We played several hours of Sega's next big crime-thriller, and so far the Like a Dragon series is getting its most bold entry to date.

Stranger Than Heaven is the next game in Sega's sprawling crime-epic series Like A Dragon (formerly known as Yakuza in the US). On the surface, it looks like a grittier, more brutal take on the traditional Like a Dragon brawler action, but after extended hands-on time, I found myself thinking that Stranger Than Heaven's style feels much more grounded, and personal.

I recently spent several hours playing the opening chapters of developer RGG Studio's next entry in the crime saga, and it was clear that Stranger Than Heaven is about returning the series to its roots with a more relentless, character-driven story about an outsider making his way in early 1900s Japan. It took me a while to get into the Stranger Than Heaven's grittier crime-thriller flow, which leans heavily on a new, unusual combat system. Still, I couldn't help but be captivated by protagonist Makoto Daito's story of a stranger trying to embrace his ancestral land that's going through great change.

Spanning five decades, Stranger Than Heaven follows Makoto Daito's rise from a mysterious Japanese-American outcast to an infamous hustler and gangster in 1900s Japan. Starting from his traumatic life in the segregated United States, to his eventual arrival in Japan, Daito's growth leads him to being a scrappy dock and factory worker hustling on the streets of Kokura, to an up-and-coming nightclub owner and businessman in Osaka, and eventually to one of the key figures of the Tojo Clan in 1960s Shinjuku, shaping the lives of Kazuma Kiryu and Ichiban Kasuga in future entries.

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