Stranger Than Heaven adds wearable cheat items to ease its parry combat
Producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto says the assists regenerate health and let beginners win with basic punches, but everyone watching can see you are wearing them.
Stranger Than Heaven will include optional cheat items that make its demanding parry-based combat easier, RGG Studio producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto told IGN at Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show 2026. In the interview, published on October 31, he said the items are available from the very start of the game, which IGN lists for January 15, 2027.
How the cheats work
Sakamoto said equipping the cheat items makes you "much harder to defeat" by automatically restoring health and adding other perks. For players who still struggle with blocking, he said there are assistance items that let you clear fights using only basic left and right punches.
There is a catch, in classic RGG style. The items count as handicap gear and are worn as clothing, so anyone watching your screen can tell straight away that you have them on. No pretending to be a parry god on stream.
Why RGG added them
Hands-on demos showed the combat is a big step up from the button-mashing of recent RGG games. IGN's preview called it demanding, with attacks you have to read for direction as well as timing. Sakamoto said the team expected parrying to be tough and used feedback from show demos, including the one at Gamescom Asia in Thailand, to tune difficulty balance and control responsiveness.
On top of the cheat items there are difficulty settings and a long tutorial phase early in the game. Sakamoto said the hardest setting is "extremely challenging", so players who want the punishment will still get it.
What it means for players
The goal, in Sakamoto's words, is to give action-game beginners enough support to reach the ending. That matters for a game sold as a fifty-year story across five cities and eras of modern Japan, with a showbiz career running alongside the street fights. Fans who come to RGG for the drama and the side activities can now dial the fighting down without losing access to the story.
Stranger Than Heaven is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, with SEGA publishing. Players who want to see where RGG's brawling started can go back to Yakuza 0 Director's Cut while they wait.
Source: IGN interview with producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto; SEGA (Stranger Than Heaven on Steam).
