RGG Studio’s Stranger Than Heaven closed the second day of Xbox @ Gamescom with producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto detailing the combat. Described as the developer’s most visceral yet, it highlights how protagonist Makoto Daito’s fighting evolves across three eras: Kokura in 1915, Kure in 1929 and Osaka in 1943.
Kokura is a display of hand-to-hand combat, and almost dramatically, crowds of NPCs will clear out when a fight is about to break out. As revealed before, players can control the left and right sides of Makoto’s body separately. This also applies to guarding, so you’ll use his right arm to block attacks from an opponent’s left and vice versa.
You can combine left and right attacks into combos, but if you time things just right, Makoto can also parry attacks. Jumping ahead to Kure, he pulls out a giant crowbar, and enemies now have weapons like shovels and blades. Players can wield these with either one or both hands – if you choose the former, then you’ll punch an opponent with the free hand. Besides the usual fodder, larger boss-style threats can appear.
Of course, it’s not always about size. In Osaka, Makoto faces a single blade-wielding foe who can close the gap quickly. This also showcases how you can parry enemy blows during ground-and-pound sequences and roll out of the way of attacks when knocked down.
Stranger Than Heaven offers a darker tone than RGG Studio’s previous works, so you shouldn’t expect as many “zany” characters this time around. Nevertheless, there is a lot of side content, and since the team created all the assets from scratch, you can expect plenty of new sights and sounds when it launches on January 15th, 2027.
