So this is a big beautiful and sometimes messy game that's hard to articulate into words just what it's all about.

First of all, let's start from the top. The gameplay here is so much improved over LAD7 (which was already fantastic) and Hawaii is just a wonderful sandbox to explore, this was exactly the shot in the arm this series needed.

The story is fantastic most of the way here, there are some dumb things here and there (like every yakuza game if we're being honest) but just such an incredible amount of heart to go along with this. Ichi is an amazing protagonist, as much as I love Kiryu he's totally captured my heart at this point and will hopefully be the guy going forward.

I do have some issues with this game, the biggest one being how bad the game is at telling you things. The final dungeon had no level requirement, and I was a few levels under, making it very difficult to complete. There are many side quests that you do, and if you do them too early you get wiped and the game offers you no way of knowing this. Stuff like this was a massive time waste, and unfortunate, but not enough to hurt this game overall.

The ending is....interesting. I can't say I love or hate it, I have to see where it goes, but it left more questions than answers for me. It still brought out tons of emotion (as did this entire game) and I can't wait to see exactly where they go from here.

I think realistically, this is certainly a top tier Yakuza game, and I wouldn't be shocked at all to see this one go into people's top spot. For me, it's just going to miss out on that, but a genuinely incredible game, that RGG cooked on.