After playing Stranger Than Heaven, I think this is RGG's hardest game

As laughter and confused murmurs began to fill the Dolby Theater after Tupac's revelation, one thing became clear: Stranger Than Heaven was living up to its name. Whether it's the story with Snoop Dogg, Tupac, or RGG's Yakuza/Like a Dragon series that brought you here, Stranger Than Heaven is looking to deliver an experience unlike anything aspiring developers have ever offered – and it all starts with battle.

I previewed Stranger Than Heaven's robust new combat system at Summer Game Fest earlier this month, with three difficulties culminating in the hardest 'advanced' fight against an extremely skilled swordsman. Even with my Yakuza experience, it was difficult.

Battles that can only be clicks

I sat at my preview station with an innocent smile on my face, unaware of what I was walking into. I'm a huge fan of the Yakuza series, so after the title screen faded, and I loaded into the first area, marked 'Beginner', memories of Like a Dragon: Isshin danced in my head. However, despite its retro setting, Stranger Than Heaven is nothing like Ishin or any other RGG game, and its combat is ahead of the reasons why.

The primary emphasis is on using the right and left side of your controller to control each side of Daito's body. If someone grabbed your right arm, the best way to break free was to swing with your left arm. Simple enough in theory, but very subtle in practice.

As I set up, I caught a glimpse of a man attached to the haymakers in a group of thugs beside me. The beginner mode seemed easy enough. But then, as I stepped up to the plate to face my own group, my perimeter saw his screen fade to black as he punched 'game over' in the darkness of his failed attempt. At this moment, I felt cooked. But I took his failure as a warning and was able to skillfully dispatch two of the enemy to thin out the small crowd facing me.

Divide and conquer quickly became a recipe for success, as I randomly swung my camera around to keep an eye on the main, much larger baddie. This strategy was essential for the first fight, and saved me from near death during the second encounter against another strong group of enemies. While picking off enemies at once was a useful plan for the first two encounters, it proved useless for the third 'advanced' fight against a single swordsman.

I took a somewhat confident step towards my opponent with a short knife in my right hand – badly outmatched by a swordsman's katana. A few knives barely scratched the surface of his health gauge, perhaps depleting two percent of his life. In an instant, he grabbed me by one arm and pinned me down with a deadly flourish – the game over screen was no longer at my periphery, but staring me in the face. I wiped my hands and leaned forward in my chair – this difficulty was not a mess all around.

Another time, I spent almost no time attacking, instead choosing to learn my enemy's move set and attack only after dodging or blocking a slash. Slowly, I began to make progress in draining what seemed like a never-ending pool of health.

Dodge-punish-block-back up. I got into rhythm and pushed the swordsman aside, as he was about 30 percent of his health stuck. Suddenly, I was caught in a grapple and witnessed the same grapple-and-stab animation that killed me before finishing me off again.

As I wiped my sweaty hands on my clothes and threw off my headset to readjust, one of the PR staff members setting up the previews tapped me on the shoulder. “You're catching on really quickly,” he said with a smile. With renewed confidence, I jumped again… and failed again. And again. I probably died four times until I figured out how to avoid the swordsman's signature killing blow and finally landed my own final blow.

I pulled the headset back to let out a sigh and clench my fists with a celebratory fist pump. A symphony of applause echoed behind me as I turned around to see three PR people gathered with smiles on their faces. “Wet it,” they told me. I looked around, I understood why they said that – I was the only person who beat the advanced difficulty in the session.

Is RGG forcing you to be better?

If you're wondering if your only options are to quit the game or git gud, the short answer is not exactly. The long answer is 'yes' – if you want to play the most challenging mode of the game. However, while the other two difficulties offer a decent challenge, they don't is necessary For you to get better, per se – they require you to play smart. While many previous RGG titles could be defeated by button-mashing dodges and random attacks, Stranger Than Heaven rewards playing strategically to deal with the situation at hand.

If the enemy grabs your right hand, massing RB or RT on your controller won't help much – you need to use your free left hand. Likewise, if you're facing off against five enemies, running into the center and spamming attacks will throw you around, even if you manage to take out one of them.

However, that doesn't mean Stranger Than Heaven's new take on fighting is easy to click with. When I reached out to another RGG fan I met at Summer Game Fest, their faces showed bitter disappointment. “I wasn't a fan of it, to be honest. It was too hard for me,” they lamented. Thanks to the fun conclusion of my demo, while I left with a positive impression, it made me reflect on how hard I had to try to get through some fights.

I'm not really exaggerating when I finally beat the toughest challenge they had prepared, my hands were sweaty. And for a single-player game from a developer with a wide range of fans, it felt like their answer to Alden Ring rather than a bold new take on organized crime.

While it is easy to pick a side and condemn or praise the fight based on my experience or that of my colleagues, I think the difficulty is more subtle than that. For example, we didn't encounter that final swordsman on the starting difficulty, so what would the fight look like if that were the case? Will the HP be too low? How much will that hand and knife hurt me? There is a lot to consider.

But Stranger Than Heaven's demo made one thing abundantly clear about its combat: There's going to be a learning curve. How steep this curve is will be up to you depending on the difficulty you select, but part of it will be rooted in the style of play. If the demo is anything like the final product, then it's clear that RGG wants you to approach every engagement thoughtfully.

How you choose to fight and which enemies you prioritize is ultimately up to you, and that's the beauty of Stranger Than Heaven. While your mind may have been numbed by countless pushover fights against grunts in past RGG games, every encounter in Stranger Than Heaven has a chance to be memorable and unique to you.

Despite the changes that longtime fans will have to adjust to this new fighting style, Stranger Than Heaven promises to be another amazingly weird, wild ride when it releases in January 2027.