《Stranger Than Heaven》最终预览：如龙团队跨越数十年的动作冒险

Key Preview Takeaways:

It tells a serious story that shows how discrimation of the early 20th century shapes someone, but intentionally includes certain anachronisms.
The parry-based combat mechanics work really well once you lock in with it, and there are some top-tier minigames, including being a music and club manager.
I'm still not sold on the weirdness of Tupac being cast in this game.

I was conflicted coming out of my first hands-on with Stranger Than Heaven earlier this year, generally liking what I saw but unsure if its slower, clunky combat system would get better in time. That was a 45-minute demo that thrust you into battle without any real setup, but in a new three-hour demo, I got to play it from the start, see a bit of its decade-spanning story in action, and explore the different towns that represent each time period while playing all-new minigames that fill the streets. That also meant getting real familiar with how to throw hands in the re-tuned combat, and it feels like I've done a complete 180-degree turn on RGG Studio's next game. Meaning, I’m now all-in on the Yakuza team’s latest.

Life of a Yakuza

Stranger Than Heaven's premise drew me from the first reveal – a story about a man of mixed ethnicity in a tumultuous time between Japan and the US, spanning decades and leading into where the Tojo Clan began in 1960s Kamurocho. As someone who's played every Yakuza / Like A Dragon game, this sounds like it could hit hard. Being familiar with the dynamic of being mixed and struggling to find your place in society, it seems like a story that's touching on something very few game stories have.

It starts with lead character Makoto Daito looking to get out of San Francisco in 1915 while fleeing the scene of a crime he did not commit. But the bastard cops pursuing him don't care – they can pin the crime on a "foreigner" and call it a day. And man, it's been a while since I've heard some of these old time-y slurs towards Asians, but that's the tone being set here with regard to the discrimination they faced during this time. Thankfully, we get to whoop their ass as the tutorial for the intricate combat system. He escapes on the last ship leaving the Bay as a stowaway, meets Snoop Dogg's character named Orpheus after tussling with the ship crew, and arrives in the small Japanese town of Kokura.

They kinda just let Snoop Dogg do his thing, even teaching Makoto how to roll up loose cigarettes.

Here's what I'll say about Orpheus; Snoop Dogg's role kind of works for what this story is doing because part of it seems to be about outcasts finding community through music. One thing director Mikinobu Abe mentioned is that Stranger Than Heaven isn't trying to be time-period accurate – and maybe being anachronistic breaks the believability of its world, but I want to see more of how this is done. They also just kinda let Snoop Dogg do his thing, even teaching Makoto how to roll up loose cigarettes, which is also a gameplay mechanic for crafting cigs that give temporary stat boosts!

Stranger Than Heaven takes on a more serious tone, however. The story sequence I played in Kokura shows Makoto as a very timid outsider whose deep blue eyes give away that he's an outsider – and again, discriminated against in a country he's supposed to be home to. He meets a hostess named Tae at a restaurant under the pretense of getting closer to a crime boss he's tasked with helping take down. The way he clearly lacks the social skills, or just feels shame for who he is, comes across powerfully in these cutscenes. That anxiousness causes him to break since he's compelled to be an honest person, and so they both lay their motives bare.

This made for over 15 minutes of cutscenes, and I was still locked in the entire time. RGG Studio and the Yakuza series have been some of the best in terms of cinematics and actor performances, and Stranger Than Heaven proved that it still has the sauce, letting the intimate details speak volumes and establish a believable dynamic between characters.

Catching Hands

The demo fast-forwarded to a raid on a factory in Kokura where Tae was being held captive by said crime boss, so I didn't have any real context for what led up to this moment. However, this is where it dialed in the combat. It still feels pretty sluggish and gets a little messy when dealing with crowds, but the calculated nature of fights shined through. The bumpers control left and right light attacks while the triggers are for respective heavy attacks, which is a great idea on paper, and once I came to grips with the directional parry system, I started flowing through each fight. While holding the guard button, you have to either time the parry with a left or right light attack to stagger your foe – and you really have to pay attention to attack animations not just for timing, but to make the correct call on the direction it's coming from. Stranger Than Heaven joins the crowded ranks of action games with parry systems, yet this seemingly minor mechanic could be the difference in having something more engaging.

Your attacks also change based on the weapon you have equipped. A big odachi sword isn't always the best option even if it's powerful, and the massive hammer is great for breaking guard and finishing enemies with a nasty smack to the face, but it slows down your overall movement. So, I mostly gravitated toward the one-handed knife and wooden club, which gave much-needed mobility and kept me feeling nimble for those directional parries. As I fought through the factory and faced waves of enemies, it kept clicking and it prepared me for the boss fight at the end. Instead of feeling intimidated, I was excited to test whether or not I actually came to grips with the combat system – turns out, I did. Understanding what's parry-able and nailing down dodges around the boss rather than just backing up, also not getting greedy with openings, were the keys to surviving. It's demanding, and I like that about it.

Abe confirmed that RGG Studio reworked the combat after feedback based on the earlier demos, and while it still has its quirks, it has improved drastically from what I played. So, when I got to the snowy town of Kure as the story moves to 1929, I sought out the fight club side activity where I'd just fight dudes in a pit for money. This made Stranger Than Heaven feel like a boxing game, and when I thought of it like that, combat started to make more sense. There are a ton of weapon types to upgrade and gain new techniques from, so I'll be curious to see how this system could evolve over an entire playthrough.

A Night Out on the Town

As a game in the Yakuza lineage, you already know that these towns are going to be filled with interesting side activities. The last portion of my demo took place in 1943 Osaka, specifically Sotenbori (real-life Dotonbori), which you may recognize from the Yakuza games. And Stranger Than Heaven might just have RGG's best stuff yet. But first I want to talk about a few of the smaller things I really enjoyed.

This game's got beyblades, man! It's called beigoma and you basically collect spinning tops with different weight distribution and rotational speeds to use in matches. Choose your beigoma, time your power and accuracy on a meter like a golf game, and let it rip! There's also Menko, which is pretty much a game of pogs like we'd do at the school playground as kids. Here, you slam down menko cards to knock others off the table and can use different throwing angles to your advantage.

Of course, every RGG game needs mahjong and I've learned to play recently (shouts out to my homegirl Jackie), opening a whole new way to sink hours into these games without advancing the main story! There are also quicker, one-off things like a shooting gallery for items, five-finger fillet, and arm wrestling.

Stranger Than Heaven fuses the club / business management and karaoke minigames into one robust side activity called Showbiz.

Most importantly, Stranger Than Heaven fuses the club / business management and karaoke minigames into one robust side activity called Showbiz – and I already love it from what I played. It's thematically coherent with music being one of the major thrusts of the story, and it fits who Makoto becomes as a character. You'll employ musicians, set up props for the stage, set ticket prices, choose the songs they perform, and hopefully draw crowds to make money. It then brings in an easygoing rhythm game element, having you time the transitions for lights and stage effects with the performance to keep the crowd engaged.

It's said to be a consistent throughline as the story spans different decades and eras, and a lens to see how Japan changes in those time periods with fashion, music, and nightlife. And it's how the character Keiko, played by J-pop idol Ado, is woven into the world. As a big-time fan of Ado myself, it's pretty wild hearing her voice a character in a game, but also singing the very songs her character performs. I heard and played two of her in-game songs, both being era-appropriate, and it's such a nice touch where a celebrity casting works really well.

Along with being a music and club manager, you can customize the individual tracks of the songs that are available. So you can take the same old song, change what kind of instrument, mood, or tonality fills the lead, rhythm, bass, or drums tracks to completely change the genre of the song. For example, I basically recreated fourth-wave ska with a classic Balkan brass tune by setting every instrument to "intense" for a contemporary punk sound and setting the horns to "melancholy" – Streetlight Manifesto, eat your hearts out. Again, this is one of the ways things get anachronistic, but damn this is pretty sick.

Other Strangeness

I find so many parts of Stranger Than Heaven fascinating, and in talking to Yu Shirota, who plays Makoto Daito, he mentioned bring together his careers in music and acting together into one role, but also his own identity as a half-Japanese person who primarily speaks Japanese and still struggled with finding his place in the world. The story encompasses time periods during a tumultuous time in history with Imperial Japan, World War II, and Western culture spilling over, and Abe said that this is a story more about how a man navigates a world that's constantly changing around him.

But then there's the whole digital necromancy of Tupac. RGG studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama already told me earlier this year about how they think using his likeness is a good fit, and talked with Tupac's estate and family about the project to get approval, despite the backlash and overall tastelessness conceptually. Involving Snoop Dogg also seems like stunt-casting, but maybe that could work out well in the end.

Sometimes I don't know what to make of Stranger Than Heaven and I still have reservations about it, despite being one of the upcoming games I'm looking forward to most. And if anything, I just want to see what the hell RGG is doing with some of its questionable parts. But now, its gameplay and story are coming into focus and I need to know how it all plays out in the end. We'll see soon since it's the first major release of 2027, launching on January 15 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Be sure to check my full conversation with director Mikinobu Abe and lead actor Yu Shirota where we talk about music, being outsiders, and how all that informs the story of Stranger Than Heaven.

While you're here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we've checked out recently!