I enjoyed grappling with Stranger Than Heaven’s unconventional combat, but I’d love to see more of its depiction of early 20th-century Japan. RGG Studio has always had a flair for the cinematic, with its Yakuza series taking inspiration from Japanese crime dramas on film and TV. 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 last century.

While the game’s central story of a Japanese-American outcast escaping America to find a new life in Japan sounds intriguing, it conveniently overlooks Japan's oppression of Korean immigrants during the same time period. The quick demo wasn’t really for interrogating these matters but rather an introduction to the game’s combat. 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, 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.

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. Where it perhaps got trickier was the metal pipe, a weapon that you're two-handing, which took me a while to parse how it functions 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, there's a refreshing brutality to Stranger Than Heaven's combat.

Ultimately, I get why RGG wants to sell people on the combat system first, and having proven to me its depth, now I just 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.