Absolutely a fantastic experience from top to bottom, although my satisfaction with the combat started to wane toward the end. The humor is top notch, emotional beats hit hard, and the protagonist may be a top 10 contender for me. He's just that good.

I enjoyed the grind aspects overall, they were relatively simple and fun to engage with, generally filled with easy mini games that had their own special feeling. The Underground Dungeons I found largely bland and uninspired, in contrast to the dungeon runs as a part of the story which I found unique and cool approaches to them in a realistic world. This game makes me excited to continue the series.

I started playing the Yakuza games in October 2023, and all that time I was looking forward to getting here. It didn’t disappoint.

I’ve never been a massive fan of the real time combat in the series, so this shift was very welcome and I definitely prefer it to what we had before. But more than that, this game has my favourite side content offering in the series, and even more than that:

HOLY SHIT, THIS STORY! The best story in any game I’ve played. I love every character in this game so much, and the emotional tension especially in the final chapters is the best stuff in the whole series.

It’s worth playing all the Yakuza games just to make this game the best experience possible. And obviously those games are great too.

This is probably my favorite game in the Yakuza franchise, no joke
At first I was conflicted about the combat changes but it's really refreshing after years and years of tiger dropping and button mashing enemies AND Ichiban as a main character is what the series needed imo. He's really likeable and his party of characters is equally as interesting to me, he's the opposite of Kiryu whilst being all the same and I think it really adds to his character. From the jump he's an engaging character and the lore that surrounds him is actually so good I LOVE THE STORY IN THIS GAME I cannot ever fully express how much I enjoyed this game it was so good this game is so good Ichiban is so good I'm in love with him forever!!!

This was my first Yakuza game, and it completely hooked me into the series. I'm glad I was recommended this because I think I found one of my favorite series outside of Persona and Danganronpa.

To start off, I'll talk about the story. This was the main reason I kept playing. It has one of the most realistic and engaging stories I've seen in a while. It feels so genuine, maybe helped by the fact that there's no supernatural elements (unless you count Ichiban's schizophrenia, lol). Its characters are definitely its strong-suit. I think in the beginning, it was very slow, which is why it took me a bit to finish this, but once it picked up, it picked up. I can't compare it to any other Yakuza games yet, but I assume that's how it usually is.
Story: 9.5/10

Next is my second favorite part about this game: the music. I don't see it discussed a lot, but this is some of the best soundtracks I've heard in a while. It completely pumps you up during fights and 100% adds to the tone of the story.
Music: 11/10

Next is the gameplay, which is iffy for me. I love turn-based combat, but there's a lot about this one that is off to me. Not only are the moves terribly balanced (Joon-gi Han's head trauma, god) but pretty much 75% of the moves on each character are useless. Idk what was going on in Sega there, but yeah. I also hate how the auto mode doesn't fast-forward, because god are the animations long as hell. I kind of dreaded running into Sujimon... As for the boss fights, I had a hard time with a lot of them, but that was what made theme exciting for me. I absolutely LOVED the challenge of the boss fights. It always felt good to defeat them. For the RPG aspects of the gameplay, it felt like there was too much for you to do. Not only were the side quests like, way too much, but there were TONS of things you could do and it just felt overwhelming. I decided to ignore most of them and focus on the story. If I didn't. I probably wouldn't have finished this game.
Gameplay: 7/10

For the voice acting, I played the dub. I think the dub voice actors did an amazing job, as much as it's criticized. Kiryu and Majima's voices were... odd choices, though. I love Robbie Daymond, so of course I loved Zhao's preformance, but I also adored Joon-gi Han and Ichiban's. I love how Joon-gi Han actually has a Korean accent, and how low and chill it is. when I listened to his Japanese voice, I felt it didn't fit his sort of melancholy tone to his character. Ichiban was just perfect. He perfectly captures the goofy but also rough-tone of his character. Props to these dub voice actors; you do better than most English dubs.
Voice acting: 9/10

Overall, I fucking loved this game, and it'll probably go down as my favorite ever. Thanks for teaching me capitalism and family, Yakuza 7.

ALERTA DE JOGASSO. E eu não sou particularmente chegado nos RPGs de turno, mas aqui é feito de uma maneira tão simples de entender, mas ainda assim dinâmica, que deixa pouquíssima coisa a desejar. O único ponto baixo que eu consigo pensar nesse jogo tem a ver com o combate. O fato de você não poder posicionar os bonecos e tanto os seus personagens quanto os inimigos se movem aleatoriamente faz com que as possibilidades para ataques em área e utilização do cenário de maneira inteligente seja bastante limitada. Mas mesmo assim, em comparação com todo o restante lindo que é esse jogo, isso não me incomodou em quase nada. A melhor história principal da franquia, DE LONGE. Com tanto conteúdo adicional pra fazer que eu passei horas fora da missão principal. Uma trilha sonora foda pra caralho com várias músicas bem únicas e boas. Um elenco fortíssimo de personagens, facilmente o melhor da franquia também, pra mim não tem um personagem chato ou jogado. Papo reto, eu podia dar 5 estrelas só pelo diálogo final do Ichiban (do final mesmo, antes de rolar os créditos).

One of my bigger disappointments of the last several years. After the departure of the longtime studio head (along with, very notably, the longtime franchise producer) there was a big opportunity to reinvent the franchise, and re-casting things as a jrpg is a charming new direction. Along with a great, well performed new protagonist this game on paper should be very good. And the rpg content is serviceable, the mid-point of the plot has some cutscenes that roughly fit in among the series highs, and the shuffling corpses of some series favorite minigames are here again, like in every yakuza since 0.

Unfortunately, everything around the seams of this game fucking sucks. Along with judgment 2, there’s a palpable air of “budget game” choices — a dramatic cutback on polish, much more padding, simpler minigames (although the new quiz game is a charming standout), color by numbers bosses without any of the bespoke qte and mid fight cutscenes yakuza previously used to drive characterization, plus look, kiryus back for some reason, and he’s still the players best friend (ok, that might actually be in-character.)

The biggest disappointment is this games treatment of the classic yakuza “ludonarrative dissonance is good and funny” approach — not satisfied with throwing hundreds of goons out of windows and then laboring over kiryus refusal to kill a story character, this game has replaced it with… wacky mental illness? Our protagonist hallucinates regular people as goofy jrpg enemies, both in and out of the actual narrative? Deeply embarrassing.

Along with the big cutback on one off cutscenes and animations, the basic combat system manages to feel recycled and cookie cutter in a way prior games always avoided (despite similar amounts of actual re-use.) for the first time since some of the ps3 era spinoffs this feels visibly like a budget game. This likely has to due with the newer lead Producer rather than an actual budget cut. If anything, with all of the localized VO, this game is probably higher budget than 5 or 0?

The acting and UI design are high points. Objectively I think this game sits somewhere in the 2.5-3.5 range but I gotta follow my heart. One star.