RGG Studio has always had a flair for the cinematic, with its Yakuza series drawing heavily on Japanese crime dramas on film and TV and casting real-life actors in its roles. Stranger Than Heaven essentially doubles down on that, telling an epic saga set over five decades across five cities in Japan for most of the first half of the last century.
That said, I'm conscious of the disclaimer Sega puts in the game's demo at Gamescom 2026, stating that Stranger Than Heaven is "in no way a reproduction of actual history". It's an important distinction to make since one of these eras is in the early 1940s, when Japan would have been fighting the US in World War II.
Its central story of a Japanese-American outcast escaping America to find a new life in Japan, meanwhile, sounds like an inversion of those immigrants pursuing the American Dream narratives, as well as conveniently overlooking Japan's oppression of Korean immigrants during that same time period.
However, this quick-and-dirty demo wasn't really meant to interrogate these matters, but rather to introduce Stranger Than Heaven's combat. It might seem an odd choice, given that the large appeal of the Yakuza games is that they're like virtual tourism as you soak up a Japanese city's vibes and get distracted by all kinds of minigames, more so than the fairly simplistic brawling that has largely stayed the same over the years.
But what makes Stranger Than Heaven stand out is its unusual combat. While having light attack and heavy attacks mapped to the bumper and trigger isn't exactly new if you've played a Soulslike, what's different here is that the left bumper and triggers and right bumper and triggers of the controller correspond to protagonist Makoto Daito's left and right sides.
That definitely takes some getting used to, though at least it doesn't go so far as having each input map to a specific limb. The trickiest part is probably that you also have to press both bumpers and then a separate button in order to guard against attacks, rather than just holding a button to block, although there is at least a dedicated button for evading.
Yet as I went through the three available combat scenarios, each giving me a different weapon or combat style – the first with just my fists, the second with a heavy pipe, and the third with a knife – it gradually became more intuitive, and I was even getting used to the way everyone's health is displayed like Zelda's stamina wheel rather than a conventional health bar.
The idea is that you can string together combos more freely with either side of your body, so I would alternate between bumpers to throw left and right punches or hold down the trigger for a charged-up punch. It also dawned on me that when Daito wields a knife, he's using his right hand, so it made sense that I would be using the right bumper and trigger to stab my opponent, while he would just be punching and kicking with his left.
Where it got trickier was the metal pipe, a weapon you two-hand, which took me a while to parse in this control scheme. This was incidentally the fight that I ended up attempting the most times, though it was also because, besides dealing with a mob, you've also got a 7-foot giant wielding a blade that unsurprisingly does a lot of damage if you don't block or parry it.
When you do get in the flow of it, though, this still has the brawling chaos of RGG's other games, with objects you can pick up as weapons or smash into the environment, like a nearby market stall. Whereas the Yakuza games' combat has been reusing its slapstick animations to the point of tedium, there's a refreshing brutality to Stranger Than Heaven's, for lack of a better word.
If Kiryu's bouts in Yakuza feel like wrestling, where after all the hot-blooded smackdowns you pick each other up and suit yourself off, I don't feel like your enemies are going to get back up in Stranger Than Heaven after they've had their faces beaten to a pulp or taken a long knife in the gut.
Yet as compelling as I found the combat, I'm just itching to explore more of the game's world, which the demo did at least give me a taste of a different era for each of the three combat scenarios.
You can feel a transition in 1915 Kokura with its tram system stopping by a traditional market quarter while tall factory chimneys are visible in the background, while by 1929 Kure, the presence of motorcars are a more common sight while Daito's also changed to a Western-style suit. 1943 Osaka is even more alluring for Yakuza fans as the district you're in is recognisably Sotenbori from those games, albeit in a time before it became populated with large illuminated signboards and garish animatronics, though no less colourful for it.
Ultimately, I get why RGG wants to sell people on the combat system first, and now that I've seen its depth, I can't wait to see everything else it has to offer.
Stranger Than Heaven releases on 15 January 2027 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC.
