Stranger Than Heaven's combat system is one of many gambles that RGG might

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While less attention-grabbing than the inclusion of American celebrities, the combat of the next Ryu Ga Gotoku game is just as big a departure from Yakuza.

Lexi Luddy September 17, 2026 1:00 PM Sega 1

Rarely have I cooled on a game more extensively during a pre-release marketing cycle than I have with Stranger Than Heaven. There have been plenty of games which I felt positively toward before release, only to play the finished product and realise things didn’t really come together; however, in the case of Ryu Ga Gotoku’s new IP, I find there have been many more downs than ups on this pre-release rollercoaster.

As a long-time fan of the Like A Dragon games, a lot of this has come from the contentious casting of deceased rap icon Tupac – whose estate is currently controlled by a music executive being sued by Tupac’s sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, for embezzlement and refusing to hand over personal items. This, paired with the casting of known played-out bag-getter and Trump inauguration party performer, Snoop Dogg, has resulted in the game that, when first teased as the fresh and bold-sounding Project Century back in 2024, already feels stale and, dare I say it, lame before it has even been released.

Sucker punch

I get all this out of the way upfront, because it's only fair that if you are reading my impression of the demo about this game, you should be aware it had plenty of winning me over to do during the brief, 15 minutes of gameplay that was being shown to press at Gamescom 2026. With that said, I hope that this demo could at least reassure me that there was a part of this game I could jibe with going into its release, and the answer is “kinda.”

Stranger than Heaven’s combat, like many aspects of its design and style, is a noticeable departure from the long-running Like a Dragon franchise that it seems to share a universe with. Instead of traditional brawler controls on the face buttons, Stranger Than Heaven has an almost QWOP-ian design philosophy because, much like that iconic browser-based Bennett Foddy-developed game, each limb is controlled by a single button. In combat, both bumpers and shoulder buttons take on the role of a limb. On a PlayStation controller, it would look like: left arm is controlled by L1, left leg by R2, etc., with presses and holds for light and heavy attacks with each appendage. 

Moreover, the game also features a direction block, not dissimilar to the recently released Blood of Dawnwalker. Basically, if you can tell which direction a strike is coming from and flick the analogue stick in that direction along with hitting the block button, not only will protagonist Makoto Daito not consume stamina, but the assailant will be left vulnerable for a follow-up. On top of all this is also a seemingly extensive weapon system, which can be used to break enemies defensives along with a more basic two-handed grapple you can use to wrestle goons to the ground for a beat down.

Find a target

This layout is novel in the extreme, and will almost certainly take you several minutes to grow accustomed to, unless you are some kind of sicko that has been rebinding Virtua Fighter controls off the face buttons for some reason. Which, come to think of it, could be how someone at RGG, who are also developing the new Virtua Fighter, conceived such a control scheme. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I have criticised recent Like A Dragon games, particularly the much-maligned Yakuza Kiwami 3 remake, for its exceedingly mashy combat, which confuses enemies with unbreakable blocks, with an actual interesting challenge as the game progresses.

It is nice to see RGG trying to breathe new life into the brawler genre, and the system that is here has potential to create some rather intense one-on-one encounters. The big problem is that, bar the final mini-boss I threw down with, RGG’s combat design has not evolved with the gameplay systems to focus on more individualised fights. Instead, the demo saw Mako trudge through beatdowns with half a dozen more combatants without a dedicated lock-on.

The result is quite frustrating. Stranger than Heaven is clearly meant to be a more challenging game than recent Like A Dragon games, with much more demanded of the player in any given encounter, and much tougher (i.e. spongier) enemies. However, fighting with the camera, while you try to juggle and strafe around a group of enemies until you can single one out without his pal being close enough to closeline you mid-attack, isn’t challenging. It’s just a hassle.

This was an issue that plagued the first two encounters during this demo. I was consistently struggling to keep the camera facing the right direction while also hitting the circle button to block, AND trying to use the right or left shoulder button to nail the directional parry. Not every game needs a lock-on, but if it doesn’t have one, encounters should be designed accordingly, or a more directed camera system is probably needed.

As if to prove this point, once I reached the third, final, and apparently hardest fight against a single mid-level boss-type gangster, I actually ended up getting through the fight faster and with fewer deaths than the easier group fights. It was this fight where the combat system began to click, and while I am sure some of that was muscle memory building up, it also felt like a much more reasonably balanced encounter where I was rewarded for skill, and not juggling the camera control.

Punching at air

So with all that in mind, I left my appointment with Stranger Than Heaven even more conflicted than before. I was hoping that combat could be a lynchpin I could grab onto when evaluating this game; however, instead it feels more like a loose nail that you probably can’t hang a whole game off of.

RRG is in a strange spot; despite Kiryu’s story ostensibly ending with Yakuza 6 in 2016/2018 (depending on your region), he is still kicking around that universe and seemingly can’t even be killed by terminal cancer. On top of that, the leadership team seems to have gone out of its way to start retrofitting bizarre story beats into remakes, creating a needless secret government subplot to undercut any realism or teeth the once gritty series had. This “Daidoji” Saga seems like it will even play into Stranger than Heaven’s story – which is almost assuredly actually about the founding of the Omi and Tojo Clan – making an already dense lore even more impenetrable for new players.

While I would love nothing more than for this game to be the moment of reinvigoration that Ryu Ga Gotoku has been crying out for since the high-profile departure of Toshihiro Nagoshi, instead I am left worried that it's the studio throwing its last remaining ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. 

This preview is based on a PS5 demo played at Gamescom 2026. The final product is subject to change.

Shacknews staff does not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their content. Shacknews strictly prohibits the use of its content for AI training or to generate text, including text in the style or format used for this publication. Shacknews reserves all rights to this work.

Lexi Luddy Contributing Editor

Lex Luddy is a freelance writer and journalist. She has written for Vice, Fanbyte, PLAY Magazine, Gayming Magazine, Push Square, startmenu and more. She can be found on BlueSky @basicallilexi.bsky.social talking about Like A Dragon, Kirby, and queer representation in media.

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