It’s impossible to learn everything all by yourself, which is something that Like A Dragon: Ishin understands more than most games. Instead of giving all the skills in the game to you from the get go, you’ll need to visit various mentors and teachers that’ll show you some advanced skills for the game’s four fighting styles: Brawler, Swordsman, Gunman and Wild Dancer. Unfortunately, Like A Dragon: Ishin doesn’t hold your hand to find these masters, so we’re on hand instead to give you the essential info.
Here’s everything you need to know about Like A Dragon: Ishin’s masters, and how you can unlock more skills for each fighting style.
How Do The Masters Work?
Like A Dragon: Ishin has three masters, with each one unlocking skills in your fighting styles. There’s Komaki, who upgrades your Brawler style, William, who is responsible for teaching you Gunman skills, and Ginryu, who pulls double duty to teach you both Swordsman and Wild Dancer.
Every master has lessons which focus on a new skill Ryoma can learn, but crucially, you won’t learn that skill immediately. Instead, you unlock that skill to be purchased on the relevant style’s skill tree. While you can complete most of the lessons pretty early on, you may not actually be able to use those skills until the later chapters.
Each master has their own methods of training and progression, so here’s where to find each master, and how their progression works.
Komaki
A regular master that fans of the franchise will recognise, Komaki teaches the player about all things bare-handed. If you’re looking to dominate the tail-end of the samurai period of Japan with just your fists, Komaki is your man. Located in Fushimi, in order to find his Dojo, you simply need to exit the Teradaya Inn, turn left and it’s one of the first buildings on the right hand side.
On your first time here, you’ll see Komaki arguing with his apprentice, but after a brief cutsence, he’ll begin teaching you some new moves. After every lesson, Komaki will want you to “get to grips with what you’ve learned”, which basically means “have a few scraps then come back”. Easy enough.
William
A gaijin hoping for some long-awaited vengeance, William is the master who’ll teach you how to your pistol better in Gunman style, which is perfect for those who want to riddle everyone with bullets. You can find William and his gang in East Umekojicho, which is located in the Rakugai neighborhood of Kyo. This area of the map can only be accessed from Chapter 3 onwards, so keep that in mind.
On your first trip through this area, you’ll find a group of three shady looking ronin huddled up in the corner. After approaching them and watching the following cutscenes, you’ll be able to train under William. As far as progression goes, William’s training doesn’t require much from the player. No fetch quests or anything like that. However, you will be dragged on some additional missions to help William in his vendetta.
Ginryu
A highly trained individual obsessed with the beauty of swordplay, Ginryu is your master for Swordsman and Wild Dancer. If you need some pointers when it comes to dicing people up with your sword, this is the place to go. As far as finding him goes, Ginryu’s dojo is pretty hard to miss, located north of West Shijo Street in the Rakunai section of Kyo.
Like William, this area of the map can only be accessed once you reach Chapter 3, so make sure you plough through the story first. When you first reach this area, you’ll hear some chatter about a powerful dojo in the area, and when you approach the dojo, you’ll be accosted by some thugs. Defeat them, and Ginryu will meet you in person, allowing you to train under him.
In order to unlock his lessons, you need to show him weapons of a certain quality, with the quality benchmark being raised higher each time. All you need to do is equip said weapon, and he’ll teach you. Each stage of his training has two sections, with them both dedicated to one of the two styles he teaches. Once you complete one stage, you can then talk to him again for the second stage before he asks you to present a new weapon.
Like A Dragon: Ishin is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X & S.
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