"This is a great game, just not a good yakuza game" part 2
I love the franchise to pieces and I wish it was the best it could be, but god being a fan of it is frustrating nowadays.

Long story short, if you like good games, ones that let you progress at your own pace, are wacky in a good way with a lot of really great moments, scenery, music - it's for you. Provided you like RPGs that is. Gameplay has been vastly improved over last RPG entry. Nobody can deny that the game is good and will give you a lot of bang for your buck, whether you're into tourist aspect, camaderie aspect or just storytelling of the franchise. Even the most lackluster yakuza story is a great story by triple A standards.
If you're a Yakuza fan, there's a bunch of things that were incredibly frustrating or disappointing to witness. Some story elements, some things that weren't changed but definitely should have been and a bunch of missed opportunities to maybe right some wrongs that previous games neglected.

I'll start with some positive things that I really appreciate about this title, including some that i could say about pretty much every game in the franchise:

- Characters. They're always done extremely well, and this game is no exception. Yamai, Chitose, Tomizawa, Bryce, even lesser characters like freaking Gondawara of all people being actually a really great guy with a wholesome moment.
- Music. They just never really miss. The credits theme was outright gorgeous.
- General vibe. It's a yakuza game. Obviously just having a good time in whatever city you roam is practically guaranteed. There's many ways to interact with your own party and learn more about them as characters. The bond bingo boards were a good shout in that regard.
- Remembering the franchise. For the most part, the whole "Bucket list" thing was honestly just wonderful. While the trailer already gave away some of the characters from the past that you get to see, the others were a very pleasant surprise, especially Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 6 reps. This is also a major step up in terms of how such thing was done in the past games.
- Gameplay improvements. I maintain this franchise isn't one for RPG combat, and if you really wanted to force it into mainline series there are better ways to do it, but the system that they have now is certainly much better than the one from the previous game. Moving to line up skills, balancing of said skills, difficulty curve all have vastly improved, so for instance you don't have to grind to have a chance against a boss.

Now that that's done, let's start with the low hanging fruit.

NG+ being locked behind DLC is absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and everyone should be very much up in arms about it. It's a feature that was already in the standard game, but was stripped away for extra cash. I understand wanting extra money for a pretty expansive product, but have the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ decency to feature actual extra stuff worth paying for instead of something that should've been packaged to the base product.

Story at times is absolute garbage. Please, for the love of god, Yokoyama, never touch omnipresent, all-knowing factions again. Daidoji is an absolute joke. From just the stuff we got to see happen in game - Hanawa being frozen in place when Eiji is outed as a rat and engaging in hand to hand combat afterwards instead of taking Akane and Lani to the back of their hideout the moment something is wrong. Daidoji attacking Date for letting Kiryu look or listen to people of his past for "breaking the oath" when said oath was broken already when the world found out Kiryu was actually alive and well with video footage. Like the incompetence is just astounding, these things took me away from the game outright, stuff was on par with rubber bullets.

The combat. Look, it's better, it's an improvement over what it was in last mainline entry and in any other franchise it would be great, but it just does not work in terms of what Yakuza was. Brawler installments were always a good mix of building tension and letting you release that tension, whoever the bad guy was you could do some brutal maneuvers against them that i hope nobody had a chance to feel in real life. Sure, as time went on there were some outliers in this, like Akiyama's air combos or Majima's shadow clones in his fight, but they were still used sparingly or were otherwise intertwined with actual grounded stuff. You just don't get that with the RPG system - shooting ink from a squid, swinging a giant fish - none fit the game's aesthetic for anything more than a one time gag (though in all honesty it's even infected brawler games, like the agent gadgets in Gaiden, the card superpowers in Ishin Kiwami and flying cutlasses and whatnot in the upcoming Pirate venture). It being turn-based doesn't help - until you make your move opponents are going to be shuffling about and yelling stuff, but are forbidden from attacking you. I would be a lot more open to the idea of combat style shift from brawler if it was more like FF VI for instance, where your opponents do move while you're taking your time waiting or thinking about next course of action. Granted, with DQ being the inspiration and the thing Ichiban's schizophrenia sees it's wishful thinking to expect adjustments that would heavily deviate from the original formula, but a man can dream.

The game is also plagued by missed opportunities. Now, i'm not going to bash the studio for not getting more voice actors from past games to do stuff in this game, i know voice acting work in Japan is serious business and the fact they got Yamadera to voice Akiyama again was probably pricey enough as is. Instead, I'm going to focus on both voiced and unvoiced content that we got.
Memoirs were great for the most part. A lot of characters were mentioned that I didn't even expect to see brought up again, but there were a plenty that were missing - Bacchus or Miss Tatsu, especially considering we did return to our Yakuza 0 combat styles, Mikio from Yakuza 3 (who helped with orphanage a ton - you'd think they'd mention him a lot more), Watase and any single person aside from Hanawa from Gaiden. The last part is especially odd with how he pretty much owes Tsuruno's funds his life at that point in time and how stellar storytelling was with Shishido for his final fight.
Something that sort of relates to memoirs, but should be done more IMO are more passive mentions of characters - whether it's some radio talk show mentioning last Shinada game or police banner PSA to report to Tanimura regarding any problem in the Little Asia area, stuff like that. One moment in chapter 8 where Tsukumo and Sugiura make an appearance with 0 voice lines was a sweet nod and we really could use more of those.
We now have some dynamic intros that involve characters other than Ichi fighting which is appreciated, but everyone disappearing for substories is something i thought would be fixed with the new release and it's disappointing that we didn't get there. It wasn't a problem when it was Kiryu alone trying to fix issues or solve problems, but now that you have a team you fight with you'd expect them to chime in, offer help or insist the group takes on some issue in particular, especially considering Ichi, who knows only the most basic of basics of English language, is in Hawaii, so you'd have his local companions act as translators for instance, or letting them take care of it all.

I really, really hope to see some of what i mentioned in future releases, but hope is also what I had for prior titles. Still, I will love this franchise for everything that it does so well. We can meme about asset reusing all we want, but this franchise is probably the best case for it, the most justified one for it.

"This is a great game, just not a good yakuza game" part 2 I love the franchise to pieces and I wish it was the best it could be, but god being a fan of it is frustrating nowadays. Long story short, if you like good games, ones that let you progress at your own pace, are wacky in a good way with a lot of really great moments, scenery, music - it's for you. Provided you like RPGs that is. Gameplay has been vastly improved over last RPG entry. Nobody can deny that the game is good and will give you a lot of bang for your buck, whether you're into tourist aspect, camaderie aspect or just storytelling of the franchise. Even the most lackluster yakuza story is a great story by triple A standards. If you're a Yakuza fan, there's a bunch of things that were incredibly frustrating or disappointing to witness. Some story elements, some things that weren't changed but definitely should have been and a bunch of missed opportunities to maybe right some wrongs that previous games neglected. I'll start with some positive things that I really appreciate about this title, including some that i could say about pretty much every game in the franchise: - Characters. They're always done extremely well, and this game is no exception. Yamai, Chitose, Tomizawa, Bryce, even lesser characters like freaking Gondawara of all people being actually a really great guy with a wholesome moment. - Music. They just never really miss. The credits theme was outright gorgeous. - General vibe. It's a yakuza game. Obviously just having a good time in whatever city you roam is practically guaranteed. There's many ways to interact with your own party and learn more about them as characters. The bond bingo boards were a good shout in that regard. - Remembering the franchise. For the most part, the whole "Bucket list" thing was honestly just wonderful. While the trailer already gave away some of the characters from the past that you get to see, the others were a very pleasant surprise, especially Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 6 reps. This is also a major step up in terms of how such thing was done in the past games. - Gameplay improvements. I maintain this franchise isn't one for RPG combat, and if you really wanted to force it into mainline series there are better ways to do it, but the system that they have now is certainly much better than the one from the previous game. Moving to line up skills, balancing of said skills, difficulty curve all have vastly improved, so for instance you don't have to grind to have a chance against a boss. Now that that's done, let's start with the low hanging fruit. NG+ being locked behind DLC is absolute bullshit and everyone should be very much up in arms about it. It's a feature that was already in the standard game, but was stripped away for extra cash. I understand wanting extra money for a pretty expansive product, but have the goddamn decency to feature actual extra stuff worth paying for instead of something that should've been packaged to the base product. Story at times is absolute garbage. Please, for the love of god, Yokoyama, never touch omnipresent, all-knowing factions again. [spoiler]Daidoji is an absolute joke. From just the stuff we got to see happen in game - Hanawa being frozen in place when Eiji is outed as a rat and engaging in hand to hand combat afterwards instead of taking Akane and Lani to the back of their hideout the moment something is wrong. Daidoji attacking Date for letting Kiryu look or listen to people of his past for "breaking the oath" when said oath was broken already when the world found out Kiryu was actually alive and well with video footage.[/spoiler] Like the incompetence is just astounding, these things took me away from the game outright, stuff was on par with rubber bullets. The combat. Look, it's better, it's an improvement over what it was in last mainline entry and in any other franchise it would be great, but it just does not work in terms of what Yakuza was. Brawler installments were always a good mix of building tension and letting you release that tension, whoever the bad guy was you could do some brutal maneuvers against them that i hope nobody had a chance to feel in real life. Sure, as time went on there were some outliers in this, like Akiyama's air combos or Majima's shadow clones in his fight, but they were still used sparingly or were otherwise intertwined with actual grounded stuff. You just don't get that with the RPG system - shooting ink from a squid, swinging a giant fish - none fit the game's aesthetic for anything more than a one time gag (though in all honesty it's even infected brawler games, like the agent gadgets in Gaiden, the card superpowers in Ishin Kiwami and flying cutlasses and whatnot in the upcoming Pirate venture). It being turn-based doesn't help - until you make your move opponents are going to be shuffling about and yelling stuff, but are forbidden from attacking you. I would be a lot more open to the idea of combat style shift from brawler if it was more like FF VI for instance, where your opponents do move while you're taking your time waiting or thinking about next course of action. Granted, with DQ being the inspiration and the thing Ichiban's schizophrenia sees it's wishful thinking to expect adjustments that would heavily deviate from the original formula, but a man can dream. The game is also plagued by missed opportunities. Now, i'm not going to bash the studio for not getting more voice actors from past games to do stuff in this game, i know voice acting work in Japan is serious business and the fact they got Yamadera to voice Akiyama again was probably pricey enough as is. Instead, I'm going to focus on both voiced and unvoiced content that we got. Memoirs were great for the most part. A lot of characters were mentioned that I didn't even expect to see brought up again, but there were a plenty that were missing - Bacchus or Miss Tatsu, especially considering we did return to our Yakuza 0 combat styles, Mikio from Yakuza 3 (who helped with orphanage a ton - you'd think they'd mention him a lot more), Watase and any single person aside from Hanawa from Gaiden. The last part is especially odd with how he pretty much owes Tsuruno's funds his life at that point in time and how stellar storytelling was with Shishido for his final fight. Something that sort of relates to memoirs, but should be done more IMO are more passive mentions of characters - whether it's some radio talk show mentioning last Shinada game or police banner PSA to report to Tanimura regarding any problem in the Little Asia area, stuff like that. One moment in chapter 8 where Tsukumo and Sugiura make an appearance with 0 voice lines was a sweet nod and we really could use more of those. We now have some dynamic intros that involve characters other than Ichi fighting which is appreciated, but everyone disappearing for substories is something i thought would be fixed with the new release and it's disappointing that we didn't get there. It wasn't a problem when it was Kiryu alone trying to fix issues or solve problems, but now that you have a team you fight with you'd expect them to chime in, offer help or insist the group takes on some issue in particular, especially considering Ichi, who knows only the most basic of basics of English language, is in Hawaii, so you'd have his local companions act as translators for instance, or letting them take care of it all. I really, really hope to see some of what i mentioned in future releases, but hope is also what I had for prior titles. Still, I will love this franchise for everything that it does so well. We can meme about asset reusing all we want, but this franchise is probably the best case for it, the most justified one for it.