The game was great, it has 16 chapters + 3 sub-chapters for a Majima short story (these chapters are INCREDIBLY short, so i'd consider it one chapter divided into 3), falling between the length of 0 and Kiwami 1 (17 and 13).

The story was pretty good, but once again I have a biased view on the amazing story of Yakuza 0 so I wouldn't say it was the greatest. It also kind of felt like the story was made how it was specifically to give Kiryu a love interest, as weird as that sounds. If you were to remove her from the game I feel like nothing would have changed much besides some dumb decisions she decided to make. I personally didn't like the dynamic that was given for them, but I might have a biased view in Majima and Kiryu's dynamic lol. Other than that one gripe, the story had me guessing everything, I felt like I knew exactly how it was going to play out, then I'm hit with a twist or surprise. The ending was great, Ryuji was such an amazing character, showing that although he wanted the downfall of the Tojo clan, he had morals in how he did it, and would only do so in the most honourable way possible. The pacing was fine, It didn't feel rushed at all when I played, but I also did all substories along the way so that may be why as well. Majima's mini story was absolutely amazing, it was a slight continuation to 0's story, giving closure I never knew I needed, gave me just as much emotions as 0's story did.

The combat had a new spin where you only had one fighting style that kind of combined all the original ones into one (e.g. the heat moves you start with are similar to brawler ones, then you slowly learn ones similar to rush and beast). It felt kind of refreshing having it, I dare say I actually like it more than 0's and 1. My only complaint with the combat is that dodging was kind of 50/50, you would dodge (barely go far) but would still most likely get hit if you didn't dodge away from the attack, yet when an enemy dodges and you still "hit" them, they've successfully dodged it? This especially sucks when you try dodging, fail, then get stunlocked by an attack chain. They have somewhat remedied this, as you can parry almost immediately after being hit, unless you get knocked over (don't get me started on how funny the ragdolling is).

The substories felt a bit bland compared to the other games, they didn't feel as.. unique? One nice thing however is that there is no substory finder item, as they give you the ability to see them straight away, making completion pretty easy. The completion itself was fairly easy due to this, as I had finished about 78% of the completion book as I finished the main story. There are some things that are not needed for completion, but it just feels strange not doing them since the whole point of the completion book is to, well, complete stuff. One example would be the food combos; they wanted you to do 2 less than how many there were in the game, but wanted you to drink everything from the vending machine (i believe 41 different drinks). Another example is that there are 26 bouncer missions with 3 difficulties, making 78 in total, the completion book only wants you doing 20 of them.

All in all, it was a fun game to play, I may have not liked it as much if the Majima short story wasn't in the game, as that boosted my enthusiasm for playing the game.