Recent reviews by bmn

If you're familiar with other Yakuza games on PC, this is far harder on your system due to the new game engine.

As a game, it suffers a little in that most of the side stories are taken wholesale from Yakuza 2, when the series hadn't yet found its feet in terms of humour. There's still a decent amount of meme-worthy stuff, but it's not on the level of Yakuza 0/4/5/6. The new additions such as Clan Creator (improved from Yakuza 6) and Cabaret Club Grand Prix (pretty much taken wholesale from Yakuza 0) go a long way to helping with that.

The new gameplay is different and not necessarily better or worse. Overworld is a lot better and you don't get stuck on the scenery nearly as much. Battle swaps out the pre-programmed physics for ragdoll physics and is a lot more freeform for it. The downside is that your own actions are more limited (only one style, less scope to do heat actions, etc) so, while more interesting things happen due to physics, it can feel more monotonous anyway.

The story is Yakuza 2, it's a classic and it's still a great watch 13 years later.