After an hour with Stranger Than Heaven’s combat, veteran Yakuza fans are in for a shock

Of all the games I expected to be comparing Stranger Than Heaven to, the ragdoll-based browser sensation, QWOP, wasn’t one of them.

The latest from RGG Studios certainly made some noise over Summer Game Fest weekend. Few people I bumped into could resist talking about the announcement that, despite being dead for 30 years, Tupac will appear in the upcoming game.

Despite that bombshell, the focus of our demo wasn’t the game’s story or its time-hopping setting; instead, it was entirely focused on the new combat system. We were thrown into three combat scenarios, each in a different era of the game. The first saw us introduced to the new controls. In short, it’s the left bumper and left trigger for your left hand and left foot, and the same for the right side.

What this means is that in order to adequately send thugs flying through ornate shop fronts, you have to consciously swap between left and right in order to build up momentum and execute combos. This is an interesting change off the back of a Yakuza system that veteran players can master with their eyes closed.

It certainly took a while to get used to, training your mind to use your off-hand to break the enemy’s composure rather than spamming heavy attacks over and over. There’s also a parry and dodge system, which opens foes up for further damage.

Stranger Than Heaven also gives the player access to 13 different types of weapons. While our demo only included 3 of the 13, it did give us some insight into how weapon-based combat differs from hand-to-hand combat. When using a large metal staff, we were able to take out multiple enemies at once, making for much easier crowd control than just using fists.

The combat section of our demo showcased one of the larger enemies. These enemies bowl into traffic and take down not only the player, but his mates too. This means that I was able to kite him towards the group of baddies surrounding me for a couple of easy takedowns.

He was essentially just a big guy with a massive amount of help, but given that crowd control is seemingly a central challenge of Stranger Than Heaven’s combat, more than one of these big lads would have been a nightmare.

“In order to adequately send thugs flying through ornate shop fronts, you have to consciously swap between left and right in order to build up momentum and execute combos.”

The final area in the demo is a one-on-one battle with a drunken swordmaster roaming the middle of town. His hits do an extreme amount of damage, meaning blocking, parrying, and dodging are key. The player, as well as every enemy, has a composure meter, which is affected by things like blocking heavy attacks or blocking too many times in a row without response.

The key to this fight is to overwhelm him with shots from your knife and break up my rhythm with punches from your left hand. This fight is where the new combat system felt most at home. My main issue, and this was a problem throughout the whole demo, is that every enemy seemed to have way too much health. I had long unpicked the combat puzzle before the enemy actually died.

This swordmaster also had a few moves that felt rather cheap. While this could be a case of my having not played enough of the game to look out for specific tells, one of his moves saw him take me down and stab me, instantly halving my health.

Overall, Stranger Than Heaven’s combat feels like an intriguing way to freshen up a genre that has been spinning its wheels for a while now. That being said, it’s easy to see the rubbing-your-stomach-and-patting-your-head balance of going from left to right infuriating some players, especially those coming in expecting a Like A Dragon-type experience.

I think that if it clicks for players, it could be something really unique, and while our demo gave glimpses of that, it’s something that only time with the full game will actually fulfill. My only regret is that we weren’t afforded any time to walk around the game’s various cities, which, even from this short demo, felt teeming with life and had a strong sense of atmosphere.

Divorced from the Tupac drama, this is a game that I’m keen to keep an eye on, especially as RGG attempts to recover from recent stumbles.