that can be helpful to know early on in Returnal’s bullet hell: 

• Don’t ignore Overload, the little reloading minigame. It speeds up your reload and lots of artifacts, and parasites will give you bonuses or otherwise interact with successful Overloads. 
• Keep an eye out for purple alien eggs while wandering around; they may seem like background scenery, but you can destroy them to get all kinds of useful things. 
• The red tentacles that can grab you Half Life-style can actually be pretty useful for getting around. You can let them pull you up to a height you want and then dash to out of reach platforms. 
• If you find a Datacube, they’re only useful if you find a Datacube Processor—doing so will let you trade it in to permanently unlock a weapon, consumable, or artifact for future runs. Plus, you’ll get whatever one you unlock right then. Like everything else, though, they’re gone if you die without using them at a Processor.
• Don’t save your alt fire; it has infinite uses and comes off cooldown pretty quickly. There are a bunch of them to play with, but all of them should be part of your regular arsenal.  
• You can pick up more Ether by doing the daily challenge inside your ship. 
• If you aren’t sure what the Astronaut Figure artifact does, you aren’t alone. It does nothing at all until you die while you have it, at which point it will bring you back to life on the spot—making it a huge boon for tough bosses.